When my dad enrolled me into a boarding managed by the Pilar Fathers in ‘74 at a rundown district in North Goa [some 590 Km from Mumbai] at just nine years of age [just three months back, I had completed my ninth year], the only question that flashed through my young mind along with the copious tears at seeing my beloved daddy leave me upon the verandah of the boarding house was, ‘why leave me and go?’ Years later, as I became an adult, I got the answer. He left me at the boarding to fend for myself because he not only believed that in time I would learn responsibility, which would make me accountable for my actions as I grew older, but that I would also excel at academics.
He was wrong!
The boarding taught me things that my dear dad would not want his nine year old boy to know. For sure, I also learnt independence [even today, I can sleep comfortably on a narrow wooden bench like it is a king size bed], but with bigger boys surrounding you the whole day, you somehow get to ‘know [mysterious information about the forbidden fruit], speak [the F word, for instance], and do things [like smoking, and bunking study times to catch a movie down town]’ that makes every parent hope their children will never know.
They used to call it a ‘boarding school’ then [maybe they still do now, I know not]. In hindsight, I now know the term to be a misnomer. The school was just a mighty fling of a stone away from the boarding house, standing majestically upon the summit of a little hill [our boarding stood by the side of the road upon the slope leading to the school grounds]. The original three storied school building stood parallel to the road sloping upwards towards the gate [I had to scour the internet to remember the number of floors the school building had] that opened out into its concrete quadrangle. In ’75, the fathers commissioned another building with four floors to be built at right angles to the original school building [I remember this]. Heck, I often go to google, click on images, and look wistfully at my old school.
I was good at studies, apart from learning all the wrong things inside the boarding. Sadly,
I chose wrongly, and those choices never got me to college [there goes the ‘I was good at studies blah-blah-blah]. But the thing that stands out till date was me ambling into the school library on the third floor [next to the chapel on the same floor] and seeing the title of a book [Papillon, by Henrie Charriere] that struck me gob smack between both hemispheres inside my brain [often at loggerheads against each other] as I read the book’s synopsis on its back cover. Till date, to my mind, Papillon has been the finest story ever to be written. I was in my sixth grade then, bravely trying to navigate a boarder’s life at ten years of age, with the big boys staring at me incredulously every time I opened Papillon [this little punk reads novels???]. In those free loving, flower-power, hippy days of the ‘70’s, punk was the go-to word in keeping up with the times. And it filled my heart with great pride when I got called a punk.
My ultimate aim, ambition, and goal in this life is to author a story that grips the reader acutely, much in the same way that Papillon did to me, and to millions of readers throughout the world.
However, Papillon was not the first book that I have read as a young lad. The first author [whose books I would devour shamelessly every time I came across one] was James Hadley Chase, or simply Chase to his fan base. His book, ‘The Flesh of the Orchid’, was my first novel as I cruised into age ten. In fact, reading Chase novels was what made my stay at the boarding house bearable. But it was Papillon that nagged at my very core to be a writer of an equally blistering story someday.
My education is at best sketchy, but it has in no way, at any given point in time, made me be ashamed of it. To the curious ones wanting to know, here’s it: S.S.C - 45%, and a three year N.C.V.T trade certificate in Electrical Systems [apprenticeship tenure -’83 to ‘86]. That’s it! Sketchy, at best. Between ’86 and ’96, I have lost count of the number of workshops that I have worked in, inside industrial estates, to simply keep the wolf at bay.
Later, in ’96, an MNC recruited me into its payroll, handed me the job title of a Production Associate [I retained it for 21 years till the time I resigned prematurely due to unusual circumstances] and put me on their shop floor. Throughout my tenure on the shop floor, I never let go of my dream of authoring a book. I was a shop floor worker for 21 years, and I still remember my days as a shop floor worker today. But not a single day had my dirty, grease stained, safety gloved hands, the hard hat on my head, and the pair of safety shoes covering my feet inside an industrial environment ever come in the way of me authoring a book one day.
Nor has my lack of [superlative] academic credentials ever, ever stand in the way of that dream.
Therefore, if a mere shop floor worker like me can latch on to a dream and never let it go, then I promise you, any godforsaken soul with a dream can do it too. You only need to have the desire, the passion to do what you need to do, and the gumption to pursue the passion relentlessly.
Thankfully, for my own sake, I did.