Born Fighting, Learning to Speak
If I have to talk about myself, I should start at the beginning.
I was born impatient.
Why do I say that?
Because I came into this world about two months early. But life has been teaching me patience ever since.
Being a premature baby in the early 1980s put my life at risk. My parents say I came out fighting through that stage, eager to start living.
I thought surviving such a dramatic entrance would lead to an easy life.
Life had other plans.
When I was about three or four, I visited my grandmother's village in Kerala. There was a pond near her house—not a decorative garden pond, but a real village pond where people gathered to collect water for their nearby fields.
I was playing near the edge when I slipped.
I remember the cold water covering my head. The panic. The muffled sounds above the surface. The darkness.
Time moved strangely—it felt like hours, but it was probably just seconds.
My mom saw me go under a couple of times. She pulled me out just in time. When I came up gasping for air, I cried my heart out—partly from fear, partly from relief, and partly from the shock of nearly losing everything without fully understanding what 'everything' meant.
Two near-death experiences before I could even count properly.
For years, those stories were just conversations at family dinners. But they shaped something deeper in me, a belief that I’m here for a reason. Perhaps life was teaching me early: every challenge I survive plants a seed for future strength.
That belief was tested in my career. After twenty-two years in customer support and project management, I realized that the tug of war between life and death that I experienced as a child, would define my work life.
When a critical project was failing and the client was losing patience, I didn’t panic—I remembered being four years old underwater. When I had to grow a team from one person to eighteen, navigating personalities and pressures, I relied on that resilience from being born early—surviving against the odds and adapting quickly.
Those childhood brushes with death became my professional guide—the universe was intentional in its lessons: resilience, patience, and problem-solving under pressure.
But there was one fear I never overcame: speaking to a room full of people.
Ironic, isn’t it? I survived drowning, but a microphone terrified me.
That’s why I am here.
Not because I am a natural speaker—I am not. Not because I have everything figured out—I don’t.
I’m here because after years of helping others find their voice through customer support, after surviving challenges that could have silenced me forever, I realized something:
The little boy who fought for his first breath, who gasped for air above that village pond, deserves to have his voice heard. Not just heard—amplified.
And if he can learn to speak with confidence, imagine what else is possible.
From being born two months early to nearly drowning at four, life taught me that every moment is borrowed time. I am done wasting it being silent.
Maybe every struggle we face is karma preparing us for the moment we choose to speak our truth. I was born fighting for my first breath. Today, I am learning to speak with my full voice. And the fight was worth it.
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