What changed your life trajectory?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Ishwara Prabhupada Thank anyone. I’m simply trying to do what I can. But yeah, what changed my life trajectory? I would say two main events.
When people ask me, I say that I was frustrated by success. So, as I said, my dream was to be a topper. And when I did give GRE, I did come first, not just in my college, I came first in the history of my college.
It was in the state of Maharashtra. And I thought that, I was delighted. I’m going to be happy now.
But then I found that just looking at the marks sheet, it was only a very little pleasure. It’s only when other people come and congratulate you. Then you feel happy.
And then I had three, four of my friends who just forgot to congratulate me. No bad intention, but they just forgot. And then I was meeting there.
I was expecting it. I did congratulate. At that time, I felt so agitated.
And suddenly, it was an epiphany I had. That I just felt, instead of becoming happy by this GRE achievement, I have actually become more dependent on others for my happiness. Earlier, I would meet with them and just have normal interactions.
But now, when I’m meeting them, I expect them, and if they don’t give it, congratulations, I don’t feel happy. So I thought, okay, I might pass another exam. I might do another exam.
I might do something else in my life. Whatever, this pattern will remain the same. I will be dependent on others for my happiness.
So that was the time when I felt, I should look for something which will give me inner happiness. And at that time, a friend gave me the Bhagavad Gita. And when he gave it to me, I told him, I read this already.
I had read it, but I saw that he was changed. He had been a typical, materialistic, happy-go-lucky kind of person. But now he was looking so peaceful, so serene, so purposeful.
I thought, maybe I have missed something in the Gita. When I read it, that’s how I started reading it. And when I started reading it, and I started practicing what he was teaching, all this was in the third year of my engineering.
So then I found that I was getting transformed. I was notorious for my short temper. So short temper just almost disappeared within just a matter of weeks.
And I started talking about Bhagavad Gita with my friends in the hostel. And some of them were into bad habits. Just the bad habits disappeared.
The parents had been concerned about, oh, my son is going into bad habits. But then parents were also happy. So in the meanwhile, I was also into a little bit of social service.
Since my childhood, I had a lot of faith in the power of education, in opening new options for people and helping them to grow. So while I was doing my studies, as a part of a social service organization, I used to go to some nearby slums. And there I would offer like free tuitions for the children over there.
So I would teach maths, history, English. And most of these kids, nice kids, but they were from dysfunctional families, especially their fathers were alcoholics. And there’d be a lot of domestic violence when these fathers would come drunk.
So when these kids opened up to me, I started thinking, how much is this education going to help them? And one of my friends was much more into social service. So at that time, we had observed the problem of alcoholism and we felt that we should also diversify. We means our organization at that time.
We should diversify and help people become free from alcohol. So we had adopted a small village. And my friend was the leader in that.
He had gone and he had got this whole village. He had got everybody almost become pure alcohol. And that was a big achievement of our organization.
But one day he came back. I used to go to the nearby slum. He used to go to this village.
One evening, a night when he came back, I saw he was looking shattered. And he told me that just the previous week there had been local panchayat elections. And the candidate, in order to get people to vote for him, had brought three truckloads of free liquor.
And not only the fathers, even the kids had got drunk. So at that time, we started thinking that it’s not just that we have to open options for people. We also have to equip people to choose those options.
That is internally, if they don’t have the strength to choose the right options, our opening options is not going to help them. So around that time itself, I was in the Government Engineering College, Pune. And there was a student.
He had been a university topper throughout his eight semesters of engineering. And he had got the highest paid job in the history of our college. So like a model of success.
But he was also a chain smoker. And in six months of that job, he got lung cancer and he died. It’s tragic.
So that event also shook me. I mean, I saw that this problem of self-destruction, it was not just among the uneducated slum dwellers. It was afflicting someone who was also far more brilliant than what I was.
So then, that was the time I fell. By this time, I had also passed out. I had also got a job.
I was also working. I was working in a software company. But I felt that I could contribute to society much more by sharing the wisdom of the Gita, which had helped me to change myself for the better.
Which in my observation, helped others to change also. Rather than writing software programs. Writing software programs is wonderful if that’s what we are inspired to do.
But if I don’t do it, there are hundreds of other people who will do it. But how many people are going to teach the Bhagavad Gita? So I felt this was the way I could contribute the best. So that’s what I’m trying to do right now.