LIFE MOVES ON....

I was sitting in my room in the afternoon, with the warm sun making its way through the window…. Just a day before, the Mains results had poured in. I came to know, that many of the guys I knew, had made it…but most didn’t! Jubilation and gloom prevailed. As I turn back the pages, I remember, most of us having gone through a similar feeling a year back…Arms in prayers, nervousness writ large on our faces, an abominable lull prevailing all around…often punctuated by somebody needlessly predicting that the results would be out in a few hours from now, parents excitedly moving around the house, friends waiting with bated breath…and then the D-moment arrives! Lo and behold…there is jubilation or gloom, celebration or despair! That is what life is actually centered around. (I really wonder how many of us can reappear in the exam…and pass through the harrowing process again!)
Taking our success in the stride and not cribbing about the things around, is the magic potion of life. A Greek philosopher once said, joys and sorrows are the two sides of the same coin. Iqbal echoes the same thought as,

‘Kyun parishaan hai tu…kai jahaan aur bhi hain’

(Why do you despair, there are many more worlds).

Ghalib again reiterates the idea as:

‘Qaid-e-hayaat aur ranj-o-gam asl mein donon ek hain,

Maut se pehle aadmi gam se nijaat paye kyun’
(Life is synonymous with the vicissitudes of happiness and sorrow,

why then should man be dispirited?)

The essence of our existence lies in moving on, as Raj Kapoor once said: The show must go on. If we reminisce a little bit, as youngsters, the earliest challenge before us, was to score well in our High School exams, then came the mighty Twelfth Standard exams….Thereafter, life suddenly threw us out of our slumber, forcing upon us the arduous task of choosing our career. Our decisions were followed by competitive exams or beelines before Delhi University colleges or endless struggles to get into premier institutions of the country. Life moved on.. We then decided to appear for the civil services examinations. (More often by compulsion than by default !)…certainly, the rest is history. But did life stop there for us? It moved on….the hopes against hopes to get a rank good enough to be in the top echelons, the silent yet desperate prayers for a suitable cadre, the heap of assignments and reports in the academy and so on….But then, all of us know, life…
More struggles are to follow ahead for each one of us. Even if we follow the law of averages, the best has been mostly on our side so far! Its akin to catching the right train to reach our destination…but the destination is still in the wilderness…yet to come. Our job is challenging, no doubt. It requires a mix of intelligence, smart work, innovativeness and commitment. It is a balancing act, but that doesn’t suggest we fall into the dungeons of mediocrity. Its while we perform our entrusted duties, we need to enjoy every moment. (pata nahin kal ho na ho!) Jubilation and despair are human tendencies. Or as Kahlil Gibran says, these two demons shall remain with us…
-ZUHAIR BIN SAGHIR