"It’s not just resilience but it is about developing a will that is unwilling to relent" Social Activist, and author tells us her story
"It’s not just resilience but it is about developing a will that is unwilling to relent" ---- Jillian Haslam
No one achieves success without paying a price. The real
story is always what came before. When you see Jillian Haslam on stage
speaking, read her books, or give to her charitable work, what you’re seeing is
a testimony to resilience, to never quitting, and to passionately pursuing a
better world, even for those in greatest need.
But what you don’t see is how she got there. Born in
Calcutta to parents with British ancestry in post-colonial India, Jillian faced
a bruising childhood of extreme poverty, malnutrition & disease. She lived
through the deaths of four siblings and some appalling instances of racist
abuse. Her rise from the depths of despair and misery to wealth and
international celebrity status is an inspirational story of vindication and coming
home.
Today, she travels the world speaking to businesses, universities, and anyone else who wants to be inspired to keep moving forward. In these challenging times, Jillian’s brand of relentless determination is needed more than ever.
Her book Indian.English. A
Memoir that tells the story of her dark childhood growing up in
extreme poverty and fear, yet drawing strength from parents who gave everything
for their children, and from the timely generosity and kindness of strangers.
It walks you through her ascension in the Indian and British corporate banking
sector and how she later became the motivational speaker, author, and
philanthropist you see today.
The book’s greatest strength comes from the lessons Jillian
learned during her hardest times that still shape her life and drive her
ambitions to this day. These moments are poignant, visceral, and universal to
the human condition. The book is an international bestseller that has received
rave reviews in Indian and International press with her being dubbed the “Real
Slumdog Millionaire and is in the process of being turned into a Hollywood
production.
We ask Jillian a few questions:
Tell us about your dream job as a child?
Since I was a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to be
able to reach out to hundreds of people in order to alleviate some of the
sadness and the despair that is caused by abject poverty. I grew up facing it
and I lived by the quote that “Poverty is like punishment for a crime that you
didn’t commit - Eli Khamarov”. I grew up not being able to smile and was asked
many a time, even by my bosses if I ever did smile? I had an impossible dream
(coming from an extremely deprived background) and not knowing how I was going
to accomplish that dream was a worry that never ever left me. It was impossible
to smile but today, I do nothing but smile all the time, only because I now have
six teams of people who work to change lives every single day (three huge
food-banks for the poor and the disabled, five study centres for street
children, a team that work for women in need, the youth, the disabled and for
people with serious illnesses. Am I living my dream. I most certainly am. Go
here to find out more: www.remediatrust.org.
What is the one emotion that kept you going at the time
you were living under the stairs or in the Kidderpore slum?
It has to be perseverance, something that I like to define
as “An Irrepressible Mind”. It’s not just resilience but it is about developing
a will that is unwilling to relent until & unless the job at hand is
accomplished. In most cases, we accept our circumstances and our fate. My
father, my mother, and even my siblings had accepted their fate and were
grateful for the same. But, it only takes one person or one child, to stand up
and say, ‘I refuse to accept this as my fate, I can do better but, in order to
turn things around, you’ve also got to take a decision to be willing to put in
the hard work and commitment that goes with it – “This is easier said than
done!”
When did you believe that you could find a way out of your
circumstances?
Our first home was under a flight of stairs. Our second home
was in a room 8 x 10 feet in a slum. We didn’t have a television, we hardly had
any electricity, we filled water from a tube well, had no access to the
internet or to a telephone. We went from boarding school to this little room in
the slum. “My biggest moment of triumph would be when I decided that I had to
find a way out. At 17, I finished school and went to Delhi and took a few small
jobs. I understood by then that my hands were tied without money. It was this
time that I applied and was selected to work at Bank of America. I took up two
jobs. I wanted to give myself the best shot I could in life, so I put in all
the hard work I could. In return, the only thing I sought was mentorship. I
went to the CEO and asked him if he would mentor me. Surprised as he was, he
said that no one had asked him for mentorship before. He put a few conditions
like I had to get his kids to do their homework and in return, he would stay
back, at the bank and mentor me for an hour or so. I found it in me to ask for
help from the people who had what I didn’t!
“I wasn’t a Harvard or Cambridge graduate, but I wanted to
learn what these graduates knew. When you lack knowledge, experience and money,
you need to be very humble (and commit to eating humble pie every single day
until you succeed). You have to be willing to do anything to get to where you
want to be.” I sought guidance from the brightest of minds in the banking
industry, I did everything they asked of me in the words of Zig Ziglar “My
attitude did define my altitude in life!!
You say that you’ve always felt that you were the “Weakest
Link” in your family. Tell us why?
Given the trauma I had faced as a child (for want of a
better word), I grew up with a nervous disposition. By the age of 10 I had
cared for a child who was in my care and dying (my little sister Susan), I was
traumatized every time she didn’t move only because I didn’t know if I had
harmed her not knowing exactly what to do with a little baby, when my parents
were away for long periods in search of money or food. Chocolate bombs
were thrown in front of our little room, the detonation was like living in a war
zone. Me holding my little sister and trying to hold my little brother too are
moments I shall never forget. There were horrific, traumatizing and impossible
to explain. Above all, Vanessa (my little sister) and myself stayed with a
person when we were two and four and we watched my mother being beaten and
thrown against walls etc. The person wanted money. Money she didn’t have to
give. A little later, my Mum went to work for two ladies who allowed us to stay
under their steps in return for my mother having to work for them but almost
every day they pulled her hair and beat her and pushed her and we watched in
horror feeling helpless, scared and totally lost. We were then cared for by a
lady named Mrs. Cleofas who loved Vanessa and disliked me for some reason. She
felt that one of my eyes were horizontal and one was vertical, I would
therefore be good at nothing and as a punishment for being slow, I was locked
in an Indian style toilet with thousands of flying cockroaches and the light
turned off. This tuned me into a traumatic child and not just someone who was
fearful of something.
As I grew up, I fell down everywhere I went and my sisters
never failed to tease me either. I used to have a boyfriend and my sisters used
to tell me “Now please do not fall in front of him” but you can well imagine
that it was asking the impossible. I always did fall and with buckets of water
too, in the mud, in the drains and almost everywhere we went. There are very
many instances that I could give you just to show you how fearful I was as a
child and as a young person but I also knew that only one person could cure me
and that person was “Me/Myself”. My parents had other children, other serious
problems in life and other hardships to deal with. I was the least of their
worries. The fact that I was alive, eating, drinking, going to school was more
than I could ask for. What happened inside of me each and every day was
something only I had to live with and I had to endure but I was determined to
fight this drawback, because I had a responsibility to fulfil, I had a promise
to fulfil and furthermore, I had a duty to fulfil. This was to get strong and
go back home and to help those who are suffering till this day as I did. How
was I ever going to get to where I wanted to be if I was going to continue as I
was “A bag of nerves” and to put it perfectly “The weakest link”.
I was determined to succeed so I put myself forward for
jobs, I could only ever have dreamed of, I found great mentors, I set myself
goals and tasks, I competed with myself to get up every time I fell down, I
knew that Life was a DIY project (Do It Yourself). No one was going to help
you, until & unless you Helped Yourself.
I am now grateful to God for having allowed me to find the
courage to understand that I had a problem, I was trapped and that it’s only my
own initiative that has helped me to shine through. I have chosen to tell you
all of this only because I hope it helps in some way to believe that we all
have it within us to be great and to excel but fear is a dangerous disease – if
we allow it to spread!!
How would you describe your nationality?
“I am Indian and if I failed to feel it or to admit it,
despite my ancestry or bloodline, it would be a down-right disgrace.
What is your famous quote?
Never forget the past and the future will never forget you!
Tell us about some of the awards & recognition you have
received so far?
Recognition comes in many forms and is different for all of
us. For me personally, the hugs, the kisses, the cards, the little gifts and
the little gestures that come from the kids from my study centres or from the
aged or women who are incredibly grateful for the little things we do for them,
is the greatest recognition ever but if you are looking for a list of Worldly
Rewards then here you go:
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