I want to tell you something I do not say often enough.
My first salary was Rs.200 a month. I worked at an STD booth. After that, Rs.600 a month as a receptionist. These were not stepping stones I was embarrassed about and moved past quickly. They were formative years that taught me things no degree or certification ever could.
I grew up in an agriculture family. My father farmed. We had very little. The idea that money was something you had to go out and earn through daily effort, not something that simply arrived, was the first and most important financial lesson of my life. I learned it not from a book but from watching my father walk to his fields before sunrise every single morning.
The STD booth years
At the STD booth, my job was simple. Manage the calls, collect the money, keep the log. Rs.200 a month. I was grateful for it. Not because Rs.200 was enough, it was not, but because it was mine. Earned honestly. Every rupee of it.
What those years gave me was an understanding of how ordinary people think about money, communication and service. The people who came to that booth were not executives. They were families trying to stay connected. Small business owners making important calls. Students talking to parents far away. I learned to read people quickly. I learned that everyone who walks through a door has something important happening in their life. That understanding has made me a better teacher, a better healer and a better digital consultant than any formal training ever could.
The receptionist years
At Rs.600 a month as a receptionist, I learned something else. I learned that the person at the front desk sees everything. Every visitor, every meeting, every mood in the office. You become invisible in a way that is actually a superpower. People speak freely around you. You observe without being observed. You understand the human dynamics of an organisation in ways that the people at the top often do not.
I also learned the value of being useful. Not impressive. Not noticed. Just genuinely, reliably useful to everyone around you. That quality - being the person who can always be counted on - followed me through every role I ever held after that.
The teaching years
In 2000 I became a Mathematics teacher at St. Thomas High School. This felt like an enormous leap from Rs.200 a month. And it was. But what I brought to the classroom was everything I had learned at the STD booth and the reception desk. Patience. The ability to read a room. The understanding that every student sitting in front of you has a full life outside that classroom, and that your job is to meet them where they are.
Mathematics is not about numbers. It is about teaching someone to think logically, to break a complex problem into steps, to trust that if they follow the process the answer will emerge. I use that exact same approach in IT delivery, in yoga teaching, in digital strategy and in healing sessions today.
The corporate years
From the BPO industry delivering requirements for Microsoft, to Satyam Computers and Tech Mahindra delivering requirements for Barclays, GSK, Mastercard, Cisco, GE Power and British Petroleum - the distance from Rs.200 a month felt almost incomprehensible at times.
But here is what I know: every single skill that made me effective in those boardrooms and project rooms was built in the years before. The ability to listen without ego. The ability to make complex things simple. The ability to show up with full attention regardless of how important or unimportant the room considered you to be. These were not corporate skills. They were human skills I had been developing since the STD booth.
The turning point
In 2009 I experienced Sudarshan Kriya for the first time under Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar ji. And something that had been building for years - a quiet sense that the corporate path, however successful, was not the full expression of who I was - became impossible to ignore.
I did not leave IT immediately. I taught yoga voluntarily in corporate offices from 2012 while still working full time. I let both worlds exist together for seven years. In 2019 I finally made the full transition. Founded Navyoga Wellness. Became a certified Art of Living teacher. Completed sound healing and Rakkenho certifications in 2020.
What the journey actually taught me
People sometimes look at what I do now - yoga teacher, sound healer, digital consultant, founder - and assume I had some advantage I am not acknowledging. A family connection. A shortcut. A stroke of luck.
I started at Rs.200 a month. There was no shortcut.
What there was, and what I want to pass on more than any technique or credential, is this: the quality of your attention is your most valuable asset. Not your qualifications. Not your network. Not your experience. Your attention. The degree to which you are fully present with whatever is in front of you - the person at the STD booth making a call, the student in the mathematics class, the stakeholder in the project meeting, the student on the yoga mat - determines the quality of everything you produce.
My father taught me that at the neem tree. The STD booth reinforced it. The reception desk deepened it. Fifteen years of yoga and healing practice made it the centre of everything.
From Rs.200 a month to wherever you are reading this - the distance is not measured in money or titles. It is measured in the quality of attention you brought to every single step along the way.