Row Your Own Boat

Focus on your personal journey, and be the main character of your life.

- Dr. Vinisha D'Cruz e Peres

People nowadays are in the business of minding others business.

-Kartik Mehta

It was the first week of January, a cold windy day. I was sitting in one of the computer rooms at the World Trade Organization headquarters based in Geneva, Switzerland. Time was running out and I had exactly five weeks to complete the collection of data for my Ph.D research. With all excitement, I settled down on one of the chairs with books piled up in front of me. I glued myself trying to focus looking out for content that would be useful. I caught the book in my tiny hand and happily marched toward the Xerox machine in the hallway. Lo and behold, there stood a magnanimous printer. It was the largest machine I had ever seen in my life! In fact, this giant machine was taller and wider than me too! Placing the book on the scanner, I started xeroxing. I was nearly done when an elderly lady came with a massive book of around 500-pages. Both of us tried to be courteous to each other - I smiled; she smiled back.

I was in my 20s and she was in her 50s. I spoke English and she spoke French!

The only way that we understood each other was with gestures and facial expressions.

I finished xeroxing, collected the papers, and shifted to my right to make space for the lady. I was standing a few steps beside her trying to sort out my documents just to ensure that I had everything I needed.

Suddenly, I noticed her pressing buttons on the printer and struggling with it. As any normal person would do, I thought of helping her out. She had to xerox a few pages of the massive book in her hand which weighed around 2 kilos. I saw tiny paper flaps inserted in the book to mark the exact pages that needed to be xeroxed.

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