Episode 9: Do it or leave it

"When we start listening to what our heart says..................!!!!!!!"

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''Do you think twice before giving a smile?'' ''Are your goals, not being achieved that makes you feel sad, most of the time?'' I got it now you have a feeling to achieve something that makes you unique.

What if I give you everything you wanted to achieve, in your life?

May be, a house in a posh, well opened area surrounded by broader,cleaner, roads all around your residence, beautiful street lights twinkling, sparkling in the evening when it gets dawn. A small garden, a coffee house on the roof of your home, opening in front of balcony from where you can feel cool breezy air, trying to kiss your cheeks. With your life partner and your whole family well settled, with a good family earnings making it into pounds.

What else, you would go for, after you feel that you have seen every movie you wanted, every place you wanted to visit on a tour ? Are you still  unhappy? Then it simply means you are not listening to your heart.


We middle class Indians hardly enjoy our lives. Every second or every other moment we are more of, successful in rejecting happiness. Surmounted by several family issues, our heads hardly accept, we can, too be happy. The  best thing, we can learn from western people, is that , they never refuse a single moment which promises them, a chance to enjoy life.  So why be shy ? or scared, in doing something that may make you laugh,a minute or more? 


Somebody is nobody until he expresses his talent. You may be very passionate about your hobbies. Reading, writing, visiting, singing, drawing, dancing or may be you are fond of clicking snaps but as soon as your world is restricted within you, nobody cares what interests you, the most.


Have you ever tried getting wet, in the rain in your crowdy street, knowing your neighbors, would not appreciate it, just because your age has crossed twenty five?

I never wore black goggles, never tried driving even a two wheeler. Using deodorant for a night out birthday party, would make me feel shy. Though I always dreamed of all these, only in my imagination.

No one could beat my singing talent, but my voice never crossed the bathroom boundaries.

I evolved more into, like a serious person though nobody knew I tried few hip-hop dancing steps in a closed room leading to successful failure of my dancing act, at the end.

This is what my teenage appears to me when I look back into my past time. Is every teenager do  like same?Why I never tried all those things that I should have? What stopped me, being what I was, from inside?

When I look back into time, when my childhood prevailed, running into paddy fields, spread-ed over several miles just to catch a colorful butterfly, flying alongside of a long river, may not make any sense to me now.

During monsoon, when it would go dark at noon, everybody in a group would run to collect wind shed-ed ripe mangoes, to fill their hanging bags. Watching rains for hours, getting wet for no reason, would make me happiest in the world.

Catching tiny fishes in still transparent water in a shallow canal, loosing fight for obtaining commonly collected ripe mangoes, would  appear as if we had lost the Mahabharata  battle. But next morning, everyone would be found on a new mission.

Almost every empty house at the offsite of the village, would assume to be ghost house for us. Few of us, would go into the house and speak loud, while remaining would run away very fast listening to echo of their own sound, carrying sandals in their hands. Reaching home, I would keep thinking of that echo,  frightened whole night.

But even then whatever used to happen, or whatsoever type of  feeling, sustained  my childhood mind, was thousand times more rhythmic than those which are presently sustained.

A city life. Run by machines. Day starts with alarm tones and ends with tiring  loads of pending work. Shopping at malls and eating at stalls. If we feel we should laugh we have to wait for finishing assigned tasks.
The fear that boss will grill us, shyness that  people would laugh at us if we do our work this way, will never let you live your life. If people say you are a foolish, you think you are gone and you become prey of your own. 


If trying a torn jeans makes you happy, being weird at looks gives you immense satisfaction, better go for it rather than waiting for somebody to come to you to insist it to happen. 


So do it or leave it but do not hang at interface. Once you pick up your best flair in you, the picked character  definitely will pick you. Once compatibility is established between your happiness and you, no body would dare to, badly deal with you.


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"Many things in life, would happen at times, when they are actually supposed to happen. And this realization changed my perception towards life. Finally I stopped running after things which were not under my control. I started listening to my inner tunes that ask me to follow what my heart wanted, not what my brain desired ."

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Episode 8 : Molding Machines

''It is really a hard core truth that it is only the first teacher who molds you, in a direction that makes you what you are today. This story presents a diversity among teachers who changed my life entirely. I am not an ideal person but still all my goodness that I have ever evolved into, is attributed to them.''

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Everyday she would save five rupee or a ten rupee note, counting or adding up to sixty rupees, that was my first ever decided tuition fee. I didnot know how she could manage this? I remember that day, she gave me a handkerchief in which, few coins were tied along with some folded ten rupee notes and then she asked  me to give it to my first tuition teacher as an advance amount.

It was my first tuition fee she had saved from daily hard home budget. Yes, you are right. She was my mother, my first teacher, who taught me counting, few tables, discipline and patience.

                                    

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She enlisted me on the top of the list as a first child in the entire family to have such a costly private tuition. She made my successful landing on a safe platform. I was handed over to a more simple  but sophisticated, humorous but equally sincere lady. My first official teacher.

She had a style of teaching that was different. She always praised students even if they were bad at work, worst at handwriting. I would not have realized that I was unique if she would not have praised my handwriting. First few alphabets that I wrote on a piece of paper, even though my alphabets pretended different dancing poses.

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I made it to pass, my primary level. I was being admitted to another school for further secondary education. My new sixth standard class teacher was a science teacher. 

I was learning English at home, by my own through a grammar book. Everyday, after learning a sentence from a book,  I used to practice it in my school by using it in the class. 

That day, first period, science teacher was sitting in front of me and one of my friend’s book fell down from  desk, onto the floor. He asked me to pick it up and give it to him. I denied him with an attitude saying ‘’I have not your servant.’’ On hearing to this grammatically incorrect sentence, she called me and said silently, in my ear, “ I am not your servant is the correct version of the sentence.’’

She would have said that in front of class.But she didn't. I learned how to correct people by being polite, secretly and more profoundly. Anger has no essence if you really want to induce corrections in a person. Things can really be effective if considered politely.

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Well what was my ambition was still not clear by the time I had passed my eighth standard. I thought I would  aim to become a good doctor or a more sophisticated engineer as I always used to hear only these few terms, from my parents since my childhood.

                                        

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I too could write, imagine and think. Thanks to my Hindi master, an optimistic creature, who made me realize I am not a bad writer and thinking too much is not hazardous. It puts you into another world. Words become your friends. Black ink becomes most important colour. And yes, it gives you power that can convert  ‘nobody’ into ‘somebody’ through the power of this ink. You are more loved by people, respected by your beloved ones. You feel fully expressed, happy and energetic.

My Hindi was improvising, better than English. He made me a poet. Every line he would read, in the class, from a poem, used to have several different meanings. Really he proved, ‘‘it is, not the circumstances that matter but, the perception towards them that make circumstances odd or even.’’

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 Days passed . I started dreaming more and working less. I became showy, overconfident as  I was continuously being praised by my teachers.

 I dropped my one year, thinking I would crack the national medical exam for M.B.B.S. But I failed. Got stressed out I thought life was finished rendering me totally into a big ambiguity about my carrier.

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I applied for university. Got admission in a good college. First orientation class. An old lady, introducing the department and faculty said, ‘We all here , not to compete with others but with ourselves.’’ This sentence though sounded very familiar but made me to promise myself to follow it.

When I saw the high class environment , in the campus, I started feeling more inferior and less prestigious. My focus changed from academics. I started spending more time trying to  adjust to a friend circle which was not, of my economic standard.

I went more reckless, disgusting and extremely careless about my studies, hobbies etc. Hence I hardly scored more than sixty percent.

Genetics class, afternoon period, that dedicated, sincere lady was busy, in drawing some flow diagram on board. Extreme corner desk, last table, I was continuously talking, murmuring with my friend, thinking she is not watching the conversation as for me her presence was an optical illusion.

After the class was over, she called my friend into the staffroom, and said to him, "You are a good student but if you continue sitting with Pawan, you will not remain a good student.’’

On hearing to this, a deep sense of insult pinched my self esteem. I felt I was better before the way I was. I pledged I will not change my positive or qualities which defined my identity. I started studying day and night. This had never happened before. I topped my college with a rise in percentage from sixty four to eighty four, scoring highest in genetics. My original lost identity was restored.

Thanks to her as she induced a superlative change in me, that helped, restoring my identity.

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As my masters finished, I thought I would get a good place to work. It was not easy as I thought. After passing through a stage when all ways were closing down, things were getting worst. I was denied , dragged, defeated by my own incapabilties. I had started thinking if my all educational journey would go waste if I was not able to get a good place to work in. So when I had nothing left as a hope, when I was broken, down, and denied. Suddenly a hope flashed. God sent a miracle lady into my life. She made me realize that I was still unique, honest, intelligent, common like others but different. My present research supervisor who secured my incoming few years to venture into research as her student. A very sophisticated  lady with very focused attitude about her quality work.

Surrounded by such teachers, surmounted by their supervision, I feel, I always wanted to become a good teacher. Whatever I extracted positive from these marvellous creatures, I tried to transfer to my students. My ongoing teaching at my home, encompassing twenty to thirty students every year, for past six years have helped me to evolve into a new identity. 

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''Whatever I have learned, accumulated, or have gathered during course of my journey either being as a student to as a teacher, is the result of continuous molding efforts of my teachers.And one thing that was common to all them, was that all of them were  good human beings who were less professional and more practical.''