About Mithilesh

A LETTER TO ALL MY FELLOW READERS

Dated: 29th August, 2003, when I was 15 years old

On a crisp white page, I wrote a letter to my respected father in Red Ink, which read like:
“Dear father, you will not be expecting an off-track letter, but I must tell you, the following letter is a long wish kept inside the deep pockets of my heart. May be my recent exposure to literature has given me the courage and the motivation to break ice with you.  Please take it as it comes and forgive me. I am sorry father for everything I have done. You may not have noticed that there were several occasions when I disobeyed you. I want to assure you that I will never let you down again. Father, last month on Doordarshan I watched an Amitabh Bachchan movie in which Amitabh secretly gets married to his love. On reaching home with his bride, Bachchan’s father, played by Dileep Kumar, told his mother, pointing at Amitabh, “My Vijay has grown up so much that he got married and didn’t even bother to tell me”. Dear father after listening to this dialogue, I cried for hours and hours together. I must assure you that there will not come even a single moment like this in your son’s life…”

Greetings!!!

This is a paragraph from the 8 page long letter of a boy. He also wrote similar letters to his elder brother and younger sister expressing his apologetic feelings. Nobody replied to his letter but he realized that he had won the trust of everyone. From that day onwards, the boy learned to follow his heart and started dreaming big.

The letters that I wrote, were because, I draw huge inspiration from literature and I think every time I read a book I accrue a new dimension to my personality. Literature helps you to experiment and connect the dots of your life. To connect my dots let me take you through my past. I was born and brought up in the glorious land of Buddha. I am an engineer by degree but an artist at heart, and like most engineers present out here, I too stayed away from home for a long time. In fact, since 1998, I have never stayed with my parents for more than a month. The expatriate within me often propelled me to stretch my limits.

On one such endeavors to stretch my limits I started my career as an entrepreneur in 2010 through an institutional incubation at my institute, IIIT Gwalior. The start to this entrepreneurial journey was very spontaneous but contextual. On way to my home town I was reading a book on Indian Entrepreneurs and mid-way I just stopped and called one of my successful alumni entrepreneurs and told him that I had found courage to say no to the placement. My venture took me to different places- Gwalior, Indore, NCR, Jaipur, Western UP, Pune, Patna etc. In due course I got acquainted with many high achievers. After trying my hands in entrepreneurship, I joined ISB followed by Infosys, where I currently am, as a data scientist.

Off late I have developed an interest in running. So far my score on Runkeeper for this quarter (Feb - May 2016) is about 400 kms. My emotional connection with my past setbacks helps me conquer physical pain on the tracks. During my under graduate years, in extra-curricular domain when most of my peers were exploring singing, dancing and dramatics, I was reading, writing and reciting Hindi poems in front of thousand plus audience. On this note, dear friends I would like to conclude my letter to you all with one of my couplets, written in Hindi, which goes like:

“क्यों तड़पता हैं रे मन

जिद्द छोड और सुधर जा,

पायेगा सब तू जो तुझे पाना हैं

पहले तो छोड़ उन्हे जिन्हे जाना हैं |

बह जा तू इस नये लहर के साथ,

सफलता के सागर में तुझे

फिर से नहाना हैं |”

(“O Mind why are you yearning
You will get everything,
Throw away your obstinacy and start turning.
Let them go who have to go
And sway with the flow,
You will rise again(2)
Amongst the peaks of glow”)

Signing off, Yours Sincerely,
Mithilesh Kumar
Over to you Mr./ Mrs. Reader!