Now that I have begun to read more serious things like news articles for my CCA activities and got myself acquainted with current affairs to win Quizzes and by then was also a centre of attention in not just my sections but also other sections in my Class, there was a lot of interactions I used to have with my classmates, particularly when the results are announced after the Unit tests.

And honestly, I would admit that it was quite a gratifying feeling for me when other students or toppers of other sections used to be interested in my marks more than me.

Particularly, there was this one topper girl from the other section, who was in the same house as mine (and I had friendly relations with), who had this habit of insisting she has a look at my test notebook so that she can learn from my answers.

This was fine with me and I too wasn’t very suspicious.

And come on, it was a girl who was asking me a favour and that too, the topper.

However, later I came to know that she used to compare my answers and in case she was awarded fewer marks for writing similar points, she would go to her teacher and ask her to award her the same marks as mine.

And there was this one time, she found that I was awarded marks for a wrong answer (it skipped my attention as well as the teachers, but not this Sherlock Holmes), she ensured that she brought this up with my teacher and got my marks reduced.

Despite, all this, I went on to win the award for the Best General Proficiency for Class 5, both sections combined and won the coveted gift voucher for Rs 480. And this provided me ample room to buy that one book by the person, who begin to have a great influence on me then. There was hardly a Quiz competition I attended, where his name wasn’t the answer to at least one of the questions.

There was this one time in early 2002 when the Quizmaster showed his Photograph and asked us to identify him, and immediately, the organizers of the event disqualified the question as they found it too easy as he had gone on to become a household name by then (And later, we were shown the photo of Farookh Engineer and none of us could identify him). His name used to crop up in the news quite often then, right from being instrumental in carrying out the nuclear tests to writing books like India 2020, Wings of Fire and being addressed as Missile Man of India and who was eventually going to be the President of our country. He was none other than Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam: The One who thought the value of Dream and the need to Dream However, luck wasn’t in my favour and I couldn’t buy that book, Wings of Fire,(which I had heard numerous times until then) from the gift money from Jyoti Book Depot because the day I visited their store they ran out of stock.

However, I eventually brought that book from the Book Fair, later that year.

And his works inspired me a lot along with a few other events that happened around that time. And it was here, in late 2002 and early 2003, while I was in Class 6, that I broadly decided what I wanted to become, or rather what career I had to pursue, of course, that is in Engineering. So, in a way the year 2002, and my Class 6 was instrumental in helping me make quite a few decisions that till day impact my life.