Author: Khushwant Fatnani
Sense of purpose indeed ignites a spark to keep marching ahead in life. Revelation of a weakness leading to despair and then a journey to forge a new self is the saga….
“What an abominable performance, Drupad! This is your worst essay..What has happened to you? ” were the words resonating in classroom, which had some faces filled with fear, while others with a solemn expression. It was dreary afternoon when all of us, students of class IX A, were being shown corrected copies of our English first term examination papers. Lalita Ma’am was one of the most adept English Teachers we had in our school, St. Xavier’s, Raipur.
I and Drupad both have been great friends since our school days. I indeed admire his patience and a very determined attitude, and these virtue make him the protagonist of this blog post. Despite his bold nature, sometimes I have seen Drupad taking life too seriously and pushing too hard. And what had happened the other day in class catapulted him to do something quite close.
He has grown up in the close company of his grandparents. Well, not everybody gets this privilege. This privilege had won him many diamond-like priceless virtues, say, truthfulness , honesty towards his duties and above all, a very obedient and humble nature. And this sums up very much how and why he was continuous class and school topper in our entire batch of around 350 students. But, there is an Achilles heel of his attitude, His bringing up in an orthodox family had made him too respectful to the teachers. And even a minor criticism by our mentors used to make him restless.
A class topper who had always known to score an ‘A’ grade in almost all his subjects took a ‘C’ to be very apologetic, and this rebuke by Lalita Ma’am in front of the entire class seemed to have made him very uncomfortable. For almost a fortnight, I had witnessed a sea change in him. From a very confident speaker he had turned to one of the most quietest boys in our class. He would simply come, attend the classes, eat without speaking a word during lunch break, when entire class used to reverberate with giggles, laughter and thumping of desks and benches. Almost every day I made some failed to talk to him or cheer him up and finally I too resolved to make sure, I would go and talk to Mithila aunty, Drupad’s mother.
I thus paid a visit to his home in the pretext of asking for some notes and thus sneaked into kitchen so that could freely talk to aunty and brief her about the not-so-good behavioral changes in my friend. Aunty was pretty surprised as Drupad had not uttered a word to her, especially when he was a sort of boy who wouldn’t hide anything so painful from his family. Well, before I left his house, I had left a sticker on his room’s wall. It was gifted to me by my father. And there could no better place and situation, when I could have used this gift and this one.
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
~ Rudyard Kipling
Now, here is an account I got to hear from aunty after around three days. Post my visit to his house, the other day, Drupad read these words on his wall and broke down and cried and cried and cried. As he had been very close to Dadaji and Dadi (his grandparents) , he simply went with his Dadaji for a walk and narrated him the reason for all the gloom he thought he was surrounded by and sounded bewildered, if it was his inefficiency in written English or some grudge which he thought, Lalita Ma’am had held towards him. Dadaji offered from his treasure trove of wisdom, a lesson, which is lost somewhere, in our fast pace lives today.
“Guru kumhaar, shishya kumbh
Gadh Gadh Kaddhe khot
Andar haath sahaar de
Baahar maare chot “
A mentor is like a potter, who seems to be hitting his pot (pitcher) from the outside, but never fails to hold it from the inside and does so, only to check if the forged pot is strong enough to hold the immense pressure of water, to be filled in. A mentor thus reprimands his student with a pristine motive to make him stronger from within and skilled in the art learnt. This short motivational account with Dadaji acted like a miraculous fuel, helped to vaporize, from Drupad’s innocent mind, all the wrongly conceived emotions of shamefulness and remorse. He had learnt the following lesson.
The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire
~Richard M. Nixon
Never run away from what will make you grow and step into your greatness, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.
~Robin Sharma
It was as if he ego was deconstructed. And he had now embarked on a forging a new self. He had understood by now that this event had rather provided him with a sense of purpose. A purpose to fine tune his English essay writing skills, which clearly meant, learning a clearer perspective to articulate his ideas.
“Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.”
―W. Clement Stone
He had adapted himself to sleep and therefore get up two hours earlier than his usual schedule and imbibed a habit of reading newspaper every day. He used to mark 5 difficult to interpret words for the day. By the end of the day, the 5 words and sentences made using them, were unfailingly present in a small diary, he had especially made for this purpose. Drupad had now entered his metamorphosis phase.
While all this while, I had noticed a very positive change in his behavior. He had now begun to exude shear confidence and a sense of fulfillment. I think that rebuke the other day, had set him on a path where he was turning into a better version of himself. He was unintentionally, not only working on his writing skills, but also was learning from solid lessons for life. He used to practice writing essays every weekend as simulation of the real test. After a month, we all were bombared with the results of our final term.
It was our last academic day of the year and I and Drupad were outside the class during lunch break. We came across a senior, whom we had never talked to before. He came to us and question, “You are Drupad, right?” . We were puzzled but Drupad nodded in a yes. The senior simply left smiling. And soon after this, we encountered a colleague from another section IX C, Arjun. His eyes seemed to have a mixed sense of amazement and respect when he looked towards Drupad and started to converse with us. He informed us, how Drupad was the new ‘star’ of our school now. Why not? It was the first time ever that a strict and the best English teacher of our school was taking Drupad’s corrected essay to all the sections and all high school class, talking about the fineness and niche, which she could mark in Drupad’s essay. Drupad’s pace of learning and his amazing writing skills were a talk of the entire high school post our winter vacation. All this again drenched him in tears, but this time, he was overwhelmed with thankfulness towards Lalita Ma’am and his family who were the ones whom he could credit all this.
It might seem to be a trivial school story, but had left a very strong impression on Drupad’s life. No wonder, today, he is my first go-to person whenever I need to get my write-ups or SOPs proof read!
You can’t connect the dots looking forward ; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny life, karma, whatever, this approach has never let me down and it has made all the difference in my life.
~ Steve Jobs
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