The Man With Many Careers

You may have come across a man with many talents, a man with many businesses, a man with many girlfriends, may be. But how often do you come across a man who has successfully pursued many careers in his life and one polar opposite to the other?

Well, I met this man in Hyderabad few years ago, and was fascinated with the way he has lived his life. He still inspires me.

I am talking about my GRE teacher, Mr. Krupa Shanker. He runs a famous and successful coaching institute in hyderabad for the GRE exam. For those who don't know, this exam is required to many courses in English speaking countries like U.S., U.K., Australia, etc. This has two main parts, English and Maths. 

I went to Hyderabad, with my friends for internship, and few technical courses, in our final year of engineering. I was planning to take GRE test, and go to U.S. for PG (which I dropped later), and I joined this class, as one of my relatives in Hyderabad, highly recommended it. He himself attended this class, and scored well in the test and went to U.S. One more friend of mine, +vishal chaudhari joined along with me.

From the first day itself, we were amazed with the film like entry he makes into the classroom, dashes to the podium, and conducts the lecture with a very high level of enthusiasm and energy. He taught us the English part of GRE, and did it with his unique style.

He never sticked to the book, and conventional ways of teaching English in India. He used to talk on any topic, all walks of life, and whenever he used a notable word in English, from GRE point of view, he used to halt for a minute, write that word down, explain its meaning and all related words, and then continue with the topic.

Those random talks exhibited his tremendous knowledge in several fields, fabulous command over language, and will to share it, encourage his students to grow and rule the world. Juggernaut is his favorite word, and he has written a nice poem about it. Juggernaut means an unstoppable force, which will destroy anything that comes in it's path. He used to call himself and his students as juggernauts.

He is an ardent reader. In my guess, he might have read thousands of books over these years. He himself said, that he used to read books on literally any subject, in any genre. Be it fiction, non fiction, technical, scientific anything. He told us about his farm house, where his library has thousands of books, which I wish to visit, and already feel envious about.

He shared his story through many of such lectures. He was a chef for several years. He and Sanjeev Kapoor (the famous chef, and host of recipe shows on TV) were trained in the same batch. 

After working as a chef for a long time, he took interest in the teaching, and joined some college. Where other teachers used to teach 2-3 subjects, he started teaching 5-6 different subjects since he really enjoyed teaching, and could take the challenge. He did not stop there, and wrote text books on his subjects. 

When he was done with teaching in college, he went into private sector. Worked in a large chain of GRE coaching institutes, and gathered enough experience, and soon opened his own institute. He instantly connected with the students, and created a niche for his institute, among other big institutes in the field.

Due to his knowledge, and love for teaching, he gets invited to many places to deliver speeches, and motivate people. Public Speaking/Motivational Speaking is another parallel career for him. He told us, that on one occasion, he was invited to a Jain Community function, to speak about his views and understanding of Jainism. He delivered his speech so well, that an old Jain fellow met him afterwards and told him that, he never understood Jainism as well as that day in his entire life.

When we were attending his classes, he was enrolled to a law course. He studied law while conducting classes as usual, with a pretty busy schedule. And still he topped the semester exams. 

He believes knowledge to be the biggest strength. He himself is a great example of this. Knowledge is what has led him to success in whichever field he enters. He is an inspiration to those who want to pursue their interests. He explores every field he is interested in, and proves that if you strive to excel, you can succeed.

I look up to him, when I think of my other interests than my job, like photography, writing. I look up to him, when I dream of developing my own library over years to come. When I look up to him, I feel assured that if ever I want to quit my current job, and aspire to do something else, I can succeed, If I put my 100% to that thing.

In true sense, he is my role model.

I am writing about #MyRoleModel as a part of the activity by Gillette India in association with BlogAdda.com.