He’s been a dreamer since his early high school days. Back then he wanted to do a lot of things – be a professional dancer, become an artist, choreograph action sequences in movies, make a movie with lots of special effects, make an animation movie and many more crazy things. He never revealed his plans to anyone, not to his friends – for the fear of being ridiculed and he wanted to be sure about everything before he said anything to his parents. But he was never really sure. If only he had a relative who wasn’t an engineer or a doctor.

He loved movies as much as the next guy. Even though Tollywood/Bollywood movies looked artificial, overtly exaggerated and quite stupid, he enjoyed those 2 1/2 hrs. It wasn’t just the female actor(s) or the songs that made him watch all those movies. It was the way the male actor was portrayed in every film – heroic, ability and power to do anything. There was only one thing that was going on in his mind after every movie – he wanted to be a hero in his own little world – he wanted people to look upto him, he didn’t want to be just another guy in the crowd – he want to be more than just a blot.

Soon after he entered high school people started asking him “What do you want to become?”, “Any plans for your future?”. He wasn’t sure what to say. His answer was usually a simple i’m-not-sure smile, but as more people started asking similar questions he wanted to know what he should do atleast after high school. After a little ‘research’ (asking a couple of ‘wise’ friends) he found out that if he chose MPC in Intermediate he could go into any field (other than medicine) later. He was also told that ICSE Maths was easy compared to SSC so it might cause problems during Inter if he opted for MPC.

It was around the same time that people started talking about IITs and Ramaiah’s. He got sucked into that hype. He didn’t know what he had to do to be an artist or to be a movie maker and his friends seemed to have clear vision of their future – get into one of the elite institutes that coached students for Ramaiah’s entrance exam, get into Ramaiah and then into IIT. His motto at that time was ‘don’t blindly follow the crowd’, but then he unfortunately had to join one of those elite coaching centers, not to get into Ramaiah but to avoid any problems with Maths after high school. He joined a less famous institute which had classes twice a week.

That day was one the best days of his life. He never thought that doing something different, doing something for the first time would be so amazingly exciting. The cheers, the applause, the whistles made him feel like a hero for a few minutes. And when the teacher he admired the most hugged him and thanked him and everyone involved for the amazing…..

to be continued…