Ignite the Spark

Just now, I had a chat with Sofi Zahoor, our HR head at Quark. He was telling some interesting stories and were very inspirational.

The first one is about Sir Humphrey who was a laureate. Once he was supposed to deliver a lecture in Great Britain. He had two hours at hand before the lecture bagan. He went to a library and was impressed by a helper boy who assisted him in finding books. While returning from the library, he handed over a pass of his lecture to the boy. This boy attended the lecture and after few years, he was known as the famous poet William Wordsworth. So the moral is that just one spark in the childhood can alter the life of an individual. The former President of India, the great A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is a firm believer of this. He tries to be with kids explaining them about space, energy etc. Who knows, one child may turn out to be another great President or scientist. What a nation building example this is. My senior colleague Mandeep remarked, "Just see the radius of thinking of such great people, which is very unlike us".

He then told us about his idea of Kid's day out which he implemented around one year back. Children of all the employees were invited to watch a movie and move in and around the office. He asked even the helper staff who are into dish cleansing or sweeping to bring their children. To his amazement, all the children of the helper staff were wearing new coats which their parents had got for them just for this day. Though these coats are costly, but were still purchased because they had a chance to dream big about their children. They wanted them to rise above the ranks of their parents. Again this was done to ignite a spark in the minds of young children.

Another story is of a person who had a dream to be included in the Royal Army. He fought in WorldWar II. This man lost both his legs in a chopper crash. He then got artificial limbs and despite this, he managed to be included in the Royal Army.

"Dream is not what you see in sleep, dream is the thing which does not let you sleep." - President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam