Capt. Asha Alagappa is a 3rd generation army officer who has gone through life learning lessons from various stages of life as a daughter, sister, wife, and mother socially and as a girl child, student, lady cadet, an officer, a corporate employee, and presently as a people leader professionally, is being addressed. The ups and downs of life have been seen by her, and the pillars of life support have been realized to shake and shatter many times when life wanted more from her. Every time, she comes out as a winner, proving to herself and the world that she is tougher than the situation. Enormous efforts were taken by her to fight the odds and be there to face the challenges with her guts and grit to succeed and come out with flying colors. Today, her story is prepared to be shared with all.
Life has been fair to her in supporting her to grow into a stable, mature, and experienced woman with professional and social achievements and peace and harmony around her. She is happy to be blessed with a lovable husband, an adorable child, and some of the greatest friends of her lifetime to share her life with.
Early Struggles and Dreams
She was born into a middle-class family with limited resources and lived with limited needs and desires, not really having a happy and comfortable childhood as her mother suffered from some of her psychosomatic problems after the robbery in their house when she was an 8–9-year-old child. She grew up with her father, being supported by him for all the household things from childhood until her adolescence. She was treated like a black sheep of the family; her mom wanted her to be the maid of the house, and the other three siblings were happily allowed to study and enjoy life. However, time did not stop for them, and they all grew up and took on their own profession soon after finishing their studies. She was later told by her father that she had grown up with three dreams of childhood, and one of them was that she wanted to know how to make a bomb. Two: she wanted to join the defense as an officer and do parachuting. Three: She wanted to get married to a South Indian.
Professional Ascension
After a year of her graduation, she made it into the Army as an officer and her gaddi to chalpadithi. She put her heart and soul into preparing and did everything best possible to learn and clear all the exams and courses in time to do well professionally in her career, and socially, she took being a friendly and supportive human being. In the fifth year of her service, her specialized course of vaccination was obtained after fighting the system to give a technical course other than the basic course to women officers. She was destined to meet her would-be husband in the college of material management at Jabalpur. She was soon professionally and socially elevated as she finished her vaccination course, and officially engaged Capt. S. Alagappa, and got posted to Panagard, the vaccination depot. She soon got married to S. Alagappa, a South Indian. Life needs to progress when one is happy.
Challenges and Sacrifices
In her case, this turned out to be a toxic action of her life where her in-laws created a mess for her, and professional male chauvinists made her lose the spirit to fight for long after the birth of her child. And she ended up taking decisions emotionally rather than practically and logically. She thinks she made two wrong decisions in life, and those are: one, quitting her army career; and two, compromising with her in-laws after going through her initial years of marriage. Life seems to be a bundle of problems without solutions and endless tasks; however, one has to stand out to see the problems and find solutions to them one by one. She did exactly the same thing: she sorted out the problems, prioritized them, and made an importance list with the mind and soul working together to win the bigger battles of life.
Motherhood and Career Transition
The motherhood for her child, Animisha, for the initial 3–4 years has been the best of the best time they two spent together, almost all alone single-handedly, in spite of being with people around them. She was grossly emotional and involved with her child and his needs, though they moved out to a new station, with lots of professional commitment for her husband, visiting in-laws to help them many times, and sometimes being with her parents to help too. What mattered to her was that she had left her army job for her child, and she was there with him to help and support him fully.
The schooling of her child started soon after 3–4 weeks of birth, and it opened the door for her to have her second career in corporate America. She started from a BPO to a manufacturing company, to a chemical company automotive parts manufacturing, and defense manufacturing, and presently into corporate training for women empowerment and leadership training, along with a mission and an aim to help and groom 1000 young students to choose defense as their first career choice.
Dreams and Resilience
Time kept slipping from their hands, and they are here where they are yet to fulfill the desire to do something to feel good and achieve bigger aims in life like writing a book, earning a million, and living life king-size. Probably she was going to write off saying that everything is not possible in one life; let’s be happy and do a few things in the next life and enjoy the balance of a half-century of life left peacefully and happily without any cribbing and bad feelings. While finding solace in heart-burnings and struggles in life, although out and succeeding with a defense career driven with passion and valor, she muddled over and found her mission and purpose in life to transform 1 million students into passionate officers in defense services and lead a life of fulfillment and compassion to serve the motherland powerfully.
She got stuck by the idea to give this life itself a shot and succeed in getting not only another 2-3 dreams fulfilled before dying peacefully. So, she is here to dedicate her life to her passion and her dream to go ahead and drive her heart out to live life king-size, along with her book writing and her purpose, with a mission to drive as many children as possible to choose defense as their first career and to always support as many women to live an independent life without the burden of others controlling her.
