Resilience: Roll with the punches

In a world where change is the only certainty, the quality that will stand us in good stead is resilience, which is the capacity to spring back twice as good as new each time life knocks us down. Suma Varughese explores the concept and offers a spectrum of strategies to build it up.

- Suma Varughese

Let’s start with some stories, because everyone loves stories. Besides, we learn best from our fellow human beings. When we know that someone has done something, then that begins to be possible for us too. Remember Roger Bannister? Once he broke the four-minute mile barrier on May 6, 1954, it only took another month and a half for John Landry to break the same barrier and Roger Bannister’s record.

Paramjeet Singh was a successful Delhi businessman and at one point the sole distributor of Rasna (a soft drink). He had a big godown in Lajpat Nagar and seven–eight autos to deliver Rasna all over Delhi. Then the 1984 riots in the wake of the assassination of Indira Gandhi broke out, and he lost his godown, his fleet of autos, and his dealership. No matter how hard he tried for another dealership, it eluded him. He restarted life by buying a taxi and driving it, always in a crisp white uniform and with a pleasant deportment. All went well for a few years, but while coming down from Mussoorie, he had a terrible accident that put him in a coma for 13 days. He woke up in a Dehradun hospital with knees, rib cage, and one hand crushed.

Later, at Safdarjung Hospital, doctors rebuilt him over three months, with another three and a half months of physiotherapy and exercises. He was up again, but the taxi was destroyed. He bought an auto, but a few years later, he had a stroke. It took time but he recovered fully. Today, he drives an auto with a smile on his face and never refuses a passenger.