Youngest among all my cousins, I belonged to a business family with sufficiently good means to lead a comfortable life. Busy leading a life of a sportsman, I never really looked at things which were slowly changing the fiber of relationships in the family. It was too late to understand when suddenly, at 20, things changed. It was August, 1980. I lost my mother. (Intuition made me feel the tragedy as I was playing a tournament away from home in another city.) Business disputes with millions involved had enhanced the gulf between families. My old father, who was 70, fell sick and went to live with a cousin. I seemed to have lost everything. I struggled to survive with the help of few kind souls but the destiny had something else in store.
It was February, 1982. I knew it was time to say good bye to all and embark upon a journey into the unknown. My choice was clear – No to unhappy money to a happy normal life of an ordinary. Yet I knew that one needed to be very lucky to be extra-ordinary and that didn’t appear to be the case. So, I made a commitment with myself:
I would strive to live a life of A Little More Than Ordinary.