The Boy Who Ran at Dawn
Suresh was the son of a vegetable seller in a small town. Every morning he helped his father load the cart and then ran five kilometres to school because there was no bus he could afford. His teacher noticed that he was always the first to reach the ground and the last to leave it, and she entered his name for the district athletics meet.
The other runners had proper shoes and coaches. Suresh had neither. He ran in his old canvas shoes, and when they tore he ran barefoot on the cinder track. He lost the first race, came third in the second, and went home with bleeding feet. His father told him to give up, but he kept running every dawn on the road beside the canal.
A year later the state selection trials were held in the town. Suresh ran the 1500 metres against boys from big-city academies, and in the last lap, when his legs were burning, he remembered every barefoot morning of that year. He crossed the line first.
The whole town came to the station to see him off, and his father wept openly, on that day he had achieved his goals.
