How often have you come close to giving up on a dream? How often do you regret your decisions? Have you ever wondered you could have achieved something bigger if you were born in a different part of the world? We tend to blame our failures on the smallest of things and eventually give up too soon. But if you take a look at some of the most inspirational success stories, they're all about strong willed people beating the odds to reach the top.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, 'When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.' And it seems these people have followed just that. They come from humble beginnings but that hasn't stopped them from realising their dreams. Here are 8 inspirational stories you probably hadn't heard of before or may have heard somewhere and have forgotten. They'll make you believe nothing is impossible.
Govind Jaiswal: In the year 2006, 22-year-old Govind Jaiswal ranked 48 in the Civil Services Exam. His father is a rickshaw puller who sold off his land to provide education to his son. From the money collected after selling off the land, Govind enrolled himself in a coaching class, and ended up qualifying the examinations, and how! The same police officers who once harassed his father now refer to him as ‘sir’. Amidst 10-14 hours of power cuts and the deafening sound of generators, Govind Jaiswal toiled every night and said he first wanted to get his father treated for his wounds. His father had saved a little land he planned to sell for his three daughters’ weddings, but Govind has ensured that won’t happen anymore.
Kartik Sawhney: Kartik Sawhney was rejected by the IITs, so he chose to accept the offer to study further from Stanford! This teenager’s road to success was paved with rejections. The educational system in India failed to find place for this talented boy whose only weakness lies in the fact that he cannot see. In India, blind students can only take subjects like arts and literature after the 8th standard. Kartik wanted to study science and after a lot of effort from an NGO campaign, he was allowed to appear for CBSE board exams with science as his subjects. He scored a whopping 96%, but the IITs denied him admission. Stanford University, however, welcomed the student to study engineering.
Babbar Ali: I have written about him on LinkedIn earlier. Famously known as the world’s youngest headmaster, 16-year-old Babbar Ali is determined to provide education to every child in his village. A student of class 12, he attends school in the morning and comes home to ‘Anand Shiksha Niketan’ in the backyard of his house in West Bengal, where he teaches close to 800 students. His school has been recognised by the Bengal State Government, and allows students from here to migrate to other schools out of the village for higher education. There may not be desks or a roof for these students in the village, but they rush to the decrepit backyard of Babbar’s home every afternoon after the bell sounds for the classes to begin.
The all-girls football team from Jharkhand: A group of tribal girls from Jharkhand were beaten and asked to sweep floors by bureaucrats when they requested for birth certificates they needed to apply for passports. Thanks to their American coach Franz Gastler, the girls managed to get passports to travel to Spain to play a football tournament. With no shoes or football gear, the girls may not have won the tournament but won the third prize! The girls dressed up in red-bordered white saris to receive the prize. From being slapped to being felicitated, one of the girls from the team remarked, ‘I do not remember the slap, I remember the Cup.’
Saalumarada Thimmakka: Our very own Indian environmentalist Saalumarada Thimmakka was noticed after she planted 284 banyan trees along a four kilometre stretch in Karnataka, India. She has won the National Citizen’s Award of India and also has an environmental organisation in the US named after her – the Thimmakka's Resources for Environmental Education. Once a casual labourer in a quarry, Thimmakka was married to a cattle herder, but they had no children. She started treating these banyan trees as her children and earned the name ‘Saalumarada’ which means ‘of the row of trees’ in Kannada. The management of these trees is now being taken care of by the Government of Karnataka.
K Jayaganesh: Born and brought up in a village in Vellore, K Jayaganesh cleared the civil sevices examination in his seventh attempt with a rank of 156. He studied to be an engineer but only got odd jobs here and there and started working as a waiter to make ends meet. From the money he earned as a waiter, he started attending coaching classes for civil services examination. He finally got seventh time lucky and out of the 700 candidates selected in the exam, he ranked 156th.
Ashish Goyal: A student of NMIMS, Mumbai, Ashish Goyal was asked to look for a government job by a corporate house during his placements. Ashish Goyal was blind, and only government jobs had reservations for the physically challenged. He put all of this behind him and stood second in his batch in NMIMS and went on to pursue an MBA from the Wharton School. In the year 2010, Ashish Goyal was felicitated by the President of India with the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. He now works at JP Morgan’s London operations and hopes to bring awareness about the abilities of a person battling with disabilities.
Kalpana Saroj: She was labelled an ‘untouchable’ Dalit in school. At the age of 12 she was forced to marry a man 10 years older, but she escaped that marriage and decided to move to Mumbai. At the age of 16, the hardworking Kalpana Saroj toiled for 18 hours a day. She gradually took over Kamani Tubes, a debt-ridden metal engineering company. After Kalpana joined the company, it turned into a profit making business making over $100 million! One of the most inspirational entrepreneurs today, Kalpana Saroj battled social evils to reach the top and aims to change India for the better.
So are you ready to follow your dreams with grit, determination and perseverance and have faith in your abilities !