It was a sunny day.
I hurried to the new cafeteria that had started operating in my school.
There was a long queue of students at the counter for ordering food.
I joined at the end of the queue and started thinking. No, I wasn't thinking what I wanted to eat (like all the other students there). I was thinking something like this:
What should I order? Let's pick something that I can say easily without stammering. The guy standing behind me says 'poori sabji' tastes great. But it would be really hard for me to speak that. I better point at the pastry kept on the counter and say that I want this.
I didn't like pastries. And it they were too expensive for me because I was a school kid. But I decided to have it for lunch, because I didn't want to stammer and make a fool out of myself.
When my turn came, I pointed at the strawberry flavored pastry kept in counter and said I want this. I paid the money and he gave me the pastry. I has a sigh of relief. Mission accomplished! I didn't stammer!
But the cashier started speaking, "we are having a lucky draw this week. So we need your name. Please tell us your name."
The feeling of victory for being able to successfully order food changed to panic, I felt something uneasy in my stomach. I tried to speak out my name.
B - B - B.. I got a severe block. I gave up.
The cashier said, "What? You forgot your name?" Everyone including the cashier started laughing. I had made a fool out of myself.
I took the pastry and ran to the playground and sat in a corner. I felt worthless that day. First I cursed the damn lucky draw. Then I thought why poori sabji wasn't kept on the counter like the pastries, so that I could point at it and buy it.
I don't know when a drop of tear fell on the pastry. I felt worthless and threw the food. I didn't have lunch that day.
Ordering food, speak on the phone, responding to roll calls, telling a story or a joke were nightmares for me.
That lunch break was one of the worst lunch breaks of my life. I had a mixture of emotions inside me:
I was embarrassed (I made a fool of myself in front of others)
I felt sad (I had to live with this problem till the end of my life)
I felt angry (How dare they laugh at me like that!)
I felt frustrated (I punched everywhere asking God WHY ME? WHY?)
I felt revengeful (One day I'll prove it to you who I am and I'll laugh at you!)
I felt hopeless (No matter what I do, I'll always be like this)
The next day I didn't go to that cafeteria. I asked mom to pack fruits for lunch. When she asked why, I lied to her saying "I don't like the food at the cafeteria. It's unhealthy". I had lunch in the classroom with a nerdy boy who used to study even in lunch breaks and games periods.
This went on for a week.
On the seventh day I got a bit of enlightenment by having lunch with the nerdy boy. He had habituated to rote learning. He used to memorise mathematics problems also. His only intention was to score the highest marks in the class. He never gave up.
Watching him I realised I had two options:
1) I will never have lunch in the cafeteria again.
2) I will not give up and work hard like the nerdy boy and I will order poori sabji like all the others.
The problem was not with the cashier, or the students or my name. The problem was with ME!
That day back at home I started to learn to speak poori sabji. I spoke it in front of the mirror for a 100 times. I enacted the scene and imagined I was standing in the queue and decided that I will order what I like to eat and not what is easy to speak.
I practiced for a few days. And the next day I went back to the cafeteria.
I was least bothered about whether people will laugh again. But I didn't want to move back. I wanted to give it another try. All the time I stood in the queue I didn't think a lot many things about my speech. I just told myself that i was going to have poori sabji today, and I relaxed by watching kids play football in the nearby playground.
"A plate of poori sabji please", I spoke out when my turn came. And I had spoken it clear enough for the cashier to understand and he had started printing the coupon. No one congratulated me that day, because the war I was fighting was against my own self.
I realised something that day. The biggest hurdles in our lives lie inside us, in our minds. And that is the reason why, when all of us have the same set of limbs and legs and eyes, only those who know how to overcome those hurdles win.
