Tree of Life

I read a story once about a man who was surveying some land he had recently acquired. A barbed wire fence ran all around the boundary of the property. Two trees happened to be growing along the line. Apparently it was thought expedient to thread the sharp wire through the trunk of the trees, rather than go around them. The man observed that one of the trees had grown twisted and deformed, as if it had writhed in agony at having the wire run though it. The other had grown tall and straight, serenely unaffected by the experience. The man wondered what it was in Nature that could bring about such different reactions in similar organisms.

That story was very much on my mind as I read about Kalyana Raman Srinivasan. His father died when the boy was fifteen. Abruptly the family of five was plunged into poverty. Though Kal Raman’s mother was urged by her relatives to put her teenaged sons to work to augment the family’s meager income, the undaunted mother insisted that her children pursue their education. Raman remembers selling the plates to buy rice, and studying under the streetlights for lack of electricity. But having graduated from school, this academically gifted student secured admission into both Engineering and Medical colleges in the highly competitive world of India’s professional colleges.

His challenges didn’t end there however. While in university, he often had to go hungry, when he couldn’t afford to pay the fees for the college mess. When he sat for his final semester exams, he hadn’t eaten for a day and a half. The hard days are behind Raman now. Once he had completed his education, his rise was meteoric. Today, he is the CEO of GlobalScholar.com, a company that offers online tutoring programs.

His is an inspiring story in more ways than one. Kal Raman has adopted all the orphanages around his village, providing education to some 2,000 children, some of whom are handicapped. In his words, “I do not do this as charity; it’s my responsibility. I am giving something back to the society that fed me, taught me, took care of me and gave me hope.”