First day at tuition. DVN sir walks in. He gives us a test to see which teaching approach is best for our class (I was immensely happy to see him do that, because it meant that year after year, he customized his teaching depending on the capacity of the students in that batch). He then said, "Each of you must wake up at 5a.m everyday from tomorrow, and you must maintain a diary where you will write how many hours you studied, and which subject.

Little did I realize the impact these two seemingly small things would have on me, then.

Little did I also realize how serious DVN sir was, when he said, "Wake up at 5a.m everyday".

While we went about struggling to get out of our beds at 5a.m while the alarms went off in each of our houses for the first week, most of us thought it was just too hard to get up that early. Until next monday, when sir asked one of the guys in the class(who lived opposite his home), "Eno, ivattu Id ghantege nim maneli lighte on agirlilla??" (What I say, today lights in your house was not on at 5?).

We were all dumbfounded. Rahul(the guy in question) said that he put on lights only in the last room of the house and hence Sir must've missed it! Sir then said that he must switch on the verandah light from the next day as proof, and laughter ensued.

But the message was conveyed. In a shocking realization that our sir (approx 35 yrs old) wakes up at 5a.m daily (and hence actually practices what he preaches) struck a chord.

I for one always jumped out of bed remembering that someone way older than me and someone who could've given way more reasons than us to sleep longer was leading a life of discipline which was as essential for us as him, if not more.

While I cannot say that I got up every single day without fail, I tried my best. est. Same goes with everything else sir asked us to do. He would, (and still does) practice what he preached, and when the results came, each of us told him that without him, we would've never achieved what we did,or become what we had become,he'd so modestly say, "You can take the horse to the water, you cannot make it drink".

However true it might be, one needs that the horse be taken to water in the first place!

Find someone who will take you to the water, and quench your thirst to the fullest. For one day, you may find that your destiny is to be the one to lead many horses to that eternal fountain!