Contemplation!!!

Life is not easy. It is not meant to be in the first place. But nothing in life is to be feared. It is about exploring, comprehending & making it a life worth living ultimately.

After almost 24 priceless years, life made me contemplate the very meaning of it. I don’t know, but I guess there is something which it is hinting towards. After a clear-cut assessment, it made me even more bewildered.

I hate it when I have options. It makes me ponder over & over again & there is always the inner strong craving to pursue the option which I have left. I am sure most of us go through this many a times in our lives. The celebrated author Chetan Bhagat once mentioned, we will live for probably 50 years & 50 years are like 2500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up?

Being an Odia from the temple city of India, I needed to follow a particular system. Bhubaneswar, though rapidly making its mark on the national scenario with some of the rarest treasures & the IT, infrastructure development, still is loath to part away with the traditional (inapt) culture & the human psychology attached to it. Below are a list of things that I actually did & what I always wanted to do alongside.

I had to follow the system, did my schooling with academics on my priority, a less than 85 % used to give me more of a heartbreak as compared to the delight intensity what a more than 90 % gave me. I was allowed to follow my heart to do whatever I wanted to, but with the tag of *conditions apply*. I could not take an admission at a professional cricket club as the latter demanded perseverance & quality time which seemed as a potential threat to my already conventional academic career. The nature of my father’s job made me stay in such places that I could not pursue my interest in music.

After schooling, finally got a chance to play professionally & within a very short time made a special name for me in the cricketing circle. And then came the time to join college. I desperately wanted to pursue arts primarily because of two simple reasons. First, Arts is something that exerts a pull on me & secondly, I would have got ample time for cricket. But once you study arts, becoming an engineer or a doctor is out of contention. And how on earth could I have done that ( typical pressure from society). Owing to my SSC percentage got my self admitted into Science in the premier & the best college of Odisha & this marked a final full stop to my cricket. I still remember the look on my coach’s face, when I gave him the news of me quitting cricket.

Don’t exactly know when I made up my mind to do an MBA but just went with the flow. And the inherent childhood dream of becoming a bureaucrat was fast becoming extinct. After those high profile board meetings, frequent air & road journeys, interaction with some of the best minds of my industry, now I ask myself.

Is this what I want to do?

Is this what I had planned my life for?

Do I have the need & want of earning a seven figure salary?

Will I ever repent for not giving a shot at something which I had always wanted to become?

I have a no. of examples before me who in spite of belonging to otherwise traditional families of Odisha, followed their dreams, went off the orthodox way & finally made it big. Whether I talk about Sona (An engineer by education, an MBA by profession gave up her highly lucrative corporate job for a career in Music) or Siddhant (a FMS alumni pursued acting & became a superstar in Eastern India & a Member of Parliament) or even the latest sensation Ankita ( An engineer who became Gladrags mega model & made it to the top 5 in Miss India contest), they all chased their dreams & succeeded.

Now life questions me again. And this time I guess I know what I am supposed to do. It will be a tough decision to make but yes don’t I always believe in the fact that high risk always yields high gain. Life won’t be easy for the next couple of years certainly. I may not be able to earn enough that I will own a Mercedes S-class, I may not afford owning a flat in the posh locality of my hometown, I may not be able to send my children to an aristocratic international school but who cares. I was born wet, naked, and hungry.  Nothing can get worse for sure. But at least I will be delighted to have tried. When I will stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." (Nice lines by Erma Bombeck) & who knows I might come up with another post a few years hence, inscribe my success story & owe the credit to this post of mine. :) :)