Ambition or goal is not a destination but a continuous journey; once you achieve something it’s onto the next one. My life has been full of ups and downs, let it be a failure in school exam or topping the next one, getting a spot in a school cricket team and then having to sit out because I fractured my thumb while keeping wickets in practice session, scoring in top percentile and yet not being able to get a call from a school of my choice, the list goes on. And I still think I haven’t seen even a small part that life has to offer.
But the story that I wish to share is not a generic account of life like the ones I shared hitherto. It’s about the challenge I faced as a child going to a vernacular school. English was my third language and I wasn’t introduced to it until very late. Children around me used to speak in English and I wasn’t even sure that I understood it correctly let alone speaking it. It developed an inferiority complex because it is wrongly assumed that your smartness is associated with your ability to speak English. Somehow, I decided to get over it and master the language. Now people come to me for help on their essays, ask words for a particular situation – because they feel I have a good vocabulary – and appreciate when I speak, something I was always interested in doing but was afraid to do because I felt I wasn’t good enough in English. Other tangent to this is about reaching out to public for the causes which are close to me. I always wanted to write, raise awareness, and give back to the society. I just never finalized on it. Now that I have a little understanding of the things around me, I have started writing a manuscript – a non-fiction focusing on a prevailing issue – for publication, something I will finish in the coming months. I feel the work that I am able to do and all these marks and appreciation that I receive are the tokens given to my success, something which, to me, is not a destination but a journey – a long one starting from childhood till now and I still feel that I have not come far along...