Visit to Heaven on Earth

Hello my fellow bloggers, how is your life going on? Don’t ask about mine. Don’t worry I will tell you about mine even if you don’t ask. That’s why I am here. Right now I should be studying. I have an exam tomorrow. But what am I doing exactly is quite different from what I should be doing. Well that’s what my life is all about. I never do what I should be doing; rather I choose to do something I wish to do. I know that’s pretty immature behavior of mine, but I am surviving well enough, so I guess whatever it is that my wishes are made up of, they are worth my attention.

Have ever gone to a place where you looked at the beauty of the nature and you became awestruck? Have you ever seen nature unraveling its secrets in a way that left you spellbound and speechless? If you ask me these questions, I will reply loud and clear Yes!

Last week I boarded on a bus with my friends to get away from this mundane stressed out life. In the morning when I woke up I felt happiness run through my whole body. We were at the mountains!!! Finally the cool breeze, beautiful clouds, curvy roads going up and up…. exhilarating view outside the window. I can’t sum up my feelings into one sentence. I love mountains as much as a kid loves ice cream. And my love for mountains had expanded with time as I spent more of my days near the sea or the plains.

We reached Kodaikanal in the morning. It’s a beautiful heaven in Tamil Nadu, 8hrs journey from Pondicherry. The first place we visited was Silent Valley. As I got down from bus and walked up to the cliff from where we could oversee the valley, I felt happy. I felt thrilled. I felt I was alive after a long period of hibernation. I could feel tears on my cheeks. These were signs of my overwhelming emotions that my heart couldn’t retain inside. And it was just the beginning. Each and every place we visited thereafter was no less than heaven. Clouds floating everywhere, fogs playing hide and seek with us. Beautiful birds chirping and singing all through the pine forest.

We trekked through the waterfalls and forests. I was walking on my fours, crawling all the way through. I figured out, the only way one can safely trek up and down the forest was by walking like our ancestors, apes.  

Walking through new roads in a new town discovering places and roads with few of your close friends at the hour when your parents believe you are indoors fast asleep, was really an experience worth having. I hope the thrill of this tour keeps my soul alive and sparked up.

We are running after money and all the materialistic things that money can buy. But once in a while, get out of your comfortable room and walk out in the wild, with stars and moon shining above your head. You will know what life is all about. When you climb up and down a cliff, you will have count of your breath. You will be aware of every single moment of your existence on earth. That’s what life should be like.

Dear Mountains

Until I meet you, I will keep dreaming about you.

You were wired to worry but not to give up

What is your life all about? How do you decide what you want in life? How do you know if you are making a choice or something out there is choosing you? How do you know the dynamics on which our life runs- not biologically…but philosophically? What makes you get up late at night from sleep, sit in the darkness and think- what next? 

These are few questions I am currently dealing with. Or, better way to put it is, these are some questions my sub conscience is dealing with. I have sleepless nights and sometimes I am awake in my sleep. I am wide awake walking through the road I have chosen. But I don’t know where this road leads me to. I am scared that I might forget my way back and that I might not be able to go forward anymore and I wake up. I try to forget this as a nightmare but the thought remains, my sub conscience refuses to give up on it, and so the nightmare keeps coming.

Man is the only animal with the ability to think. I don’t really know if that is helping us or not. Is this a bane in disguise of boon? Given this ability where do we use it most often? We use it to analyze the past. But why do we do that? Well, some of you might defend your thought process and say we analyze it so that we don’t repeat the mistakes we had done before. But is that all? Often we analyze situations where we were not at fault, where we didn’t have a control and we start thinking so much that our mind clogs with regret. That’s a homicide. Yes, it’s not suicide because you are not killing yourself but homicide because you are killing the voice inside you; you are hushing that voice and blaming it for all the unfair days. Little by little, your regrets are going to kill your intuitive voice inside you. What then? You will still be alive but you will be a source of negative vibe. And do you really want to waste your life like that?

Why am I bringing this up now? Why am I questioning our thought process like I wish we weren’t the only animals having this special ability to think? Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against us being a thinking animal. What I am actually trying to point out here is we shouldn’t pile up our head with things that we cannot control ‘cause in that process you shall lose the opportunity to think about the situation that you can control. Few days back I was sitting in my hostel room and was introspecting on my life. I was trying to draw the pattern of my life. I was trying to weigh my successes and failures till now. And now I realize even though I didn’t get what I always wanted, I just got what I deserve. And that’s the twist of fate.

In my school days I used to think I shall be studying with statistics or mathematics as my mom is a mathematics teacher. She used to make me feel confident about the subject and I used to assume that I am going to be in the field of statistics. But then I got over that feeling. Next I bumped into languages. Hindi and English were the two languages primarily taught throughout our school years and I was so fascinated with the literature. Story books were food for my new life. I used to live my life from book cover to book cover. Classical English were part of our curriculum in class 9 and 10 and I was swept in awe. People in my class were crying their heart out for the terrible words they were unable to grasp or memorize. I never found myself able to relate to them. For me that was best curriculum CBSE could have ever planned. So, now the next think I thought was I will become a teacher but a language teacher. So I kept reading both Hindi and English literature and tried to make myself for confident in using both the languages, even though in the years that followed the two languages were just a compulsory part of our curriculum and not much in focus. 

In my higher studies I got into science field and just struggled my way out of that. Then out of nowhere I found myself studying Microbiology. I had dreamt of being a lawyer or a journalist or a teacher or an artist or do something in biology. But never had I thought about this particular subject. So then a voice inside me said “Let the bygone be by gone. Now, go with the flow”.

I took a step forward in anticipation that I might give up on it soon. But I am a person wired not to give up. I might just wane and cry and weep and shout saying “Enough I will quit now” but that ends there. Quitting isn’t something I have done as of yet. As a result, I am here now, in Pondicherry, doing my masters in Microbiology. And what do I feel about it? No, I won’t say I feel “I finally know what I really wanted to do for so long and I am doing it!” I haven’t yet reached that stage yet. But what I can really admit is I feel just fine. Whatever courses of events took over in my life and whatever choices I and destiny made has brought me to this point. Through my failures I am learning to build myself every day. I am working on myself, every single day. And I am going to continue doing that.

Not all that we dream of comes true in real life. But that doesn’t mean we made bad choices. I somehow feel I am doing what I am doing in life, not just because I made a decision, but my fate made a decision too. Both the times when I had given large number of applications and entrance exams, I was making a decision of taking one step ahead. Next step was being chosen. I am here for I worked and someone out there chose me for this course. I am here for I got selected by the nature to live. I am here because I took a step ahead and gave destiny a chance to choose me.

So what are you going to do now? Will still continue to think over past and dream about future? Will you still hug your regrets while you go to bed tonight? Or are you going to set them free and let your mind lives at peace?

As a true optimist and believer, I would just tell you, if your back is against the wall don’t sit down and wail. Kick the wall and use the momentum to move forward. Keep fighting if you want to survive and win. Don’t expect and do not regret.