Have you had an event that changed the course of your life? For Ganesh Balakrishnan, co-founder of Aurm, it was his IIT-JEE exam.
As Balakrishnan wrote in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), he had decided to skip his IIT entrance exam after contracting chicken pox a month before the exam. He was desperate. Years of preparation go to waste, he thought. But when he told this to his father, the father advised him otherwise. He said to give the exam.
I had almost decided to skip my IIT entrance exam.
Until my father stepped in to change my life (literally).
A month before my IIT-JEE (IIT Joint Entrance Examination), I had a bout of chickenpox.
So, I couldn’t prepare enough for the final and decisive stage… pic.twitter.com/ZAI115riZ9
— Ganesh Balakrishnan (@ganeshb78) March 8, 2024
“Ganesha, your duty is to do good with the things you can control, and let go of the things you cannot control,” were his words.
And it was this advice that got Balakrishnan into IIT Bombay in his first attempt.
Did this fate help him? “I think fortune favors those who are consistent,” he wrote. ‘During the two years of preparation for the exam, I was consistently persistent. So missing the last month (though very important) did not strengthen the preparations for the last two years,” he added.
Edited by Pranita Bhat