Thread by @birla_vedant

Diary Of #BajajFamily!

Is Success all about talent and hard work?

While it is inspiring to believe it’s true, evidence rather shows that circumstances and luck play a bigger role than we believe.

#RahulBajaj #RajivBajaj #SanjivBajaj

#Thread 🧵

It is is grounding and humbling to cognise that. Many times we are in this constant race of ‘proving ourselves’ and ‘claiming our space’ and think too huge of our successes, and then the ‘I’ comes in.

It is important what we do with the privileges we have. But it's minor details in the big game of circumstances and luck. All the things had to happen in a certain way for us to be where we are today. Yet there’s this notion of ‘I did’ and ‘I achieved’. Sense of Doership and Ego.

Recently this idea was well narrated by #RajivBajaj, the CEO of #Bajaj Auto.
He told the story of his great grandfather Mr. Jamnalal Bajaj in an interview.

The year was 1987, Rajiv Bajaj was young, his family decided to shoot a documentary about their great grandfather #JamnalalBajaj. They drove to their ancestral place, 2 hours from Jaipur. The house of Jamnalal was a small mud house, where Rajiv had to stoop to get inside.

There was a village well at the place, where they went to shoot the rest of the documentary.

Rajiv Bajaj saw Subhash, their security guard from Bajaj plant in Pune in the crowd and learnt that Subhash’s family was Jamnalal’s neighbours in the same village.

So many years back a 4-year-old Jamnalal was playing in the courtyard of their mud house.

A wealthy Sethji happened to pass through and saw baby Jamnalal.

Drawn to the child, he approached the house and his mother gave Sethji water to drink.

When Sethji asked whose child it was pointing to Jamanalal, the mother in typical Marwari fashion, said, it's like your child only. Sethji immediately asked if he could take the kid as his son, and mother was taken aback. She immediately called her husband.

And the husband said that the word has to be honoured and agreed to give away the son.
Sethji asked them what they wanted in return, and they refused anything in return at first. But later they asked him a favour to fund a village well as they had to travel for KM to fetch water.

And that’s how that particular well came to existence.

Sethji’s name was Bachraj Bajaj and that’s how Jamanalal Bajaj was born and raised in a wealthy family.

After narrating the story Rajiv Bajaj makes an interesting observation.

“If Subhash’s grandfather had been playing outside that day, not mine, I would have been the security guard and Subhash would have been the CEO of Bajaj.

Truly, circumstances are bigger than us.

The whole talk of ‘I have done it' or ‘this is mine’ is inaccurate. Where you are placed in life is just luck. Of course, how you conduct yourself is important, but that’s a minor detail.”

Couldn’t agree more.