It's year 2000 and I am going through an interesting part of student life. It's the public exam & it decides a student's future education in India. I had hell lot of fun in my new school & I laughed to death many times because of the kind of activities we engage as a gang. Eventhough majority of the school is filled with kids of deep pocketed Sivakasi businessmen, ambition runs everywhere in the school. Everybody walks with parallel passions. If you dont have one, you are mediocre and you won't get friends either. I wondered about existence of such a school in my hometown & the fact is that the school is a showcase of ambitious & smart rich kids.
It's high time to think about my future and confident that I want to be an Electrical Engineer as my dad. My dad runs an electrical engineering business and I am proud that we wired for almost all big businesses in our district. He is my role model, mentor and he had always given me what i wanted. He got me a HCL Beanstalk PC way back in time when computers cost a lac rupees. It triggered my passion for computers & I loved hanging around with it. During the same time, I discovered reading magazines particularly business. There will be a competition between me and my friend named Kannan on who knows more about Indian business & accasionally on Sivakasi businesses. The stories that business world carries that time is a great source of inspiration & decided that my mission in life is to build a business empire. Studies doesn't interest me much and I used to not believe in mugging up & hitting great grades in school. The success stories of big business men made me to think long term & together I find an excuse for not being a first rank holder. I convinced myself that real world knowledge is all that important. But only way to make parents feel proud in town is to make it big in public exams.
The time was running out & the words from my dad that "You should be in a good college to get the best knowledge that you wanted & for that you like it or not you should get good marks in exams" changed my perception. I felt that I don't have time left & I had lost the game. I immediately needed massive energy & inspiration to win. I want to be in one of the best of colleges and the kind of course i liked was in a college called PSG. The sandwich course combines the best of theory & practical knowledge. The management seat goes for more than 10 lacs & I really don't know whether we can afford that or not.
The thought that rich kids with lots of money are easily securing a free seat in good college made me think that I got one chance in life to do it & I wanted to do it with least expenditure to my dad. Each day I used to draw inspiration by reading about a big businessman & then I will start reading my text. I felt no pain & subsconsiously I will be thinking about them. I felt confident and couldn't wait for my exams. My greatest strength is that I write fast and that had become my competitive edge. I was trained in maths by one of the smart engineers in my family, my aunt Sivagami & chemistry by a brilliant prof called Sivaswamy who is my relative. I got a great interest for physics and we are made to mug up our computer text end to end.
I faced exams with great confidence, prepared for entrance exams, enjoyed my vacation. While waiting for my results, my interest for business continued to grow & I started reading other business mags & books.
The results were out and I was among the top three in my class & one among the hundred in the state who scored a centum in computer science. I had never made it to the top three except in my kinder garden & aha now I am on news papers. Mom & Dad felt so proud and happy. But my greatest joy was that my strategy worked. I strongly believed that the inspiration & ambition matters in life than our capacity to remember a school text. I thanked mittals, ambanis, gates & great nadar business men for being my source of inspiration and not but not the least, the smart rich kids in my school.
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