 Are you really the same person you say you are? Or is someone impersonating you over the phone? The soft-spoken gentleman from James S.R. asked me. I closed my eyes. When I was six years old, I got affected by a severe fever that impacted my brain loss. Overnight, I got very high power in the eyes and began to lose my ability to hear. The hearing loss was so slow and gradual that no doctor could detect it. It was only when I was fifteen years old that the doctor diagnosed it as a sensory neural hearing loss and he told me I left free because I used to sit on the first bench in school and began to out of the breading on my own without even being aware of the damn breading. My eyes changed overnight. The next day I went to school with two hearing aids and the whole school principal and everyone stopped to look at me. But ironically, my grades began to get better after the onset of my disability and I got admission to undergraduate course in engineering on marriage. It's supposed to be fun. You learn, you fall in love, you make friends, call it for me or the nightmare. In the course of nearly 80 students, I struggled to read my professors. I couldn't follow what they spoke. And in my class, the first row was occupied by 13 girls. The second row was left blank out of modesty and then in the third row, me and Anna was sent. It was impossible to follow from the third row. It's just simple and inclusive education. It wasn't a thing back then from being a rank holder in school to getting an F in a college subject. My life went down here. I lost my confidence, my self-esteem and it was so desperate, so hopeless that at one point I felt like ending my life. As I sat crying in the college campus, holding my mark sheet, we can F. I hand tapped my soldier gently and there was a zit, a zit that read, sit next to me and copy notes from me. I looked behind to see my classmate. She was a university topper and she asked me to sit next to her. I was delighted but only for a fraction of a second because sitting next to her would mean I need to sit with the girls. So the next day in college, I went and sat in the middle of 13 girls. For four to minutes, the whole class left. The girl also left. One of those two minutes of laughter that I injured helped me to convert my F to an A. So the college, I passed through the first class, but who would give a job to a person who cannot listen a word on the phone from the western part of India where I grew up? I went all the way to the southern part of India in a different city, different culture, different language, different food habits. And there was a company that hired people with disabilities. The senior of that company was a wonderful human being. And so I began my career at high under a manager and whatever I am today, I owe it to him for the next three years. I learned a lot of programming languages. Under him, I learned the principles of software craftsmanship. And then it was time for me to go to a consulate. You see, for me, my first impressions are never good. And when I met the client for the first time, he was a Santa Claus-like man with a long flowing beard. I couldn't even see the lips, let alone read the lips. He was super frustrated. But I persisted. And in one week, he became a wonderful friend. And one month later, I delivered the project ahead of time. So for the next couple of years, I delivered to multiple client places, delivering value and excellence, high on confidence. And after six years, I felt an S that can I survive outside this company? So I made my profile and I put my mobile number. And whenever I got a call, I would go to my friend who talked on my behalf. I got multiple calls, but not a single chance to attend an interview. So I hit upon a plan. In my profile, I put my friend's mobile number and he pretended to be me. The hard work, the calls began to get scheduled. And one such call came from James Asha. Asha would call my friend who would pretend to be me, who would text me. The trick worked for a while until we were busted. And Asha came and said, are you really the same person you say you are? Or is someone impersonating you over the phone? And I said, I had to find a way around this non-inclusive hiring system. You show me a better way. Since then, it has been ten wonderful years for me in Gen, driving inclusion one cubicle at a time to become in a pride early to launch in an LGBTQ chapter, to finally launch in a community for people with disabilities and ensuring that they have a system of an inclusive education which has never got a chance to. I started contributing to open source, started speaking at meetups, technical meetups, and became an AWS community builder. So summing up, life isn't about how much you have fallen down. Life is about how you march back, how you raise yourself up. For life is both, you make it. Thank you.