By 10 on a slightly warm Kolkata morning, the city was already in full flow. 

Tea stalls buzzed with regulars, buses groaned through traffic, and amid that familiar bustle, Ram Gopal Kothari had carved out some time to speak with The Better India. At 44, he runs Epic Assurance Services LLP, a business he built from scratch, but even today, his life feels ruled more by discipline than comfort. 

When he answered the phone, there was no rush in his voice. Just a calm that comes from having lived through far more uncertainty than most people ever see.

Kothari recently became the first Indian to complete a marathon at the Geographic North Pole, running 42.2 kilometres across floating ice at 90 degrees North. But when our conversation began, he was not talking about the marathon. He was talking about persistence. “I do not believe in giving up on anything I do. The moment you give up, everything ends there. But if you take one more step, something always changes,” he says.

It did not sound like a line prepared for an interview. It sounded like something shaped over years, in moments when things were falling apart, and there was no audience, no reassurance, only the next step left to take.

Because long before he stood on floating ice at the Geographic North Pole, he had already lived through years when even basic stability disappeared more than once. Rebuilding from zero was never a one-time effort. It became something he had to do, again and again, in different phases of his life.

Burrabazar mornings, where nothing felt unusual at the time

Born in 1981, he grew up in Burrabazar, Kolkata, in a modest home with an asbestos roof and shared facilities. It was a densely packed neighbourhood where daily life spilled into the streets, where children played outside because there was no space inside, and where routines were decided more by circumstance than planning. 

He does not recall it as a difficult childhood in the way outsiders might imagine it. For him, it was simply the world he knew.

“We never thought we were struggling; it was just normal life for us, and everyone around us lived the same way, so nothing ever felt unusual,” he tells The Better India.

His father worked in a small clothing shop, earning enough to keep the household going, while his mother ensured that education was never compromised. At the centre of it all was his grandmother. 

“My grandmother was the emotional anchor of our family. She always taught us to be kind, to stay patient, and to believe in something bigger than whatever hardship we were facing at that moment,” he says.

Those lessons found their way into everyday routines. He would wake up at 3 am to study before school, not because anyone celebrated the habit, but because it was simply what was expected. While the rest of the city was still asleep, he sat with his books, revising lessons before the day began.

Among the children he grew up with, he was eventually the only one to complete graduation. 

At the time, it did not feel like a defining moment. It became meaningful only years later, when he looked back and realised how many small, ordinary decisions had led him there.

A college experience that could have gone either way

He completed his graduation from Bhawanipur Education Society College in Kolkata, where he found himself among students from very different financial backgrounds. The transition........

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