This Viva Thing

                          "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.

                                           *the end*
                     

Note: Vishal Mehra is a novice, be kind to report any grammatical error etc. if found, at mehra.vishal36@gmail.com