Chetan Bhagat delivers a motivational speech to Gaya youth in an event organised by Yuva Prayas

Updated on: Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Exhorting the youth to be extremely careful in the selection of career options, celebrated writer Chetan Bhagat said there was no 'rewind button' in real life and as such, one mistake can derail the entire venture.

Bhagat was delivering a motivational talk to Gaya youth on Sunday. The event was jointly organized by Yuva Prayas, the activist group engaged in road safety awareness creation to save young lives and a Jaipur-based educational group. Explaining the adoption of road safety as its 'theme song', Yuva Prayas leaders told Bhagat that most of the road accident victims are youth and as such road safety was all the more important.

Giving tips to hundreds of youth, Bhagat asked his audience to be always positive and go ahead in the 'I can do it' spirit. Those with a humble background need not be unnecessarily bogged down by their 'auqat' (capacity) bogey as there are innumerable examples of people with humble background doing extremely well in life. Bhagat told his audience that he scored a moderate 76% marks in the Class X board examinations but did not allow the relatively low marks to haunt his future and made a place for himself by leaving behind the less memorable moments of life.

Admitting that luck, too, plays a role in career building, the celebrated author said luck played a very limited and incremental role. Using film terminology, Bhagat said everybody was the hero/heroine and scriptwriter of his/her own life. Why not write a script that takes the box office by storm? asked Chetan.

He told his Hasrat Mohani auditorium audience there was 'no short cut' to success and one has to work very hard consistently to achieve the goal. "Do something that you love and do not go by other people's career perceptions," was Bhagat's advice to the Gaya youth. Giving his own example, Bhagat said people discouraged him from quitting a lucrative job in search for 'something different and satisfying'. He also revealed that his books were initially rejected by several publishers, but he did not give up rather his resolve to make it went up with each rejection.

"Institutions and the family can only give you facilities, the real work has to be done by you," he said. Bhagat asked the young boys and girls to develop book reading habits as books develop imagination. "Well read men need not introduce themselves, their approach to life reveals the depth acquired through reading," he said.

Chetan Bhagat delivers a motivational speech to Gaya youth in an event organised by Yuva Prayas

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