Thanks for showing so much love to my book – The Anexas Story. Based on many requests to publish chapters of the book on LinkedIn, I continue to write a series of articles based on these chapters. Please read on and keep believing that there is an entrepreneur in you…and everyone!
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Hiring more team members gave me an opportunity to spend more time at home in Bangalore. That meant watching the children growing up more closely and sharing the responsibility of their upbringing with Varsha, who singlehandedly was holding the fort on various fronts, not only taking care of them, but also supervising the Anexas operations in Bangalore, while practicing in her own clinic. Not to mention the construction of our new office building in Bangalore she so diligently monitored.
One day, my twin children, Anukarsh and Animisha told me about an assignment given by their fifth standard Hindi teacher. After two weeks, they were supposed to recite a Hindi poem, one which should not be very common. A poem which very few people should have heard of.
Now that was a challenge. My immediate suggestions of a few poems were met with responses like, ‘Too common…’,
‘Everybody knows this one.’ They wanted something unique, yet interesting, with zero likelihood of it getting duplicated by another participant in their respective sections. This meant it had to be good and original. A little persuasion and admonishment from Varsha coaxed me into something I had not done for a long time, “Why don’t you write a poem yourself? You have not written for quite some time, isn’t it? At least let your poetic skills be of use to someone in need!”
Ever the eager poet, I treated it as an opportunity to push my own creation. Also, to my surprise, it was received fairly well. It was a motivational poem about achieving the goals despite obstacles. Those days my mother Sadhana, who was fighting breast cancer, occupied my mind a lot. I wrote a poem having her name included as one of the words:
लक्ष्य-पथ चाहे कठिन हो
दूर तक धूमिल क्षितिज हो
हार न तू धुंध से
साहस संजो कर मुश्किलों
का
सामना कर, सामना कर!
ढह गया जो महल तेरा
स्वप्न सा था जो बसेरा
दुखद स्मृतियों को भुलाकर
फिर नए निर्माण की तू
कल्पना कर, कल्पना कर!
विश्व-बंधुत्व सोच तेरी
पर द्वेष की छाया घनेरी
परपस्पर वैमनस्य को हर
शक्ति बनकर शांति की तू
साधना कर, साधना कर!
I wasn’t sure if my ten-year-olds would understand the full meaning of the poem, but it made a good poem to be recited by them, I thought. At least the teacher would be impressed! As both of my children were in different sections, they could choose the same poem for recitation. I told the kids to learn the poem in the next one week, by when I would be back again after my forthcoming travel, to guide them on how to present it.
The following week, all of us practiced together during the whole weekend with all the tips and tricks to enhance the delivery. Before I took the next flight, I wished them good luck as I would not be able to attend their recital in school due to a client engagement. But we planned to continue practicing together on Skype. So, it was time to plug-in to Skype in them evenings for some online consulting at home too.
On the Monday of the next week, after the kids performed, Varsha called and told me that the teachers were very much impressed with the poem, not only with the content, but also with the style in which it was delivered. The father in me was happy to get this golden opportunity to be a part of nurturing them and shoulder the responsibility of a parent which Varsha had been single-handedly shouldering graciously enough for several years making up for my absence.
The Skype sessions were to continue whenever I was needed to pitch in to help in their homework, though such occasions were not so frequent. Though I might not qualify to brand myself as a caring father spending a lot of time with children, unknowingly one brand was getting metamorphosed slowly and steadily – the Anexas brand!
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For subsequent articles, please watch this space.
You can buy the book directly from its website on https://www.anexasstory.com
or on Amazon on https://www.amazon.in/ANEXAS-STORY-There-Entrepreneur-Everyone-ebook/dp/B07ZGLN8C7
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Amitabh Saxena is founder of Anexas, a well-known lean six sigma and project management consulting organisation. He has trained over 50,000 participants and has 30 years of experience in consulting more than 300 organisations around the world including Fortune 100 companies across industry domains. With a strong team of 25 Master Black Belts, his organisation Anexas has been helping individuals and organisations achieve eminence through excellence since 2006. They can be reached on enquiry@anexas.net