It is about an incident a long time ago in the 90s. Our school used to celebrate the Republic Day on 25th itself. As students we used to participate in many cultural activities. I was always the one ready with my speech after flag hoisting. My father used to write my speech with lots of facts and quotes. All I used to do was to memorize, practice and speak. It used to come off quite well as I had no fear of public speaking (until late in my school days). The difference in my speech on that day was it was my first speech in English.

One of my father's colleague visited our place in the evening. He used to teach English. Taking a break from their conversation, he looked at me and appreciated the speech. Then he asked me to translate "Chidiya udne waali hai" into English. I thought about it, offered him tea and then left from there without giving an answer. Basically I chickened out as I did not know the answer. 

Later, my father tried to make me understand that I could have accepted not knowing the answer and could have asked for help. However, back then I did not get it. In fact, I was furious with his colleague. After all, I had a great day until he chose to ruin it with his silly translation question!

It remained a silly, unpleasant and insignificant event that I never remembered until my early days as a software engineer. I suddenly realized how the lessons from this incident can help me both as a person and as a professional.

Every individual has his own strengths and weaknesses. While it is paramount that we be confident about our strengths, it is also imperative that we understand our weaknesses or rather say deltas. Quite often, we get into situations where we are required to work with or work around those deltas. 

Acknowledging these deltas has made me to look for answers from valuable resources. It also helped me in acknowledging my mistakes readily giving a chance to correct them sooner. It certainly does not make me perfect. However, it does help me improve. And all I want to do is to improve.