"Worrying is futile, remains the fact.
calm down, and let fate act.
sometimes you're dropped, sometimes you're lifted.
still you should value life, for you're lucky to be gifted."
*This viva thing*
©Vishal Mehra 2014-All rights reserved
"Bullshit
yaar, She didn’t ask us, jo hum padh ke aaye the,” says a frustrated friend,
who sacrificed his peace of mind, last night’s sleep and those sweet dreams
where he had a meeting with his latest crush, for the viva of a subject which
is not going to make any special contribution to his domain expertise (as per
the belief system).
“Ab Vishal fir se Status daalega, scored blah blah despite
getting fucked up sessionals,” says Vivek.
“Chod naa yaar, its hardly going to make much difference to
our pointers,” says an apparently cool dude (deep inside he feels: “kaash ek
aur answer Sahi de deta yaar”).
I too was feeling a bit low, as I expected to score a bit
extra through this subject, but I was normal, more or less, because I have had similar
viva exams for a number of times. Eventually, I also lost my calm, and the same
thought was now on my mind. “Are yaar, I
wish I could have answered a bit more, kaash wo pooch leti jo padha thaa. This
viva was the last hope that could be a contraceptive solution to my fucked up
sessional marks.” I thought.
On my way home, similar thoughts captured my mind, even
though I tried to keep my attitude positive.
“If I am feeling this negative energy just because of a small viva, what those
people must be feeling, who despite even more efforts couldn’t give their best
shot due to what so ever reason,” I thought.
I never cared about those shitty sessional marks, and this
carelessness increased after I saw people with average marks getting placed in
big MNC’s, performing better than those having higher scores in recent campus
placement session. But somehow today, I couldn’t escape this bubble of negative
energy. I tried recalling all those thoughts which made my attitude positive. “I cannot simply disturb my peace of mind
just because of a silly viva, many other such things are going to come my way,
and I shouldn't really allow such situations to break my firewall where these negative emotions are black listed.” I thought.
Drenched in this feeling, I kept riding my bike, and what I
saw next changed my perspective towards life forever.
” A man, who looked extremely poor, walking barefooted on
the concrete road under the charged sun carrying the dead body of his own child,
wrapped in a red coloured cloth. a man bearing the pain of losing a child in
front of his eyes at a very young age (probably 10-12), a man who didn't have enough money to conduct a
proper funeral for the child he lost, a man who didn't even have a shoulder to weep in the toughest of times a person can see, a man with shattered dreams, a
man who probably didn't get a chance to say goodbye to the one he loved the
most. “
For a moment I went numb. I did this thought experiment of
keeping myself on the place of that man for a moment. I had tears in my eyes
for I could feel the pain.
“And I was feeling sad
about a viva, was it really worth it!?” I asked myself.
My sadness seemed minuscule. I felt lucky for what I have in
my life. I thanked god for being kind enough. The same life seemed like bliss
to me now, but what was it that changed? The situation was same but perspective
had changed. I understood that happiness is not in the things or
materialistic stuff, rather it’s in the perspective and our perspective of being
happy changes to its exact compliment when we see others happier than us and we
feel lucky not to be in pain when we see someone in woe. We measure happiness
relatively though it actually is absolute.
When we see someone very happy, we say “kaash, meri life bhi
aisi hoti yaar,” What we don’t see is that in some part of our lives we are
also excelling them, and in some other part of their life they are also “not so
happier,”
 |
| By Cyanide77 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons |
It’s important to realize that, first of all, we shouldn't at
all compare our life to that of others, if at all done, it shouldn't disturb our
peace of mind just because someone is on a happier side. There are people who
are sadder, struggling with their lives more than we are. At least we should
be grateful for what we have, for those moments of smile, for those little things
money can’t buy, the real wealth.
