PRIYANKA KHURANA

• Brief About Yourself

My name is Priyanka Goyal, 32 years of age from the city where your dreams get the flying wings- Mumbai. I am from a middle class backgroud with values of hard work, honesty, self belief and perseverance deeply ingrained. I did my initial studies from Delhi and then went on to do my post graduation from IIM Calcutta. Post that I have been working in the Wall Street and enjoying the challenges that it brings. I delivered a very cute baby, Yuvaan, 18 months back and since then enjoying the roller coaster ride that new motherhood brings about. Yuvaan has brought new changes in my way of thinking and has made me much more experimental and unafraid of new things. Motherhood has developed a very favourable 'BRING IT ON' attitude in me whenever I am faced with new situations at work or home alike. This has resulted in unpecedented success at both work and personal front which you usually don't expect so soon after motherhood. I have developed a lot of new interests like cooking, soap making to bring the absolute best in nutrition and care for my baby and immense amount of satisfation from my role as a mother and as a homemaker. I am also a keen follower of yoga and do meditation on a regular basis to have a balanced approach in life.

• Your achievements that make you feel high?

I feel I have been quite blessed in my life, born to and brought up by loving and supporting parents, having had a very happy childhood and fun filled school days, cracking the big CAT exam to win a place at IIM calcutta, meeting the love of my life, getting through to a premier Wall Street firm, getting married, having a baby and building a career. But my most joyful momemt came, after 7 years of a fulfilling marriage, shortly after the birth of our child. My husband one day out of the blue, clasped my hand, looked into my eyes and told me that he was so fortunate to have a soul mate like me in his journey of life. My eyes filled with tears, and I would not hesiste to say that this is the closest I have come to true bliss. I think my greatest 'achievement' has been in building a happy family.

• Define the true beauty.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, true beauty is not just skin deep. It is the combined beauty of a life, a heart and a mind. I define it as a beautiful mind that has thoughts of wellness that involve not only your near and dear ones but society at large. I define it as beauty of a heart that melts when it sees suffering of less fortunate and pours positive emotions to reduce the pain. I define it as a beautiful life that serves to be an inspiration for whosoever it touches and that is a beacon of hope for the less fortunate ones. A complete beautiful package that serves as a rolemodel and inpires others to follow the beautiful path of love, hope and faith, is what I define true beauty as. This is the beauty that lasts forever.

• Why you are participating in Mrs India Queen of Substance.

People say I gave birth to Yuvaan but I say he gave birth to a new me who wants to experiment with the unknown, try new experiences unafraid of failure, undeterred by the fact that I have no background about the nuances of this industry. Is a child afraid of the aforementioned factors- ofcourse NOT. That's what Yuvaan has inspired me towards. I want to try new experiences out of my comfort zone. Having cleared one of the toughest exams for my education and got one of the most coveted Wall Street job while competing with the best brains in the country, I want to start afresh. Want to feel the butterflies in my stomach and the nervousness of the untried territory just like a teenager. It is when you know nothing about something that the scope for improvement and learning is the highest. It is for this learning and experience that I am here. It is my chance to stand on a platform where I get visibility with a large number of audience to highlight the thoughts that I stand for. I believe if you have faith in yourself and a heart of a child, you can conquer even the most difficult of situations. I want to use this platform to be that role model girl that every parent would feel proud of and will force future parents to think twice before thinking that girl child is any inferior to the male child.

• If you were given the chance to live again, what would it be?

My life before I met my loving husband was fairly linear one dimentional and a lot focused on results of my efforts. This focus on end goal sometimes takes the joy out of the journey. After he introduced me to the world of meditation, I feel my life is much more balanced with the focus on the experience rather than the results. This makes the entire experience much more enriching and satisfying and the results merely happen as a bi- product. If given a chance to live life again, I would have this approach from school days because that will change the focus from marks to knowledge which is much more useful in your daily life when you grow up. I gained 97 percent marks in chemistry when I was 16 years but I learned it and gained true knowledge when I read the same books again at 32 years of age for the purpose of using chemistry in my kitchen and in bringing the right nutrition for my family. I wish I knew that learning could be this much fun when I was younger. If given a chance again, I would focus on knowledge, not grades; learning and experience, not rating; enjoy the journey of life and not focus only on destination. I would laugh more ( sometimes at myself), have more fun, make more mistakes and learn from those, try more new things, spend more time with family and friends, not worry about the little things, and enjoy the very act of living.

• The Quote or saying that encourages you?

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older' - Tom Stoppard. Nothing could be more true as I have experienced it myself. I feel younger, more energetic, experiment ready and highly knowledge hungry after the birth of my own child. A child tells us that human mind has the capacity to learn multiple languages, extremely subtle nuances of human behaviour, experiment with science and nature, deal in an equitable manner, look at things with a fresh perspective every time in a non- judgemental manner and a lot lot more. This makes you wonder - did you grow up or down when you left your childhood away. I feel this saying summaries it all very succinctly and aptly.

• How you will contribute towards the not so fortunate children & women of our society.

'If you give a man a fish, you feed him for one day. If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime'. I believe in this saying whenever I look at people I could help. In education lies the answer. If you give education to a person, you not only educate her, you educate a family. An educated mother becomes the pillar of strength for the whole family and becomes the source from where a bright future for the kids originates. My entire focus in the field of charity is on education of women and children to ensure that the current as well the future generations reap the benefits.