pain no gain' may appear to be a contradictory statement. But it is very true.
Rags to riches stories of many millionaires are replete with instances of hardship
suffered by these achievers during their boyhood and youth. Abraham Lincoln,
who performed an almost incredible transition from a 'log cabin to the White House'
used to study in street-lights when he was a boy.
Akbar the great had to undergo incessant sufferings and wage continual warfare to retrieve and build up his kingdom. In our own times, the great business tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance Textiles, began his career as a peddler of goods. How much suffering and humiliation has gone into the making of this business magnate can be easily imagined by anyone who knows the way licenses could be obtained and a market could be built up by struggling entrepreneurs in a ruthlessly controlled Indian economy of Nineteen Sixtees and Nineteen Seventees.
Literature and history of all countries are replete with stories of young- men and
women who underwent untold suffering for the sake of personal love, love of one's
country or love of God. "The course of true lover never did run smooth", says Rosalind
in "As You Like It", the celebrated comedy of Shakespeare. Rosalind had to leave the
comforts of royality to embrace the austerity and deprivation of Forest of Arden to
pursue her lover Orlando.
She had to maintain the disguise of a young-man and pass through dense jungles inhabited by ferocious, wild animals to pursue and achieve her mission of getting united with Orlando. And her sufferings were ultimately rewarded when she got united with Orlando in the Forest of Arden. Romeo and Juliet had to undergo even greater suffering than did Rosalind and Orlando. They were harassed and tortured and were compelled to put an end to their lives. But their sufferings ennobled not only their lives when they lived it but also put an end to the ancestral enmity between their families.
But the most shining example of suffering in love followed by blissful union is that narrated by Sanskrit poet Kalidasa in his inimitable love-drama "Abhignan Shakuntalam". Shakuntala, who was united to King Dushyant according to Gandharva Marriage systemwas later abjured by Dushyant as the latter had forgotten his marriage with Shakuntala under the influence of a curse. For years
