September 13, 2008

Don’t Let Your Single Failure To Be Your Final Failure.

This post is written by the guest author Suchandra Dutt.

It was the day before the result of my twelfth final. We, my family and friends, were all excited and just on the verge of celebrating my result with bang as I never scored less than 80% of marks.

Next day, I dressed up like a princess and went to school before time. It was great time there, so many friends met after 3 month and talked about everything to anything.

Then the moments came we were waiting for.

We all jammed in our seminar room and our math teacher was announcing the name with the score: “Somadatta – 95%; Jhumki – 92%; Kiran – 88%.”

Now it’s my turn. Yeah, for the first time, I got little tensed. And then listened my name announced: “Suchandra Dutt – 56%.”

I was thinking, “Did my teacher read that right?” But my bad luck, he read that right.

And that single scorecard changed everything around me. It changed the way my friend used to talk me. It changed the way my family used to see through my eyes. It changed the way my teacher, neighbors used to love me. It changed my brightest days into darkest nightmares.

Was life easy? No! The taunts, the negligences and the humiliations made my future dusky in my own eyes – brought me down from a sweet-talented girl to a girl with no future.

Oneday I decided, “Enough is enough. If they don’t love me with my failure, do they really love me at all? Am I, as a person, not worthy enough for their love? I don’t wanna live anymore if no one loves me for what I’m.”

But my inner voice yelled to me, “Stop Suchandra. A bad score is just a fullstop in the essay of life. Don’t make your single failure to your final failure. It’s a challenge – the challenge to prove everybody out there that you’re not a loser – take that challenge!”

And I took that challenge.

Though in the next two years, literally, I couldn’t succeed to get my real-self back – after two years, finally, I acted on my chellenge and took admission in an engineering college.

And when, after one long year, another academic result hit my life, I proved every one out there that Suchandra wasn’t a loser. Because my scorecard showed: “Suchandra Dutt – 80%.”

Yes, I ain’t a loser. I just lost once. I didn’t let my single failure to become my final failure.

~ Suchandra Dutt

Suchandra Dutt is a columnist and professional speaker on the subject of peak-performance. She is currently working on her book on creative writing. An engineer by education, she stays in Kolkata with her husband and a little angel.

~ O ~

The most valuable things we can do to heal one another is sharing each others’ stories. Why not you share your story too? Share your story and give us the more reasons to celebrate. Send it here.

August 27, 2008

Diana Golden: Who Lost Her Leg But Not Her Faith

Running away from a problem is also a problem. Life is about facing the problem, naming it and resynthesising who we are. Just look to Diana Golden, who at the age 12, got affected with bone cancer and lost her right leg.

But she was the one who could fly 65 miles an hour on one leg. She was the one who mounted the podium at the Olympics to claim gold medal and become the poster girl of the handicapped athletics movement. By the time she retired, she won 19 US and 10 world disabled gold medals, and had been honored as one of the greatest athletics – yes, not as disable athletics ... athletics.

It’s all because Diana Golden always used to believe, “Disability isn’t physical, it’s mental.” She believed -- as God has put her into this world, it’s her responsibility to prove how worthy she was. Losing a leg? Nothing, because she never lost her will to dream.

August 16, 2008

India, Independence & Believe

So we’ve celebrated our 61 years of Independence. We’ve celebrated India’s first individual Olympic Gold after 104 years of waiting. We’ve celebrated all those respected faces’ political correct speeches. We’ve celebrated all those patriotic songs spiced with "Jai Hind." But what do you believe in? I do believe in India as:

I  = I
N = Never
D = Deny
I  = In
A = Action

What about you? What do you believe in?

August 5, 2008

A Lot Can Happen Over Jeannie’s Java ...

On her 72nd birthday, Jeannie Brown, a lonely divorced woman, woke up and asked herself, "What is it that you want? You're getting old." When she listened to her inner voice, it said, “I wanna have a coffee shop.”  So with her lifelong saving, she started a lovely little coffee shop named Jeannie’s Java.



As she didn’t have enough fund or get any bank loan, she brought in all her furnitures from home: the sideboard, the tables and even all the chairs. And today, from a lovely little coffee shop, Jeannie’s Java, has grown up to the much talked restaurant as hot and sweet as like her coffee. Even at the age of 80, with her 100 percent blind right eye, she keeps serving to the customers with her warm smile and generosity (She has put nine love affairs together in Java.) If you are in Tiburon, California, Jeannie’s Java is the best place not only for coffee but for the inspiration as well.



Wanna get a glimpse of the true spirit of this lovely grandma who has always focused what she was looking for? Watch this video and get loaded with the true inspiration served with acerbit wit.

August 1, 2008

Love Does Cost A Thing ...

In the movie, No Smoking, there is an interesting dialogue sequence between John Abraham and Ayesha Takia. It began when John asked Ayesha, “What gift do you want on our wedding anniversary?” Ayesha firmly replied, “Divorce!” Then John said, “I don’t have that budget.”


Really, nowadays divorce is getting too expensive. If you really want to get the real picture, ask Rupert Murdoch who got divorced from her wife Anna Murdoch with the settlement of a whipping 1.7 billion dollars - the most expensive divorce in the history!


And of course, there are Michael Jordan, Neil Diamond, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg who have signed a handsome check (their handsome look wasn’t enough) to settle their divorces. Maybe that’s why, Tommy Manville joked, “She cried and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.”



But a woman paying her husband more than 10 million dollars to settle her divorce was unheard till Jennifer Lopez made it "loud." Her divorce to her second husband, Chris Judd, cost her $ 15 million. Surprised? Come on, today she even doesn’t need to act or sing to earn money. Just showing off her new-born baby’s photographs on magazine cover, she earns million dollars.



But if you rewind her life to the early 90s, it was totally different. Landed in New York with no shelter and food, she started performing in manhattans night clubs. Later in 1990, she went on to become a "Fly Girl (back-up dancer)" on the Fox's comedy show In Living Color; though she has been rejected twice by the Fox. In 1993, suddenly the time started forwarding with a new tango, when as a back-up dancer she appeared on Janet Jackson's video "That's the Way Love Goes." And today, she is the only artist in the history to have a No.1 movie (The Wedding Planner) and a No.1 album (J. Lo) in the same week.



It's right: when we fall in a river, we are no longer a fisherman; we are swimmer.

July 1, 2008

Amy Grant: Then & Now

THEN!

Amy Grant was just 16 and used to work part-time sweeping floors and demagnetizing tapes at a local studio.

NOW!

Ever since 1978’s self-titled debut, Amy Grant has cleaned up in terms of multi-platinum sales, Grammy Awards and Dove Awards. Having six No.1 hits (and still counting …), she became the first Contemporary Christian musician to have a certified platinum album. Even her song Find A Way from the album, Unguarded, became the first Christian song to hit Billboard’s Top 40.