T’was a typically cold, October evening. The mildly cold breeze made the leaves rustle and a slight drizzle made its presence felt by the sweet scent of the first drops on brown soil. The rapidly darkening clouds overhead suggested a visit of the rain gods onto earth. The tune of the song that we had been practicing over the past few days kept my mind from fretting over the impending onslaught of the second internals that was to start in two weeks’ time. I sat at the famous “katte” in my college sipping hot lemon tea and enjoying the pensive atmosphere. This was one of those exceptional moments of phlegmatic joy that etches itself into ones memory in the form of indelible images that cannot be delineated in words. It was an atmosphere that evoked thoughts and memories spread over the 3 and a half years that I had spent in BMS uptil now, right from my first day in college to our first performance of mad ads on stage. It was a highly contemplative moment of time, that demanded introspection on the part of the individual in question, which was me. It was the perfect time for me to open the flood gates in my mind that brought out gushing volumes of thoughts, most of them centered round the nagging problem that I had refused to give proper thought to, for a long time now. It was a question that would either answer, if I was really the worthless student that I thought I was, or that would tell me that I had done the right thing by partially compromising my studies for an extended involvement in the myriad activities I was part of, in college. Here I was, a student of Electronics and Communication Engineering, with a modest aggregate of 72.41 percent, a mediocre job offer and a file full of certificates that had the words ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘mad-ads’, and ‘dumb charades’ appearing pretty frequently among them. There was nothing remotely technical about any of the knowledge that I possessed at that point of time and a slowly strengthening conviction, that I was going to end up being a pathetic engineer, started creeping into my already tormented mind.
Apart from all this, the most frightening part of it, was the fact that, the saying “hard work pays off” was proven to be correct, time and again by either a Nobel prize winning scientist or by a cricketer who played magnificently for the country. I was outright sure that I had not been working hard enough on my academics, as I should have been all these years, for it to be paying off. At this point of time I had an urging intent to build a time machine, go back 2 and a half years in time, pick up the 4 inch, 3 kg Electronic Circuits text book , and start studying like there was going to be a power cut for the next 5 years to come. But then I thought, “ Hey!!! Wait a minute; I can still do this right? I don’t need a frikkin Time Machine. As the wise-asses of yesteryear have most solemnly said, “it’s never too late to start”. That’s it. I can start right away and be a person that I was not, a moment ago. I can be
As much as I wanted to, I could not deny this. The distance between the cities of hallucination and implementation is not one that can be traversed in an aero plane. You need to walk the road, trudge along, drag your boots, mop your forehead, bake in the sun, drench in the rain, face the wind, melt the snow and…… never lose sight of the ultimate goal.
Hmmmm.…. ME!! Doing all that hard work…. Seems a lil’ far fetched doesn’t it?? But tell you what, I am dead sure and have never been surer about anything else in my life, that, one certain day, I will set out on this journey, and against all odds, and will emerge victorious, shining like the sun, glistening in the rain, flying with the wind, and melting snow all around.
