An Essay On Courage --- 15 Marks

Courage - is defined as a human character shown in the times of adversity when the odds and evens are against the subject. Quite true, infact.

I read this wonderful story, somewhere in a magazine, about a student whose courage really taught me the definite definition of Courage.

Here's the story :
The classroom was having a pin-drop silence. All because there was this dreaded final exam going on. The English subject had a questionnaire which required the writer to ink an essay of about 400 words(15 Marks).

Students were almost writing like workers in a factory as if one-minute break would devoid them of their life. Ding-Ding rang the bell and there was this hue and cry everywhere to finish the papers as fast as possible.

All the answer sheets were collected and amply submitted to the invigilator. This was actually the exact time when students feel that air is the sole reason for humans to survive. But until those 3 hours, it was the successful completion of paper being the prominent reason to survive.

Coming back to the story, the essay was about a topic which read "What Is Courage" with the additional prerequisites of having atleast 400 words description. All the papers were communicated to the English professor. As he was correcting the papers and giving them their due marks, he saw one paper which outdid and outclassed all others in the essay section.

Every student had written a voila of words for describing the traits and exactness of Courage but one student had crossed the limits of brevity. Any guesses as to what this student had written for the essay. He wrote only 3 words and those words were :


"THIS IS COURAGE"

Remembering Dakiyawala

Indian Postal Department --- When was the last time you had heard about it, in its real sense. Yes, I am talking about the mails which we used to get in our homes during the days when Tim Berners Lee (The supposed inventor of the revolution called "World Wide Web) was not famous and we were not having flora and fauna of technological inventories like mobile phones and Electronic Mails around us.

I still have some vivid memories of the Khakhi clad - Postman, which we had back to my growing-up place in Dhanbad, Jharkhand. He would come in a cycle and his job was to bring us mail, money orders, telegrams, New Year greeting cards and you know what was the reason I remembered him the most. I remember him because he was my sister, for he used to tie Rakhis to all brothers who didn't had sisters(Of course "Bhaiya mere Rakhee ke bandhan ko Nibhana" wala song happened to be a mismatch in our case). Well, that seemed funny but was quite a remarkable thing to happen to me especially on that day. This continued until I had some real-sisters to tie Rakhis to me.

I wanted you all to just spend a few moments for the surprise element which our Postman used to carry in his baggage. The moment he opened our house-gates, there was this feeling of excitement as to whose mail it would be. We would then see the Sender's address and then quickly open the mail to read its contents. All of us would sit down and listen to the reader, either my Papa or Mummy, for most of the times, it was written in Malayalam. And it took some time for me to learn to read and write my language.

And probably the busiest traffic month for the Postman would be in December, when he would be bringing flurry of New Year Cards to our homes. He used to bring good news, sometimes bad, but nevertheless the stature, the spontaneity his legend("Legend" word came here 'cus I recently saw "I Am Legend" - Will Smith) carried in our lives would remain intact in my memories forever for reasons galore.

Rancholization -- Process of Living Lives

The talk of the town is 3 Idiots. How on earth can an idiotic film amass such revenues that such a big Bollywood archive of films were unable to reach.

Rancchoddas "Rancho" Shyamaldas Chanchad, the engineer who happens to live life simple before it even thinks to make it complex. His thinking was straightforward : to enjoy the moment. If you just happen to listen to this song carefully --- the "Behtee Hawa Sa Tha Woh" one, one could easily relate to the breeze in the song. If you really want to enjoy the song to the fullest and make your brains do some arithmetic and geometric calculations then in the song, wherever we have "Woh", replace the word with the picturization of ourselves (still on the laps of our Dad and Mom). Think as to how we used to marvel at the small things that used to slide in front of our eyes and how we used to feel the real meaning of "E-N-J-O-Y".

The one other USP about this Rancho was his way of making heart a fool by always making it understand, despite the dire situations inherent, that "ALL IZZ WELL". That, in turn, does makes things work less direly than expected. It was a very good gesture followed or in fact, to-be-followed to make things seem less complexualized.

A worth watch if we can capitalize on what Phunsukh Wangdu wants to convey to us.

Dancing Feel Good Tryst

Have you ever wondered what smiling, indeed, is all about. Well, it is one of the most beautiful state-of-existence every one of us wants to be all the time. But it doesn't happen so quite often. Right?

I have always been wondering how one can prolong this state for more days and months and years and not the other extreme i.e. for hours, minutes and seconds. Its like a Sudoku puzzle with the 3 Levels : Easy, Medium and Hard. Sometimes, its so simple, sometimes, its so not-so-simple and sometimes, its not-at-all-simple.

On the other day, I was watching Dance India Dance, a program telecasted in Zee TV. There was this guy named, Yashwant from Rajasthan, whose sheer innocence and charisma, pounded my heart to beat atleast 3 beats faster for sometime. There was this-something in him, which made me wonder "If there are more people like him, I wonder whether Oxford dictionary alikes would be able to maintain the word 'Sadness' in their word-list for a long time"

This is what happened :
Yashwant from Banswada(Rajastan) gave his audition. He has done all his practice from TV. His dream was to meet the judges of the show and see them through his live eyes. When he came to the stage, his eyes were showing the excitement on seeing the judges. When the audition ended, the judges were of the view that he should come next year. His response was something which made me think and remember him for a long time for the smile he carried throughout :
"Sir, main rajastan ke ek chote se shahar se hoon. Maine practice sirf aapko TV pe deh dekh kekeeya hai. Main sahee mein truly bol rahaan hoon kee main yahaan ke layak naheen hoon. Kyonkee iss program ka level bahut ooncha ho gaya hai. Mera sapna tha kee main aapko real mein dekhoon. Jab aap bahar bheed mein se aa rahe the, tab main aapko haath bhee naheen de paaya tha. Main aapko promise karta hoon sir, kee agle saal aur mehnat ke baad pheer aaonga. Bus ek request hai sir (there was a cap which he used for the audition). Agar aap yeh topee mere sar pe takdeer ke topee samajh ke pehnaa de (Actually, the person who gets selected gets a cap from the judges as a token, called 'Takdeer Kee Topee') to mujhe…."

Forget all the above conversation, what was evident from his face was that his was a character who deserves to be applauded for being so simple and straight. The judges, of course, applauded him and gave him his version of takdeer kee topee and said they can’t forget him. And the guy went out with the same genuine smile with him.

Sometimes a small deed, a small gesture, would make us think about the different facets of the people. I just wanted to capture this beautiful one in writing, less it shoves away in the sands of time.

Faith Walks

Some stories turn your heads towards them. Because they have something in them which makes you think "Wow!!!This is something !!!".

As told by Jude Stringfellow(the owner):
Faith was rescued by my son Reuben on January 21, 2003, when he and his friend Johnny, the owner of Princess, jumped over the fence of the flea market area that Princess was raised to guard. Princess wasn't exactly the mothering kind. She was literally terminating Faith's life because she knew instinctively that Faith was unable to battle the other puppies for a place to feed. Faith was weak, small, runtish, and mostly she was nearly dead. Reuben grabbed Faith out from under Princess and smuggled her under his jersey.

When Reuben brought Faith to us she had 3 actual legs, but the left front leg was badly deformed, placed backward, upside down, and it had more toes on it than normal dog legs. The leg was removed when she was 7 months old when it began to atrophy

Her owner, Jude Stringfellow, using a spoon with peanut butter as an incentive taught Faith to hop but Faith decided on her own to walk.



And the sentence which I want to emphasize again and again is "Faith decided on her own to walk". She walked her life with her. Let us all Live and Walk Our Life the way it should be.

A Feel-Good Tryst

On Dussehra, I went to my brother's place. It was quite an enjoyful experience. Would like to narrate one small incident which happened in the midst of all the hue and cry. We all went to Ayyappa temple on the occasion of Dussehra to get the much needed and never-ending yearning of blessings.

After paying our homages to the God, we went straight or rather our bikes paved itself to the Idli-Dosa stall nearby. We ordered masala dosas and were engulfed into tasting the yummy-crispy food in our plates. Just then this guy came and ordered for himself the same menu as was ours. Nothing unusual uptil now.

Here comes a lady who was begging for some alms. She went to this guy asking for some favours and without a hesitation guess-what this guy did. He asked her as to whether she wants something to eat. She said she wanted to have some vada-sambar. He promptly gave the order and gave the vada-sambar plate to the lady.

That was quite a different aspect of helping street beggars. In this way, you feel happy and the receiver is also happy. Had it been a child (God forbid) then giving a small chocolate to him/her would be the best thing you would feel about yourself. Its just a way of taking things in a different way. If you really wanna help, give them something to remember or something to cherish....you may never know it could bring the much needed smile to their lips and the best part -- it would bring smile to your lips....think about it and try it

Underestimate At Your Own Risk

A lady, in a faded gingham dress and her husband, in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the Boston train. They were to meet the President of Harvard University. When they reached the venue, by seeing their simple attire, the secretary was in a dilemma as to whether she should pave them in to meet her boss.

For hours the secretary ignored them but their determination of not-to-budge-until-meet-the-President attitude finally took them inside the The Cabin. The President obviously was not entertained by seeing them in such a simple and un-sophisticated look but gave them some time to listen to their say.

The parents had a son who had attended Harvard for 1 year. But was accidentally killed in a mishap. As as he was very happy during his short stay in Harvard, so they wanted to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on the campus.

The President was shocked. And said "We can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.” The lady said "Oh no, we were thinking of giving a building to Harvard in his memory". The President rolled his eyes and said "“A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have overseven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard.” The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, “Is that all itcosts to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own?”Her husband nodded.

Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away traveling to California where they established the memorial of their son and you guessed it right...it is Stanford University.

The authenticity of this story is still debated but whether fake or real, it indeed is a good story for us to consider that no matter how small or insignificant a person may look like or be in his nature, Never ever can anyone in this universe estimate the true self of simplicity. For if you do so you would end up surprising yourself more often than not.

Carrying Things In Paradise

Sometimes, we carry things for more time than we should. Quite a simple story to illustrate this:

Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other bank. She thanked him and departed.

As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"
"Brother," the second monk replied, "I set her down on the other side, while you are still carrying her."

You see the woman could be replaced by virtually anything in this world ---- all depending on the way we take and perceive things. We have our own way of living life. Now the main thing which I am trying to stress is as to how much time we keep less-important things in our paradise(Our Mind) and for how long. Because the more we keep it, the more we delve into unnecessary chasms of irregularities

Just Another Unbelievable Story

We all love commentaries...be it cricket or football or tennis (they are the livewires who makes our adrenaline rush to its allowed limits though it often crosses while watching).....the likes of geoffrey boycott, harsha bhogle are many....and we have Dean du plessis.

Now who on earth is this guy --- I am quite sure that until today you would have joined me on the whereabouts of this hitherto anonymous name. This guy is a superb and brilliant commentator, he is one of his genre....the way he comments with precision and accuracy about the ongoing live cricket war on field is unbelievable.....the last word is not a typo because--- he is blind

Dean du plessis - a Zimbabawean commentator is all about self-belief and what it could do to your inner self. Wired up to the stump microphones, he can tell who is bowling from the footfalls and grunts, a medium or fast delivery by the length of time between the bowler's foot coming down and the impact of the ball on the pitch. He picks up a yorker from the sound of the bat rumming down on the ball, can tell whether the ball is in on-side or off-side and when it has hit pad rather than bat.

He cant deliver bowl by ball passage but works with the anchor. He has already shared the podium with Ravi Shastri, Geofrey Boycott, Tony Cozier and Bruce Yardley. This is quite an ardent display of believing what you are and to pursue your dream to the end and keeping that come-what-may-i-will-damn-reach-the goal attitude. Time to look inside us and rejuvenate those latent or made latent dreams to prop up and see the light of the day with some never to die vigors.

Making a Difference

Sometimes we come up with a brilliant and noble idea but when it comes to the execution part, which unfortunately is the most difficult part, we start thinking that we as individuals would not carry a say or for that sake, it doesn’t make any difference to others because that act may not be big enough to come into view. But in the larger sense, it is.

A beautiful story to keep up our momento intact, in doing good all the time, howsoever small the magnitude of the action may appear to be as it does a invaluable difference in the long run---to someone else.

My friend was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As my friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had washed up on the beach, and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. My friend was puzzled.

He approached the man and said. “Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing.”
“I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see its low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen.”

“I understand,” my friend replied, “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?”

The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, “Made a difference to that one!”