How a Question asked by me made me question my forever bad luck!! #GoodLuck

I kept on thinking continuously for a week about my good luck story. First, I couldn’t define it properly for myself and secondly, I was clueless about where do you exactly draw the line that it was pure luck and that you had nothing to do with the way things turned out. 

The last thing someone could probably think of is to attribute an owned possession or a prize won to good luck. I mean a prize won, pretty much like a lucky draw, is definitely luck, unquestionably. Such stories don’t make up for great entries for a contest like this. They lack depth and are quite non-exciting. And also, says a lot about how materialistic the person actually is. But for me, after all that I could think of, ending up with my first Apple product, my iPAD, was luck – surprisingly to my track-record.

I am a kind of girl who belong to a very similar kind of family where things never come easy to us. From waiting for a landline connection for good 4 years to having to wait for an invariably long period to anything like say a voter id card or a delayed delivery of our cherished furniture Diwan just because the maker had different life events happening in his life, we are very much used to waiting for anything and everything. The ultimate result is no excitement whatsoever once we actually get the thing in our hand. 

Given the background, this was 2 years ago, when me, my co-founder and our designer decided to attend a popular ad fest, Goa Festival. We heard that Rajasthan Patrika is giving away iPADs to selected people who are attending sessions and asking questions to the panelists. During the session, people are asked to write down questions on a piece of paper, they get collected by the volunteers who then hand them over to the moderator who get to choose any two questions to be asked to the panelist. Those two questions are the winners!

Being a start-up, you think of resources from a different angle. All you should possess are things that would add value to your organization and so a pricey possession like iPAD is the last thing to carry around. So this giveaway sounded exciting but owing to my luck’s past performances, I was least bothered to give myself a chance. The first day, we just chose to visit the halls where selected ad prints were displayed and to take a whiff of the place and the people around. But our designer was getting restless and as soon as we were back to the hotel, he declared that tomorrow we will attend sessions and try our luck. He had seen many winners with iPADs gift packed in their hands during the day. 

So it was mutually decided that we would reach early, attend the first session as not many would be there and give our so called “luck” a really good chance. I was least hopeful but realized that the session was by Swami Sukhabodhananda, the famous corporate guru, and so decided to be there on time. As we arrived, we realized that many hopeful souls have already taken the seats and that this looked like the most packed sessions till now with people standing all around. I smiled and saw the One Above doing the same looking at me. The session started. It was so good that I was not convinced to miss any of it by thinking of a question to ask. But after 30-40 minutes, something said by Swami Sukhabodhananda made a question pop up in my mind. I quickly wrote it and kept the paper with me. The volunteers came and collected it from everyone. The person moderating was surprised and declared that this is perhaps the most curious audience till now as he had received more than 70+ questions in his hand. 

He read out the first one.

Not mine.

He picked the second.

Not mine.

Now according to the rule, only two questions were allowed. But seeing the number of responses, they decided to take one more question during which I clearly remember Sam Balsara (the moderator of the session and the Chairman of Madison Communications) saying that, “I would pick one more question which is quite interesting and is very much related to the brand industry.”

This made my stomach tickle. I knew my question. I had hopes, no matter what.

He read out the third and final question.

That was mine!!!

I don’t remember what answer did the corporate guru gave to that. It was like all the voices around me turned into null. A strange kind of nervousness and disbelief creeped inside which made me sweat under that AC. Was it for true? Am I going to get an iPAD and that too for FREE??

My excitement turned into horror as Sam Balsara asked Swami to pick any two questions out of three as winners!

I went numb. Like, can I really be the unlucky one, all over again?

But since I was destined to have a story to write for this contest, I think God let me smile, for the good reasons.

Swami, instead of two questions, picked one – mine! and said, “Choose this one for sure and the other one you can decide.”

I was screaming inside. When my name was called upon, I remember not realizing how fast I had reached the stage from my seat. There was a sense of jump in my humble walk. What a day it was!!!

For the curious ones, here is the question that I had scribbled on that piece of paper:

“How can brand’s fear and consumer’s fear be met positively?“

#BloodyGoodLuck 

My Twitter Handle: @anamikajoshi

You can reach me at: anamika@nailbites.in 

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You can also WIN Ashwin Sanghi’s book ’13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck’
by posting your #goodluck story on trhs!

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