REX CONCLIVE 2014

It was not a regular day for me on February 28^th, 2014. I was told a week before that I’d be attending this discussion forum called Rex Conclive and I was quite intrigued to know what I’d expect from that forum. Morning 8 am, I along with my team mates reached our NGO head’s home and from there we were to go Jesus and Mary College, Chanakya Puri, New Delhi, where that forum was being held. There are certain things that happen on a big day. You may not have the best start to this all important day and that’s pretty much what happened with us. Unfortunately we  were up against heavy Friday morning traffic and we thought we might miss the slot. However the almighty was on our side and we finally managed to reach the Conclave on time.

Since this was my first time to this conclave, I wanted to understand what I could expect from this visit. I was told by my NGO Head Mrs.Nidhi Arora, that it’s like the TEDx of our country. A platform where people can share ideas to make this world better. I was quite impressed to see the thought process behind such forums. How people go  beyond their way to think for the society that we live in and how we can contribute to make India and the world a better place to live.

We reached the place around 10:30 AM and I was quite overwhelmed to see people from various walks of life sharing their ideas. Each and every session was followed by a Q and A from the audience. It was very professionally conducted and it was moderated by Jeroninio Almeida  who was moderating the same for the last few years. My NGO head was also one of the speakers of the event and I was quite excited to hear about what she was going to speak on. Knowing how eloquent she is, I was quite confident that she’d do remarkably well and so she did. She co-presented the session with her long time mentee Raju who inspired the audience with his genuine speech.

Nidhi spoke about how important it is for somebody to identify what interests them and what are they passionate about. One needs to understand how interest and passion are two different games played with the same ball! One can be interested in a lot of things and interest doesn’t necessarily allow one to remain focused in a particular activity. One needs something more than interest and that is called Passion. Passion is something that brings longevity to a course of action and leverages the sustainability factor. For example, Sachin Tendulkar had passion to play for India and play Cricket. This enabled him to play for over 23 years. He’s a classic example of how passion can actually create longevity. Great inspirational leaders have always had passion in them to make them successful in what they did. Steve Jobs was passionate about Technology, Nelson Mandela was passionate about creating Equality amongst his citizens and there are a lot of other leaders who had passion that made them successful. It was quite inspirational to listen to what Nidhi and Raju had to say and I am quite sure people who were there in the forum thoroughly enjoyed their time.

Overall the event was a learning experience for me. It moved me to find out how so many different people in the country are passionate about creating a better world for us to live in. Some of the ideas that were shared were thought provoking to say the least and it really gave us a wakeup call and sparked a thought amongst us SOIL students to do better for the society.