A start…

“The greatest battle lies within”

It has been one and half months since I have joined IIT-bombay. “Life is somewhere between quizzes and assignments” meets the usual question of “How is life??” from my friends (Probably the assignments come first and then the quizzes). Everyday “Maa” calls me and asks ” Are you good ?”. 

Why is it so difficult to start over?? Perhaps that’s why “Rudyard Kipling” in his famous poem “IF” mentions:

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings”

He just knew like I know now. Coming from the east, where the Sun and I shone brightly, it is difficult to be in shadows.

We never thought it would come to an end. We basked in the glory of sun for far too long. It gave us the false impression of a never ending summer. Gone are those days, when company of three other gentlemen kept me busy all day long, when homefood nourished me, when a warm blanket of mother’s love cared and protected me. We felt like invincibles then. The world was ours to take. Archimedes got replaced by “us”. His famous quotation looked like this:

“Give us a place to stand and we shall move this earth”

It is all quiet now in the western front. The shoulders which knew nothing other than pride have fallen. We all look for the answer to the following question:

“What will happen??”

But wait..There is something we have not noticed yet. There is a “will” somewhere in the question. Oh there is the answer to it. When we are worried about the future, we are not taking care of the present. We need to let go of onething that we will never have “control”. There is no starting or stopping. 

“A warrior doesn’t give up what he loves. A warrior acts. A warrior is not about perfection or invulnerabilities. He is about absolute vulnerability. That’s the only true courage”

We become something else entirely when we rise above the doubts of success and failure. I have let go the idea of control. There is no failure, no success. There is only learning. The occasional quiz is going to go bad. But that’s not the end of it. Life goes on. All we need to do is remember the principle: 

“Never leave a problem behind”

And the rest things will take care of themselves. About the “Sun”: The sun is always there. We just need to rise above the clouds. We need to take a leap of faith. We need to look for the stars. Not for ourselves, not for anyone, but for the man who from the day one believed on us, for the mother, who believes that her son is ready to take on the world. Let’s not let them down. Let’s just start..