📚 Howard Gardening Story #48 – Achyut: When curiosity becomes an engine to service

 

What happens when a leader NEVER stops being a learner?

What happens when a leader is busy 24x7 to democratise knowledge? 

You get Achyut Godbole — a living library for society.

Some people live one life. Achyut seems to have lived a hundred.

Here’s his profile - 

- Topper at the state-level matriculation and University

- Chemical Engineer from IIT Bombay

- CEO of leading IT companies for nearly 25 years (Patni, Syntel, L&T Infotech, etc.)

- Prolific author — with nearly 90 books spanning subjects as vast as Operating Systems, Music, Psychology, Economics, Management, Literature, Law, Technology even AI ... to name a few.

- Over 1,000 articles across newspapers and magazines, hundreds of public speeches and TV interviews, TEDx talks

- Ranked 35th among the “Top 100 Great IITians” who stayed in India and achieved greatness

- Human rights activist in his college days — including imprisonment during a Satyagraha for Adivasi rights

- One researcher has completed PhD on Achyut’s body of work. Two more researchers are currently doing PhD on his work

But here’s what truly makes him extraordinary:

Most of his books are written in Marathi, aimed at educating and inspiring the vernacular population of the state of Maharashtra — especially those without access to world-class knowledge.

I’d call him a Wisdom Bridge — someone who distills the world’s knowledge and makes it accessible to everyday people.

Achyut is a shining example of how authors can serve society — not just by creating knowledge, but by democratising it. 🌍

He once shared a profound story with me about the impact of his autobiography, Musafir. He told me that he received letters from 18 people who, in a moment of despair, had been planning to end their lives. After reading his book, they found renewed hope — and chose to live. 💫

Salute to him for his relentless endeavour.

                                                             ***

Dear Leaders,

Imagine if the employee communities in your organisation could also channel their passions to serve society; you would create an ocean of opportunity - 

- Democratise technology - Create open-source projects for people across the globe or turning AI into an everyday assistant for farmers

- Democratise learning - Example - Explaining APIs through regional languages

- Democratise opportunity - Example - Providing platform to small-town coders

- Democratise empathy - Design products that include the elderly, differently-abled …

That’s the promise of Howard Gardening. 🌱

📹Howard Gardening Story #47 Mrudul: The voice of the wild

 

Mrudul spoke passionately about ‘A Call in the Rainforest’, a documentary on Lion-tailed macaques — the rightful owners of the forest, now portrayed as thieves in their own home.

Mrudul was part of the production team that brought this masterpiece to life — a film that went on to travel the world: Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, New York; Haida Gwaii Film Festival, Canada; Wildlife Vaasa Festival, Finland… and many more.

We invited her to speak about her documentary at our all-staff meeting. Mrudul, the shy one, hesitated — but when she began, the room stilled. Her words, her conviction, her eyes reflecting the forest’s call for help… she spoke like someone who belonged to that world.

Mrudul was a wildlife photographer, an animal activist, and a storyteller of the voiceless. 

She worked on projects like Jewels of Thane Creek 🦩, Wild Gujarat: Discovering Rann 🏜️, and Leopards: The Last Stand 🐆.

But that wasn’t how her journey began.

Mrudul once dreamt of flying — she trained to be a commercial pilot. But corrupt practices kept her grounded. Heartbroken yet resilient, she turned to computers, studied Computer Science, and joined us as a Business Analyst.

We became very close. She was like my daughter. Whenever she found time, she would tell me about her wildlife projects — her voice carrying that unmistakable blend of pain and passion.

After I retired and moved to Pune, I missed her terribly. And then one day, the news came — a young, bright life snatched away too soon.

Dear Mrudul, I still have your last WhatsApp message — 15 August 2022 — where you wrote to me about your latest film Corona Warriors, and another about Leopards: The Last Stand, that you left unfinished.

The forests remember you, Mrudul.

Every rustle in the leaves, every cry in the canopy — it’s you, still calling in the rainforest. 🌳

                                                                 ***

It’s so painful to write about those who leave us — taking a piece of our hearts, yet leaving behind such beautiful memories.

🌏Howard Gardening Story #46 Tejas: From PayPal to the Planet

 

A few weeks ago, I joined a webinar by Tejas on Biochar. It was meant for students seeking internships — but it felt like a masterclass in purpose.

Bright young minds filled the chat with questions, and what truly lit them up was Tejas’ offer:

“Complete your internship — and either join us or start your own biochar venture. We’ll buy back what you produce.”

An internship… with a buyback guarantee and a higher purpose: healing the soil and enriching Mother Earth. 🌿

Before we dive deeper into Tejas’ story, let’s pause for a reality check.

India’s New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 mandates internships for undergraduates — a well-meant step. Yet, many students face unpaid or token work, thinly disguised exploitation, and no real learning. The terms “wage theft,” “gofer work,” and “resume filler” echo too often.

Tejas’ program was refreshingly different — an internship with dignity, discovery, and direction.

I salute Tejas, and also visionaries like Sarvesh Agrawal and Ankur Khator, founders of Internshala, for showing that internships can be bridges — not burdens.

The Making of Tejas 🌾

An IIT graduate, Tejas once worked at PayPal in the US — a company known for its social commitment (over $20B raised for nonprofits, 130K volunteer hours in sustainability).

And yet, something deeper called him.

He left it all to return to India — to serve her. 🇮🇳

He experimented relentlessly — with Black Soldier Flies as pet food, aquaponic systems (I still remember his delicious home-grown Tilapia 🐠), bamboo cycles, carbon sequestration, and teaching farmers millet farming.

Now, his focus is on Biochar — a carbon-rich soil enhancer that improves fertility, retains water, and boosts crop productivity.

Tejas isn’t just manufacturing Biochar.

He’s manufacturing possibilities — for students, farmers, and the planet alike.

May his vision ignite a million young Biochar Entrepreneurs 🌍✨

And perhaps, one day, companies like PayPal will find ways to harness—not lose—such hunger for purpose.

🧑‍🍳Howard Gardening Story #45 Steven: Garlic, Grit, and Greatness

 

It’s a Sunday morning.

We, the older ones, are visiting our company guesthouse — home to our young engineers.

Steven puts down a mountain of garlic in front of us.

Our job is to peel every clove, hand it over, and then wait — patiently — for his legendary chilli pork (sorry my vegetarian friends. No offence meant)

Even after 27 years, the taste still lingers.

By day, Steven handled the Foreign Exchange module of our product — a pucca techie.

By night, he was our resident foodie guide.

We were a small company, living those Narayana Murthy hours — but we didn’t mind.

Not when Steven led our midnight food trails —

• Fish curry rice at 1 AM in St. John’s canteen
• Sheekh kebabs at Fanoos, after 11 PM
• Andhra meals (if we made it before 11 PM)
• Bheja fry at Empire on Residency Road (not after 1 AM)

One day, Steven followed his calling — he left to start his own restaurant, Mangalore Pearl. 

Today, Mangalore Pearl is one of Bangalore’s top-rated restaurants.

Back then, it was the only place in Bangalore that served Bombay Duck. The Sole Curry he makes is the best in the world. (Okay, maybe I’m biased.)

Steven still works long hours — buying fish at 4:30 AM from Russell Market, closing his shutters at 11 PM.

When he first told us he was quitting to start a restaurant, I thought: “He’ll make it — he cooks brilliantly.”

Only later did I realise — making Prawn Ghee Roast is probably the last skill you need to run a restaurant business.

Running a restaurant, like running a company, takes everything — finance, people, marketing, resilience, grit…..

**

Maybe every organisation should host a mock Shark Tank — To grill employees who dream of entrepreneurship, and give them a taste of reality.

What do you think?

💃Howard Gardening Story #44 Kaushik: Shaking a leg to Bollywood Beats

 

One day, I spotted an ad for Shiamak Davar’s Bollywood dance school — right near our office.

Without much thought, I asked Kaushik to bring his bike. We went together, and I enrolled him.

Kaushik could easily afford the fees, but he said, “I won’t pay you. I want to remain indebted.” Such magical words. It was an emotional moment for me.

Soon after completing the course, Kaushik joined Shiamak’s core team — and even performed in the Middle East.

**

Let me share how this all started.

Every month, our company hosted Last Friday Blasts. That’s where I first noticed Kaushik, a young software engineer who turned every step into poetry. I knew I had to do something for this kid…. And I did.

**

Later, Kaushik was selected for an engineering project in France.

Before he left, I made him promise one thing: “Teach Bollywood dance to the seniors in nearby old-age homes.”

The night before his flight, we both sat together googling all the old-age homes around his new city. I don’t know how many he eventually visited — but I knew he would do something nice.

I could almost imagine the response after his first session in France —

Seniors hugging Kaushik, feeding him fruit, laughing together, asking for another session…And their voices ringing with joy:

“Wow, I can still move!”

“So what if I danced sitting in my wheelchair — dance I did!”

“Oh, why didn’t we take our video? We would have sent it to our children!”

“Darling, you must train us for La France a un incroyable talent!” 

**

Years later, Kaushik moved on and returned once to conduct a dance workshop for our team.

It felt like a reunion of joy and rhythm.

Today, he’s Director of Engineering in Singapore — still dancing through life, I’m sure.

Dear Leaders,

Do you know who your dancers are?

Ask them how they can help your company find its rhythm of happiness. 💫

☮️ Howard Gardening Story #43 Girish: The backpack that carried his calling

 

In my younger days, most parents in India expected their children to graduate quickly and start earning.

But Girish wanted a different path. He convinced his parents to let him see the world before settling into work.

To the horror of the relatives, the parents agreed. With a backpack on his shoulders, Girish set off for Europe. He eventually landed in France and began teaching English.

Somewhere along the way, computers caught his imagination. He immersed himself in coding, multimedia, and computer graphics — even creating an interactive guide to spread awareness about Indian music.

Girish then transitioned from teaching to running the technology department of French Chamber of Commerce training organisation.

His curiosity drove him to take a sabbatical for a Master’s in Communication in Boston, and research with the Visual Computing Group at MIT.

When he returned to France, he proposed setting up a multimedia department to prepare students and businesses for emerging technologies. The Chamber of Commerce trusted his vision.

Girish then discovered pictograms as autonomy tools for intellectually challenged persons. He also created a method to teach illiterate adults to read by associating color-coded sounds with pictograms — two powerful ways to promote social inclusion. 

Today, as an associate researcher in a design lab, Girish’s focus is on a care and support model for the social inclusion of persons with intellectual disabilities and developing the use of pictograms as a visual language, with the aim of serving communities in need.

🌱 Dear HR Leaders: Don’t you think we need an “HR stethoscope” — a way to listen to the heartbeats of our people? When we truly hear their aspirations, we can support those who dream of changing the world, just as the French Chamber of Commerce did for Girish.

🖼️ Howard Gardening Story #42 Ashok Soota and the Coders recreating canvases

 

🎨 Time for a corporate fairy tale

This story comes from a personalized book I created to honour Ashok Soota, then the founding CEO of Mindtree, who contributed handsomely to the IT boom of India.

This is the story of how a software campus became home to an Impressionist art gallery.

Here it goes,

In 2006, during a conference at MIT Sloan, Ashok wandered into an M. F. Husain exhibition. 

Ashok didn’t know much about art — but by the time he left, he’d made a friend -  M. F. Husain, the legend himself.

Weeks later, Husain visited Mindtree’s campus — a buzzing hub of young, hopeful India. Moved by what he saw, Husain said:

“I want to paint something for you — something that captures this emergent India.”

🌟 That canvas became a masterpiece.

And a revolution began.

🎨 Weekend art classes.

📚 Booklets on great painters.

🖼️ A mission to recreate the world’s greatest works — by hand.

Teams researched Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas, Sisley, …

They painted. They wrote. They shared.

And walls across the company turned into a walking museum of Impressionism.

But it didn’t stop there. - “Why not build our own gallery?” someone said.

📍 They crowdfunded it

🏛️ They called the gallery - Reproduction Material — cheeky, defiant, unforgettable

🧑‍🎨 Over 500 masterwork reproductions adorned its walls

📖 Each one came with a story — researched and written by the employees.

And on September 17, 2012 — Husain’s 97th birthday — Husain inaugurated the gallery himself.

The media called it Bangalore’s hidden Louvre.

Tourists lined up. Students learned. Families came to marvel.

🌟 What if your workplace became the place where your other self comes alive?

--

Like a good trailer, this is just a teaser. The whole film? Housed in Ashok’s book. Try asking him — nicely.” 🎬🙂

🔭Howard Gardening Story #41 Shan: The star who invented wonder

 

“It’s expensive, dear. I’ll get you something special,” Shan told his ten-year-old daughter. She wanted a Barbie doll badly, but she trusted her father.

A few days later, a big brown box arrived. Inside was a telescope kit. Father and daughter spent the weekend assembling it. When the lens finally faced the night sky, a new universe opened, not just above them, but between them.

That was Shan — our inventor, our star. Even while parenting, he was teaching by creating. Without ever quoting a theory, he let his daughter live the IKEA effect — the joy of valuing what you build with your own hands.

He once invited me home to see Venus through their telescope. I reached late.

His daughter looked a little disappointed. She said softly, “Okay, next time. I’ll show you the moon instead.”

We climbed the narrow ladder to the terrace. The city lights faded behind us. 

Through the telescope, I saw not just the moon’s craters — I saw the reflection of a child’s joy, a father’s legacy of curiosity.

Shan had installed a star-gazing app, I think it was Stellarium, on his laptop. His daughter guided me across constellations as if she was introducing me to her friends in the sky.

Shan, you are among those stars now — perhaps near Orion, maybe beside Venus.

The world missed your inventive brilliance, but we who knew you, still look up — because somewhere, a part of you still shines.

Dear Leaders, please share Shan’s story with your engineers. It will remind them that true innovation isn’t about budgets or titles — it’s about curiosity, imagination, and the love of creating something together. I am sure they will volunteer to go to the schools you sponsor and open up a new world to the students.

I feel sad when writing this for a friend who we lost at a tender age but happy that I have immortalised him through this story.

🧘Howard Gardening Story #40 Praveen: From deep work to heart work

 

Praveen joined our Telecom Product Centre as a Testing Specialist. He was only 21 days into the company when he surprised me. 

With fresh eyes and quiet confidence, he pointed out weak areas in our product design that even our experienced team had overlooked. 

It wasn’t just his sharpness that impressed me — it was his way of working. Praveen had a rare talent for what Cal Newport calls deep work — the ability to enter a state of distraction-free concentration where true insights emerge.

But what made Praveen special went far beyond his professional contributions. He was equally committed to his inner journey. 

He once described it to me with a metaphor I’ve never forgotten: Moving from ignorance to knowledge, he said, is like trekking through a dense jungle. The path is dark, full of obstacles like self-doubt and limiting beliefs. At times, you feel lost. But if you persevere, breakthroughs arrive like shafts of light breaking through the canopy. Finally, you reach a clearing — a space of awareness and wisdom, transformed by the struggle that brought you there. - it was a wow moment listening to the young Yogi.

That inner clarity soon shaped his outer actions. Praveen wanted to start a community of meditators within the company, a place where colleagues could pause, reflect, and grow together. We had a prayer room that our Muslim colleagues used on Fridays. I spoke to them, and Praveen and his group started using it for meditation on the remaining days.

Praveen has since left IT. Today he runs Heart Café, a space where people gather not to network or transact, but to have genuine heart-to-heart conversations over coffee.

🌱 Dear Leaders, has anyone ever approached you to start such a community? Say yes to them. The community may actually emerge as a team of ‘Deep Workers’.

♟️ Howard Gardening Story #39 Unni: From Hooch to Chessboards

 

“In this village, everyone was once an alcoholic… until one man came along and introduced them to chess.” - That’s how Shenaz Treasury described Unni (Thanks Shenaz). 

Filmmaker Kabeer Khurana captured Unni’s spirit (pun not intended😀) in his short film, The Pawn of Marottichal.

Marottichal, a sleepy village of 6,000 people nestled at the foothills of the Western Ghats in Thrissur, was once drowning in moonshine. Alcohol wasn’t just a drink there — it was a way of life.

And then came Unnikrishnan.

As a young man, Unni had lost his way, drawn to a Maoist movement that cost him his family’s trust. But in his 30s, he returned — this time, not with anger, but with resolve. He opened a small teahouse at the heart of the village and started something audacious: a war against alcohol.

He and his friends raided houses brewing hooch, smashing barrels and dismantling distilleries. But he knew raids alone couldn’t heal the addiction. So, after every raid, he offered something unexpected — a chessboard.

Soon, one move led to another. Curiosity turned into obsession. The people who once filled their evenings with liquor now filled them with pawns, bishops, and queens.

It took nearly 40 years, but the transformation was complete. Marottichal became famous as India’s Chess Village. Children played in schools, elders played in Unni’s tea shop, in bus stands, at roadside, even in fishing boats; and the world took note — even the Solomon Islands issued stamps to honour Unni and his village.

Dear Leaders, imagine this: if a single man in a tiny village could transform alcoholics into chess players, what change could you spark in your organisation using your powerful employee communities?

Could you not invite a:

- Dr. Rosie Meek to create sport-based rehabilitation in prisons? Or

- Kailash Satyarthi to launch gully cricket for child rights? or

- Prof. Vijay Barse to bring Slum Soccer to the forgotten corners of our cities?

All it takes is one seed, one bold move — and the board changes forever.

🎓 Howard Gardening Story #38 Rajan Singh: Roots in service, fruits in self-mastery

 

In his early days as Police Commissioner, Rajan Singh noticed something strange: the most effective officers weren't the ones who strictly followed the most rules, but the ones who had the strongest personal routines. He began seeing discipline not as a command, but as a seed.

His career path reads like an ACHIEVERs’ checklist: IIT, Civil Service, Wharton, and McKinsey. For Rajan, each stop was just a different laboratory for the same idea: self-mastery through habit.

- As an IPS Officer: He learned about Structure and Chaos. He saw how small, consistent routines could tame street-level chaos far better than brute force.

- At Wharton: He studied Inspiration. He understood how to move discipline from rigid "enforcement" to thoughtful "cultivation."

- At McKinsey: He mastered Systems and Scale. He learned how organisations build systems that last—and realised the same engineering applies to building lasting human habits.

Today, Rajan channels this distilled wisdom into his own organisation that runs habit-building programmes, helping individuals and companies plant seeds of discipline, water them with consistency, and grow them into tall trees of resilience and performance.

He shows that the same analytical precision used to build a robust business strategy is the key to building a robust life. Discipline is not about restriction; it is about cultivation…. And habits are the flowers that bloom when that cultivation is nurtured with care.

If only his police bosses had seen this talent, Rajan could have built habit-based interventions to foster integrity and resilience among the police force — perhaps a "21 Days of Service Integrity" program. Perhaps McKinsey could have given him charge to design a unique Leadership development model; probably made him their ambassador for India’s Atal Innovation Mission.

🌱 Dear Leaders,

Do you have such awesome giants in your organization? Are you recognizing the true skill behind their impressive resume? The person who can distill strategy into habit is your most valuable asset. How are you using them?

🎥Howard Gardening Story #37 Amit: A lens of compassion

 

The Commissioner of Police did something rare. Not only did he release Amit’s short film but also announced it should be made compulsory viewing in all colleges and Transport Offices. I still remember the pride I felt witnessing the event.

That was the power of Amit’s work.

Long before his business card said Director, Amit was already one. A director of social conscience. A storyteller who turned his lens toward the overlooked corners of life.

I remember how passionately he spoke to me about a film he was making on road safety. It wasn’t just about rules or traffic signs. It was about a boy.

A poor slum dweller. A child whose life was shattered by one rash act of a car driver.

Amit visited the boy in the hospital. He sat with the boy’s parents. He gave them hope when they had none. One day he shared a story with me — the family, desperate, had sacrificed a cock praying for their child’s recovery. Amit did not dismiss their act as superstition. He respected their pain.

But fate was unkind. The boy did not survive.

Amit was heartbroken. Yet he didn’t stop. He transformed his grief into a film — not to preach, but to make us feel the real cost of negligence on the road.

This is what true gardeners in our workplaces look like. They may be writing code by day or managing projects, but outside of work, they plant seeds of awareness, compassion, and change. All they need from us is encouragement. A little sunlight of appreciation.

My salute to Amit — a director not just of films, but of humanity.

🔨Howard Gardening Story #36 – Mani, the metallurgist who forged leaders

 

What is intelligence? What is time? What is energy?

For most of us, these are abstract ideas.

For Mani, they were living questions. Questions that pulled him deep into the fundamentals — not just of science, but of life itself.

I first knew Mani as a corporate trainer who built a leadership programme called Eagles for our company. But by qualification, Mani was a metallurgist. He worked with iron, tungsten carbide, cobalt, ceramics...

And in working with them, Mani noticed something unusual: men and metals behave alike.

He describes his turning point like this:

“I thought my job was to produce materials. But I realised no one really cared about iron itself; what they valued were its properties. Then it struck me — we love people not for what they are, but for the properties they display.”

That realisation changed the course of his life. Mani left metallurgy and dedicated himself to people development and the practice of Learning Engineering. His workshops became poetry — a strange alchemy of science, story, and soul.

Here are a few sparks from his forge:

- “For steel to become harder, you must rearrange its molecular structure inside. For people to grow, you must modify their beliefs.”

- “Hardening without tempering makes both metals and men brittle & inadequate.”

- "Nature made iron & oxygen a couple, they love each other. We want to separate them because we love Iron's properties when its alone. Rust is the greatest metaphor for true love!"

- “Forging requires careful engineering of heat & pressure; so does people's personal growth.”

- “Highly melting materials are difficult to work with; so are some people. You must understand who they are, and then you can work them well.”

This was wisdom born not from books, but from furnaces, anvils, and sparks.

In Greek mythology, Hephaestus — the god of the forge — shaped weapons for gods and mortals alike. Mani, in his own way, carried that torch. Except his forge was not fire and hammer, but curiosity, conversation, and compassion.

He forged not metals, but leaders.

👉 Dear Leaders: What if you looked at your organisation as a forge? Which beliefs must you heat, temper, or alloy today — to bring out the best properties of your people?

🍴Howard Gardening Story #35 Nandan and his engineers stirring the pot

 

🌟 Time for a corporate fairy tale.

This story comes from a personalised book I created to honour Nandan Nilekani, then CEO of Infosys. 

The story is about what’s possible when technologists aren’t boxed into just code.

Here it goes -

In 2007, Nandan found himself seated next to celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor on a flight. A casual chat led to an invitation: “Why don’t you join a potluck my colleagues are hosting tomorrow?”

🍲 The next day, engineers became chefs.
🎉 Tables were dressed with vegetables and laughter.
👨‍🍳 Sanjeev Kapoor was delighted, calling them “scientists of the kitchen.”

The potluck soon evolved into a bold idea: “What if we built a restaurant where people cooked their own meals — guided by Sanjeev Kapoor?”

The idea first got a few blank stares - “Isn’t that like asking them to debug a biryani instead of a program?”

But Nandan wasn’t fazed. He believed the same analytical precision that fixes a stubborn bug could just as easily perfect a stubborn recipe. After all, what’s a kitchen if not a live lab for algorithms of taste?

🌟 Thus began the Do-It-Yourself Restaurant — imagined, funded, and run by Infosys employees.

 📽️ Engineers produced quirky recipe videos with music and humour
🎥 Cooking stations had cameras, so guests could record memories as they cooked.

Even Sanjeev Kapoor invested.

This was no ordinary restaurant. It was:
💡 Team-building with taste
💰 Passion turned into equity
🍛 A platform where employees became creators, not just coders.

It was culture, courage, and culinary creativity at scale.

🌟 What happens when you give people a kitchen, a camera, and a crazy idea?

--

Just a snapshot — the full story blooms in Nandan’s book. Ask him nicely, he might just show you. 😊

📚Howard Gardening Story #34 – Neelambari: From victim to saviour

 

Once trapped in the fragility of her own mind — even attempting suicide — Neelambari has today become a saviour for thousands living with mental health challenges.

Her journey blends art and science: music, trekking, painting, storytelling, and psychology. Always seeking the roots of human misery, she turned to writing. What began with volunteering to translate books soon grew into a prolific career as an award-winning author.

Her body of work is vast: books, articles, social posts, and interviews. She has explored chaos in many forms — Maadhyam Kallol (media chaos), Corporate Kallol (work-life balance challenges), Mana Kallol (mental turmoil). Her writings span reflections on Khalil Gibran, Zen stories, cinema biographies, and even her latest on Artificial Intelligence.

To spread awareness, Neelambari and her team screened 300+ world cinema classics in six years and founded MindGym, an organisation devoted to grief and depression awareness.

Though an IT graduate, she speaks with ease on mental disorders ranging from phobias and cyclothymia to autism, psychosis, bulimia, and even pyromania.

And yet, she balances all this with her role as a Project Manager, giving her best at work. 

When asked if her organisation supports her, she smiled: “When you are burning the midnight oil for a cause, the whole world comes forward to help.”

👉 Dear HR Leaders: Look around your organisation. Do you see such Neelambaris — employees with extraordinary energy to serve beyond their roles? With your nudge, they can become changemakers, even celebrities. Why not start a MindGym in your company?