प्रथमवयसि पीतं तोयमल्पं स्मरन्तः

शिरसि निहितभाराः नारिकेलाः नराणाम् ।

ददति जलमतल्पास्वादम् आजीवितान्तं

न हि कृतमुपकारं साधवो विस्मरन्ति ॥

praThamavayasi peetham thoyamalpam smaranthah 

shirasi nihithaBhaaraah naarikelaah naraaNaam | 

dhadhathi jalamathalpaasvaadam aajeevithaantham

na hi krthamupakaaram saaDhavo vismaranthi ||

Meaning: 

A coconut sapling remembers those who gave it a little water to grow. Even as a tree, it retains the water (within the coconuts that grow) in its head. Throughout its life, it repays them with its sweet, tasty coconut water. Similarly, saintly folks never forget the benevolence of folks who have helped them.

In this episode, Dr. N. Hema Malini, Madhavi Nadig and Chai Nadig discuss how one shouldn’t forget the folks who helped them in their initial days.

• Remember those who helped you in your younger days—parents, teachers, siblings, neighbours and friends. 
• Always give them their due credit, no matter how high a position you’ve reached today.
• Chai thinks this subhashitha illustrates how startups grow. Seed-stage startups start with a little funding from initial investors and repay them by growing 10x. They consume very little resources in their early years but produce a lot more as they mature.
• Rajinikanth embodies the philosophy of his subhashitha. Even when he received the Dada Saheb Phalke award, he acknowledged how his bus-driver friend Raj Bahadur shaped his acting career.
• In this age when people typically kick the ladder that helped them reach their loft, this subhashitha reminds us to be grateful to those who held the ladder steady as we climbed it.
• Dhirubhai Ambani started his business with 15,000 rupees. He urged small traders and retail investors to invest in his company and ensured that he made them rich too, as his company grew.
• Chai believes this subhashitha illustrates the qualities of leaders. Leaders give more than they take.
• When Spotify decided to go public, it opted for a Direct Listing for the benefit of its early investors and the employees who built it up. Instead, had it chosen to do an IPO, it would have had to shell out hefty fees to banks. Slack, LinkedIn, TripAdvisor and Pandora have also chosen Direct Listing.
• A dejected entrepreneur once shared the story of his sinking company with an old man who sat with him on the same park bench. The old man introduced himself as Warren Buffett. He wrote the entrepreneur a cheque for $10,000 and asked him to return it to him at the same place the next year. Inspired, the entrepreneur worked hard and turned his company around, without encashing the cheque. The next year, he saw the old man in the park again, but followed by nurses this time. The nurses told him that the old man was only a Warren Buffett look-alike who lived in an asylum and wrote such useless cheques to several people. Source: Unverifiable.
• As a leader, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, puts his employees first, since their efforts contribute to his company’s success. Chai is impressed with the philosophies he has outlined in his book “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman”.
• This subhashitha encourages us to believe in those who helped us come up, remember their favours and repay them whenever possible.

Who helped you when you started something new? Share your story in a comment.

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