I, Karthi Easwaramoorthy, sat with Naturals CK Kumaravel one fine evening for more than an hour just to have a casual conversation. He explained his journey from his childhood till his recent entry to politics. It was so moving and got the feeling of watching a biopic film. Big thanks to Mr. Kumaravel for sharing his insights on NGO, entrepreneurship, society and politics. The below is from the conversation I had with him. CK Kumaravel, who has never even written a resume, is a successful entrepreneur and a current politician, who caught my attention because his victories seemed to have an inside story that I wanted to know. Even at the slightest chance, I very well knew that his story would motivate me and I’m very sure it will inspire all of you (my readers) too.  “Life can be defined by a series of defining moments.” Kumaravel, born and brought up in Cuddalore, strongly believed in the above saying because of his personal experiences. The first spark that ignited his business mind came when his father, Mr Chinnikrishnan, sowed the thought that all his three sons must be job providers and not job seekers. Kumaravel, the last of the three, took his father’s words seriously and prepared himself for it.  THE  FIRST DEFINING MOMENT “My father told me that the success of a business and English are related, and this defined my future life instantly.” He started while we were having a conversation. As Kumaravel, a 7th standard Tamil-medium student, heard his father say that English is the most important language, he had fear pricking his confidence. However, he never gave up because of what his father had achieved and not achieved in his life. We all know that Mr Chinnikrishnan, someone who did a lot of business especially in the field of Pharma products, is the founder of Velvette International Pharma Products. But how and why did he do it? I got the answers from his third son, Kumaravel, who said, “my father was travelling to Singapore on a business tour and on that tour he sought the first grain to start a shampoo business. One day, the shampoo bottle he had carried in his suitcase broke and this motivated him to introduce shampoo sachets, similar to how he sold the other pharma products. He bought the required raw materials, including machineries and started to invent a whole new brand of shampoo at the age of 45. Different combinations of shampoos were tried on our hair and finally, he found one and packed it into several small sachets with a brand named Velvette.” Kumaravel added, “After my father founded Velvette, he looked at his whole family, us, and said that this will upgrade the level of our living. At that moment I knew that this was a changing point for my father and us.” “You can count the number of seeds within a apple but you can never count the number of apples produced from an apple seed.” He said. Excellent thought process. Chinnikrishnan considered himself as a “failure”, his family and the entire world thought the same when he passed away at the age of 48, as nobody knew that his apple had so many seeds of success in it. After his death, his idea sprouted out to be one of the biggest shampoo brands in the world.  Though Velvette stood deep-rooted on its own, its founder was still a failure according to him. This created an impact in Kumaravel and boosted his determination to live his dreams in the life he has. Kumaravel was 13 years old when his father passed away and his mother came up to him and his siblings, and said, “From now on, I’m your mother and father.” Kumaravel could not fathom the actual meaning behind his mother’s words but he understood that his family was in bad shape. This again defined him the actual life and the harsh realities that he needed to face. SECOND DEFINING MOMENT Kumaravel grew up and pursued his Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics at P.S.G. College of Arts and Science. He hung out with a decent group of friends and attended various conferences and events at college. Once, he listened to M.S. Udayamurthy’s speech as he sat on one of those fine auditorium chairs in his college and experienced his second defining moment. Kumaravel stated, “Udayamurthy talked about Gandhi and about how a single man can make a difference. This altered my thinking from ‘how can one man make a difference?’ to ‘I’m that one who’ll make a difference.’” After this inspiring incident, Kumaravel started collecting pebbles to build the bridge to success with more self-confidence, strength, determination and will. Another person who inspired him in the course of his success story was one of his professors, Mr Thyagarajan, who never carried a textbook along with him, not even inside the classrooms. His style transformed Kumaravel and moulded him into the great reader and speaker he is now. Once, Kumaravel was prompted to read Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” as Mr Thyagarajan had mentioned about it in one of his speeches. Though the book was lying in the hands of Kumaravel, he could not read more than half a page a day because English was a barrier. However, at times like these, he only let the thought of what his father told him about English linger in his mind as that was the main factor that kept him going. THE THIRD DEFINING MOMENT Kumaravel left to Chennai after his graduation and found himself discovering Landmark bookshop. He bought “Innovative Secrets of Success”, thinking it was a motivational book but later found that it was an audio cassette. So he brought home a walkman and started listening to the audio, which was easily comprehendible for a Tamil-guy like him. This inspired his spirits altogether and made him listen to it regularly.  “We never read a book twice but we listen to a song a hundred times.” said