I haven't completed the journey of my life as yet but today I feel like sharing a part of my life with you. I belong to a middle-class family. I come from a small town that is nestled in a backward district of Andhra Pradesh.

Cricket had always been my passion. I would get up at 4 a.m. and travel to a place which was 5 miles away from my home to practice cricket. I worked hard to prove my worth. I wanted to represent my town.

I even experienced some measure of success because my coach stood by me. My coach was my God. He spent his own money to coach me.

He had no children of his own and he believed that I was capable of achieving his goals. He had not been able to realize his goals in his life because a few people had ruined the spirit of the game with their politics.

All of a sudden someone special entered my life. Things gradually started changing in my life. I started losing my passion for cricket. Obviously, my coach did not like it. I was so besotted by this special person that I promised to support her even if the whole world was against her.

She had unknowingly put me in a ‘do or die’ situation by asking me to choose between cricket and her. I ended up making the wrong choice.

I was banned from playing cricket for 2 years after I took this decision. After that, I kept facing some challenge or the other in my life. My career was yet to take off. I did not have the right attitude to overcome these challenges and I had stopped living my life in the way I had wanted to. I gave up on my friends and eventually I even had to leave my town.

I joined an autonomous college because I wanted to impress her with my degree. I thought she would be mine after I finished college. 18 of us had to stay in a room in the college hostel. I spent several sleepless nights and skipped dinner on several occasions. Around 200 pigs roamed freely in our verandah. 50 boys took a bath at the same time. There were days when the queue outside our bathroom was longer than the queue outside a ration shop.

Yet I put up with all this because I loved her. Unfortunately, while I was enjoying all these "heavenly pleasures" she was busy changing her boyfriends and having great fun with them in my town.

I was completely disappointed in her. I asked her why she had done this to me. She simply said, “At that time I was not mature enough to know what I was getting into. Now I am mature and I know that I don’t want you in my life anymore.”

I had lost touch with the real world for almost two years now. I then enrolled for a hotel management course after having several bitter arguments with my family. They were not very keen on enrolling me for the course because I had never proved my worth to them so far. So I couldn’t really blame them for thinking like that about me.

Somehow I managed to convince them about it. By now pain had become a part of my life. I just focussed on getting an internship in an MNC food company. I would walk for miles at a time. I always had 4 or 5 copies of my résumé with me. I would give them to every store that I came across and beg them for an interview. I had worked in three restaurants, 2 coffee shops and one 2 star hotel by now.

I wanted to get a feel of the hotel industry first. I had wiped hundreds of plates, cups and saucers by now. I had washed cups and saucers in coffee shops. I had done all kinds of shitty work in the hotel that I worked for. I would work for 12 – 14 hours a day and then attend my college as usual.

I never complained about my lot. I just wanted to experience success in my chosen field. I had no time for friends, parties, celebrations or family. Often I did not even have the time to call my mother.

Things in my life were pretty hard but I had got used to facing challenges by now. One fine day I got a call from KFC for an internship. They had been through an unpleasant experience with my college authorities. Yet they were giving me a chance to work for them.

When I went there, the manager showed me a bundle of résumés and said that the entire bundle belonged to me. He said, "You submitted more than a hundred résumés in this store alone. I have saved all your résumés.

I tested your patience and I am highly impressed by your determination.” I just stood there quietly.

My life became even more hectic after this. I would begin my day at 8.30 a.m. I would attend college till 1 p.m. and report for work at 2.00 p.m. I would work for almost 12 hours after that and leave the store at around 2 or 3 in the morning. Often I had no time to sleep or eat too.

My passion for success was making me work like a maniac. I excelled at my workplace and got a lot of appreciation from my seniors and customers.

I would often eat only one meal in a day not because I did not have the money but because I did not have the time to eat. I was hungry for success not for food.

I worked at KFC for 9 months. I struggled a lot during this phase of my life and the people I worked for wanted to retain me. But I was determined to move on. Today I am preparing to appear for several interviews with the hope that I will become a management trainee in the near future. I want to put an end to this phase of my life when I had to struggle so much with everything. I want to start my life afresh.

Yes. I believe that my first love changed my life in many ways. But with God's grace, I was able to overcome all the hurdles of my life and I think I have been quite successful in my life. So in a way, I have to thank my first love for giving me a chance to mould my life.

P.S: I recently got to know that my sister too had been in a relationship with someone and had called it off after a while. I wanted to know why she had broken up with her guy. She was not too keen on sharing the details with me but I continued to prod her. And finally one fine day she said, “I was not mature enough at that time. Now I am mature enough to know that I don’t want him in my life.” I was stunned. I had heard the very same words from my first love a few years back.

That is when I realized that even if two people are born from the same womb they can never ever be the same. The same blood flowed in my sister’s veins too yet we both felt differently about the same issue.

I have forgiven my first love and myself for the mistake that we made because I too believe that life is all about how we respond to (not react to) our challenges.

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