Challenges i faced and overcame to achieve my ambitions
There are challenges we face every day, some of them we overcome and some act as a learning case study for future reference .but there are some challenges that empower you just by the fact that you were confident when you faced them. This incident is one of those, I used to live in a industrial township in the outskirts of the city Bareilly. Bareilly is an important educational hub in U.P and has good infrastructure for educational institutions, but I was in a project school inside the vicinity of my township, the school was very competent in all respects but English was not spoken as a primary mode of communication here in contrast to the various convent and private schools. We always felt we lacked in that aspect because our scope of understanding was very limited and narrow (being from a small town).
One day, a leading newspaper advertised about an extempore competition that was going to be held in the city and each school had to send 4 of their brightest and voluble speakers to compete, I was a good speaker but I had never tried my luck in English .we had an internal competition within our school and 4 students were selected out of which one was yours truly. We were assigned a mentor to escort and help us during the actual extempore and our school PGT Hindi teacher was assigned to the task. The competition started on a summer day and I was stunned to see the talent present there, people were speaking flawless and a hyper vocal English. This was going to be my biggest nightmare, a crowd of 600 people laughing at your incapability to speak. I had to quit, I can’t be a laughing stock I was only 13 and I took my teachers phone and called home asking them to take me back. My mother was shocked as she had seen me narrating poetry on school stages and leading charge during parades but she knew it was only confidence I needed. She said that she is coming and just asked me not to take my name back so soon. I obliged and waited biting my nails .my turn was going to come after 4 contestants and I was staring to shiver as no one had faltered during the last 15 performances and I was going to be the first. after 30 minutes my mother arrived and she was not alone , she brought my sister ,father and 2 of my neighbors with her and sat next to me . She only said one thing taking my shivering hand, “even if everyone laughs in the audience, there are going to be 6 people in that audience who are going to be proud “. My shivering body which cold had a sudden splurge of warm blood , I had found confidence , I knew I had it in me because now it was not just me and I was not alone anymore . The topic was given to me and spoke beautifully for 5.5 minutes, the recording still gives me Goosebumps and take me out of any depressing situation in life. I secured 3rd rank in the city of Bareilly and I was a new found proud confident boy.
