{This article of mine was published in the magazine of La Martiniere Boys' College, Lucknow, where I used to study.}
Ever feared if an unpreventable circumstance cuts you off this school and cancels your option of studying elsewhere?
WHAM.
Your life will come to a creaking halt. You will be burdened with more dullness than you can ever imagine. Yup, you will have a lot of time, but it has pleasure because currently you are busy. You will be friendless, lonely, and inactive.
So was I when a progressive visual impairment compelled me to leave this school. I failed in class 6th half yearly first but was then promoted to 7th where before getting out of this school I failed again and afterwards met more failures in grad and post grad also! Simple.
Yeah, you guys might have guessed that I was not so good at studies. Right.
And yeah, you guys might have also guessed that I kind of enjoyed my failures and school-getting out. Wrong.
These failures with my school-separation made me think of committing suicide. The sorrow of being separated from my school, teachers and friends is so seething that it still wounds my heart, though in time, I got over my failures. More years than a decade has have past and I continue to dream that I have returned to my early youth and am studying in your school. I rarely regret over things, but I deeply regret that a good piece of my teenage, in which each moment is more precious than a gold coin, has wasted. So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Tennyson. But…
Martinians! Changing the paragraph here because now am going to show you the positive side of the game.
Deprived of regular education, faltering over failures – and therefore exposing myself to mockery, I started to form a belief of my own.
I was sure that my academic record is not the measuring stick for my talents and potential. Charles Dickens had a formal education of not more than four years. Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout; Steve Jobs (the Apple guy) too was a dropout – Google out his college/university name – and btw Google-choreographers Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Stanford abandoners. Sachin also was a failure. In academics.
Back to me: I tried harder than one can think to pass in English but failed several times before I could obtain 3rd division marks. so much I was committed to my education that even if for a day I was unable to study, I used to fall ill.
Sometimes my failures filled me up with self-guilt, but my teacher (who presently is your principal) used to praise my writing, telling it would be my forte! A comforting thought for me was (and still is) that an eminent person and several people with knowledge have praised me for it, so I keep going. I currently am not a famous writer but am trekking that mount.
To my joy, I have got two job offers to work as a writer. Imagine in this competitive time a blind person with poor academics getting such offers.
I don’t do the blunder of defining myself by academic record or small achievements/failures. Nor Dickens, Gates, Jobs, Page, Brin did.
Will you?
