My father’s brother — our dearest Lalu Uncle — went to be with the Lord in October 2025.
He had travelled to Delhi to deliver this TEDx talk, but sadly, he never got the chance. He passed away before he could step onto that stage.
If he had delivered this speech, it would have been one of the most inspiring and viral talks of all time.
Take just 2 minutes to read through his incredible testimony — a journey of failure, faith, resilience, and destiny.
The last speech Abraham Zachariah prepared – to deliver at TEDx
I didn’t go to school. I was sent to school.
Hence, for 10th standard, marks were very low and I could get admission only for Commerce group, as no one wanted (is 55 years ago) in my home state Kerala.
My mother was very upset as my cousins and friends got into Science groups and she pushed me into Commerce Group.
I was used to tell everyone that “Useless fellow, useless fellow, useless fellow are in Commerce Group and all the useless ones are in commerce group.” She was partly right because of me.
On those days, an Uncle of mine came home, she repeated “useless fellow, useless fellow, useless fellow.” His Uncle said, “So what? He can become a Chartered Accountant.” In my life, I had never heard about a profession called Chartered Accountancy till then. Innocently being a village boy, I asked, “No, uncle. Uncle, who is a Shattered Accountant?” “No, no, not Shattered accountant but Chartered Accountant – big man, sitting inside an air-conditioned cabin.”
In Dale Carnegie’s words, he aroused an eager want in me, to become a Chartered Accountant.
After a week, I went for a wedding. There, his uncle was waiting for me. He gave a card to me and said, “Look at that man. He is a Chartered Accountant.” I looked at him. He was a tall and handsome person. That day, I thought to myself, “I must become a Chartered Accountant. I too would also become tall and handsome.”
That evening he went, I went after him. The way he was meeting and greeting well-presented people, and how everyone was over, I found him getting into a big white BMW car, which was like BMW or Mercedes today.
I must become a Chartered Accountant, that was my dream. With full thrust, I joined 1st Accountancy, but in 12th Standard, I ran out of fuel and failed.
My “Chartered Accountant” became “Shattered Accountant.”
Then, I passed B.Com and went to Chennai to pursue my dream – Chartered Accountant.
Ignorance is Bliss. If 12th failed would not have joined for CA, where the pass percentage was just TWO, out of thousand students only 20 were passing every year.
I had a major challenge – I was an English language. I couldn’t speak one full line in English, for others, it was Manglish, worse than what you are listening right now!
For the first CA exam, I did my best, but my best was not even average for CA Institute. I failed. I was not upset having failed in 12th standard. My roommate said, “I have you ever seen a big loser?” I laughed. “What happened, man?” He said, “Last time you will pass or fail. Today you have not passed your exam, yet failed. My roommate said, don’t worry. Look at Senthil and Suresh, both passed. Everyone passed, only I failed. My third roommate said, “That’s the reason I failed, all the three roommates passed.” He laughed at me left me.
Then fifth, sixth, seventh I lost count of it, but not my mother. One day she came to see me. When I asked, she was upset and angry. She said, “You are making me angry. What about your roommate?” Where are you? You said you would make us proud, where are you?” As she was saying this, I could see a sparkle in my mother’s eyes that caused flooding. I vomited, I turned back towards my roommate.
There was a fire in my belly! The same evening, I left for Chennai and burned the midnight oil for Chennai and passed – No one conquered that mother of all exams, Indian Chartered Accountancy; and stood before you proudly.
I shared my game of the CA story – the opening and closing. But it has a middle part, a strange one.
Abdul Kalam has rightly said, if you have a dream, let that dream not give up easily.
It happened to me when I was failing without fail. My father was working in Saudi Arabia. He said, “Why waste your time and my money. Come here, I will arrange an employment, free visa, free accommodation. Everything is free.” I said “No” to him.
It was a do or die situation. Since dying was very complicated, I intensified my actions.
Success is not by accident. If you think you can, you can. Otherwise 12th Standard failed youth have not passed Chartered Accountancy. I am perhaps, the one and only student who failed in 12th Std, passed and became a Chartered Accountant.
Paulo Coelho of The Alchemist has rightly said, “If you have a dream, the Universe will conspire to achieve it for you.” I never believed it until it happened.
I used to fail in the Economics Paper for CA regularly.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, in its rarest of rare decisions, changed the Economics paper in 1985 and that very year that I passed Chartered Accountancy. “If everything fails, the universe will conspire to achieve it for you.”
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