I am standing here today to talk about taking initiative. I repeat – standing because this would have never happened if I had not taken an initiative 17 years back. I met with an accident, was on the bed for a year, was admitted thrice in the hospital. In fact every time I went to the hospital with a hope that my doctor would now allow me to walk, he would admit me. There came a time when the doctors told my father- “He’ll never be able to walk on his own! Buy him crutches! I refused…I was 17 that time! I didn’t want crutches. I told the doctor “crutches to me means dependence … It means that I may be able to do a lot of important work but sooner or later I would become dependent on them and then I would never make an attempt to walk myself…”
The doctor was actually angry with me. I was very popular among fellow patients and nurses because I never complained about my pain and my bed used to be a place for playing cards, where many patients walking with crutches used to come to enjoy themselves. But the doctor never liked me because my father never bribed him. In Dehradun hospital, his rate was Rs. 400/- to do a correct operation. He didn’t get that money and my foot is working incorrectly – till date…
I was forced to leave my science studies as I was unable to attend classes but never wanted to waste my one year so I prepared for BA, sitting on the bed and got the permission to appear in the examination. For that I had to walk, I had to go to the college to write my examination. On April 13th 1988, I filled up an old sock with a lot of cotton, tied that to the foot to make it walkable, took a hockey stick and tried to walk. I fell and got up a number of times but three days later with my brother’s support – I was walking. I appeared for the exam and got about 61%. NOT bad… The doctor was wrong. .I recollect this as my first major initiative, which really shaped up my life. About 6 years back one of the 32 senior doctors of Delhi, whom I’ve met for my foot, told me that your foot has a life of maximum three years, my mother, my father, my wife were sad – somewhere me too – but I didn’t believe him that time and I have no reason to believe him today.. The first initiative for walking on my own has made me like this..
It was an initiative, I took against all odds. That to me is the very basis of taking an initiative that one needs to go beyond conventional logic and rationale and believe in one’s own power to change things.
If everyone begins with ‘This can’t happen’ or ‘this is not possible’, then how will anything ever begin?