Independnce day: Celebrating a dream or a reality

26 Jan is near. One can sense it by seeing small chidren carrying Indian national flags with them to their school, or by reading the headlines of the newspapers which feature articles like "Have we betrayed our founders ?", or by seeing a surge in the number of police and paramilitary personnels in our city.
It reminds me of the day when I was a small kid. I was always active in celebrating the republic day in my school. Sweets would be distributed in our school, parades were held followed by a vast number of cultural programmes, not to forget the speech of our principal Dr. S K Tyagi. Dr. Tyagi was a person with great wisdom and a distant vision. During a republic day celebration in our school, he once told us a story. The story is about a young boy called Tiku. One fine day Tiku wakes up in the morning, gets ready for the school and starts from his home on his bycycle. He walks into the main road crossing through the streets of his colony. He finds that there are no beggars on the roads. Although there is lot of traffic, yet there is no chaos. There are separate lanes for people to walk, for bicycles, for scooters, for cars and buses. The roads are very clean and there are trees surrounding the roads everywhere. Tiku moves on. He reaches his school. He sees that no teacher is absent today, all the teachers are teaching their students with great passion and the students are no more bunking their classes.He completes his day at school and returns back to his home. He switches on the TV and puts on DD News. He sees that there are no more news of murder, robbery, or terrorists; or of people dying of hunger, devastation caused due to floods; instead there was news showing the progress their country had made in various fields, showing new innovations in agriculture, engineering and medicine. Tiku was really happy.

Dr. Tyagi told," All of us have a Tiku inside us. Just like Tiku's dreams, everyone of us have some dreams which we wish was a reality. The day it happens to be so, will be the day when we should really celebrate, call it republic day or independence day. If you want to celebrate, celebrate the reality not the dream; or celebrate only when you turn your dream into a reality, till then bend your back , work hard, and wait for your dream to come true."

3 Idiots: Awakening of the self

I watched "3 Idiots" first day, first show. Amir khan's movies are always a great attraction for me. But what forced me to watch it as soon as it was released was that being an IITian, I wanted to relate my inner self with the movie. I had already read the book "Five point someone" written by Chetan Bhagat, which was the inspiration behind the movie and I was curious to know what new innovations the script writer would have brought to the original story.

The movie really impressed me as it must have done to crores of people across the world. I along with my roommates (who also are IITians ) spent the whole night talking about the movie. In the morning, I went to my office, my mind still thinking about the movie. I went to my office, opened my email, and saw lots of mails regarding pending work which I was supposed to complete in the last month itself. I closed my mailbox, moved towards the conference room where we have our daily meeting, everyday. The boss asked me what my progress was on the pending work. I had no answer, I tried making some excuses, giving some fraud progress status, which we were so expert in, during the college days. But none could satisfy him. He scolded me, as he does nowadays everyday and gave another warning to me, which I have become really comfortable with nowadays. The meeting was over, I came out of the conference room, entered into the engineer's hall where I sit and pass my whole day in the office ,each day. I gossiped with my friends about how furious the boss was and how well I have adapted myself to handle him and his warnings. Then after an hour, I was alone in the hall. All my colleagues had gone to their respective units, but I was feeling tired; I had not slept the whole night and I really felt like sleeping. I saw all around to see if anybody was around.I put my head down on the desk and slept.

Very rarely I see dreams. But when I see them they are really dreadful; and this time when I slept, I saw a dream. I saw that "3 Idiots" was a reality and not a movie. We were three friends; Amir, me and Sharman (Joshi). It was 2'o clock in the night. Amir, me and Sharman are all drunk and sitting on the stairs leading to the central library.

I ask Amir, "Baba Rancho, since you know all the things, please tell me why I am not able to do well in my job, why I am scolded by my boss everyday, why no warning has been able to change my attitude towards my work, please tell"

Amir replied, "It is not that you are a worthless fellow, its not that you can not do well in your profession, you can be a star performer if you do a work of your own choice, it is just that you are not at the right place, you are not where you wanted to be, you took up your job not because you wanted to do that particular job, but only because you sat, during placements, in each and every company and got selected in this company, if at that time you had asked yourself what type of job you wanted, what area you wanted to work in, and if you had tried to get a job in that area you would have got a job sooner or later and, succeeded in your job, and in that case you would have earned praises in place of scoldings each day, and rewards in place of warnings. Still there is time left, it is never late to recover, correct your wrongdoings, get a job which really interests you, and see the effect... "

I woke up, I saw around myself to see if Amir was around, I could not find him. I could not believe it was not real, that meeting had changed me, It had changed me for the good. I stood up, I was really feeling great, while I was sleeping, I had a dream and the dream had awakened my inner self. I was feeling if I was in some other world.

Suddenly somebody shouted, "Hey you, come here, are you sleeping or what?"

It was my boss.

I smiled, I was wondering if I should narrate to my boss about the dream I had just now. I decided I was better off in negation to my desire. My smile turned into a laughter. I kept laughing, my boss was amazed, his mouth wide open.

He told me,"You are fired, don't come to office from tomorrow"

I kept laughing, shut-down my computer, picked up my back and left.