It was
the summer of 2011 and I was off for a vacation to the mountains, to the
picturesque state of Sikkim, the land from where the most famous footballer of
our time, Baichung Bhutia hails from. I was in a SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle)
on those beautiful roads around the mountains. The river Teesta was flowing
from the mountains creating a symphony and the cool mountain breeze along with the
cacophony of the bird calls was a wonderful cocktail for both the body and the
soul. After the first couple of hours of the journey from New Jalpaiguri to
Gangtok, my mind slowly started wandering off to my childhood days. The past
7-8 years had been such a rush, getting through 10th and 12th,
going for engineering, tensions of future and suddenly it felt as if the days
of childhood were a memory of some other life. At this stage, my body had had
enough and it decided to shut my brain up and I was forced to take a nap.
The
following morning, the sunrise on the Kanchenjunga was a sight to behold, a
beauty so intense that you have to witness it to appreciate it fully. After
some hot tea and light tit bits I decided to walk on those curvy roads which
you only get in a hill station, after taking in all the fresh morning air that
I could, I started pondering on my childhood days again and I started thinking
of what I wanted to be as a kid, my first love was sports, chess and cricket to
be specific and I always wanted to be a great player someday, a hero who rises
from the ashes like a phoenix and wins the most important game of his life when
no one expects him to, as a kid the romance of the situation of a fallen
warrior defying all odds to save the day was just too enchanting, though I had
this feeling at a small scale as a kid, I couldn’t ever get to the level that I
wished for. And then when I was a bit older, I wanted to be an astronaut,
moving in the infinite space trying to find our origin, trying to find if we
humans are alone in a universe so enormous that our earth is not even the size
of a drop of water in an ocean.
The
years rolled by and reality of the world started dawning, I had to become an
engineer, though I was always wanted to be one, I didn’t actually know what
engineers do, I don’t think I still get actually what engineers do but that’s a
story for another day. My next love was writing and I used to write a lot as a
kid though they mostly used to be stupid adventure stuff inspired by some
author whose book I last read but I loved writing it all the same. As I was
walking on the street, too engulfed in these thoughts, a wafting smell of
butter on a hot allo ka paratha reached my nostrils and I suddenly realized I
was hungry, I went in and ordered 2 parathas and sat down on a chair below a
bamboo shed, and waiting for the parathas I started thinking where it all went
wrong, I am not a famous sportsperson, I am not an astronaut or I am not even a
struggling writer, would I have been happier being one of these?
This
is a question that I will never have a clear cut answer to. And suddenly as I
was looking at the enormous mountain range of the Himalayas, I realized it’s
not about what could have been, these were just childhood dreams which gave me
their fair share of thrills, even if I could have done one of these, there is
no guarantee that I would have been happier than I am today. It’s not about the
past coz its already gone, it not about the future coz we don’t know what it
holds, may be one of these days I will become a famous poker player, winning a
lot of tournaments and end up buying a space ship to go to space and meet
aliens and I might be posting my blogs from there having millions of people
reading it, who knows, so what I can really do is appreciate my present coz
that’s all I am sure of right now, my present- a gift… and at this very moment
a gift came for me, my hot allo parathas with a lot of butter, I decided to
jump into them and I was done thinking, I was going to appreciate my present
now which at that moment tasted very delicious.
