Karthik Muralidharan — R. Samuel
Bengaluru:
“I have known failure, that’s why I do what I do”, said Karthik Muralidharan. At the age of 23, he conducts motivational sessions for students from the weaker sections of society. “The fact that I was unable to do as well as I should in school really crippled me at first, until one day, I realised I wasn’t the only one”, Karthik says. “All I wanted to do was quit.”
Now, he wants to tell people that failure isn’t the end of the world and that no matter how bad things get, they are not alone. The idea of social development, of bringing everybody on to a level playing field, where everybody has room to grow came to him. “None of this was part of the plan,” he said. “I had no idea I would work with financially deprived students and I didn’t see myself doing what I do today”.
In college, Karthik began giving motivational talks, which proved very lucrative. “I was making a lot of money and things seemed to be going well.” His work brought him to Magadi, where he met a young Muslim woman who would change the way he saw the world.
“The odds she faced were tremendous. Even so, she overcame them all and went on to make something of herself.”
The untapped potential in these areas, he realised, was huge. All they needed was an opportunity. “The boy who delivered the newspaper everyday was doing his MSc and it made me realise that there is so much talent out there going to waste.”
Corporate gigs haven’t reeled him in, “not yet”, he says honestly. “There is much money to be made there, but I don’t want to get carried away. There’s something I want to do and I don’t really aspire for a Mercedes”.
The young and impressionable are driven almost entirely by the opinions of their peers, most of the time, they don’t know why they do what they do, Karthik says. “Young people are very fond of the word ‘scope’,” he said laughing. “Placements and the prospect of financial gain are what drive them, usually down a path they are ill-suited to.”
This is when corporate sharks like to move in with promises and false hopes. “In the name of training, companies exploit,” he said. Creating a sense of inadequacy and promising to fill the void is a popular tactic, which corporations use ruthlessly to their own advantage. “The only aim is to make a little money and maybe fulfil the requirements of a few”.
“Companies have a 60% rule,” he said, “but if you really scrutinise it, you’ll find that even the person who made the rule has no idea why he did so. A memory game is all that stands between a student and his future.” Trapped now in a vicious cycle, where success is the only end game and there is only one way to get to it – to conform, youngsters, most of whom are completely confused anyway, become easy prey. “People with good marks do science, because the humanities imply weakness,” he said. To be a doctor or an engineer is the only way to go, even today, when the world is open and information is available to all those who seek it.
“I met a girl once, a Commerce student, who told me she wanted to be a doctor,” Karthik recalls. “When I asked her how she intended to do that, she said her friends told her she could.”
Communication skills are a rarity, mainly because so many people fail to see how important they are.
A large section of the rural population doesn’t know what an IIT is, or an IIM, he reveals. When these students enter mainstream colleges, they find themselves completely out of place. Their peers seem miles ahead of them, an unpleasant reminder of how far they need to go and how alienated they have been from the world.
His methods are simple. “I might go to a college and tell my students there to organise a blood donation camp, or pledge their eyes. That makes them aware of how much they can do, it motivates them, makes them more confident.” In that way, everybody becomes a leader. There’s more to life, he says, than a namesake degree but no real education, placements without progress. “I want my students to be nourished physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.”
The greatest strength comes from within. It was Sheldon Kopp, psychotherapist and author of If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him! who said, ‘The most significant battles are waged from within.’ When those are taken care of, the universe falls into place. One might even call it magic.
source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> News> Current Affairs / DC / by Darshana Ramdev / Monday 04th, 2013
