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Beyond Limitations…From Frozen Thoughts - August 2008 : 
After reading something very striking in a book, keep the book aside, close your eyes and run it in your mind. It will give a better understanding and a much deeper message. In other words - go through the book, then keep the book aside and allow the message to go through you. It always reveals more than what you infer at the first glance. This has been my practice.
My wife’s favourite weekly magazine was kept open on the sofa. She must have been halfway through reading it. The picture of a girl and the caption on that page grabbed my attention. I went through the page. I liked it. As is the case with me, I leaned on my back, closed my eyes and reproduced it in my mind what I had read in the magazine with my own emotions and vocabulary.
It could bear neither a heavy rains nor the blow of the wind. It was a small hut. They live there and so it is called their home. They could count on their fingers the days they had three meals. His daily wages of Rs.75/-, for which he had to sweat the whole day, wasn’t enough to feed the family thrice. There were days they struggled even for a single meal. They survived on ‘Neerakaram’* (the previous day’s leftover rice mixed with water to form a fluid that’s taken to fill the stomach) and ‘Pulithanni’* (boiled water mixed with tamarind and salt). Milk and egg were luxuries to them. So they had never tasted such stuff.
A ‘cutting chai*’ (slang meaning a small portion of tea) was enough for his psyche to convince his mind to treat it as lunch. However, this heart would bleed when he saw tears of hunger on the tender cheeks of his little one, Saraswathi. He was broken. He couldn’t find ways to earn more. Sleepless nights were the norm and his dark nights were wet with his heavy tears.
After every sunrise, little Saraswathi was sent to a school that is run by the Municipal Corporation. The primary motive behind the decision was not for education, but the midday meal that she would get at school. It was the only reason why she was sent to school.
Saraswathi wasn’t a studious girl. Whether it was because of her non-involvement in academics or because of her daily battle with life is beyond our guess. She just managed to pass every year. Much beyond human comprehension life has its own plan. Thought not bright in studies, Saraswathi found her ex-pression in her eighth standard. She was good in Javelin throw. She won at the district level. Life’s graph began to take an upward turn.
Successive victories became Saraswathi’s way of life. She went on to become the National Champion and she repeated the feat yet another time. Indian Railway offered her employment, which she gladly accepted. Her current salary of Rs.5,000/- is helping her to take care of her parents. She is targeting Olympics.
A press reporter once asked her, “With abject poverty, no avenues for coaching, no proper nutrition and a limiting lifestyle - Does it make you sad sometimes?”
True being a National Champion Saraswathi hurled her instant reply, “I never felt bad or get depressed about my limitation. I put in the extra efforts to make up and to conquer.”
Yes, her extra effort won her the gold in recent Nationals. She added to the reporter, “This extra effort will get me through in the Asian as well as Commonwealth games.”
Saraswathi doesn’t have any material possession. She has nothing – not even a cell phone. Yet she has one thing that can make up for everything else – the willingness to put in the Extra effort. Her life has made me to think.
How long should we keep saying, “ I am from Village background, I am from Kannada medium, I am from Kannada medium, I am not a good in dance, my handwriting is poor, I don’t know how to parent my children, this is a new kind of project for me, I never got up so early in my life, I am not able to get good at driving, I am scared of water for I don’t know swimming, this technical certification exam is too tough, I am not getting the grammar of relationship ……..”
Enough! Let us wake up. I agree all these are limitations. For the sake of survival his parents sold him to an arts school. He went on to become
Everybody has limitations. With no proper food and no proper coaching, the girl from the slum can become the National Champion. With so much of what we all have and so much going right for us, what’s not possible for us?
I opened my eyes. I truly woke up to possibilities. Saraswathi has taught me, “Limitation should not limit me. With extra efforts I cane make up and conquer.”
I am going to identify my limitations, pen down the plan to put in the extra efforts and I am going to conquer them.
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