ROARSTORIESRoarStories
Every story that changes someone follows the same four movements. Not a model to memorise — a shape you will start to recognise, in the room and in yourself.
The Moment
A real human edit.
I thought I understood the story of Nelson Mandela before I visited Robben Island. Like many people, I knew the facts. I knew about the twenty-seven years he spent in prison. I knew about apartheid, his eventual release, the Nobel Peace Prize, and the presidency that followed. It was a story I had heard many times before, one that had been told through documentaries, books, speeches, and history lessons. Yet there is a difference between knowing a story and standing in the place where it happened.
The journey began in Cape Town, where a ferry carried us across the cold Atlantic waters towards the island. As the city slowly faded into the distance, I found myself thinking about the men who had made that same journey decades earlier. For me, the crossing would take less than an hour. For them, it marked the beginning of a sentence that would separate them from their families, their freedom, and the lives they once knew. The island itself looked almost ordinary from afar. It was difficult to imagine that this small piece of land had become one of the most feared prisons in South Africa.
What made the experience even more powerful was our guide. He was not a historian reciting events from a script. He was a former prisoner who had lived on Robben Island himself. As he walked us through the prison grounds, every building seemed to carry a memory. Every corridor held a story. The experience felt less like a tour and more like walking through someone's lived experience. History was no longer a chapter in a book. It felt tangible and uncomfortably close.
Then we arrived at Nelson Mandela's cell.
I remember standing there in silence, staring at a room that seemed impossibly small. The photographs I had seen over the years had never prepared me for the reality of it. There was nothing remarkable about the space itself. No grand monument. No impressive display. Just a tiny concrete room with barely enough space for the most basic necessities. Yet it was within those walls that one of the world's most respected leaders spent years of his life.
As I stood there, I stopped thinking about Nelson Mandela the icon and began thinking about Nelson Mandela the man. I thought about waking up every morning to the same walls and the same routine. I thought about watching years pass and eventually turn into decades. I thought about missing birthdays, family milestones, and countless moments that could never be reclaimed. Most of all, I thought about the purpose of a place like Robben Island. This prison was not designed to rehabilitate. It was designed to isolate, discourage, and ultimately break the human spirit.
Yet somehow it failed.
Standing in that tiny cell, I found myself asking a question that has stayed with me ever since. How does a person spend twenty-seven years in a place designed to destroy hope and emerge without bitterness? Most of us struggle to let go of disappointments that last weeks or months. We carry old grievances, failed relationships, workplace conflicts, and missed opportunities far longer than we should. Yet Nelson Mandela endured twenty-seven years of imprisonment and walked out carrying a vision for reconciliation rather than revenge.
That was the moment the story changed for me.
His greatest leadership achievement was not becoming President of South Africa. It was a decision made long before he entered public office. Somewhere within those prison walls, he decided that his circumstances would not determine his character. The prison could take away his freedom, his time, and his connection to the outside world, but it could not decide the kind of person he would become.
As I left that cell and made my way back towards the ferry, I realised that the lesson of Robben Island was not really about history. It was about choice. Life does not always give us control over our circumstances. It does, however, leave us with a choice about how we respond to them. Standing in the place where Nelson Mandela made that choice reminded me that leadership is not revealed when life is easy. It is revealed when life gives us every reason to become less, and we choose to become more.
PS: Robben Island was one of the reasons I started RoarStories.
The Pattern
I first met Pushpa Basnet over dinner. Like many people, I knew her as the woman who had won CNN Hero awards for her work with children living in prisons in Nepal. What I did not expect was how ordinary she seemed. There was no dramatic introduction, no attempt to impress anyone in the room, and no trace of someone carrying international recognition. She spoke quietly, almost matter-of-factly, about the children she cared for. It was only as the evening unfolded that I began to understand the scale of what she had built.
The story began when she was a young social work student. During a college assignment, she visited a women's prison in Kathmandu and saw something that most people would never expect to see. Children were living behind bars alongside their incarcerated mothers. These children had committed no crime, yet they were spending their formative years in prison cells because their mothers had nowhere else to send them. Some would take their first steps inside prison walls. Others would grow up believing that prison was simply what life looked like. That moment stayed with her long after the assignment ended. While others completed the project and moved on, she could not.
Most people encounter injustice and feel sadness.
A few feel responsibility.
Pushpa chose responsibility.
At an age when many people were building careers, pursuing personal ambitions, and planning their futures, she chose a very different path. She raised a small amount of money from family and friends and created what would eventually become the Early Childhood Development Center and later the Butterfly Home. The mission was simple: no child should grow up behind prison walls because of decisions they never made.
What struck me most that evening was not the number of children she had helped. It was the fact that she had never married and never had children of her own. Yet hundreds of children call her "Mamu", mother. She made a conscious decision to dedicate her life to a challenge that most people would never even see, let alone choose. She did not inherit this responsibility. She adopted it.
As she shared stories from the Butterfly Home, I began to see something far more powerful than charity. Many of the children she rescued from prison have since completed their education. Some earned scholarships. Some built careers. Some left to pursue opportunities they could never have imagined as children living behind bars. And then something remarkable happened. Some of them came back. Not because they had nowhere else to go, but because they wanted to serve the very community that had once given them a future. They returned as mentors, caregivers, and teachers to the next generation of children walking through those same doors.
That was the pattern I could not stop thinking about.
Real leadership is not measured by what we build during our lifetime. It is measured by what continues to grow after we step away.
Pushpa did not simply rescue children from prison. She interrupted a cycle. She changed a story that could have repeated itself for generations. Instead of creating dependence, she created possibility. Instead of creating followers, she nurtured future leaders. Her impact did not stop with the child she helped. It expanded to the families, communities, and generations that child would eventually influence.
As I left that dinner, I realised I had spent years thinking about leadership in terms of influence, strategy, and results.
Pushpa taught me something different.
The most extraordinary leaders are not always the ones standing on the largest stages.
Sometimes they are the ones quietly changing the trajectory of hundreds of lives and creating ripples that will continue long after they are gone.
That is not service.
That is legacy.
PS : If you want to continue Pushpa’s work.
Visit the Butterfly Home (https://www.ecdcnepal.org/)
Support Their Work
ECDC - Early Childhood Development Center
The Turn
What actually happened?
I met Nirmal Purja in the United Kingdom in 2018, just before the world would come to know him through Project Possible. At the time, he was preparing for a speaking engagement, and by pure chance, I found myself in the same room. We never shook hands. We never exchanged names. There was no lengthy conversation and certainly no indication that years later I would still remember that brief encounter.
What struck me was how ordinary the moment felt.
Here was a man preparing to attempt something that many thought bordered on impossible. He was setting out to climb all fourteen of the world's 8,000-metre peaks in a fraction of the time anyone had done before. The mountaineering community had every reason to be skeptical. The previous record stood at almost eight years, while he intended to complete the challenge in less than seven months. It was the kind of ambition that invited criticism long before it invited admiration.
At the time, I did not see him as a leadership figure. I saw him the way many outdoor enthusiasts would. He was another climber. Another adventurer. Another person determined to test the limits of human endurance against some of the most unforgiving mountains on earth.
What stayed with me was not confidence or bravado.
It was humility.
There was calmness about him. A quiet certainty. He did not carry himself like someone trying to conquer nature. If anything, he seemed deeply aware that nature was not something to be conquered at all.
Over the years, I have met people who speak about mountains as though they are opponents to defeat. Nims felt different. There was an unspoken respect in the way he approached the challenge. He understood something that every serious climber eventually learns. Mountains do not care about your reputation, your titles, your achievements, or your plans. The mountain will always have the final say.
Perhaps that is why his achievement fascinated me so much afterward.
When Project Possible succeeded and the world celebrated what he had accomplished, I found myself thinking back to that brief encounter and of course in my own way I was cheering him on. The headlines focused on the record. The documentaries focused on the summits. The public saw the triumph. What impressed me was something else entirely. Despite achieving something extraordinary, he never seemed to lose respect for the forces much greater than himself.
That, for me, is the turn.
Many people believe audacity and humility sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. They assume that to pursue something impossible, you must possess an oversized ego.
Nims demonstrated the opposite.
He dreamed on a scale that very few people would dare to imagine, yet he never appeared to underestimate the mountains he faced. He had the courage to challenge human limits without pretending he was bigger than nature itself.
That lesson has stayed with me.
The most remarkable people are often not the loudest people in the room.
They are the ones who can hold two truths at the same time.
The courage to attempt the impossible.
And the wisdom to respect what could destroy you.
Every meaningful challenge begins there. Not with celebration. Not with achievement.
It begins with standing at the foot of something immense, feeling the weight of uncertainty, and choosing to take the first step anyway.
That is not fearlessness.
That is courage.
PS: My next expedition will be to Mount Kilimanjaro – a eight-day track.
The Move
On a rainy afternoon in March 2015, I stood among thousands of Singaporeans watching the funeral procession of Lee Kuan Yew make its way towards the University Cultural Centre at the National University of Singapore. I remember holding an umbrella, soaked despite my best efforts, and wondering why I felt such a profound sense of loss. I had never met him. I had never spoken to him. Yet standing there, I found myself unexpectedly emotional.
As the hearse passed, I realised that what I was grieving was not the loss of a leader I knew. It was the loss of a man whose convictions had quietly shaped the life I was fortunate enough to live.
I was born in 1975, just ten years after Singapore became independent. Growing up, I never questioned whether I would receive an education. I never questioned whether I would be safe walking the streets of my city. I never questioned whether, as an Indian girl, I belonged here. Those things felt normal. They felt expected. Looking back, I realise they were not inevitable. They were built.
That was the move.
In 1965, Singapore was a tiny island with few natural resources, deep uncertainties, and no guarantee of success. Many saw limitations. Lee Kuan Yew saw possibilities. Many saw a country that was too small to survive. He saw a nation that could compete with the very best in the world.
What always fascinated me about him was not his ability to build a country. It was his refusal to believe that size determines significance.
As a petite woman, I have carried that lesson with me throughout my life.
People often underestimate what appears small. Small countries. Small ideas. Small voices.
Yet Singapore taught me that greatness has very little to do with size and everything to do with conviction. It taught me that intelligence matters. Discipline matters. Integrity matters. Excellence matters.
Somewhere along the way, those ideas became my own.
Long before I understood leadership, I was learning it by simply being Singaporean.
I learned that trust is earned. I learned that promises without execution are meaningless. I learned that difficult decisions are often the right decisions. I learned that quality is a choice. I learned that leadership is not about popularity. It is about responsibility.
Standing there in the rain, I realised that many of the principles I live by today were planted long before I was old enough to recognise them.
What moved me most was not the success of Singapore.
It was the courage required to start. Imagine being told that your nation is too small.
Imagine being told that your people cannot compete. Imagine being told that success belongs to someone else.
Then imagine ignoring all of it. That was Lee Kuan Yew's move.
He did not inherit a success story.
He wrote one.
As the procession disappeared into the distance, I found myself thinking about the Singapore he left behind. The green spaces woven into a modern city. The multicultural society where a little Indian girl could grow up believing she belonged. The safety, stability, education, and opportunities that I had spent most of my life taking for granted.
And for the first time, I understood that none of it happened by accident.
The greatest leaders do not simply build institutions. They build belief.
They create a future so convincing that generations later, people forget how impossible it once seemed.
That day, standing beneath an umbrella in the rain, I realised that I was one of those people. I had spent a lifetime benefiting from a belief that began before I was born. I too was a leader that LKY had built.
And that is why I cried. Not because a leader had passed.
But because I finally understood the magnitude of the move he had made.
Where does your story turn?
The four movements are easier to see in someone else than in yourself. That is exactly what the work is for.
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