Your Conviction Shows in Life

When can you predict in the early days of student life how some one is going to fare well in life? Or probably someone will do average? This is the story of two of my friends, I met recently during the alumni meeting.

 

Those were our early college days in Pantnagar. It was the trimester system there. There was a concept of surprise quiz of five marks. No announcement beforehand, teacher comes and take the lecture and suddenly announces that there is surprise quiz of five marks. If you are not attentive in the class, it is sure that you will not get good marks. So, system ensured that if you miss the class, you miss the exam in toto and secondly, if you are not attentive, you score poorly in the quiz.

 

 

So, here was the class of Biochemistry and surprise quiz was announced. In surprise quiz, no special seating arrangement is done and if the paper is objective type and one is smart, one can peep into others answer books as well. You can call it cheating also. So, these two were sitting beside each other. So, one of them was college topper type, let we call him Ramesh and another one was average one, let we call him, Suresh. This story was told by Suresh during the alumni meet. Some how teacher got impression that Ramesh has peeped into the answer book of Suresh so he penalised him with zero marks. Fact was that Suresh copied from Ramesh’s answer books.

 

Ramesh felt very bad, he went to the chamber of Professor and told him the real facts but professor did not believe him. Ramesh challenged him that he will prove him wrong by getting A grade in the subject. Every body told him to apologise to teacher but he did not budge. Through out the trimester, this was the tussle between Professor and Ramesh.

 

Who won it? Ramesh got A grade in the subject. Teacher lost. This story is of 1975.

 

Now, Ramesh went to join state services and became the director in the department.

 

I asked Ramesh “With your attitude, did you not face problems in state govt job, in fact it becomes too difficult when you deal with politicians and bureaucrats?”

 

“Yes, so many problems and so many transfers. But everything was over in firstfive years only. Every one realised that I will do my job sincerely and will not listen to any nonsense. After five years, my reputation preceded me.

“So, you really feel happy for the life you lead throughout.”

 

“Oh yes, even if you see through the normal parameters of success, I did reasonably well, became Director in the department. Family wise, my kids are doing so well.

 

I felt happy for him.

 

How about Suresh? I asked Suresh why he did not walk into Professors chambers and told him the real facts. His answer was very cryptic “I wish I could but honestly, I got selfish at that point of time. But I always told Ramesh that he has suffered because of me. That guilt was there. In fact, I am feeling better today after narrating this reality.”

 

So, courage of conviction always pays. This real story is live example.

  

What do you think?

 

@allthingsbrightandbeutiful @lifeisgood