a rupee !!

A single rupee can change the life . hmmm , some may say now a days there is almost no value for a rupee. Few days later , even beggars might not accept 1 rupee . But .., every rupee is important. Here is an incidence. Few years back when i started playing football in school, the competition was too much to enter the school team especially when there is no official coach. i was one of the players who used to practice daily and played decently as a striker and used to score some goals. i never knew a rupee can change the way i played football game.
Though we got football from school to play , whenever it got punctured, we used to pool in money to repair the damaged football and play again . each one had to pay 1 rupee. and that had happened several times. but ... this time a part of my future was about to change because of the damage caused to the ball . frequently the captain ( he was the best playing amongst us:) ) used to playing 11. every time i used to see my name in the playing 11 list. but this time when the captain started announcing names i heard my name and couple of others announced first and that had never happened ( usually my name used to come after 5 or 6 people ) . and the team representing our school had to be announced soon. so i was planning to assume that i have been chosen in the team for next few days, i heard that shocker . we were people who were not in the team because we did not pay 1 rupee when ball got punctured .
I was thinking fast in my mind y such a mistake happened from me . can not blame the captain as the competition was too much and we all knew the rules . then i remembered y i did not pay that rupee. i was out of town for few days and unfortunately the ball got punctured the day before i was leaving and by the time i came back , the ball was already in good shape and i forgot to pay that rupee. but i was blacklisted by the captain. now as compensation we had to pay double the regular amount this time and those who paid last time need not pay . that sounds reasonable . that was not enough,a shocker was about to come in next few days. i paid double the original for the repair of the ball .
The day had finally come where the selection for the team was to happen . but i was still not in the playing 11 but was sitting in the bench. In parallel were happening selection for shuttle badminton. one of my friend asked me to try my luck there as that was open to all. i agreed with him and went for the shuttle badminton selection , perhaps that was the biggest mistake i made . my game was football and i went for shuttle badminton selection . of course i was not selected to play for shuttle badminton but attempting for that had cost me dearly. during the match for selection of football team , even players in bench were given opportunity to play. so there i was trying to travel in two boats and fell miserably.
I still was scoring some goals during practice sessions and still was not in the team . but a silver lightning was awaiting for me...... . just few days before the tournament started , few people opted out of the team , that created few opening in the team and i was in as last player to be selected for the team and i was still not in playing 11. some times i used to think if only i had given that rupee on the day it was to be given , i would have got better chances of proving myself and play in team as a striker. but fate had something else waiting for me.
we played couple of matches which we won. i was a spectator of both the matches . sitting in the bench and seeing our players score and cheer for them . but i was happy as i got chance to travel with the team. after couple of matches one more person opted out of the team and then me in playing 11 was almost certain and i would play as striker which was my dream. but questions were raised about me in team as a striker ( the guy who fought wanted to score goals who was defender @ that point of time ) and finally i was asked to play as a defender. we were about to play district level matches , our lone goal keeper got injured. that was really fortunate for me that no one else was willing to take that place of goal keeper assuming he does not have any part to play. me and the goal keeper exchanged our positions . i accepted to play as goal keeper and i was indeed successful as goal keeper right from the first match i played where i stopped spectacularly ( it was indeed spectacular ) a penalty stroke to win the game for us to the last match we played during engineering days ( final year ) where i stopped number of shots @ goals and still ended on losing side in the finals of the tournament. sometimes i think but for that one rupee perhaps i would been playing all the games i played so far as a striker and try to win the games which we had lost and might have been playing football . even now.....