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Today’s episode is a special one dedicated to Vaidyanathan Singararaman. It should have been a day to celebrate his birthday. He would have received a voice message from me wishing him a happy birthday. Instead we celebrate his life: one lived fully and with purpose. 

I’d known Vaidy for over 30 years when we were both at the same business school, but in I never really knew him until about ten years ago. Social media and a few changes in my own life brought us in greater contact. I wrote a blog in 2015 which took his story to a wider audience. In 2016 he kindly agreed to be the only man in my book Leading Ladies by agreeing to share his late mother Ganga’s story. In so doing, he shared his story too. 

Vaidy never wanted to inspire or be treated as special. His greatest wish was to be treated as himself, an ordinary man whose turning point led to him living an extraordinary life. When Vaidy first told me his story for the blog, I apologised to him for not having taken more notice of him on campus, and for being so unforgivably unaware of the ordeal he had suffered. His face lit up with his characteristic gentle smile. “That is as it should be” he said. “It means you didn’t treat me any different simply because I was in a wheelchair.”

I will be reading the chapter from the book Leading Ladies, titled Ganga’s Story as told by Vaidyanathan Singararaman, Co-Founder of The Ganga Foundation.