An Unforgettable Story of an Indian Lady
How beautifully and rightly said Winston Churchill, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm”.
I’m an ironed-willed lady of 25 from India. I came from a lower-class family. My parents were uneducated. During high school, I read a lot of inspirational books/autobiographies and that made me focus on my studies and secured 92% marks in high school. There was no tradition in our family to continue girls’ education after 10th. However, teachers at our school convinced my dad to continue my further education.
With the sincere support and motivation of my teachers, I did my Diploma in IT and secured first rank (84% aggregate) in all semesters. After my Diploma, I had a decent opportunity in hand to work in a small IT startup however I wanted to finish my Bachelor of Engineering degree. This time I myself able to convince my family.
I took admitted to Computer Science Engineering and was able to start well in the first year. The college was very far from my village. I was commuting 4 hours daily but never disappointed and remained focused. However, the biggest problem arrived then. My dad passed away during my exams. I remember attending one of the papers after their funeral. This was a major setback for me and my family. We were not having any money to continue my education. I decided to quit engineering and travelled to a bigger city for a job to support my family. As my education was incomplete, I was not able to find any decent job in the city. The situation was becoming worse every day. The first shade of hope came. A local community leader from our village came to know my story and decided to pay fees for my engineering. Meantime, I topped the engineering semester although my dad passed away during exams. Our college acknowledging my outstanding performance waived off my complete fees for 2 years (~ 1.6 lacks). Now again I started focusing on my engineering. Although having major financial issues, I graduated with distinction in Engineering but could not get a job as no campus placements in our college.
Now I again decided to move to a bigger city to find a job. My bad luck, after interviewing at a few MNCs, I could not find any job. Now to survive I started taking private coaching Classes. Somehow able to manage my monthly expenses. Borrowed money from my uncle now to do Training in Java and joined Training Institute. After finishing my training, was able to find a job in a very small company for Rs 5000/month. I decided to continue until I get a decent job in MNC. With private classes paying another Rs 5000, now monthly income was Rs 10,000. My mom was very worried as I was staying away so I decided to call my mom and younger brother to stay with me.
Somehow things were settling but another monster was waiting (Marriage). Because of my poor family background and not having any connections, I was not getting any decent proposals. Extended family members started putting a lot of pressure on me and my mom for my marriage. I wanted to marry a person with at least similar educational background but was getting all third-grade proposals. The last proposal was from a guy who was just 10th pass, working as a labourer and my extended family members wanted me to marry him. Their analogy was I can’t get better than him as I am earning very less. Somehow I escaped from this proposal. Then I spoke about the 10th guy incident to a senior lady in our company. She felt very bad and asked me to open an account on the Matrimony site.
Now the new life chapter began. 10 days after opening an account on matrimony, I got marriage interest from a guy living in the US. I didn’t know anything about the US. I asked the senior lady from our company. She looked at the US guy’s profile and convinced me to accept the request. The guy immediately contacted me on FB. He spoke to me once over the phone from the US and then we did chat on FB for 2 days. Then, He landed in India on Saturday evening and decided to meet me and my family on Monday. He came along with his mom. We met with our families and liked each other. My mom told his mom that we can’t even afford the cheapest ever cost of my marriage. But the magic happened now. The guy and his family took care of the entire marriage cost by themselves without any dowry. It was the best wedding arrangement that happened in both my and my husband’s extended families. Within a month after marriage, I landed in the US.
I got my work permit after 9 months of entering the US. I brushed up my technical skills but it was difficult to find a job. Got an interview call from a big tech firm, Cleared a technical round but because of poor communication, flunk in the managerial round. Then I became very serious and landed in a decent job in 2 months. The pay rate was very low $20/hr initially but kept learning new skills every day. After 9 months of study and hard work, now I am getting a $105 K/year salary in a big Investment bank. Supporting my family, and taking care of my husband. My husband and my family are proud of me now.
The story speaks volumes about how success is not something ready-made or an ideal that can be achieved overnight. It takes time, patience and courage to marry success.
