Possibilities

"You always recommend different books to us."

This was more like a question than a statement. Or maybe that was more like a complaint. It was necessary now for Rajesh to ask the intentions of the maker of the statement.

"Yes Manish, when you like something there is an internal urge to spread the joy. This is the main motivation for me to recommend the books. Do you have any problem?", asked Rajesh

"No. Not like that. I was thinking whether you really learn something from these books? or have you ever experimented the things written in the books?"

"Yes of-course Manish, I have. In fact I almost try all the things I believe and where I agree with the author"

"No way. Say it again. Really? Do you mean you really follow the things given in the books? Can you give an example?"

"Yes why not. Do you remember the book I recommended some days ago, by Robert Schuller, named Tough Times Never Lasts Tough People Do?", asked Rajesh

"Yes, I do"

"There is a chapter in that book about raising funds to build crystal cathedral and the author has mentioned a way for brainstorming and positive thinking, Ok instead of telling you more about the book contents I will tell you the story how we got motivated and used the theory in one of our objective"

"Interesting, Rajesh I am all ears now, let the story begin.."

"One of our best friend is poet and has written many poems. We loved his poems and we wanted to publish his poem book. It was thought by our friends that printing the poem book and giving him as surprise will be a wonderful thing."

"Wow and then what happened", Manish.

"Yes but we all were studying in college and were not having that much funds to achieve this, but still then we started this effort as a project. We learned that to print a 100 page book of poems will cost us minimum Rs. 2000"

"So how did you solved the problem?", Manish.

"Wait, wait, I am also eager to reveal that. I was having the crystal cathedral in mind and the positive thinking concept always in my mind. I thought of one idea, as said in the book if you cannot find funds from one place think of different sources. If you want 1000 then either ask one person for 1000 or ask 1000 people for 1 and you can achieve even things which you feel are impossible"

"The idea was great and all my friends were also motivated with the idea. We created a list of all the well wishers who can lend some money to us and we were ready with 5 families who were either in relation with the poet friend or were knowing and fond of his poems. We explained them our project and told them that we will refund the amount after the book is printed. They happily lent us Rs.300 each to make a sum of Rs.1500."

"Wow, so you were more than half done", said Manish, excitement in his eyes.

"Yes but the remaining Rs. 500 were also very important and now we had exhausted our list of well wishers. Suddenly one of our friends came with an idea. He said why not sell this book before printing to all our friends. We will keep the pre-printing cost as Rs.10 and we will have to find 50 friends who will buy the book before it is printed."

"That was not fully impossible and we all started convincing our friends, friends of friends and we gathered the remaining Rs. 500 in 10 days. The book got printed and the day when we had all our copies in hands was a great day of celebration and was a reinforcing day for positive thinking."

"wow and then, was the poet friend knowing this?", asked Manish.

"We surprised him by presenting him copies of his poem book", we couldn't forget that day and that joy we went through. And see you now cannot say that books don't teach us. They do teach us lots of things. We can experiment with life and life is beautiful if we want it to be"

"Great! Now I am more than convinced Rajesh"

"And you know what Manish? We repaid all the Rs.1500 by selling 150 more copies of the books. We got total 500 copies from which we distributed the already sold 50 and we gave 100 copies to the poet friend and we sold many more copies and thus our complete project was a success. It was a big lesson for us about how to believe in your self and think positively"


Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

(Image courtesy Mak Patel)