Namashte........
Ladies and gentleman, I am truly overwhelmed by the love, affection and the honour conferred upon me by you all. Adarniya Popli sahib, adarniya ladies and gentleman present here. I am grateful to Mr Popli for organising this event at very short notice and inviting me to deliver this talk.
I will mix my talk in Hindi and English both as I am in my own native country and very proud of my Bhartiya heritage and roots.
Mai hamesha kaheti hu ke unchayi chune ke liye aur mushkilonka samna karne ke liye bulging ya powerful muscles ki nahi balki lohe ke dil aur majboot eradonki jarurat hoti hai aur aaj esiliye mai yahape aap sabke samne proudly khadi hu ke maine apne majboot irado se apni majil hasil ki hai. Aaj mai world ki pehli mahila hu jisne akele ne, without back up vehicle and without back up team Arctic circle and transcontinental combined journey ki hai.......Jo ki koi male bhi akela aaj tak nahi kar paya hai.
Mera drive ek simple drive A to B place jane ki koshish nahi thi, lekin my driving was driving the change, and an attempt to change the mind set of the society that given an equal opportunity females are capable of conquering the world.
I was never in mission to break any rules of the society or anything else for that matter, but I wanted to live my own dreams, my ambitions, I wanted to test my limit, push my boundaries and become best of me that I could be.
No doubt, along the way I broke every obstacle that came along the way.
Today, I stand here before you all, very satisfied.......I am fairly successful......... BUT becoming who I am...... I have always followed my own instincts and my own heart and put in my 100% in all I did.......... I pushed my boundaries, Pushed my limits to become the version of me and to realise core of my personality......
This is your world and you have your own place in the world. It is your life and you have every right to make decisions about your life and your choices. Most of the time we donʼt allow ourselves dream beyond our imagination and to recognise true ability of ourselves. But I have learnt to identify my ability to dream beyond the routine life.......
Have the attitude to make a dent..... leave the mark or your foot prints......
It is never too late to explore new opportunities or try out something different than your soft landing. Nothing wrong in trying out new things.
Be fair to yourself.... Donʼt crush yourself......do justice to yourself and others around you........
Be your own advocate....speak up if you are unhappy about something.....Donʼt worry about what other would say.... They might dislike what you say but you would be satisfied that you have been fair to yourself.....When you are fair to yourself then only you would be fair to others around you........
Do not worry about what others say about you....... No matter what you do...someone will always be unhappy....... You can never please everyone....So just carry on....on the journey of your life.....
Failure and success both are equal parts of the journey of your life and both plays an equal role. It entirely up to us what we learn and what you make out of your failure. In my life, one thing I had was my own determined personality and the attitude of never to give up until I have given my 100%....
As an example..............
Since I am known for my world record driving, I will tell you about my driving experiences....... I was scared of driving....my younger sister had passed her driving test and was driving around... she used to tease me and that is the only reason I decided to learn driving.... At my very first driving lesion.......I was scared of putting the car from first to second gear...The instructor asked me to put in it in to the second gear...I refused and I said.....I am comfortable and donʼt want to go in second gear...He insisted and I refused. He continued insisting and I continued refusing....He said no one in the whole wide world drives in first gear.... you would be the first ever person on the earth..... He himself put the car in second gear and same debate started asking me to go in to third gear and so on..... Ultimately an hour long lesson ended in various debates about changing gears..... I did not take second lesson immediately in same week or in next few weeks but in the mean time I made self-assessment about the gear changing debates I had with my instructor........
I asked myself a question that what was very scary about it...when the instructor also has all the control with him? ... what I realised was that it is my own fear.... So I wrote down all my fears that was pushing me away from learning to drive...... and when I wrote them down they were minor.......I assessed my fears by analysing them.... And conquered my fears........
I was never a confident driver.......I failed my driving test three times.....but I learnt from each of my failure and did not give up until I passed.
I passed my driving test at 4th attempt....... but today here I stand as a first women in the world, having driven combined journey of The Arctic circle and transcontinental...........
Fears donʼt last for life time... they are present until we allow them to be present in our life.... Learn to conquer your fears...........
Over the years driving became my passion..... many years later, I bought my first car. It was perhaps my proudest moment and I would drive everywhere - through the British Isles, Spain, most of Europe... you name it! Back in 2000 I decided to make a journey to India to show the girls that what can a girl achieve with determinations and goal. The plans did not materialise owing to number of factors in my life at that point. However, the dream to drive to India remained with me and I continued to work towards it.
But....... unfortunately, in 2007, I met with a horrible road traffic accident leaving me partially disabled and with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Owing to this, I did not get behind the wheels for four and half years during my recovery.
Life became stand still. I was in a dark tunnel and had no idea whether I would be able to get out of that tunnel. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended and for a long time I did not see any light...... at a time the end of the tunnel was just a hope rather than a reality.....
I remained in my own confined prison of fears and anxiety that I had created around me.... I remained indoor for over 4 years.......I had forgotten my own personality.........I failed in my life on an epic scale........
Therapy was intense but amidst all the words of encouragement, one particular idea stood out. "What were your dreams before the accident?" the therapist asked.
This question became the turning point of my life. Initially I did not take the question very seriously but my analytical nature analysed the question for few weeks. The question became the boost I needed to drive again to fulfil my dreams to be the catalyst for change.
I recognised that all that anxiety, fear etc was within me and only I have the power of removing them from my life. It is me who can be Hero of my own life......
I began to direct all my energy in to what I wanted to achieve and what mattered to me.
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life which is before you all.......
I pray to almighty that none of you face any failure to the scale I did, but some failures are inevitable....It is impossible to live without failing at something... if you ever face any failure then paus and reflect and learn from you failure.....
My failure gave me inner security that I would have never attained through any academic education... Failure taught me things about myself, my strength, my will power, and that what I am capable of physically, mentally and emotionally.
The failure taught me what I would not have learnt otherwise... I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline that I had ever known... The knowledge that I have emerged wiser and stronger from setback means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive...
You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your own ability, until you have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift for all that it is painfully own but it worth more than any qualifications...
Whilst we say we learn from our mistakes.....But we must learn to sometime learn from the other peopleʼs mistakes also...our life is too short to make all mistakes by ourselves and learn from them to move forward....
I promoted “Save girls, educate girls”campaign through my journey. I hope that my journey would inspire people globally to work towards equality. I believe the issue of inequality against women cannot perish till the time women believe in themselves. “Just providing education to girls is not sufficient; they need to have an equal say and decision- making opportunities,”.
We all must work towards raising our children just a human being and not to differentiate between a girl and a boy. It is sad what happens to the girl child in the beautiful country like India..... It also happens in other countries but we will talk about India only because we have power within ourselves to make a difference in our own motherland.
The speech moves on to the powerpoint presentation..................
I would like to highlight few statistics here..... they are depressing....but without knowing them many of us are unaware of the issues at large scale..... It is the sad state of affair that on this land...our land.... the cruel things that happens to our girls....We have to focus on stopping it.... During my journey I have seen many orphanages for girls....yes girls only.... Because the boys gets adopted but no one wants to take the girls....
When we kill the girls we create an imbalance..... the imbalance that we will be so sorry in generations to come... because of our own action the life will stop to exists the way we see it today........
Donʼt worry about changing the world.... You change one life...you change one thought....tell one person.. that by giving birth to a girl child you are truly a blessed parent because you have a girl... the creator of life......she will create and nurture the life beyond.
To all females in this hall.........You are amazing.... you really are.......You are Daughters, sisters, friends, girlfriends, wives, mothers...... you are simply an amazing creation of the god. You are stronger than you know, you are more beautiful than you can think and most importantly you are worth far more than you believe.
It is evident that women are performing better in all fields including in education system and coming out with better qualifications than many boys.
Women are multi-talented, hardworking and committed.
Here I stand before you all.... having learnt many lesson that the life has taught me both positive and negative. I am grateful to each and every opportunity that I had and each and every person positive and negative both who became part of the journey of my life, which made me who I am today.
My work is ongoing and will be..... throughout my life...and I have miles to go before I sleep...