Was in my final year at high-school. I was only seventeen and the pressure of knowing that the outcome of school results would determine my whole life ahead finally got to me. I snapped

        The words of Gregory David Roberts described my situation as I felt it- “I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison.” Two years in jail and I escaped in broad daylight and took asylum in the jhopadis of Dharavi in Mumbai. I got involved in the mafia and started a business of smuggling guns and ammunition and counterfeiting money. The money I earned was enough to pay off any heart fancying a call to the police. I was a notoriously known figure now, and probably the most wanted person in the whole of the country. Everyday I met new people interested in my business. One day to my surprise a female entrepreneur came to my “office.” She was gorgeous and from the moment I set my eyes on her I fell in love with her. She helped my business for six months and became a close part of my life until finally she betrayed me to the police. It seemed she was involved with them and did this for a sum of money. I was imprisoned again. It was here that I was chained beaten, stabbed and starved. I was at constant war with myself. Should I have done what I did? But it did not matter now. My companions lost sanity while I kept my nerve. I buried them and their lives into my own as it was only with their help that I was still alive. I realized through the pain and sufferings within, that even in my brutal, gory helplessness, I was still free- to hate those who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It may not have been everything but in times like those, it was all I but and it seemed like a whirlpool of possibilities. This hardest choice I thought, could determine where I may end up next and I chose to forgive.

        Time flew by and the nineteen years of torture soon ended. I thought and reflected upon my “half-life” as it began back in high-school. I thought of what I could have been- a better human being. Pondering over the thought that a life wasted is not worth living, I realized that it was time to turn over a new leaf. I penned my experiences and memories in an autobiography to ensure that young adults would make the right choices in life and would not fall in the same trap as I did. My book- Realization- as it is titled is a guide for youngsters today and has earned me fame. My life has changed ever since. Life now seems beautiful. I regret having ruined a long part of, what could have been, a fabulous journey throughout. It was an expensive realization…