No pain no gain

No gain without pain? Well, yeah. I remembered this proverb as my memories jogged back to yesteryears, when playing sports were a part of everyday life.

These days we do play sports, but of the mental sorts...and not the ones commonly known as 'games' like cricket, football, kho kho, catch-catch and all.

Falling and hurting yourself was very common and rarely did it result in anything more complicated than the murder of the person who committed the foul !! (if it was a game like football and if the 'fouled up' player was good enough to chase the fouler or was 'big' enough to commit his 'murder'!!!).

The small bruises, the annoying sprains, the huge cuts, the deep wounds, the small abrasions....all contributed to 'pain'. And no matter how bad the pain...it was temporarily forgotten in the frenzy of an exciting ongoing match!! In fact....everything else was forgotten once you got out onto the playground !! It was just a game, but it had to be won...it had to be treated like a war. Once the game was over, you came to terms with the pain which had been temporarily numbed. And then the pain used to hit you and water and medicine would seem to worsen it....Soframycin was great but tincure iodine and antiseptic solutions used to make them burn...so much so that you felt like yelling !! I've had lots of falls.....tripping over, toppling over, falling flat on my face and breaking my tooth, landing on my bums, scraping my knees, bruising my shins, hurting my elbows, spraining my ankles...on top of which I committed quite a few fouls in football myself !!! I have been battered, bruised and hurt. After sometime you get used to these falls, become tougher and grow stronger....its natural.

Its same with life isnt it? You fall, you rise, you fall again, rise again, this time a teensy bit more easily.