leaders are not born they are made

Leaders aren’t born, they are made.#Motivation #Leadership

I feel sometimes the crisis or hardships one faces in life make them into leaders. When a calamity befalls someone, there are people who respond with – I’m helpless, what can I do? This is my fate! Then there are people who turn the situation into an opportunity and come out winners – Leaders.

Two individuals come to my mind:

Saalumarada Thimmakka: First one is a lady from Karnataka: She is known as Saalumarada Thimmakka, for her contribution of planting and nurturing 384 banyan trees. Saalumara loosely translates into trees planted in a row. She and her late husband (Chikkaiah) planted these trees over a stretch of 4 kilometres.

The couple tired of the social stigma attached to being issueless, spent their own meagre income to plant banyan saplings and nurtured them. Treated the saplings as their children.

She has been conferred many awards, one among which is the National Citizen’s Award of India (1995). Now the management of the trees is taken over by the government of Karnataka. I only hope they will not be cut down in the name of development.

Jadav “Molai” Payeng: Second (not in effort or achievement) is Padma Shri Jadav “Molai” Payeng (born 1963).

Over the course of 3 decades, he planted and tended trees on a sandbar of the river Brahmaputra turning it into a forest reserve. The forest, called Molai forest is located in Assam and covers an area of about 1,360 acres.

It all started in 1979 when floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the waters had receded, Payeng, only 16 then, found the place dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life. The snakes had died in the heat, without any tree cover. When he contacted the forest department, he was told nothing will grow there and was suggested to plant Bamboo. He did plant Bamboo and later proper trees. He watered the plants and nurtured them without any help or aid from the government. Soon enough it attracted wild animals!

When a herd of 100 elephants entered his forest the Locals, whose homes had been destroyed by them, wanted to cut down the forest, but Payeng prevented it. In 2015, he was honoured with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India.

Timmakka and Payeng are forward thinking and believe in doing what they think is right. They are the true thought leaders!

Source: Wikipedia and publicly available information.