A thank you note!
As I start a new journey I wanted to thank my mentors who have shown me the way to investing.
“Mahabharata” is described as one longest epic poems written and has a story that is not very popular. It has a fascinating story about Eklavya. Eklavya was the son of a poor hunter and wanted to learn archery from Dronacharya, a teacher of the royal family. In those days the state prohibited the royal family teacher to accept nonroyalty as students.
Dronacharya refused to teach Eklavya since he wasn’t from the royal family. Eklavya had a deep desire to learn and accepted Dronacharya as his Guru. The legend goes that Eklavya created a statue of Dronacharya and used to practice in front of it for hours. Over time Eklavya became very good with his aim and was proving to be better than Dronacharya’s best pupil Arjuna.
When Dronacharya heard about this excellent marksman he had to see for himself. Dronacharya was surprised at Eklavya’s skills but was concerned that this would mean that his best student Arjuna would be considered as second best. He approached Eklavya and asked him for the right thumb as gurudakshina*.
Eklavya without a second thought cut his right thumb and offered it to his guru. For me, this has been the highest form of teacher-student relationship I have known.
Over the years I have had various teachers from whom I have learned personally and professionally. I still continue to learn from them in various facets of my life. As I embark on this new journey I would like to pay homage to them for sharing their wisdom with me (hopefully, they do not exact a very harsh guru Dakshina on me). I would like to pay it forward by passing on my learnings to the next generation.
*during ancient times gurudakshina is when a student would give a token of gift or fee to the teacher.