Wake Up India

“WAKE UP INDIA.
IT’S TIME TO NOT GO TO WORK.
IT’S TIME TO GET PEOPLE TO WORK FOR YOU.
DON’T BE AN ENGINEER JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A DEGREE IN ENGINEERING. DO WHAT YOU THINK YOU’RE GOOD AT. AND YOU WILL BE GOOD AT WHAT YOU THINK. START SOMETHING THAT’S YOUR OWN. WHERE YOU CAN’T BE SACKED. AND CERTAINLY CAN’T QUIT. START SOMETHING FOR AS LITTLE AS TEN THOUSAND. YOU DON’T NEED MUCH MORE THAN THAT. YOU DON’T NEED REFERENCES, POLITICIANS OR THE POLICE . ALL YOU NEED IS YOU. START. AND THEN TEN THOUSAND COULD BECOME THIRTY BILLION.IT’S TRUE. YOU CAN DO IT. YOU WHO’S READING THIS AD. YOU, SIMPLE, REGULAR GUY. LIKE IT HAPPENED ONCE, TO A SIMPLE REGULAR GUY. WAKE UP INDIA AND START DREAMING.”

- Today's Ecomomics Times Advt regarding The Economic Times AWARDS.

I too believed it in and I had always dreamt big, as big beyond possibility but failed. May be I started from the wrong place with wrong people.

Still Dreams don’t die.

I salute you all.

I feel so sorry for her. In this freezing cold crack of dawn, she gets up half-an hour before I do and prepares herself for the school. If time permits she can have a sip of tea and a couple of biscuits and rushes to the bus stand about a mile away. Most of the days when I am in the town I drop her on my motorcycle. But when I am off for some business trip, it turns out to be pathetic. When I think of the situation I do not know how does she manage all and pull her to the bus stand on time.

I think women can do it. Had it been with us men, we would be argumentative more than working and being on time and day after day we would be there with a hell lot of excuses. She pulls on all with ease and after that the whole day in school with piled up work and practically with no break she has her smile on face.

The day does not end for her so quick. The kids wait for her for tuition and then of course the household chore is there. Sorry dear, I try to help but I cannot. I keep admiring her instead.

Women in Indian middle class society are a mystery in themselves. Look around, you get to see so many good examples of balancing their home with their professional life and at the same time catering to all the quarters of social life. They keep pace with time and turn out to be the most modern of all. They are the pillar of our family, of our society and of the nation. They are the mother and architect of modern India.

I salute each and every women of India.

Leaving, My Siliguri

“Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.” - Robin Sharma

True, very true, I had always believed in it. I am leaving my Siliguri, the wonderful valleys and mountains, the rivers and rivulets, the morning sun and its warmth, the dew and its moist, the sweet stay with my best friend and a whole world around the place with my dreams. The dreams of whom I talked so much here. To pursue another dream, hopeful that is larger than what I am leaving behind. A new chapter to begin. Hope it comes true.

I was tired fighting for ten long years in this region with this futuristic profession. It was very tough. I couldn’t stand for another decade with my innovative plans. I required surviving the present to live for the future. The province, the state, the township is not yet prepared to receive this profession. The ideas that culminate in my world of thoughts die due to malnutrition of support. The system as well as the industry and hopes of the town doesn’t support us to survive. All of us those had dreamed to make Siliguri a better Siliguri, a modern Siliguri miserable failed. Failed in our own terms, in our own way. We were either too ahead of its time or too stupid to recognize and evaluate the circumstances, situation and time.

I learn from my mistakes and doesn’t wish to repeat the same but it is unfortunate that I have to leave my Siliguri. Adieu Siliguri.

Dreams set free.

Yes, I have to let her go.

At times when situation exacerbate its better we let her go for the time being. She cannot be caged lifelong just for my pleasure.

All the dreams that I have fostered over this years were really very close to my heart but there is a reality also which though I recognized but I never wanted to consider it. We have visited the zenith of our profession and in the recent future I do not think that we could do something drastically better. The ideas and thoughts that I had put together over the years for the industry is really a distant dream to be executed in my town. The market in our region is not yet developed to cope up with all this. True, its growing better.

Dreams are dreams and they truly don’t want to walk off. When they don’t, I have to. I have to move out to the destinations that give me the opportunity to bring my dreams into truth, see them make the news, create the waves once more. Judge and trust the situation that actually is. All the situations that were understood and believed are now to be accepted. Accepted to the core of my heart. Leave all and let me leave for my dream. See the smile back in my wife’s face. Bring back all the wonderful days we had spent together.

But the dreams I fostered since my childhood are definitely not going to die. Not at the cost of my miserable situation. Not at the cost of any thing on earth. My dreams have transformed to my dear wife as hers. The pain of leaving my dreams is creating more pain to her than its to me.

Hold on, our dreams are not dead yet.

Confined Dreams

The cell phone alarm wakes me up before sunrise in this shivering cold morning and unwillingly takes me out from the warmth of the blanket. My wife is already prepared for her school. With a scowl face I reluctantly pull myself out of the bed and push me to the toilet.

Rups is always after me, “Hey dear, please be a little faster, I will miss my bus.”

Panoplied with gloves, pullover, jackets jeans and shoes with army socks I feel myself a very brave man. I bike my wife to the bus stand and rush back to my small two room rented flat. I am now over with my days work. The next job is to fetch my wife back at 3 o’ clock.

Confined in my room with the lights on and surfing the whole day on unnecessary sites blocks my brain and keeps me away from all. The first few hours of the day I cannot open my window due to the fear of cold, later when I open, it is of no use as sunlight hardly gets in. When we finalized this flat for rent we never realized that sunlight will be so scarcely available.

Without regular pressure of job for months is such a pitiable feeling I never knew. Short assignments at irregular interval kept me busy, but the stumbling blocks that I faced one after another had put me into a back seat. I wondered day and night what I can do and what I cannot, what were the mistakes I made, what are the loop holes that I created in my business and what are the facts that I misapprehended that made me jobless for so long.

My dreams are still with me and at times when I see my peer group went far ahead of me those into service I wish if I had been there too. But something within me resists me, asks me to stay away and pursue my dream. I do not know will it ever come true or not but I keep on day dreaming. The four walls stoop over my shoulder and whisper in my ears, “Piklu, you will make it”. God knows!

The small spiral while lamp that hangs from the centre of my ceiling also teases me, taunts me saying that you are a big fool. Believing in yourself and pursuing your dream won’t come true. Come-on dear, change your set of mind and do something else, that can feed your family, that can give relief to your dear wife, that can bring smile to both of you and settle down in your life.

Dreams are still dreams, the doors and windows and the curtains, the wall hangings, the television all together laugh at me, make fun of me, taunts me, teases me. I close my ears with both my hands, close my eyes and try to hide my face between my thighs so that their laughter do not enter my ears but alas! all in vain. They scream so loud that in my dreams also I can hear them and spend my nights sleepless in the fear of hearing them and fearing that my dream may go lost.

I fostered my dreams since my childhood, how can I depart from her, how can I leave her go?