For My Daughter.

I have a habit of keeping a dream diary. Every time I experience a ‘worthwhile’ dream, I note it down in it.

Last night was one such experience.

The dream started with me walking on a familiar road with a somewhat dejected stride. Apparently, I had been offered an internship at a magazine and my job entailed me having to interview a certain patient and her family at the Cancer Ward of a local hospital. So much for my first task, I thought!

Suzanne R. Fitzgerald – The youngest cancer patient in the ward, at the prime age of three years. Her family consisted of a father – Robert, and an uncle – Samuel (who was in jail). Nobody had any information on her mother. Some say she died during childbirth, while others narrate stories of her running away with her lover after leaving Suzanne with her father. Not that I really cared. I had one job to do, and I’d do it well.

I entered the hospital, the name of which I can’t recollect (It was a dream after all), but the cancer ward did look familiar. I enquired about Suzanne and was told that she’d be in room 307 with her father.

Robert was reading the morning newspaper when I entered the room. I introduced myself, and told him the reason for my uninvited presence. He was pretty welcoming and even offered to answer any of my questions until Suzanne arrived after her early morning check-up, which he said, “might take up to an hour”.

I thanked him and set up my voice recorder.

From Robert I learnt how Suzanne had developed Osteosarcoma (or bone cancer) a few weeks after childbirth. The doctors noticed it only months later and by then it had turned lethal. They had jotted down a humongous list of medications and multiple tests for Suzanne, which left Robert no choice but to shift to room 307.

“My wife, Emily, passed away 3 years ago leaving Suzzie with me. She’s all that’s left of my wife, and I love her to bits”, said Robert, trying his best to battle his tears. His in-laws had bequeathed her their family orchard, the revenue of which helped pay Suzanne’s bills.

“It’s not easy”, he asserted, “to look at your beautiful daughter, hold her, stare into her eyes, and tell her everyday that everything is going to be OK. More than giving her hope, you end up trying to console yourself because she trusts you. Every day I curse myself for having to lie to her. But I can’t do much. All I can do is smile and be there for her.”

“But she’s different. She loves it here. She has made her own friends amongst the nurses and the doctors. She doesn’t mind the check-ups, nor does she complain while taking her medications. She reads books, listens to songs, and sometimes watches movies on the television. She talks a lot, and I’m glad she does. She’s like a mystery wrapped in an enigma – No one knows what she might be up to next, but the people out here are nice. They love her and they’ve helped us a lot. One of the nurses even gifted her a doll.”

Just as he said that, a nurse brought Suzanne into the room. Standing by the door, clutching her old doll, she gifted me the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

I had seen many types of smiles. Smiles that were masks; smiles that conveyed joy; smiles that showed enjoyment, pain and sometimes even sadness. But Suzanne’s smile was different. Her smile had innocence carved all over it. Her smile told the story of a girl who thought nothing could go wrong in this world – that hers was a world without problems. She didn’t know about war, hunger or Cancer.

Whether she knew that she was going to die soon or no, I know not. But what I know is that she was happy. I had read somewhere that ‘people wait all week for Friday, all year for summer and all their life for happiness’; but here I was standing face first with a 3 year old girl and her father who had found happiness in the worst of situations.

“Who is he, dad?” she asked as she ran up to Robert.

“He’s a friend”, replied Robert, “and he’s here to ask you some questions”.

“Actually, I’ve got all I wanted”, I said, before walking over to Suzanne and giving her a tight hug.

The wind had picked up outside, and I saw strains of black clouds near the horizon. Robert came out to drop me. “She’s nice, y’know,” he said, “I’m glad I got to spend time with her, even if it’s not much.”

“You’re brave,” I said, “Not everyone can smile through such hardship.”

 “I can cry if I want and people will be there to give me pity,” he confessed, “But I choose to smile. For My Daughter.”

The memory of the rest of my dream is unclear, as my alarm woke me up moments later. But as I stretched to clutch my dream diary from my bedside drawer, I realized one thing – “Happiness can be found in the direst of situations if only one remembers to smile.”

The Story of My Life – A Song.

A few days after my final exams got over and I was finally free of my academic obligations, I penned a few verses in memory of my grandmother. I imagined myself in the shoes of my grandfather and tried to picture the extent of his loss.

I then asked a musician friend of mine (Amol Jacob) to transform the verses into a song.  Hats off to Amol for giving a very soothing melody and for lending his voice to the song.

Special thanks to Ajin Tom for single-handedly helping us in the mixing.

You can listen to the song here.

And here are the lyrics:

The Story of My Life
(Lyrics by Nishad Sanzagiri)

The dread of this place never ends,
Songs of your memories replay in my head,
Our walks, our talks, our laughs, our cries –
Are now the story of my life.

Chorus: I don’t know why I can’t let it go,
I want you to come back to me.
Really want to call you mine.
I want to relive everything again.

This hymn – A tale of anguish;
A memoir of pain and suffering.
A message to that soul who changed;
The story of my life.

Those fluttering butterflies; the fresh springs
And the dancing amidst the flowers.
We rested in those woods – to rise again; a new,
Wish that was the story of my life.

The day I first saw you,
I knew you would be the one.
You were and always will be -
The story of my life.

Every day from dawn to dusk,
I cry to the tunes of the songs you sang for me.
The insecurity grips; chokes my life out –
That’s the story of my life.

Also read: A Story of Two Simple Souls.

My Enemy

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The weather was rather tumultuous today, and I decided to go to the beach and read a book. In the midst of the battering rain and the swift winds, I spent some time on introspection.

Life had never been a bed of roses for me. I had my fair share of heartbreaks and misfortunes, and I had always accepted them as being a part and parcel of this giant game called ‘life’. But today, as I stared intently at the waves caressing the rugged shoreline, a question that had been lingering in my subconscious for quite some time resurfaced. It was one of the most debated of my questions: Who is my Arch-nemesis? Who is the cause of my misfortunes?

Harry Potter and Voldemort, Batman and Joker, Optimus Prime and Megatron, Mowgli and Shere Khan. Even the common man and the terrorists. Literature and history are filled with heroes and villains. So the question of who my villain was had always perplexed me.

But today, I found my answer – I am my own enemy. And this follows my recent post (Taking The Road Not Taken) in which I say that my decisions will be my own and that I take responsibility for all of them.

I am not perfect, and I’ve never tried to be. I remember back in 4^th grade, I had read of a drawing competition in school and hadn’t registered for it; thinking myself incapable of winning. When I went home and told my mom about it, I was on the receiving end of a lecture from her which I still remember. ‘It’s the participation that matters’, she had said. The next day I registered for it and went on to win second place.

Now you might say that I’ve done good things too. Everyone has. No one can be just bad, or just good. So what exactly am I trying to say?

What I am trying to put across is that my conscience is my greatest enemy (and my greatest hero). No one else can drive me like my conscience can. No one can affect me like I myself can.

It’s that inner voice of mine that deserves all the accolades and all the brickbats. Because no matter what anyone else says, it’s my inner voice that takes the final decision.

Hurdles, stumbling blocks, obstacles and hardships will come. But how do I know that they really are hardships? Because it’s my inner voice that has told me that. I am the only one who can decide whether a particular task is easy for me or not.

And so once back home, I mustered all courage and went up to the mirror. I stared in the eyes of the guy in the mirror and said, “Don’t stand in my sunshine”.

All he did was smile.

Autumn.

 

The autumn chill swept past the meadows,
Summer kissed the stars goodnight.
Airy birds nestled amidst undressed trees,
The lustrous moon shone high n’ bright. 

A blessed bud did blossom,
A tinge of colour on the field he did bring.
Arrived; sadly, to the roar of mournful melodies,
Rather than the sweet song of spring. 

And so, I drifted aimlessly, sensing the autumn chill,
Hills and flowers and fruits evading my sight.
Wavering time and again at will,
To bask in the abstruse beauty of the night. 

Facebook Confession Pages – Are They Really Fun?

“Ignorance is bliss.” - Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; Thomas Gray.

School and College ‘confessions pages’ have become a rising trend in cyber space over the last few months, with such unofficial pages bearing names of nearly all major schools and colleges sprouting up on social networking sites (like, Facebook).

The anonymity that these pages promise satisfies teenagers as it bypasses Facebook’s demand that people should use their real identity on their social network. Luckily for page administrators, Facebook policy enables them to mask their true identity; also, thanks to Google Docs, the contributor’s identity is secure.

Though these pages sometimes prove to be a salvation for distressed students; moments of empathy are often flooded with crude and raunchy comments and posts.

Not only can the lewd and improper posts trigger depression amongst the victims, it can also ruin an institution’s reputation. Due to the lack of privacy, outsiders might mistake the many accounts of telltales for an actual depiction of campus life.

These ‘confession pages’, in its worst phase, can be used as a medium for cyber bullying, if multiple posts are targeted at a particular person.

Teenage years are the most crucial and impressionable years of a person’s life, and even one comment can cripple a person’s self-confidence to a point where one feels all is lost (Refer the Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons cases).

But there are some who say that bullying is part of school life. It helps kids stand on their own feet and fight for themselves. In the olden days, there was always the playground bullying – One huge kid walking with his gang of chubby friends, snatching lunch money from a skinny boy and beating him up. The skinny boy then grows up to be a handsome, masculine hunk who goes on to beat the bullies. A typical Bollywood movie plot, eh?

But cyber bullying is different, ‘cause there is no fresh start. In the case of playground bullying, the victim can leave his school/college and start life in a new, safer institution. He can move on. But in the case of these confession pages – there is no fresh start. Anyone, and I repeat anyone, can read confessions about you – Even your friends and relatives.

So what should be done about it?

Well, deleting confession pages isn’t going to be a feasible solution, as no one is going to agree with it – students love anything the school and college authorities despise.

So for starters, these confession pages should stop using the particular institution’s logos and/or remove any pictures of the institution – Don’t make it look official; it isn’t.

Secondly, screen confessions. I know this goes against the very foundation of a ‘confession’, but it needs to be done. There are things that should not go public. It may be considered just a school’s or college’s confession, but it may have irreparable consequences outside.

To end with, I’d like to quote Uncle Ben (from Spiderman), and give a short message to the Page Administrators – “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Be responsible, stay safe.

Candlelight.

“There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle” – Robert Alden.

Taking The Road Not Taken.

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” – Bob Marley.

 

Since I was a child, I had developed a liking for Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’. Something about that poem always enchanted me. My classmates, I’m sure, would remember me reciting this poem every year for the Poem Recitation Competition.

In this poem, Frost talks about choices – Those big decisions which influence the rest of our life journey. Though I’ve always been enraptured by the brevity and elegance of this poem, it has proved to be even more special in the past few months – it being one of the reasons why I’ve decided to pursue ‘International Relations’ as my university major.

Coming from a middle-class Indian family, and having done my entire schooling in a school which caters predominantly to Indian students (the curriculum is Indian too), it’s difficult to find anyone who wants to study something other than Medicine, Engineering and Economics.

So why am I planning on studying something different?

Attending the Global Young Leaders Conference (GYLC) in USA last summer, for which I was nominated from my school, turned out to be a turning point in my life; I was exposed to the world of global leadership, international relations and diplomacy and the United Nations. And I took an immediate liking for it, putting across my viewpoints during group discussions and thus getting chosen as the country spokesperson during the mock UN sessions.

In these times of technological advancements and increasing globalization, a country’s policies may have a greater impact on other countries and societies than was possible a couple of decades ago. My GYLC experience taught me how important Politics and International Relations is in this ever-changing world and gave me a glimpse of the various challenges and frustrations that one faces when embarking on a leadership journey.

International Relations would help me to further understand these intricacies, study national psychologies and very much be a part of the policy making process; maybe be a part of the process that would change a region’s or world’s history.

I studied Science in high-school, and though I managed to ace my exams (sometimes by learning things without completely understanding them), I never developed a passionate liking for the stream. And I don’t intend to spend four years of my life studying something which doesn’t make me happy.

I’ve come to realize that, at the end of the day, life is like a movie. Every moment is a scene – you’re the lead actor, and the director. It’s your job and your responsibility to put careful thought into your writing and screenplay. You need to realize that you are in charge of your own life, and the burden of decisions and choices that come along with it.

And so Yes, I’m going to traverse The Road Not Taken – I’m going to study International Relations. This may be the best decision of my life, or the worst. Whatever it turns out to be, I’ll be responsible.

As Dr. Shad Helmstetter once said, “No one else can ever make your choices for you. Your choices are yours alone. They are as much a part of you as every breath you will take, every moment of your life”.

Not Failure, but Low Aim is a Crime.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. 

- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; Robert Frost.

Let me tell you a story. A story of a high-school student who had dreamt of going to Harvard College – reputed by many, as the number one institution of higher education in the world. A story of how he tried his best, but failed. Let me tell you, My Story!

Last night, I received the e-mail I had been anticipating since long. The e-mail was from ‘Harvard College Admissions and Financial Aid’. It was a long read, and not one I would have wanted to receive. In short, I’d been rejected.

Now normally, I’d have been fine.  A quiet evening walk with my iPod, a cup of steaming hot coffee and an episode of The Big Bang Theory (or any other light-hearted sitcom) would have been enough to get me on track. But this was different. This rejection was from my dream college. It was from the college I’d dreamt of getting into since 7^th grade. I hadn’t expected Harvard to announce its decisions yesterday, and the rejection came as a sudden shock. If I had known they were going to reply, I’d have prepared myself for it.

The problem with dreams is that they hardly ever come true.

No, don’t get me wrong, I’m not depressed. I’m actually surprised how easily I accepted this decision. I guess there was always a part of me that had seen this coming.

Frankly, the admission process taught me a lot. Having spent a considerable chunk of the past half a year writing essays, requesting my teachers for recommendations, writing tests, ruminating on which universities will accept me, and sending in supplementary materials, I’ve realized that there’s more to me than I can ever portray on paper. The admission process made me realize that I have the ability to give my heart and soul to a cause (in this case, to get into the university I want); something I wasn’t quite sure I’d be able to.

It also taught me that no matter how hard you try, there will always be someone who is better than you (in this case there were 2000 odd high-school seniors better than me. Ah, depressing!). But that doesn’t mean you don’t try hard. I’m sure I would have never forgiven myself if I hadn’t given my best.

Luckily for me, I’ve already got acceptance letters from quite a few amazing universities, a couple of which parallel Harvard’s ranking and reputation. But a dream is a dream, and it will always remain dear.
I won’t go so far as to insult the universities in which I got accepted by saying that getting into them was a consolation (as I’ve heard some of my friends say such), as it wasn’t. I’m immensely glad and honoured to have gotten offers from The University of Edinburgh, The University of Manchester, The University of Kent and London School of Business and Finance (in UK), and The University of Michigan, College of William and Mary, University of  Denver, University of California, Los Angeles (waitlisted) and Hartwick College (in USA). April is going to be one heck of a month as I’ll have to choose just one of these amazing universities to spend my next four years in.

Now, I’d like to thank the admission committees of all the universities that accepted me – I thank you for believing in me, and I assure you that I will not let you down. I would also like to thank the admission committees of the universities that rejected me – I thank you for giving me a reason to try harder next time.

For all you high-schoolers in a similar situation as I find myself in, I would like to quote the second last paragraph of Harvard’s decision letter, “Past experience suggests that the particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the next four years”. I wholeheartedly agree to that, and I think we should all make sure so as to hone our skills to the best of our abilities, regardless of which university we choose to study in.

The day I had decided to apply to Harvard, I had told myself, ‘When your aim is high, even the fall is glorious’. Today, having aimed high and fallen, I’m not too sure whether it was actually glorious, but it sure was a learning experience. And as Zig Zigler once said, ‘If you learn from defeat. You haven’t really lost’.

P.S – I would also like to thank my parents for always being there. You guys are my refuge, and my strength. Without your support and guidance, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.

The Sacred Dilemma

As I may or may not say to the Lord on Judgment Day, “You ask a lot of questions for someone who has so much explaining to do.” – Robert Brault.

The debate concerning the existence of God, is one of the oldest and most discussed debates in human history. I agree, I am no expert on philosophy, but having studied Science for majority of my high-school years, I have somewhat developed the attitude of inadvertently questioning everything.

So here goes:

Gently, I keep praying and anticipating the day,
The day when destiny will unfold it’s intention.
I had envisaged luxury, and euphoria aplenty,
But witnessed distress and melancholy instead.

Lord, I too am a progeny of thy radiant light,
Do I deserve to be concealed by the night?
I wish to wander from the adjudicated path,
I desire to travel on a route of my own making.

You bestowed upon me the boon of agony,
The crown of constant struggles,
But I still retained hope.

Lord, Thy supposed magnum opus fathers havoc.
Annihilation, extirpation and deceit have become commonplace.
You benevolently forgive, I’ve heard;
But do these acts deserve forgiveness?

The rich get richer, while the destitute get poorer,
To make more money everyone is eager.
When celebrities die, even angels are affected,
Society is unmoved when the poor are dead.

Ruminating thus,
A question arises:
God, the Lord over all creation,
Or God, a well-authored fiction?

Why I Write.

‘If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.’
- Benjamin Franklin

A while ago, a close friend of mine asked me a simple question. It took me some time to fully comprehend the extent of the chaotic contest that went on in my head when I started to ponder over the answer. The question was, ‘Why do you write?’

Staring at a blank notebook page or a blank word document can be very daunting. Getting started is the hardest part. We end up making excuses like “I’ll come up with something better when I have more time”. But frankly, this fast paced world has not really left us with enough time to count on our fingertips.

According to me, the first step to being a successful writer is by taking a pen and writing nonsense. It doesn’t matter how awful it is, as long as you finish each and every article/poem you decide to write. The first few pieces of your work are destined to be loathsome, but having hope in yourself is the key.

A person’s writing needs to be a reflection of what he/she is on the inside – without a mask: I still remember the day I realized that most friendships are a mirage and that we all need a flood of pseudo-images to live through our scripted destiny. My writing is a reflection of what I am on the inside, the real me. The me without the mask.

I write because creating narratives makes my soul dance and helps me feel at home with myself. Also, when someone else reads my stories, it’s like a magical invisible connection between me and another human being on Earth. And nothing can beat that feeling.

Having pondered on this topic for quite some time, I finally realized that one doesn’t really need a solid answer as to why he/she writes. And maybe that’s why my cursory response to the question, “Why do you write?” was “Because I can”.