I had always garnered hefty ambitions for myself. When I was a kid I hoped of making it to the Indian Cricket team, played cricket in clubs, was a tad good at it, but got a rude shock when I was diagnosed with a problem in my right knee which prevented me from doing what I liked the most, bowling fast. Thus ended my cricketing career. A teacher once asked in class what do you want to be in life. I stood up and answered 'an engineer'. It was the only profession I knew back then apart from law and medicine. I thought of engineers as people who make bridges and tall buildings(never had this crazy idea that they sit in front of the computers doing nothing more than ctrl C and ctrl V in some plush air conditioned office). when I came into standard X I thought the only aim of my life was to score a good percentage in the examinations, which I thankfully did. Had not seen too much into the future back then so I just went with the tide. Took up science and started preparing for engineering. Got into engineering taking a branch which I had not thought I would be taking in my wildest dreams( I was a computer guy in school and took up biochemical engineering in college). But the stuff sounded exciting and really meaningful. So now I saw my future as some crazy scientist working with some more crazy people who meddle with the ways of nature. The college experience till the pre-final year did one thing to me, if I was lazy before, I was more so now, more than ever before. Being a scientist required reading a lot of stuff and updating myself with the latest in the world of science. But now science did not appeal to me at least the practical aspects of it. I was still interested in the theoretical part though. When the placement season was about to kick off in college I decided to sit for the IT services companies that make their rounds every year. This did not involve much work and at the end of the day I had to justify my parents' investment in me by picking a job from the campus. This got me started on preparations. I guess that was the part which helped me a lot as it changed my outlook towards many things. This was the first time I was having a prosaic perspective of things rather than the mere theory of it. I looked at things in a whole new light. A decent amount of preparation saw me through the placement season. I landed up with an offer from a top MNC in the services sector. I was too happy and overjoyed. A feeling as if I had accomplished something in life took hold of me for a couple of days. As the time passed I realized that something was missing still, as this was not what I had been dreaming about all along, it was intensified by the fact that the normal academic rigours of the final year did not appeal to me, and I thought of maintaining this new found excitement, the excitement of competition, the excitement of knowing that if and only if you could give your best shot you can make it. I realized it later that after all the true competition is not with an external person but with the internal one. The one who lies there inside you, who perhaps takes a nap for sometime, but if it goes into slumber it takes quite a while to awake him. Once awakened it can take you places you never dreamt of. I realized that I had to awaken this person inside of me. Sometimes everything seemed quite within the grasp and everything seemed to come naturally, at other times it was a toil, when nothing would seep into the hard shell the brain would become. It was a matter of going on, not stopping because I had a few bruised heels, but thinking of the rewards I would reap if and when I reached the destination. The question of 'if' was still there because till now I had been a fish in a small pond with little flowing water. Beginning from now it was a sea where there were waves and dangers aplenty. Where you always had to be on your toes to survive the day. I realized one thing, there was no point in throwing up my shoes. I had to try with every muscle in my body, with every cell in my brain to come up and beat this 'if'.

contd.