a little girl with starry eyes and lots
of dreams go down to a stage like this
when she was all of three years of age
memorizing the nice little story that
her mother had meticulously taught her
she loved the audience with that tiny
little story and won the first prize in
English storytelling in the kindergarten
section and she fell in love with
stories that day at 4:00 she put on the
dress of the great adi shankara for a
fancy dress competition and won a prize
in that and she fell in love with Indian
heritage and tales and legends of
Mythology and culture that day at 5:00
she started facing cameras and appeared
in the famous Dora darshan channels of
India that day and she fell in love with
flashes and cameras at six she was
taught by one of her favorite teachers
as to how to act in a play and she got
onto the stage doing that and she fell
in love with theater that day and life
went on and on with her falling in love
again and again with numerous such
pursuits and passions and today she is
in love with life with the kind of intro
that I gave a regular guess might be
that the person is a remarkable artist
or a film star or say a theatre artist
or a performing artist today but let me
tell you you’re wrong the person is a
ever since I got into civil services
which is not too long ago especially the
last one year which I’ve spent in my
district as the assistant collector life
has taken a very fresh spin for me for
good and one of the finest things that
my job gives me is the kind of
versatility of the platform that it
provides me to work in as part of that I
have been fortunate enough to meet a lot
of young people like you very
enthusiastic people filled with dreams
and ideas and as I interacted with
students especially schoolchildren more
and more there is one question that was
oft repeated at name which was how to do
it all how did you do it all that was a
very curious thing that everybody
thought how could you be an artist and a
doctor and a writer and a civil servant
etc etc my answer to them was and it
still is that well when I was a child
nobody ever told me that it was
impossible to do it all nobody ever told
me that it was abnormal or it was
uncommon to be doing several things at
the same time and as I started reading
about versatility I came across this
tiny little story which I think
enunciates this point very clearly which
I would want to share with you all today
there was a zoologist who once came to
Kerala in order to study which animal
Kerala obviously the land of elephants
right so he came to study elephants here
and he looked at the numerous tamed
elephants which had been chained with
heavy eye
link’s and there was one place where he
went to where in the elephant shed he
made them a hoard and so the huge
elephant was tied to a little tree with
a rope as if you tie a catty to a tree
or a plant or to a stone and the
scientist was flabbergasted he said why
is it that this elephant which can so
easily break this rope and run away not
run away what is the secret behind it
and the Mahal told him we got him when
he was tiny when he was just born he was
a baby elephant when he came into my
hands and at that point of time this
rope was more than enough to keep him in
place and when we raised him we
inculcated that fear in him and the
belief in him that this tiny rope is the
biggest obstacle and hurdle in your life
which you will never be able to break
and that elephant despite having grown
this huge does not realize that it has
the strength and the power to break the
tiny rope to flung it away and to walk
away free I think this is what society
does to each one of us as children
restrictions barriers boundaries in the
form of such tiny threads and ropes
which probably as children we find it as
humongous tasks but as we grow up we
fail to recognize different facets of us
different colours of ourselves and
different capabilities of ourselves
because of the restrictions and the
barriers that we ourselves and the
society has built for us and once we try
to break the shackles of the self built
boundaries and barriers
I think versatility is all yours and I
am sure that each one of you is
versatile here it is just that probably
many of us do not realize that we are
versatile and we don’t take time off in
order to express
Sam’s in numerous fields ourselves so
why be versatile that is the next
question right so why should you be
versatile well let’s start off with an
area which I probably know the best even
now which is science who is the greatest
scientist the world has ever seen
everybody would say Albert Einstein
right so Albert Einstein himself has
revealed that music has been the driving
force behind most of his scientific
inventions and discoveries in fact the
picture the photograph of Albert
Einstein with a fiddle in his hand with
a violin in his hand is one of the most
left photograph in the scientific world
even today come to India’s gift to the
scientific world the great dr. APJ Abdul
Kalam which instrument did he play the
rare Ruth drew veena if you remember not
just the two stalwarts in scientific
fields but if you look at the Nobel
Prize winners in fields of science and
physics chemistry medicine etc it has
been found that more than 60% of them
have excelled in one art form or another
and in fact when people started
researching behind this they did find
out that we do know the functions of the
left brain and the right brain the
cerebrum of the human beings is righted
into left and right lobes and each lobe
is got specialized functions of its own
and then you inculcate versatility as a
pursuit of yours what you are helping
the brain do is to develop the left and
the right loads of the brain equally
well and thus you become a much more
holistic person even scientifically it
helps you establish new neuronal
connections every time you start
indulging yourself in a new pursuit or a
new passion that you want to continue
and from there let me go to the next
advantage of being versatile
versatility through this whole process
in itself I would call is the ambrosia
of human beings to remain young it keeps
you eternally young how does it every
time you start indulging yourself in a
new pursuit what are you essentially
doing you unlearn and shed all that you
have learnt till that point of time come
back to Ground Zero start from the
humble Novus person who doesn’t know
anything in that field and start off all
over again
now this Rises the curiosity in you and
the joys of discovering keeps you young
forever and ever another wonderful human
being who is arguably I would say he’s
been my role model ever since childhood
Rabindranath Tagore the great guru Deva
he is an example for this at the age of
16 he realized that he had a penchant
for painting and drawing and he became
an artist he started painting at the age
of 60 I don’t know how many of how many
people know that and we have a school of
painting after him in India after all
you know there’s a Tagore school of
painting even he was someone who was
relentless in his discovery of his own
self and never shied away from
adventures which leads me to the next
point which is versatility always pushes
you and nudges you to take that last
mile into plunging into an adventure and
innovating and I would in fact call
versatility as a crucible for
innovations because you are ready to
take the risk you are ready to learn
you’re ready to come back to Ground Zero
and if you have your hands on multiple
items at the same time you tend to make
these uncanny linkages which is what we
generally call as thinking out of the
mix or we call as lateral thinking and
where does lateral thinking come from
it after all comes from your exposure to
various things some of you might have
known there was a little song which I
had made and sung for electioneering
as part of my duty for a sweep campaign
which almost went viral on social media
and I was taken aback at that point of
time because I thought I have sung so
many songs in my life and suddenly this
thing just takes off and I was wondering
as to why it happened so so one of my
mentors one of my teachers in fact told
me that it’s not because you sang a song
it was because the purpose for which you
sang a song was new to people that is
the reason why it took off so that
uncanny linkages of putting that you
know of putting that square peg into the
round hole and still making it fit there
that is what the versatile mind does in
order to innovate we all talk about
specialization these days and everybody
wants specialist specialization in
various fields in fact the civil
services itself is under the attack of
this specialization debate I would say I
agree that specialization has done a lot
to humanity in terms of advanced
advancement of progress but innovation I
think is a fruit that comes out of
specialization only when
cross-pollination of ideas happen and
the bed on which cross-pollination of
these ideas happen is nothing but
versatility so there is one main aspect
of versatility which I want to share
with you before I wrap up which is that
every time in life as you move ahead we
always find goals as destination we talk
about goals as goal posts when you are
versatile what happens is that goal
posts are no longer destinations but
they’re just starting points for your
next journey for your
next adventure and thus this concept of
dynamic goals keeps happening in your
life all the time you have reached
somewhere that’s only the starting point
of the next race which are going to run
because you never stop because once you
have achieved something your life
doesn’t end there the fame is
entrepreneur and innovator of ika the
Swedish or the European chain market
which you would know in my comrade once
said that any organization which feels
that it has attained its goal tends to
stagnate quickly and it applies not just
to organizations it applies to human
minds it applies to human beings once we
think that we have reached our goal
there we stop thinking we stop learning
we start stagnating we start rotting and
their boredom sets in once you start
being versatile there is no question of
boredom trust me you just keep growing
and blooming and growing and blooming
and spreading more and more fragrance
that’s what happens and what happens
when you start interacting with people
from multiple fields from multiple
domains from multiple cultures when
you’re being versatile there is also
another dimension of humaneness that
creeps into you which is the part of
social sensitization when you work with
artists as an artist you get to know
what their world is like when you work
with officers in a government setting
you get to know what their world is like
when you work with people in the film
industry you get to know what their
world is like with so much of exposure
you’re actually learning human beings
more and more and more
in fact in Japan you would have all
heard of the samurai warriors the great
samurai warriors they were in the good
old ancient days the samurai warriors
were made to sit down under a chair
three and write poems can you believe
that samurai warriors and poems
why on earth there are made to write
poems so that they have a more gentle
attitude towards his human beings when
they retire from the battlefield and
come back and in fact it did work just
sitting under the cherry tree was you
know told to create an empathy for
nature and people started connecting
with nature and writing a poem made
people connect with human beings and
they started looking at other human
beings in a different fashion in a much
more gentler fashion so what is all of
this put together give us a good leader
ain’t it someone who can connect with
people someone who has empathy someone
who is socially sensitive someone who
can think out of the box someone who can
innovate someone who can reset and
refashion goals according to the needs
of the time and someone who is
self-motivated and is driven from within
what more do you need to have an
adaptable leader and that is what
versatility finally gifts you with let
me just wrap up with one tiny example if
you remember many of you would have had
a tiny little phone probably a decade or
two ago which now has become an antique
piece I suppose which we used to call
the brick model of the phone or so which
used to do one or two functions really
really well isn’t it even now we all say
that the battery life of those phones
you know you can never beat them right
but we still don’t use those phones
today isn’t it
even though the battery life is good
even though you could use the phone to
make that one call and have a clear
conversation without any breaks even
though you could send SMS is from those
phones today people like siju and all
the other engineers sitting here all the
other
entrepreneurs sitting here all of you
have tried to incorporate numerous
numerous functionality into that tiny
handheld device called the mobile phone
and what have you essentially done to it
you have discovered you have brought
about a revolution by just making that
humble brick phone much more versatile
right and now you call it the smart
phone right when it does so many
functions so this is the era of smart
phones and for you to become smart human
beings what do you need to do be
versatile ok so live life smart live
life versatile live life meaningful
thank you so much [Applause]
of dreams go down to a stage like this
when she was all of three years of age
memorizing the nice little story that
her mother had meticulously taught her
she loved the audience with that tiny
little story and won the first prize in
English storytelling in the kindergarten
section and she fell in love with
stories that day at 4:00 she put on the
dress of the great adi shankara for a
fancy dress competition and won a prize
in that and she fell in love with Indian
heritage and tales and legends of
Mythology and culture that day at 5:00
she started facing cameras and appeared
in the famous Dora darshan channels of
India that day and she fell in love with
flashes and cameras at six she was
taught by one of her favorite teachers
as to how to act in a play and she got
onto the stage doing that and she fell
in love with theater that day and life
went on and on with her falling in love
again and again with numerous such
pursuits and passions and today she is
in love with life with the kind of intro
that I gave a regular guess might be
that the person is a remarkable artist
or a film star or say a theatre artist
or a performing artist today but let me
tell you you’re wrong the person is a
ever since I got into civil services
which is not too long ago especially the
last one year which I’ve spent in my
district as the assistant collector life
has taken a very fresh spin for me for
good and one of the finest things that
my job gives me is the kind of
versatility of the platform that it
provides me to work in as part of that I
have been fortunate enough to meet a lot
of young people like you very
enthusiastic people filled with dreams
and ideas and as I interacted with
students especially schoolchildren more
and more there is one question that was
oft repeated at name which was how to do
it all how did you do it all that was a
very curious thing that everybody
thought how could you be an artist and a
doctor and a writer and a civil servant
etc etc my answer to them was and it
still is that well when I was a child
nobody ever told me that it was
impossible to do it all nobody ever told
me that it was abnormal or it was
uncommon to be doing several things at
the same time and as I started reading
about versatility I came across this
tiny little story which I think
enunciates this point very clearly which
I would want to share with you all today
there was a zoologist who once came to
Kerala in order to study which animal
Kerala obviously the land of elephants
right so he came to study elephants here
and he looked at the numerous tamed
elephants which had been chained with
heavy eye
link’s and there was one place where he
went to where in the elephant shed he
made them a hoard and so the huge
elephant was tied to a little tree with
a rope as if you tie a catty to a tree
or a plant or to a stone and the
scientist was flabbergasted he said why
is it that this elephant which can so
easily break this rope and run away not
run away what is the secret behind it
and the Mahal told him we got him when
he was tiny when he was just born he was
a baby elephant when he came into my
hands and at that point of time this
rope was more than enough to keep him in
place and when we raised him we
inculcated that fear in him and the
belief in him that this tiny rope is the
biggest obstacle and hurdle in your life
which you will never be able to break
and that elephant despite having grown
this huge does not realize that it has
the strength and the power to break the
tiny rope to flung it away and to walk
away free I think this is what society
does to each one of us as children
restrictions barriers boundaries in the
form of such tiny threads and ropes
which probably as children we find it as
humongous tasks but as we grow up we
fail to recognize different facets of us
different colours of ourselves and
different capabilities of ourselves
because of the restrictions and the
barriers that we ourselves and the
society has built for us and once we try
to break the shackles of the self built
boundaries and barriers
I think versatility is all yours and I
am sure that each one of you is
versatile here it is just that probably
many of us do not realize that we are
versatile and we don’t take time off in
order to express
Sam’s in numerous fields ourselves so
why be versatile that is the next
question right so why should you be
versatile well let’s start off with an
area which I probably know the best even
now which is science who is the greatest
scientist the world has ever seen
everybody would say Albert Einstein
right so Albert Einstein himself has
revealed that music has been the driving
force behind most of his scientific
inventions and discoveries in fact the
picture the photograph of Albert
Einstein with a fiddle in his hand with
a violin in his hand is one of the most
left photograph in the scientific world
even today come to India’s gift to the
scientific world the great dr. APJ Abdul
Kalam which instrument did he play the
rare Ruth drew veena if you remember not
just the two stalwarts in scientific
fields but if you look at the Nobel
Prize winners in fields of science and
physics chemistry medicine etc it has
been found that more than 60% of them
have excelled in one art form or another
and in fact when people started
researching behind this they did find
out that we do know the functions of the
left brain and the right brain the
cerebrum of the human beings is righted
into left and right lobes and each lobe
is got specialized functions of its own
and then you inculcate versatility as a
pursuit of yours what you are helping
the brain do is to develop the left and
the right loads of the brain equally
well and thus you become a much more
holistic person even scientifically it
helps you establish new neuronal
connections every time you start
indulging yourself in a new pursuit or a
new passion that you want to continue
and from there let me go to the next
advantage of being versatile
versatility through this whole process
in itself I would call is the ambrosia
of human beings to remain young it keeps
you eternally young how does it every
time you start indulging yourself in a
new pursuit what are you essentially
doing you unlearn and shed all that you
have learnt till that point of time come
back to Ground Zero start from the
humble Novus person who doesn’t know
anything in that field and start off all
over again
now this Rises the curiosity in you and
the joys of discovering keeps you young
forever and ever another wonderful human
being who is arguably I would say he’s
been my role model ever since childhood
Rabindranath Tagore the great guru Deva
he is an example for this at the age of
16 he realized that he had a penchant
for painting and drawing and he became
an artist he started painting at the age
of 60 I don’t know how many of how many
people know that and we have a school of
painting after him in India after all
you know there’s a Tagore school of
painting even he was someone who was
relentless in his discovery of his own
self and never shied away from
adventures which leads me to the next
point which is versatility always pushes
you and nudges you to take that last
mile into plunging into an adventure and
innovating and I would in fact call
versatility as a crucible for
innovations because you are ready to
take the risk you are ready to learn
you’re ready to come back to Ground Zero
and if you have your hands on multiple
items at the same time you tend to make
these uncanny linkages which is what we
generally call as thinking out of the
mix or we call as lateral thinking and
where does lateral thinking come from
it after all comes from your exposure to
various things some of you might have
known there was a little song which I
had made and sung for electioneering
as part of my duty for a sweep campaign
which almost went viral on social media
and I was taken aback at that point of
time because I thought I have sung so
many songs in my life and suddenly this
thing just takes off and I was wondering
as to why it happened so so one of my
mentors one of my teachers in fact told
me that it’s not because you sang a song
it was because the purpose for which you
sang a song was new to people that is
the reason why it took off so that
uncanny linkages of putting that you
know of putting that square peg into the
round hole and still making it fit there
that is what the versatile mind does in
order to innovate we all talk about
specialization these days and everybody
wants specialist specialization in
various fields in fact the civil
services itself is under the attack of
this specialization debate I would say I
agree that specialization has done a lot
to humanity in terms of advanced
advancement of progress but innovation I
think is a fruit that comes out of
specialization only when
cross-pollination of ideas happen and
the bed on which cross-pollination of
these ideas happen is nothing but
versatility so there is one main aspect
of versatility which I want to share
with you before I wrap up which is that
every time in life as you move ahead we
always find goals as destination we talk
about goals as goal posts when you are
versatile what happens is that goal
posts are no longer destinations but
they’re just starting points for your
next journey for your
next adventure and thus this concept of
dynamic goals keeps happening in your
life all the time you have reached
somewhere that’s only the starting point
of the next race which are going to run
because you never stop because once you
have achieved something your life
doesn’t end there the fame is
entrepreneur and innovator of ika the
Swedish or the European chain market
which you would know in my comrade once
said that any organization which feels
that it has attained its goal tends to
stagnate quickly and it applies not just
to organizations it applies to human
minds it applies to human beings once we
think that we have reached our goal
there we stop thinking we stop learning
we start stagnating we start rotting and
their boredom sets in once you start
being versatile there is no question of
boredom trust me you just keep growing
and blooming and growing and blooming
and spreading more and more fragrance
that’s what happens and what happens
when you start interacting with people
from multiple fields from multiple
domains from multiple cultures when
you’re being versatile there is also
another dimension of humaneness that
creeps into you which is the part of
social sensitization when you work with
artists as an artist you get to know
what their world is like when you work
with officers in a government setting
you get to know what their world is like
when you work with people in the film
industry you get to know what their
world is like with so much of exposure
you’re actually learning human beings
more and more and more
in fact in Japan you would have all
heard of the samurai warriors the great
samurai warriors they were in the good
old ancient days the samurai warriors
were made to sit down under a chair
three and write poems can you believe
that samurai warriors and poems
why on earth there are made to write
poems so that they have a more gentle
attitude towards his human beings when
they retire from the battlefield and
come back and in fact it did work just
sitting under the cherry tree was you
know told to create an empathy for
nature and people started connecting
with nature and writing a poem made
people connect with human beings and
they started looking at other human
beings in a different fashion in a much
more gentler fashion so what is all of
this put together give us a good leader
ain’t it someone who can connect with
people someone who has empathy someone
who is socially sensitive someone who
can think out of the box someone who can
innovate someone who can reset and
refashion goals according to the needs
of the time and someone who is
self-motivated and is driven from within
what more do you need to have an
adaptable leader and that is what
versatility finally gifts you with let
me just wrap up with one tiny example if
you remember many of you would have had
a tiny little phone probably a decade or
two ago which now has become an antique
piece I suppose which we used to call
the brick model of the phone or so which
used to do one or two functions really
really well isn’t it even now we all say
that the battery life of those phones
you know you can never beat them right
but we still don’t use those phones
today isn’t it
even though the battery life is good
even though you could use the phone to
make that one call and have a clear
conversation without any breaks even
though you could send SMS is from those
phones today people like siju and all
the other engineers sitting here all the
other
entrepreneurs sitting here all of you
have tried to incorporate numerous
numerous functionality into that tiny
handheld device called the mobile phone
and what have you essentially done to it
you have discovered you have brought
about a revolution by just making that
humble brick phone much more versatile
right and now you call it the smart
phone right when it does so many
functions so this is the era of smart
phones and for you to become smart human
beings what do you need to do be
versatile ok so live life smart live
life versatile live life meaningful
thank you so much [Applause]
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