CTC Profiles - Din Ravichandran

Featuring Din Ravichandran

What are you currently doing (job/study)? your interests?

- Dream of becoming a sportsmen ended up working in IT. 

- My interests are sports(you name it, I love it), music, art, photography, travelling and of course volunteering. 

When & How  did you  get started  CTC?

-My first event with CTC was Ainthinai plantation and camping  in Pondicherry  University. It was on 14th March, 2015.

What are the activities of  CTC that  you are involved in?

- Plantation and maintenance activities. 

- Cleanups 

- Volunteering in Sports activities. 

- Biking trips. 

- Weekday camping. 

- Blood donation and coordination 

- Waste management. 

May be I missed few :) 

What will you say has been your biggest achievement when it comes along with  CTC?

- I don't feel anything as achievement while volunteering, since it's my responsibility. Whatever I do here is not an individual contribution. All credits goes to selfless volunteers of CTC. 

- After seeing too many posts about guys running like insane. I want to do 10k marathon as a initial start. It's not that easy for me since I have issues in both my legs. Ligament tear. Operated already in one knee. Due to this over a period of time my weight increased dramatically reaching 90Kgs almost. But I Want to break all the shackles and come out. Registered for Wipro marathon 2016. Thanks to my organization for enrolling me. Till the race day I never had that feeling of completing it. Really don't had any practice at all. But all my doubts are gone. I however managed to walk and jog and reached the finish line. This was my first run after a decade almost. Thanks to all the people who influenced me to do this. This is not a big achievement, but a start for me :) 

Anything else you might want to add?

- life is very short, we are not going to stay here for 1000 years. So, do whatever you can to this earth and all the living beings. 

Share any one of the CTC Best moments you had !

- Each and every moment that I spend with CTC is best. 

- Recently I woke up in the morning and saw a message from a person whom i never met in my life. The message was "Thank you so much for your support and prayers, my mother is responding good to the treatment and she recovered from the critical stage .

Thank you once again

Ashwini" 

Tears started to flow my eyes when I read this. I donated platelets and Blood for her mother and also coordinated to get required units of blood and platelets. Thanks to all the donors and CRK team for that. 

How do you manage your work life balance ?

- This is the biggest challenge for me since I work in 24/7 support and my shift keeps changing. 

- But, when you want to do something you can always find a way. 

- luckily, we have so many volunteering opportunities in CTC. So I join the event based on my shifts. Yes, sometimes I take leave also to join ;) 

- I had a good challenge last year for managing the time during our CCC. My first wedding anniversary, CCC and District Carrom Championship which will be hosted by Carrom legend Maria Irudhayam sir all on the same day. I planned and covered all the three in same day. Also, pulled my wife in our CCC :)

Any specific goals/dream that you are working on ?

- Goals for long time, you can even say before my lifetime : 

#Completing SR title in cycling. 

#Full Marathon

#Full Iron Triathlon 

# Winning District Carrom Championship 

- Dream is to make this planet a better place to live. Plastic free, pollution free, corruption free, poverty and hunger free. All these may looks like too ambitious. But that's how we should be living and not like how we are now. I am doing whatever I can to make a small impact on these. 

How has your life changed after joining this CTC ?

- What a silly question is this :), life not changed, life started after joining CTC. 

- I want to rephrase "life begins at the end of your comfort zone" as "Life begins at the start of CTC". 

- I am blood donor for last 12 years and donated 50+ times, but I don't know anything about donation from other aspects. When I started to coordinate for blood requests, I learned so many things about blood donation and how it works. My sincere thanks to CRK team for believing in me and gave this opportunity. The also backed me up whenever I need any help. 

- Right now I do volunteering almost everyday for something. 

- I came to know many other volunteering groups through CTC and also did volunteering with them whenever I can. 

- Right now I had a feel that 24 hours are not enough :) 

- Whereever I go, when I see usage of plastics I immediately try to speak with them to see if we can change  to environment friendly way. Had very little success with this since many are very resistant and few are even very harsh. But I won't back off, will continue my torcher for sure :) 

Did anything change after marriage?

- Yes, my relationship status ;). Nothing changed but it gets little more challenging now since managing my passion, volunteering, office and spending time with family. Trying to manage all. Not every time I succeed, but I never failed to try. My biggest support is my wife. Always supports me in what I do. If there is any credit to me for anything, it should go there as well :) 

Share some of your cycling  that you did in the CTC?

- unfortunately, I haven't cycled with CTC team yet. Though I have completed many 50k, 100k and few 200k outside CTC. I have registered for my first Cycling trip with CTC this month, Western Ghats Ultra. Eagerly waiting for it :) 

We have seen you in leading many of volunteering and how does this helps you outside CTC ?

- it really helps to gel with people easily. 

- managing time. 

- being humble in all situations. 

- always reaching out to help someone. 

One day a friend who attended a senior management meeting in my office told me that our head of the project was talking about me. I was like "machi kalaikuriya" then I heard from few others as well and came to know that he referred me to others in that executive meeting to learn how to effectively manage time for everything.

So, if we have passion and determination surely we can make time for it. 

What are you other interest?

- Want to learn swimming, joined basic swimming course in SDAT. Starting from today April 1, 2017 :) soon will come to ottiyambakkam and later to sea ;) 

- Want to learn car driving. 

- My biggest interest is traveling. Want to travel to every place in earth. Hope i will cover atleast. 000000000001% of it before my lifetime.