Dreams that never materialized

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 10^th and 12^th, 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.