N. Raghuraman's column: When fatigue becomes happiness, we feel that sacrifice smells in success

It was raining on the night of July 27. A family of eight had come to the house that morning and a great fear was running through their minds. The roof began to leak. The elders burnt straw to keep insects and snakes away. One member rushed to the corner where the pots were kept—so that a pot could be placed under the leaky roof. An infant, unaware of the sudden inconvenience of moving from a pucca house to this hut, was sleeping in a swing made of his grandmother's tattered sari. The child will now grow up in the same hut for the next two years until the construction of the nearby municipal school is completed. If the local body delays the construction, the family will have to endure the rains for the third year. Wondering what the construction of the school has to do with this hut? So listen to this story. Two days ago, on July 25, this family had a big shock of life. Then it was raining and the thunder of the clouds was frightening. Suddenly, the roof of the only primary school in Pilodi in Rajasthan's Jhalawar district collapsed. The unfortunate incident took place when the children thought they were well safe. Seven children were killed and 21 injured. We had read about it in the newspapers. Mor Singh, a 60-year-old farm labourer who lives in the area and has never been to school, was deeply affected by the incident. The only property he built with his five decades of petty wages was a pucca house with two small rooms. The only thing going on in his mind was that the future of the children should be secured. That is why he gave his house to the education department to continue the education of the children. As soon as Mor Singh and his family came to the hut, some benches were delivered to their house. And slowly the students started coming. I remembered the news on Thursday when 21-year-old Sejal Patil, a computer science graduate, and her parents came to visit me. The parents were from Aurangabad in Maharashtra. There he runs a Marathi medium school, which was run by the late Prof. Shalindra Patil, the father of the current principal, Shalindra Patil. It was started by Rajendra Singh Subhan Singh Patil in 1996. Since the family belongs to the former President, the school was named Pratibha Tai Patil Primary School. In fact, just before Covid, I had the opportunity to felicitate him on behalf of our Marathi-language newspaper Divya Bhaskar in Aurangabad. Sejal was studying alone at Cummins College of Engineering in Pune. During Covid, Sejal had passed class 10 and had seen the dreaded disease kill her grandfather. This left Sejal deeply traumatised, as she was the first granddaughter of her grandfather, for this reason she was cherished. Later he was sent to Pune for higher education. Loneliness was eating away at her and despite being a brilliant child she struggled to maintain her percentages. That's why her parents wanted me to counsel her. I narrated the story of Jhalawar to Sejal and told her that when you look at successful people, you see that they have made serious sacrifices in their life. Whether it was free time, social life or leisure, he had to sacrifice something or the other for success. Students studying in the comfort of home miss social media time, fun outings and late night movies. Athletes who want to reach high altitude skip heavy food. Even students living in hostels like you bravely face loneliness. The 210 minutes I gave him strengthened. The funda is that the level of sacrifice often determines what the level of success will be.