Fly like a seagull ...with your feet firmly on ground

It has become awkward to crack those ‘life sucks’ and those ‘I am an underachiever’ jokes

Success is like a heady cocktail. And for first time drinkers, it can give a very bad hangover in the morning if not handled properly. My mom is a Hindi teacher in a high school nearby and she has a way to share her wisdom through one-liners, which she seem to have for almost every situation in life. I have grown up learning from these adages. This is what she told me the day after I got my ISB admit.

“Udaan jitni bhi unchi lo, dhyan rakho ki pav zameen par hi rahe” ..which translates to (However high your flight maybe, keep the feet firmly on ground)

Message is loud and clear. I had long believed that modesty can be seen as one of the most attractive qualities in a person but it is not something everyone can enjoy. Not everyone is eligible to be modest. You need to posses something worth praise in the first place before you can be modest.

When he was not the star he is today, Shahrukh khan could easily stand on the seashore and shout “ill rule this city someday” and nobody thought it was immodest of him to proclaim that. It would be a different matter if he does that today though.

It has been around 3 weeks since I seem to have ‘become someone’. Yeah I know it sounds funny but that is what I keep receiving congratulations for….’becoming someone’ (‘good for you, akhir kuch ban hi gae”). It feels good to know that someone acknowledges your efforts but at the same somewhere it sounds insulting. It would really suck if my only identification from here on will be that I went to ISB

I am not sure how this next year is going to change me. I am going to be in company of some very intelligent minds, going to encounter some very different schools of thoughts and am scared of what will I bring to the table for everyone's consumption. I am sure each and every one present in that batch will be an achiever in his/her own rights and each will have an interesting story to share. The oppurtunities to know, to share, to grow, to fall will be immense. I expect to learn and unlearn a lot of things from everyone but amidst all the noise which is going to engulf me in next one year, I hope I will still have the strength to make those quite conversations with myself time to time. Keep reminding myself of what defines me, and what has been important to me. I hope I will manage to maintain an identity, an identity which will be independent of the college I attend, courses i chose, groups I associate with, job I get or friends I make. The me, when no frills attached, the person me.

Year 2009 has given me a lot, personal and professional, and in many ways changed my life. Year 2010 will be a test to see how I handle those changes. For a while it had been an empty room, a wandering treasure hunter, a long drive to nowhere, a fruitless tree. It will be interesting to see how things change when the room is filled up, the treasure is found, destination arrives and fruits weigh down the tree.

Funny how the more the number of fruits there are on a tree, the more it stays closer to the ground.

thaati
PS: I should admit that it takes a lot of time for first time writer like to me to put together thoughts in a coherent manner and still I am not really sure if this can be called coherent. I can see that I have a lot to learn but with time I hope to improve. Hope I’ll be back soon.