I Got a Key !
In recent times, I met two types of youth. I found something significant in both of them, and now I know one more great deal of life.
I met Mr. Sleep, on a train journey from Kerala to Bhopal. I named him Mr. Sleep because most of the time he was sleeping during the journey, and every time he went to sleep, he used to call me too, to our respective berths of course. Let me make the picture clearer, we both had upper berths. Now I never understood then, ‘why the hell is he poking me to go and sleep??’
We had our dinner by 8 ‘o clock in the night, and then I was sitting next to him. Wait, while he wasn’t sleeping. He started talking, well to be precise; ‘asking’. All those introductory questions, and then suddenly I asked same question back. If I try to put it all in a good story, so here it is:
A cool morning in the farm lands of Andhra Pradesh, and there were teenagers enjoying the local cricket match. One of those fielders was our Mr. Sleep. It was the last over and the team at the batting end needed 5 runs to win. All lads were sweating with tension on the contrary to the present atmosphere. A shouting sound from afar, ‘I am going to be a Sipahi (Hindi translation of Soldier)’ distracted our Mr. Sleep. After the match he went to this over excited shouting guy, and asked ‘man how did you get through, is there any exam or what?’ The guy told, ‘there is an army camp in some village 600 km far away’. They are recruiting soldiers based on physical and written test. Next recruitment is 3 months later. Our dreamer went to home and thought about this army thing the whole night. At last he decided, ‘ok I am the only child of my parents and I got to give them and myself a beautiful future’. Next morning he sold his bicycle for 500 bucks because he didn’t even have money to reach that army camp. Then he worked hard for preparing the topics for the written exams. Finally the day came, first they were made to run 5 km in some particular time limit, and after that there was a written test, then they had a physical test too. Results were announced, out of 26,000 boys 2,000 were selected and our Mr. Sleep was a part of that league.
He was sent to Hyderabad for training, were he used the phrase ‘nichod diya’. He meant it was a real tough, hard, harsh and body breaking training in all. Now he is a ‘Nayak’ in the artillery section, and earning nearly Rs 16,000 after eight years of service. After the short term service he’ll be retired from the army and he’ll get a permanent job in the government according to his education. He told me, he had many chances to miss use his career or life, but he didn’t, for which he feels proud of himself. He saves a part of his salary and has good future plans.
Big dreams, but a small humble soul, a family saved and a satisfied life.

The second one is about a post-graduate, a Delhi resident. I call him Mr. Ego. His father is a Bank Manager, and mother is a lawyer. Last time I met this guy, he was pursuing Engineering from an elite private college. Then he completed his M.B.A from another famous private college. The point is; lakhs of rupees were spent on his education. Unfortunately due to recession getting good jobs was difficult. Anyway he was offered jobs of the range of Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 18,000. Perturbingly he refused the offers.
Now some may call it as bad luck for the latter guy, and good luck for the former one. Perhaps, wait and think a bit further. It’s not luck they had in common but opportunity. If you are living in this dynamic world, you’ve got to take risks, keeping ego, status consciousness, fantasies and laziness far away from the engaged mind. This doesn’t imply that the person has to rove around, but indeed be well aware of his destiny and aims. A youth should understand, “small steps are safer than large leaps on the uncertain grounds”.
So following the great phrase “opportunity knocks the door once”, I learned to think wisely about my decisions regarding career. That is, may be that small opportunity seeming worthless today is the key to a lot of great opportunities in future.
Actually after a long time, I understood the secret behind Mr. Sleep’s intrusion. He was telling me to sleep when I had a lot of free time because in the coming time I can’t afford to sleep, at that time I need to work hard, choose my opportunities wisely and use my talents with full efficiency to be a fruit to my family and society.

This is an article by me for 'Youth Magzine', bhopal.

See you soon... :)