Good Bad Ugly

Good:
Finally I did it. Got the confirmation call for IIML. Good.. I will be a manager in 2 years time from a premier institute.
Life is all set. Will make new friends.. No more office headache.. College life that I was missing so much after engineering
will be back. It may not be same though. Good that the dream I saw some 3 years ago has finally come true. It was so good to
call home and tell my parents about this. So good to have that feeling of having achieved something. Good to know that
so many friends and relatives feel proud today and are so happy for me. Can there be anything bad at this point of time....

Bad:
It feels bad to end 4 years old association with my company. Company where I had grown both at personal and professional fronts.
Shall miss my cubicle, team treats, football sessions and all my colleagues.
Back to studies now :(. Dunno after a break of 4 years, how tough it is going to be to attend the classes, do assignments,
surprise tests, what not..
I made so many friends in the past 4 years. Some really so close to my heart. Shall miss all of them.
And ya no monthly credit of the salary now. :(

Ugly:
Last day at my company.. Dunno how bad it will be to say good bye to some of the close ones.
Final meeting with friends, say good bye, turn back and travel back home through those streets perhaps for the last time..

Turning point

I never used to get good marks in the last paper of any exam in the school. Like most, I never liked the exam time and only good thing about exams was that the vacations will start immediately after. Writing the last paper in the exam, I used to think that just 2 more hours and then fun time starts. I always passed with mediocre ranks..

I went to the best school in the city and all the students were supposed to come from middle/ higher middle class family. I had a friend in my school. I used to spend a lot of time with him but never got to know much about his family, his life outside of the school. Since some days he had segregated himself from others and he preferred spending time alone thinking about something. I never went and asked him about this. I was too carefree to think so deep and emotional.

I was in 9^th standard and exams were about a month way. I went on vacation for a few days with my family to attend a wedding at a distant place. Had a great time in the wedding and did not want to return back home where the ominous exam time was waiting for me. While returning from the marriage we had to take one overnight bus that would take us to the place 10 kms away from our town. From there we had to take another bus to reach home. It was 6 a.m. of the monday morning when we took this second bus. We were very tired of the overnight journey and I was a little tense about going to school at 12 later in the afternoon. As we were waiting for the bus to start a boy stepped inside the bus and started selling the newspaper. I looked at him and was shocked to find that it was same friend of mine. I tried to take my eyes off him to save him from the embarrassment but our eyes had collided and he came, greeted my parents and then went off without selling any of the newspapers.

Through out the journey, I was thinking about him, the circumstances at his house that would have made him do this. For the first time in my life I realized the importance of being born in a family of haves. I was upset throughout the travel and somewhere in my mind there was a fear about me falling into the same situation sometime.

I came back home and went to bed straight away and fell in to the sleep. A sleep that would change my life, a sleep that was worth a million. I saw a dream in which I found severe crisis hitting my family and I am the one who has to take my family out of all this. I am surrounded by problems all around me. I woke up out of alarm and saw sweat dripping out from my face. It was 9 a.m. in the watch. I immediately went to my study table and started studying. That was the day, I became serious about my life, my career. My parents were surprised to find me studying in my room. That one month I gave it my all and scored 94% marks in the exam.

My friend had left the school after that year and I never met him again. After almost 12 years I happened to go back to that city and I visited his house but I could not find him. Its amazing to know how one small incident can make such a profound impact and change your outlook towards life . Had it been some other guy selling the newspaper in the bus, I would not have been writing this...