Global IndianstoryMeet Amit Paley the Indian American LGBTQ activist who’s in the 2021 Fortune 40 Under 40 list

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Meet Amit Paley the Indian American LGBTQ activist who’s in the 2021 Fortune 40 Under 40 list

Written by: Global Indian

(October 15, 2021) Did you know that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are four times more likely to consider suicide when compared to their straight peers? A startling statistic, but not all that startling compared to the abuse and ostracization a lot of them continue to face… at the hands of society and their own families. The Trevor Project in the US has been working to help the LGTBQ community and prevent suicide among queer people through a dedicated hotline since 1998. Helming it is its dynamic 39-year-old Indian American CEO Amit Paley.

Since he took over in 2017, the nonprofit organization has seen a dramatic increase in the number of young people receiving much-needed support. Amit has been using a healthy mix of technology, innovation and research to help create awareness about mental health in the LGBTQ community. This Indian American also serves on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline steering committee and the executive committee of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. As he forges ahead in the mental health space and advocated for the LGBTQ youth, Amit finds himself in the 2021 Fortune 40 Under 40 list — one of the four Indian Americans on the list this year — for the impact he’s been creating through his work.

Check out and share @TrevorProject's Coming Out Handbook – you never know who's exploring what coming out can mean for them. https://t.co/Hr5GKzpiPK https://t.co/wWpV1TpBfd

— Amit Paley (@amitpaley) October 11, 2021

Experience talks

Born in 1982 in a mixed-race family in the US, Amit grew up in Waban, Massachusetts where he attended Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston and The Roxbury Latin School. Growing up, he had to battle his own demons. It was a time when anti-gay sentiments were still pretty high in America and the world and Amit had no idea how to express his identity. He grew up as a lonely, scared, closeted kid, who’d never known anyone who was openly LGBTQ. He’d never really hoped to gain acceptance for who he really was. In fact, when he got married in 2019, he’d tweeted, “I grew up as a closeted, lonely, scared kid who didn’t know anyone who was openly LGBTQ. I never dreamed that one day I would find a man who would love me, that we could be legally married, & that my family & friends would come celebrate us, not shun us, at our wedding.”

Amit Paley with his husband Jonathan Naymark

For this Global Indian to reach this place of confidence and happiness was a long and arduous journey. He finally found his voice and came out as gay when he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University where he studied Social Studies and East Asian Studies. Soon after he graduated from magna cum laud from Harvard, he began his professional career with The Washington Post where he reported on the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis. He quit his job in 2009 when he was awarded fellowships at Columbia Journalism School and Columbia Business School from where he went on to graduate in the Dean’s Honors List with an MBA and MS in Journalism.

Making inclusion important

Upon his graduation in 2011 he joined McKinsey & Company in New York as an Associate Partner while also serving as an adjunct professor CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. It was also around this time that he first began volunteering as a counselor with The Trevor Project, one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to suicide prevention in the LGBTQ youth. Despite his busy day job, Amit would man the 24-hour TrevorLifeline, taking up the night shifts and weekend phone lines. Eventually, he joined its board which gave him exposure to the operational and financial challenges of such groups and inspired him to get more involved in McKinsey’s nonprofit work, he served as a leader of McKinsey’s LGBTQ group and spearheaded the firm’s global efforts on inclusion for transgender and nonbinary people.

Indian American Amit Paley

At Trevor Project, he has answered hundreds of calls from LGBTQ youth in crisis. By 2017, Amit was appointed The Trevor Project’s CEO, making him the first volunteer counselor to become the organization’s CEO… and he still continues to answer calls on the TrevorLifeline. Talking about going that extra mile outside of his regular job, Amit said in an interview, “By investing my time outside work in things I was passionate about, I learned things that made me better at my job. Those experiences also prepared me for future leadership roles that I didn’t know I would have.”

The Trevor Project takes advocacy seriously at the government level and is working to end conversion therapy, oppose anti-transgender legislation and establish 988 as the number Americans can call on to reach their suicide prevention lifeline. The fact that many LGBTQ youth are also homeless in America makes their mental health that much more precarious and the situation has only worsened since the pandemic broke out in 2020. Taking cognizance of the situation, Amit has taken The Trevor Project entirely remote for the first time ever in order to deal with the call volumes which had doubled when compared to the pre-pandemic levels.

Awards and more

Under Amit’s leadership, Trevor Project has dramatically expanded the number of LGBTQ youth that it helps. The organization has also built and launched a new, integrated crisis services platform, expanded its chat and text services and has more than quadrupled the number of youths it has reached out to every month.

His voice has been featured across major publications and channels such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, Reuters, and Fortune among others. He has also received several awards and accolades for his leadership. From being featured in Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list for 2021, to World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, NBC’s #Pride 50, and Crain’s 40 Under 40, he’s come a long way from being the scared and lonely teen in his school days.

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Published on 15, Oct 2021

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Punit Renjen: Indian American cricket buff who’s the first person of color to lead Deloitte

As a teenager, Rohtak-born Punit Renjen’s future looked bleak. He had to give up his seat at The Lawrence School, Sanawar after his father fell upon hard times. Fortunately, a generous Rotary Foundation scholarship came along and changed his life: He went on to study management at Williamette University, Oregon, and eventually landed a job in Deloitte. Three decades later, Punit became the global CEO of Deloitte Touche Tomatsu; the first person of color to lead the 300,000-strong global company.  Humble beginnings His journey over the years has all the makings of a Bollywood movie. Forced to return home from Sanawar, Punit studied at local schools and at the age of 14 went to work in his father’s factory as a dye operator. In an interview with Financial Review, he said: “I got to experience hardship at a young age. They cut our electricity and our telephones.” After college, Renjen landed a job at Usha International in Delhi; he arrived at the interview in jeans, all drenched with sweat after a two-hour bus ride. The tide finally turned in 1984 when he won the Rotary Foundation Scholarship and got accepted at Williamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management. Not used to the American accent, he would sit at the front of the class and record each lecture so he could

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Humble beginnings

His journey over the years has all the makings of a Bollywood movie. Forced to return home from Sanawar, Punit studied at local schools and at the age of 14 went to work in his father’s factory as a dye operator. In an interview with Financial Review, he said:

“I got to experience hardship at a young age. They cut our electricity and our telephones.”

After college, Renjen landed a job at Usha International in Delhi; he arrived at the interview in jeans, all drenched with sweat after a two-hour bus ride. The tide finally turned in 1984 when he won the Rotary Foundation Scholarship and got accepted at Williamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management. Not used to the American accent, he would sit at the front of the class and record each lecture so he could listen to them again.

[caption id="attachment_3628" align="alignnone" width="622"] A young Punit Renjen with his little brother in Haryana's Rohtak.[/caption]

Renjen’s next big break came when his journey was featured in a local Oregon magazine as one of the 10 best students of his university. Serendipitously, the magazine was picked up on a flight by a Deloitte partner, who asked his assistant to call Renjen for an interview. There has been no looking back since.

He credits several mentors, who helped shape him into the man he is today, for his success. His first-grade teacher Mrs. Thomas, he says in a LinkedIn post, taught them that nothing was impossible when she got them to listen to a live report on the radio when man first landed on the moon. His parents taught him the value of hard work and to appreciate even the small things. In his own words, when he first joined Deloitte he was a jack of all trades and master of none. It was at that time that Tom, an M&A partner took him under his wing and taught him his craft, which Punit went on to master.

[caption id="attachment_3367" align="alignnone" width="2149"] Punit Renjen with Apple CEO Tim Cook[/caption]

Purpose-led leadership

A firm believer in purpose-led organizations that give back, Renjen launched Deloitte’s signature CSR program WorldClass, which empowers 50 million people to succeed in a rapidly changing global economy through education and skills development. Of these, 10 million are women and girls in India. He has also been working towards improving diversity and inclusion across Deloitte’s leadership ranks.  

The devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave in India aren’t lost on Punit either. The cricket lover has been actively working towards rallying and sending aid to his homeland. He is part of the steering committee of the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response, a unified platform that is seeing the corporate sector mobilizing aid to help India fight the pandemic. In fact, the first 1,000 oxygen concentrators provided by Deloitte arrived in India towards the end of April 2021 when the second wave was at its peak.  Subsequently, they have sent more mobile oxygen concentrators and ventilators to the country.  

https://youtu.be/3WzwtyiuNEI

More recently, Deloitte developed an innovative, simple, fit-for-purpose program in the fight against COVID-19 that they launched in conjunction with the Haryana government. Called the Sanjeevani Pariyojana, it is a supervised, virtual home care initiative to help people access healthcare for mild to moderate symptoms of coronavirus quickly and with ease. 

https://youtu.be/9TBI9a3RdPA

Destination India

As CEO of the world’s largest professional services firm, Punit has had his task cut out. Under his leadership Deloitte has seen double-digit aggregate revenue growth globally and has gone on to become the largest of the Big Four firms; it earned $47.6 billion in revenue in 2020. At an HT Leadership Summit in December 2020, Punit said Deloitte plans to double their India headcount of 55,000 over the next two to three years. “This is the Indian century… India has the demographic dividend, the talent opportunity, the democratic norms, and the vibrancy of the culture.” 

[embed]https://twitter.com/PunitRenjen/status/1403343509524996097?s=20[/embed]

Recognizing that the pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the corporate world as well, Punit believes that the companies that will emerge successfully will be the ones that play good defense (ensure adequate liquidity, take care of their people and clients) as well as great offense (how they play the cards that they’ve been dealt). Outside of Deloitte, he is a member of several non-profits including the United Way Worldwide and the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum. He was also named an honoree to the National Association of Corporate Directors ‘Directorship 100’. 

Reading Time: 8 mins

Deepika Arwind: A contemporary artiste exploring theatre through the gender lens

(October 3, 2021) It's eerily dark and quiet. The strums of the guitar break the silence as they swiftly fill the space with heightened drama. Following in the footsteps of the intense music, the spotlight finds itself warming up the center of the stage that has a woman sitting on her haunches. She enacts pulling down her pyjamas to pee only to find her young niece sitting across her seeing pubic hair for the first time. The lights dim out, and the next chapter unfolds. A strong Sikh man prepares for his routine circus feat of pulling a truck with his long plait in front of a thrilled audience. He exaggerates each step with loud gestures but ultimately fails to pull it off. It's the exploration of sexuality through hair that makes Bengaluru-based theatre director Deepika Arwind's play A Brief History of Your Hair a thought-provoking watch. The 35-year-old is among the few voices in the sphere of Indian feminist theatre who is experimenting with narratives to tell stories that highlight gender issues. "For the longest time, theatre has been performing dated work that's borrowed from colonial Europe. It's time that the world hears the voice of contemporary Indian women,"

It's time that the world hears the voice of contemporary Indian women," she tells Global Indian in an exclusive interview.

[caption id="attachment_12015" align="aligncenter" width="771"] A Brief History of Your Hair (Photo courtesy: Virginia Rodrigues)[/caption]

It was in the 70s that feminist theatre narratives first emerged in the country as a response to male-centric discourses. A perfect amalgamation of art and activism, Indian feminist theatre not just highlighted women's issues but encouraged more women to enter the world of drama as writers and artistes. While the genre has found a strong footing in the last few decades with an authentic portrayal of women and their sexuality on stage, the lack of representation is still bothersome.

"There is a lack of representation in theatre - not just in terms of voice and stories. Even not many women playwrights are seen in India especially in the English language. As a woman living in South Asia, I have had my share of experiences and I put them on stage. I am not an activist on stage but it's the craft and form that's involved in my work," adds Arwind.

For someone who began her journey more than a decade ago, Arwind has become a known face in contemporary theatre.

[caption id="attachment_12025" align="aligncenter" width="700"] A still from the play I Am Not Here. (Photo Courtesy: Aparna Nori)[/caption]

Vivid imagination led to a creative dream

Born and raised in a Sikh family in Bengaluru to a doctor mother and a civil engineer father, Deepika Arwind was very much of a performer as a kid. "I had a very vivid imagination and I loved being in the spotlight," Arwind reveals. While Arwind loved performing for her family and friends, her tryst with theatre began when one of Bengaluru's well-known theatre personalities Ratan Thakore Grant visited her drama class in National Public School when she was seven. This was enough of a kick-starter for a young Arwind but it wasn't until her college days that Arwind immersed herself in the performing arts.

The mandate of producing a theatre production for her Mass Communication course in Christ College led her to a path that was set to become her destiny. Her very first production Dreaming About Me in collaboration with Thespo, a youth theatre movement cast a spell on the audience. Such was the reception that it soon made its way to a full house in Bengaluru's Ranga Shankara and later at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai.

"My years at Christ College were full of theatre. After wrapping up my classes at 4 in the evening, I would rush to do theatre. I really enjoyed the process and I would act in many productions at that time," she adds.

[caption id="attachment_12060" align="aligncenter" width="759"] Deepika Arwind Unlisted by Liz-Ann D'Souza[/caption]

Her time at Christ College helped Arwind hone her skills in performing arts. After graduation, Deepika Arwind moved to Chennai to pursue her Master's in Print Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism but her love for theatre kept her afloat. "Since college was hectic, I couldn't perform during that one year but I did write a lot about plays that were happening in Chennai at that time."

Dreams culminate into a beautiful reality

The next two years were spent working with The Hindu covering art and culture. But this time in the newspaper made Arwind realize how much she missed theatre, especially after she won the Toto Award for Writing (poetry and fiction) in 2011. So she quit her job to pursue her passion. In 2013, she formed a theatre collective The Lost Post Initiative to collaborate with varied artistes for her productions. Her directorial debut Nobody Sleeps Alone lit up Jagriti Theatre in Bengaluru as it was a perfect homage to Bollywood's gangster movies of the 70s and 80s. The play was performed far and wide in the country and turned out to be the perfect flight for this fledgling theatre collective. Such was the impact of the play that it was soon shortlisted for The Hindu Playwright Award 2013.

Gender bender

2015 saw another production A Brief History of Your Hair from the artiste. What began as a 15-minute piece at Gender Bender with the help of a trigger grant from the India Foundation for the Arts and the New Voices Arts Project soon translated into a beautiful storybook with six chapters that uses music, dance, theatre, and projected poetry to explore hair that's a marker of social and cultural anxieties surrounding gender, sexuality, caste, and religion.

[caption id="attachment_12062" align="aligncenter" width="764"] Deepika Arwind in White Rabbit Red Rabbit[/caption]

Being someone who doesn't feel bound by geography, Arwind's plays soon found themselves on international platforms. Her children's play One Dream Too Many was invited to the International Playwright's Intensive at The Kennedy Centre, Washington DC, and the University of Maryland.

Her next production, No Rest In The Kingdom, a solo piece that has Arwind playing four characters is a dark comedy about how women deal with misogyny and patriarchy. A play that came into existence out of the need to have a conversation about daily misogynies, No Rest in Kingdom confronts inherent prejudices. Packed with humor and vignettes of sexism, the play takes it to form as a collection of shared and personal experiences. "It's a feminist voice coming into its mean. I wanted to connect with the audience through humor and didn't want it to be preachy," adds the 35-year-old.

The show took her to Uganda in Africa. "It generated quite an interest among the international theatre circle and soon my work was traveling across the globe," reveals Arwind. After making the right noise in the US and Africa with her work, Deepika Arwind took off to Berlin in 2018 with her new play I am Not Here, a dark and funny production designed as an 8-step guide in how to censor women's writing. Such was the reception that it was shortlisted for the Stuckemarkt, Theatretreffen.

[caption id="attachment_12013" align="aligncenter" width="601"]
Deepika Arwind at Ballhause Naunynstrasse (an independent theatre in Berlin) for Permanente Beunruhigung (Photo courtesy: Wagner Caravalho)[/caption]

Art form awaiting its due

Things were running smoothly until the pandemic put the world on standstill, and contemporary art was majorly affected. "Contemporary art doesn't get it due. Especially the pandemic hit the artistes badly. For many, it's the only means of livelihood and with no shows, it did hit them hard. Interestingly, people turned to art, be it films or music, or online shows during the pandemic. I think it's time to give back to the artistes," she adds.

But Arwind is hopeful that things will get back on track soon as she has already started prepping up for her plays that are set to enthrall the audience in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK next year. The contemporary artiste, who calls herself a theatre-maker, loves telling stories that start a dialogue but says that she has an identity beyond the realm of theatre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCuYPKJVeSo

"Theatre is not who I am. I have an identity beyond theatre. I would say we are like railways tracks, always coming together and then moving away," she signs off.

Follow Deepika Arwind on Instagram and Linkedin

Reading Time: 7 min

Rahul Dubey: The Indian American entrepreneur who sheltered 72 strangers in danger

Rahul Dubey’s actions speak louder than words and he displayed it on June 1 last year. That night, the Percynal Health Innovations CEO instinctively opened the doors of his three-story rowhouse in Washington DC to shelter about 72 persons who were being targeted by law enforcement for peaceful protests over the death of African-American George Floyd. Dubey, who lives with a 13-year-old son, housed the 72 hitherto strangers all night, got meals arranged for them and even negotiated with the cops. Overnight, this Indian American became a humanitarian hero not only in the United States but across the world. TIME magazine named Dubey as one of its ‘Heroes of 2020’, describing him as the "The Man Who Gave Shelter to Those in Need." But the healthcare entrepreneur feels there was nothing heroic about his act. In an exclusive interview with Global Indian, the 44-year-old said: "Anyone who would see people getting pepper sprayed all over, just getting attacked for doing something peaceful for the injustice against George Floyd, would have opened their doors for them." [embed]https://youtu.be/ycYEQCb1Q5Y[/embed] “It’s my house. You can stay here as long as you need to because they will not let you leave.” Compilation of videos from

would have opened their doors for them."

[embed]https://youtu.be/ycYEQCb1Q5Y[/embed]

“It’s my house. You can stay here as long as you need to because they will not let you leave.” Compilation of videos from that night and the morning after.

Reconstructing that night

According to the Associated Press, protesters out on the roads after Washington’s 7 p.m. curfew on June 1 last year were about to be arrested. TIME says police had set up barricades seemingly to trap protesters, and were pepper-spraying those who remained. “There was this sense of a human tsunami coming down the street and police beating people, putting faces down on cement,” Dubey told reporters later.

Sensing that things were about to go out of hand, he opened the door of his Swann Street house and yelled: ‘Get in!’ He gave Esquire magazine a more graphic picture:

“This was an out of body experience. Kids were screaming when they were running into the house. I mean, they were lining them off one by one and zip tying them.”

Some went upstairs, some downstairs and others into the garden.

The University of Michigan-Ross School of Business graduate ministered to this scared, tired crowd who had nowhere to go for the night – some aged 70, some as young as 16.

“People were coughing, crying, strangers pouring milk into strangers’ eyes,” Dubey told TIME “They were sharing information, writing down numbers for bail bondsmen. It was this real camaraderie.”

One protestor, who just goes by the name Meka, recalled later on Twitter: “They shot mace at peaceful protesters is a residential neighborhood. The man who took us in is named Rahul Dubey. He gave us business cards in case they try to say we broke in.”

https://twitter.com/MekaFromThe703/status/1267638186676834306?s=20

A couple of cops reportedly attempted to breach his sanctuary by posing as protesters and by trying to intercept the pizzas he had ordered for the 72. Dubey tried to be the negotiator but when matters reached a deadlock, he advised his guests to stay put until the next morning.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1267697465400197120

The aftermath

Dubey’s spur-of-the-moment decision brought along new friendships with 72 persons he now calls family. "There isn't a day that goes by when I don't hear from at least one of them, such are the bonds that have been created, " Dubey told Global Indian.

He has become of the Most Googled Indians since he got the ‘Heroes of 2020’ recognition. People who know Dubey, like Kishan Putta, a neighborhood commissioner in DC, say he has always been a very caring, generous person who tries to do the right things.

Indian American heritage

Rahul Dubey believes his Indian American roots and penchant for travel have played a big role in molding his approach. Dubey’s father came to the US at the age of 19 with just eight dollars in his pocket. “As a child, he would visit India quite often and witness firsthand how his family helped the marginalized, irrespective of religion. “Being an Indian-American and having the blessings of both the beautiful culture of India, the sacredness and piousness of it, the problems of it as well and the opportunities of America, the diversity it brings and the power of people there, has helped shape me more than anything else."

[caption id="attachment_3483" align="alignnone" width="1079"] Rahul Dubey with his new friends at his home.[/caption]

Healthcare entrepreneur

A globe-trotter who has visited 25 countries, Dubey is a successful healthcare founder who started America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Innovation Lab. He was awarded Smart Health's 2018 Excellence in Healthcare Transformation Award and named in the American Journal of Health Promotion's 2017 Innovators and Game Changers list.

But being an Indian American can be a challenging identity at times. "When you are isolated in the suburbs of white mid-west America and suburbs of Detroit, trying to adopt an identity of your surroundings, the biggest challenge was to fit in and understand who I really am. That was something I struggled for a good 20-25 years of my life."

Dubey says he has faced racism all throughout his life in the US but remains optimistic about the future. Speaking to India Today, he said:

“What I need to do is find the identity of the role the Indian American is going to play in this transformation of America, in the transformation of this world that is coming out of Covid, coming out of systemic racism.

[caption id="attachment_3484" align="alignnone" width="409"] Rahul Dubey “They were sharing information, writing down numbers for bail bondsmen. It was this real camaraderie.”[/caption]

Hanuman Chalisa

Interestingly, the ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ has been Dubey’s constant companion for the past 11 years. The Hindu poetic verses make things a little more beautiful and more optimistic, especially on the rough patches, he says.

Today, Rahul Dubey is proud of his Indian American heritage and is keen to represent that even in the remotest corners of the world. “I want to be in the Andes rainforest and interact with people who have never interacted with anyone from the Indian descent. I want to reiterate our values upon other cultures, take their values and see the similarities between the values."

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Reading Time: 8 mins

Remembering Dadabhai Naoroji: Sage freedom fighter and first Asian elected to UK’s Parliament

Mahatma Gandhi had once said that Dadabhai Naoroji was the real Father of the Nation. To hear the man that the masses adored heap such adulation on a political leader is testimony to the power and idealism Naoroji wielded. In 1956, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said in the Parliament: “We have, to my right here, the picture of Dadabhai Naoroji, in a sense the Father of the Indian National Congress. We may... in our youthful arrogance think that some of these leaders of old were very Moderate, and that we are braver because we shout more. But every person, who can recapture the picture of old India and of the conditions that prevailed, will realize that a man like Dadabhai was, in those conditions, a revolutionary figure.” On his 104th death anniversary, we look at the life of the political leader, scholar, and writer who left a deep impact on modern India. [caption id="attachment_4156" align="aligncenter" width="480"] A plaque in honor of Dadabhai Naoroji at Finsbury Park, London[/caption] Man of many firsts Born in 1825 into a Parsi family in Navsari, Naoroji, at the age of 28, became the first Indian to be appointed as a professor at a British-run institution. That institution was Elphinstone College in Bombay where he taught mathematics and physics. At a time when most Indian

the political leader, scholar, and writer who left a deep impact on modern India.

[caption id="attachment_4156" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Remembering Dadabhai Naoroji on his 104th death anniversary A plaque in honor of Dadabhai Naoroji at Finsbury Park, London[/caption]

Man of many firsts

Born in 1825 into a Parsi family in Navsari, Naoroji, at the age of 28, became the first Indian to be appointed as a professor at a British-run institution. That institution was Elphinstone College in Bombay where he taught mathematics and physics. At a time when most Indian women lacked any form of education, he founded some of the first schools for girls in Bombay. In 1855 he left for England to join Cama’s firm in London as a business partner; here he became so involved in politics that he contested the election for the House of Commons in 1886. Though he lost that year, in 1892 he represented the Liberal Party and became the first Asian to be elected as a Member of Parliament into the UK’s House of Commons.

He went on to highlight the unfavorable economic consequences of British rule in India. By the turn of the century, Naoroji was openly advocating for ‘Swaraj’ or self-governance. He declared that only self-governance could halt the wealth drain from India to Britain; he batted for the creation of a representative and accountable administration that would serve Indian interests. His theory caught on and gave impetus to India’s nascent freedom struggle. His work and words inspired two other very important figures in the history of India’s independence struggle: Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The latter even campaigned for Naoroji in the elections and served as his private secretary for several years. In one of his speeches, Gandhi also said,

“I myself and many like me have learnt the lessons of regularity, single minded patriotism, simplicity, austerity and ceaseless work from this venerable man.”

[caption id="attachment_4157" align="aligncenter" width="299"] Remembering Dadabhai Naoroji on his 104th death anniversaryRemembering Dadabhai Naoroji on his 104th death anniversary A ₹5 coin with featuring Dadabhai Naoroji[/caption]

Inspiring Nationalism

Naoroji’s work also inspired other nationalist leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu. He founded the Indian National Congress in 1885 with help from Allan Octavian Hume and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha. Naoroji went on to play a key role in India’s freedom struggle. However, his brand of nationalism also drew its fair share of criticism. When Bengal reeled from Lord Curzon’s partition in 1905, Bal Gangadhar Tilak pleaded with Naoroji to support the Swadeshi movement. Other radicals such as Shyamji Krishnavarma blamed Naoroji of inconsistency. They alleged that on one hand he condemned British rule, and on the other, he maintained belief in British justice and fair-mindedness.

In 1906 when the INC was battered by rifts, Naoroji, the only leader amenable to the extremists and moderates, was called upon to preside over the organization’s Calcutta session and he took up the Congress presidency for the third time. It was here that he publicly termed Swaraj as the Congress’ central and ultimate goal.

“Self-government is the only and chief remedy. In self-government lies our hope, strength and greatness,” he declared.

[caption id="attachment_4159" align="aligncenter" width="607"] Remembering Dadabhai Naoroji on his 104th death anniversaryRemembering Dadabhai Naoroji on his 104th death anniversary Annie Besant and other INC leaders at Dadabhai Naoroji's Versova home[/caption]

The Calcutta Congress was Naoroji’s last major political outing. By 1907 his health had collapsed and he spent several months convalescing. He eventually resolved to retire from public life and retreated to a seaside bungalow in Versova where he led a retired life. In 1912 when King George V and Queen Mary visited India, he pushed asked Indians to push strongly for self-governance. However, in 1915 when he welcomed Annie Besant’s Home Rule League he caused great consternation among the moderates in Bombay.

When he passed away in 1917 at the age of 92, he had left behind a maturing political organization and a nationalist ideology. In an article in Hind Swaraj, Gandhi declared Naoroji to be, “the Father of the Nation. Had not the Grand Old Man of India prepared the soil our young men could not have even spoken about Home Rule.”

Watch this short documentary on the life of Dadabhai Naoroji

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeKpJyF5wB8[/embed]

Reading Time: 8 mins

Wave Rider: How Murthy Megavan, a small-time fisherman from Chennai’s Covelong went on to become a cool surfer

(September 5, 2021) Just an hour’s drive away from the hustle and bustle of Chennai is Kovalam, a tiny fishing hamlet that lies along the picturesque East Coast Road. The coastline here is dotted with colorful little homes and fishing boats that are carefully anchored ashore waiting for the fishermen to take them out early the next morning. The air is filled with the smell of the sea – comforting and inviting – as the cool breeze carries with it the sound of laughter and shrieks of kids playing in the crashing waves. It was here that Murthy Megavan, a fisherman-turned-award winning surfer, used to once ride the waves using a discarded wooden window. Today, he is the cool dude surfer from the area, who conducts lessons in surfing, kayaking, and standup paddleboarding – he has students as young as 5 and as old as 85 signing up to train with him. [caption id="attachment_9416" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Murthy Megavan fell in love with the sport at a young age[/caption] A lasting love affair For Murthy, who started off as a small-time fisherman, it was the siren call of the ocean that drew him to her waves. As a child from a broken home, the waves were his only solace. “I still remember the day

="attachment_9416" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Indian Influencer | Murthy Megavan | Surfing Champion | Global Indian Murthy Megavan fell in love with the sport at a young age[/caption]

A lasting love affair

For Murthy, who started off as a small-time fisherman, it was the siren call of the ocean that drew him to her waves. As a child from a broken home, the waves were his only solace. “I still remember the day my father abandoned the family following an altercation with my mother. He never returned. My mother eventually moved to Chennai, leaving me in my grandmother’s care. She took very good care of me, but the breaking up of the family had shattered me. The sea became my family, to me she is everything. She offered me solace at a time when I badly needed it; with her I truly feel free,” recalls the 40-year-old fisherman in an exclusive chat with Global Indian.

Such was his love for the sea that Murthy would often bunk school to ride the waves using the wooden window that he treasured so much. Time and again, his teachers would drag him back to school, but to no avail. His heart lay in the sea. By the time he was in class 6, he’d dropped out of school and taken up fishing like the rest of his family, but his love for the waves remained as strong as ever. The thing is, he never knew what surfing even was. Nobody in the fishing hamlet did. That is until they were paid a visit by the Surfing Swami.

[caption id="attachment_9417" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Indian Influencer | Murthy Megavan | Surfing Champion | Global Indian Murthy Megavan riding waves at Kovalam[/caption]

It was one fateful morning in 2001 when Murthy came across Jack Hebner, the pioneer of surfing in India. The saffron-clothed foreigner was scouting the area from Mahabalipuram to Kovalam to establish his surf ashram. As Murthy returned from his fishing trip that day, he caught sight of Hebner effortlessly riding wave after wave using an actual surfboard. Until then, Murthy didn’t even know that surfing was an actual sport. He walked up to Hebner and requested to borrow his board – for the next 15 minutes the fisherman rode the waves leaving the Surfing Swami impressed. In 2003, he managed to buy himself a surf board and began self-learning the sport.

“I would use a fishing rope for a leash, the beach sand to wax my board and coconut oil on my skin instead of sunscreen,” he smiles. “People would point and laugh at me; some said I was crazy. But I didn’t care. I’d fallen in love with surfing.”

It was written in the stars

[caption id="attachment_9418" align="alignnone" width="960"] Indian Influencer | Murthy Megavan | Surfing Champion | Global Indian Murthy Megavan teaching a student to kayak[/caption]

A chance meeting with Tobias Hartman, a German architect, and Yotam Agam, a sound engineer, in 2007 set the ball rolling for Murthy in terms of building a successful surfing career. Hartman and Agam would often head to Kovalam to surf and struck up a friendship with the fisherman who would join them to ride the waves; the duo ended up gifting the fisherman a top-notch surfboard. “In return, I promised them that I would do everything I could to further the sport in the area,” says Murthy. Six months later, when Agam visited Murthy, he was surprised to see that he had with him 10 other boys from the hamlet who were effortlessly riding the waves. Murthy had kept his word.

Impressed, Agam shot a documentary on the fisherman-turned-surfer which garnered a lot of attention. By then Murthy had also begun working with the NGO The Banyan. “Life was set for me by then: every morning I would go to the sea to surf and then head to The Banyan for my job, before returning home to my family in the evening,” says Murthy. The documentary helped them raise enough funds to rent a house in the village to open his first surf school which was inaugurated in November 2012. “I resigned from my job to focus full-time on the surf school; it was after all my first passion.”

[caption id="attachment_9419" align="alignnone" width="750"] Indian Influencer | Murthy Megavan | Surfing Champion | Global Indian Murthy Megavan[/caption]

Social activities first

As the school racked up students, Murthy was firm on one thing: students at his surf school had to steer clear of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. “It was the only way I could help the local youth stay clean. Along with this I encouraged them to take up beach clean-up drives and volunteer work. Classes for the local youth were absolutely free if they stuck to my conditions,” says Murthy, who still stands by these rules.

By 2014, Murthy found support in Arun Vasu, chairman and managing director of TT Logistics and Cargo in Chennai. Vasu, who initially sponsored boards for Murthy’s school, eventually built the Covelong Point Surfing School. The school now offers lessons in surfing, kayaking, and standup paddling, while the first floor houses Surf Turf, a bed and breakfast with a charming café overlooking the sea.

In the meanwhile, Murthy had been participating at various surfing championships across the country: he was among the top Indian surfers in his age division who managed to hold his own against more experienced surfers from abroad. He’d also participated at competitions in Bali and Sri Lanka in 2014 and 2015. “But I was no match for the participants there. Our boys here have a lot of potential, but they still need a lot more training and support to win at competitions abroad,” says Murthy, talking about the students he’s been training across various water sports. Several of them have gone on to participate internationally.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whU496OC6-w[/embed]

The pandemic that shook things up

The pandemic last year, changed a lot of things for this fisherman-turned-surfer. He exited the Covelong Point Surfing School to branch out on his own and launched Murthy Surf School in the neighborhood. Today, he trains as many as 10 to 15 people each day, many of them from Chennai. “Earlier, we’d have a lot of foreigners signing up for classes, but the pandemic has changed that. Now a lot of locals are showing interest in the sport,” he says.

In his spare time, he continues giving back to community by spearheading beach clean-up drives in the area and also works towards turtle conservation. Even as we chat, he breaks off mid conversation to holler at a beach visitor he spots carelessly chucking plastic wrapping onto the sand. That’s Murthy for you.

Murthy Megavan can be reached at 9003052231 for lessons in surfing, kayaking, and standup paddling. Introductory classes usually begin at ₹1,500 while regular lessons are priced at ₹750. The ideal surf season along the east coast is from April to September.

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