While a lot of things are woven into the tapestry of life, one thread that stands out and holds the whole delicate thread work together is challenges. One may ask, “Really? How in the world do challenges hold our life together? They pull us apart!” I might have nodded my head enthusiastically in the affirmative and went along with what you said – had this been a few years earlier. Challenges hold us together, because they introduce us to ourselves – help us identify our flaws, make us hate ourselves, then enable us to introspect and finally, teach us to fall in love with ourselves all over again. In essence, challenges mould us into the fine specimens of creation we aim to be. I have had my fair share of challenges, but I am proud to say that I have overcome each and every one of them. One of the challenges I have faced was a situation that I was in when I was in the second year of my engineering. I have been a professional Bharatnatyam dancer for quite some time now, and I used to give performances all around the state of Tamil Nadu. A golden opportunity presented itself when I was offered the chance to perform at a prestigious dance festival in the temple town of Karaikal. I was overjoyed. A few days later, I realized that this performance would coincide with a very important exam in college – I was the top student of my department (Genetic Engineering) and a regular recipient of merit scholarships – I was not someone who took any test lightly, let alone an exam such as this one which carried high weightage. But I refused to back out of the performance and decided to look at this as a chance to prove myself. The performance was outside Chennai, which where I lived at the time and it was late at night – on the day before the exam. But I had already made up my mind and I was not going to give up. I gave one of the best performances of my life that night but the performance ended much later than we thought because it was an overnight festival – it was midnight by the time the performance ended. We rushed through dinner and got into the car where I could catch very little sleep during the journey because a lot of us were cramped together and the driver was driving at a very high speed. Finally, we reached home at 5 in the morning – I hadn’t studied one bit and my college was an hour and a half away. When everybody around me had already started saying “It’s okay. Make up for it on the next test”, I had found my characteristic, iron resolve to hold onto. I studied with great determination for this highly technical subject that my peers had been preparing for many days for – which I couldn’t due to the physical rigors of travelling 3-4 hours every day to and from college and orchestra rehearsals that went well into the night. I gave the exam in a frenzy of grit and almost adamant refusal to give up or compromise. Right after the exam, all the sleep deprivation set in, and I finally breathed a sigh of relief and contentment – I had, at the very least, given the best I could from my end. The next thing I know, something totally Bollywood-
esque happened. I scored top marks yet again, and my GPA was unaffected. Two years later, I was awarded the gold medal. This incident instilled in me confidence and the belief that everything can be achieved – with grit, determination and the courage to embrace your challenges.
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