Kids were raised in a way that when their father retires they need to have a career of their own. Studying to get a plum job was their main worry, everything else was secondary.
They learned english from class 6 only as a subject. Every other subject was being taught in Hindi. When they moved to a small hill town Gopeshwar they started reading Hindi newspapers which used to reach there in the evening because of the distance from Dehradun.
Someone told Sanju that English is important for a career. So he asked for an English newspaper instead of Hindi. After some arguments in home they started getting an English newspaper. Mother didn’t know English and as a result she no longer enjoyed the newspapers. She neither learned English nor insisted on getting Hindi newspapers along with English.
The English newspaper was vibrant with many articles and advertisements. Weekly column of horoscopes caught the eyes of Sanju, which had a different way of assigning zodiac signs. They were based on the range of birthdays instead of calculated from birth place, date and time. Sanju didn’t know his calculated zodiac sign as his horoscope was kept in the clothes box of Tin by Mother. He easily figured out his sun sign in the English newspaper and started reading the weekly forecast of events in the horoscope column.
For a few months, everything seemed to be accurate and was going as per the weekly forecast.
On the forecast of money gain, he was asking and getting pocket money from mother. On knowledge gain, he was paying attention and was able to understand all concepts clearly in the classroom. On the probability of an accident, he was fighting with friends in school and getting lightly injured.
Predictions were proving to be true as observed by Sanju.
This continued for almost a year. Sanju stopped worrying about the future as he relied on the weekly horoscope column.
In the week of school results, Sanju had no worries. He used to come first in the class and he was confident that he would come first again. He read the weekly horoscope which predicted good news for his sign.
He walked to school and got the report card.
He was shattered by looking at the report card. He barely managed to pass all subjects and was not in the top 10 students in the class.
Sanju was gloomy while others beamed with happiness.
On top of his sadness, Sanju got scolded at home from all family members one by one.
Sanju cursed English newspapers.
His father told him that he was coming first in a small place because other students were kids of less educated people with limited means. Since they have moved to district headquarters from a small place, he was then among kids of highly educated and well to do people. All of them were very smart and studied very hard with guidance from their parents.
This was his first lesson on competition.
He kept meeting the moment several times, whenever he moved to a new place, sport or work. But he never looked at the horoscope again.
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