Manushi Chhillar

First of all, thank you so much for having me, Parul University, and congratulations. I think, today just reminded me of a story that we used to be told when we were in school. So I'm going to make my speech a bit long, and I know it gets boring because I've been a student myself, but please bear with me.

So once, a girl, a woman, a working woman goes home to her mother for Thanksgiving dinner, and her mother asks her that, "How was your work? How is the new city? How's your life?" And she only had things to complain about.

Things were getting harder. People were getting tougher. Every time I dealt with one problem, a new one came up.

So, she said, "Life is just getting even more difficult. The more real life gets, I'm finding it tough to deal with situations." So the mother took her to the kitchen where she was making her food, and I'm sure most of you must have heard of this story before.

So she put three pots of water to boil. In one, she placed a carrot, in the other, she placed an egg, and in the third, she placed ground coffee beans. She let the three pots boil for around twenty minutes, and after they were boiled, she asked her daughter to take off the lids and see what was inside.

So her daughter looked at the first pot and she said, "Oh, there's a carrot." In the second one, there was an egg, and in the third, there was coffee. So mother asked her to feel what they had turned into.

So the carrot, which was hard, had turned soft on being boiled. The egg, once she tried to break the shell, which was fragile before, had turned hard. Whereas the coffee, it smelt lovely and it tasted even better.

So the mother's advice was that just like the carrot, the egg, and coffee, there are three kinds of people in this world. One who are strong but get weakened in adversities. The second, who are fragile but go hard inside in adversities.

And the third, who add their flavor to the environment around them and make it a better place to live in. So she asked her daughter, "What would you like to be?

Would you like to be a carrot, an egg, or would you like to be coffee?" So with this story, I'd like to tell all of you that since now you all will be going into life and you'll be starting a new life. Let's all aim at being the coffee instead of letting reality and letting adversities, weaken us or make us go hard.

Let us add our flavor. Let us add our new ideas to the environment wherever we work. So, that would be my message for all of you today.

The second and the most important thing that I have, I have been thinking about since the last one month is that India has the largest youth population in the world. We're literally the youngest country in the world right now. Sixty-five percent of Indians are in the youth.

And everyone who's studied economics, and I mean, I studied economics till tenth grade, knows that human resource is the largest resource for any country, which means that right now we have maximum resource, we have maximum power. So make sure, know that you are the future of this country and of the world. There are two hundred and one foreign students, so we are the future of the world.

So, make sure that whatever you do, you add value. Know the power that you have in your hands right now to actually create a difference. And instead of complaining, let's bring about change.

Having said that, I'm going to say that there. I'm going to give one more advice that my parents gave me when I started working. They said that, "No matter what you do in life, make sure of three things.

The first, and most importantly, irrespective of how big or small your goal might seem to the world, make sure that you pursue it with sincerity and honesty. If you're sincere towards your goal, you will achieve it. The second is that no matter how rich, powerful, you might get, true success is only achieved when you're a good person at heart.

So always make sure that you are a good human being. And third, and most importantly, be happy with what you do because there's no price to happiness." All of you should aim that you need to be happy irrespective of wherever you're working, whatever you're doing.

Happiness is the ultimate goal here. I leave you all with one last message that, what will work for you in life is not what you've learned here, but what you make out of it. Thank you.