Featured on VK; Mom’s win in the long run!
Exactly a week ago, last Sunday I was featured on Kannada daily Vijaya Karnataka. It has such a huge reach that I got calls from friends whom I haven’t met from 4-5 years!! They had no clue about me getting into blogging & all. They knew the guy who was collecting rupee by rupee, make it 15bucks, visit a cyber cafe to check Gmail every week!!
Though getting featured on a news paper isn’t a big deal for me, it is for my mom. She literally called up everyone who were rude about her & me when I screwed up my 2nd year PU. So many people, relatives scolded me with every other word available in dictionary! People said like “Send him to my hotel, I will hire him as a cleaner”, “Let him work in my estate, will pay 1k/month, should be helpful to you”, “Why don’t he hang himself?” & lot lot more. Moms said to their kids “don’t mingle with Prashanth, he’s a bad guy!”. I was all alone, eyes filled with tears, looking out of window. I was abandoned to all functions, even if go it was ending in an embarrassing situation.
Because of all these comments & bad economic status, my father decided to put me on some job. He took me to some factory nearby to get me a job of loading/un-loading goods! Thankfully the manager of that factory didn’t accept me & suggested my father to give me one more chance. Mom still had some trust on me & forced dad to give me one more chance. Dad finally accepted with one condition that I shouldn’t ask for a single rupee from him!
I decided to go for Diploma in Electronics.
Sponsors of life!!
I looked for all diploma colleges in Bangalore, I couldn’t make it to Govt. college since my SSLC aggregate wasn’t that great. Finally chose a private college with very less fees & requested them to accept fees in installments! I visited many Swamijis, ashramas, needing economical support for my studies. Ones who contributed most of my college fees were Vireshananda Swamiji of Ramakrisna Ashrama, Tumkur & a far relative named Vijay. Remaining I collected from relatives & others. Somehow I raised funds for my studies & finished Diploma with first class.
Change in tone!
Though I am into blogging from a very long time, never cared to tell about it to my relatives. They got to know about it only after article on VK. Now they say to my mom “Your son is brilliant”, moms of my cousins ask me “teach something to my boy also na!”. They might have forgotten what they said before, but how can I? I just smile at them & say “Sure, why not?”.