This story tells the saga of the transformation of a beginner to a brand, taking every failure as a challenge and setting new limits every time she fails.

 

Her beautiful eyes opened but the thoughts of last night suddenly flashed again in front of them. She kept on thinking how life changes with every single moment. She was one day in place of that little girl, who was crying to have lost the game, clinging to her father; as if there is nothing more to her life!!

Morning was quite clear unlike the pre-occupied mind and heart. A new day broke but it brought with it the legacy of thoughts and feelings. Life has always been quite happening, sometimes in the darkness of ignorance and sometimes towards more exploration of the known.

Depth, as it is, quite a temptation. A deep digging into her mind brought her back to the bygone days of life. A bleak moment of her life when she also failed; when she failed in the most confident field of her ability. They came to her as failures but always turned to challenges; challenges that made her as she is today, that shaped her life as well as attitude, they scaled her ability and that gave another horizon to her emotions as she thinks and behaves and transforms herself.

A sunny day; a simple competition; a competition of ability; to prove herself capable of public speaking; a contest of logic and debate; and more specifically in the dreaded language of English…

Here went a girl in her teens, on to the dice, with confidence sparkling in her eyes and firmly composed body gestures, to utter her views on the topic, “Is India free from corruption?”, the girl who was unable to pronounce corruption just a week ago is on her feet to address the audience on such an issue. Despite her expectations as well as performance she got blown up by failure. The first ever failure in the field of debating, the waves of the shock were enough to dismantle her world. The entire evening went in her sobbing in the cradle of her father, pampered and cuddled and consoled… Care of mother with a broken heart for her daughter, a lot of lessons for life, but perhaps her mind was not able to perceive any single sentence or any piece of emotion, she was lying there blank-headed.

Then came the time, the time of final enlightenment of soul, of self-realisation, of a challenge, and strength to overcome all the fears, a motivation to go beyond the limit of being caught or reached and she took that time in her grip.

She remembers only what she felt and thought! She was that girl, who is not a person to be consoled or sympathised; because consolation never gave her peace and sympathy demeaned her capability, she was a piece to actualize self and challenge self to achieve what others might not expect from her. She set her own limits and own assignments to do, and that is how she loved to climb the mountain of life, which is still and determined to make everyone learn trekking on it, if you can’t trek, you fall, you die with suffocation!

Days passed on, she learnt not only to pronounce but also to write with a much strengthened vocabulary.  Challenges came; they were accepted and became tools of renovation for her.

But then again, wherever one goes obstacles are always there. Being a beginner in the field of writing she faced a lot of hurdles on her paths to get published. She tried in many places and many of them didn’t revert back to her mails, some asked for recommendations or referrals and some confirmed out rightly that they don’t have place for beginners, but she never stopped.

She finally thought to wake up and start her day not being a lazy philosopher anymore, sat on her bed, stared at her laptop, which was kept by the side of her bed; again gone to the automatic sleep mode by getting the hint of its master’s asleep state; she just switched it on and stared at the mails received, the first one was regarding some publication; she opened it and it said,

“Dear Priya,

We are pleased to inform you that your book is selected to be published by Penguin publication, India. We would like to get details on your acceptance of the offer. Our agreement letter and documents are attached in this mail. If you agree to our offer, then please send us the details required for publishing the book. We are waiting to hear from you.

Penguin publications.

India.”

The sentences started to come to her mind again and again, the sentences that denied the offer to a beginner, that told her that she was not a brand!

She was happy but more than happy she was satisfied, for now she was on her voyage of transforming a beginner to a brand! She always thought about nobody being a brand in the beginning but it is all about openness and inclusiveness of the society that makes brands out of beginners. Today she proved her own beliefs. Standing in her room, without a hurry to get fresh, she just turned on the music and got swayed with it. She danced and she sang, she enjoyed each bit of the music, relishing her long cherished desires with herself, dawn of the day turned to noon; but the sun was mild and the mood was wild. She took out some movie CDs stored in her closet and ordered food from outside, her favourite, Chinese food; sat in front of her loyal laptop and typed a mail accepting the offer from the publishing house. She then sat to watch the movie eating her food with much of a delight. The day broke and she found another self within her, the confident one, the victorious and courageous one, who won in the challenge that she once gave herself.

She was never in favour of being favoured against anybody, for she thought that somehow demeans one’s self-esteem and ability. That esteem was preserved and so was her dedication to win the game being fair, able to look into her own eyes whenever she sat in front of a mirror.

They gave a prize for consolation and she takes a pride in accepting the challenge. They say “Failure is the pillar of success”, she says, “Failures create new points of importance, milestones in life though not destinations; destinations signify end of the journey and the journey of life goes on, for her life exists after death as a name, it never ends; legacy continues!”