LUCK

I have seen many people around me saying how lucky or unlucky they have been in a particular phase of their life. But is it really luck that dictates our life?

It is said, “The harder you work, the luckier you get”. But does hard work always pay off? I have seen many of my friends working very hard, but failing to achieve the goal again & again. If they get luckier with more hard work, they should succeed, shouldn’t they? Then again I have also seen people succeed with minimum efforts. Now how do you explain that. Then people say that it is hard work that pays off in the long run & luck alone can take you only a small distance in the journey of life. Again this is something very debatable & controversial.

However, I feel that there is some kind of a divine power controlling luck. But then, this power is not under our control, is it? Luck & destiny do have a role to play but practically speaking, they are not everything. This is where, I believe, The Bhagwad Gita gives the best way out. It tells us to do our actions towards meeting the objectives & at the same time be detached from the result. Detachment is the golden word. Detachment from the result or fruit of our action allows us to overcome our fear of failure as well as the feeling of sadness that is bound to come if & when we fail.

So, at the end of the day we got to do what we got to do. I would say, do your job & forget about luck. That would be an easy way to keep our complicated life a bit simple, wont it ???

The Longest Journey Home…..

Long time since my last post. Hasn’t been easy all this time, but I guess that’s life & that’s how it goes. Have been kept busy though. First the project, then the report & then an incident which changed me & my life forever. I lost my grand mother recently. 17th of July it was, the day after the famous Car Festival. Wouldn’t like to go into the details here. What hurts me is that I couldn’t be there during her last journey. Never thought I would be so far from my family especially when I desperately wanted to be there with them. I had just finished having lunch at the office when my cousin called me up to give the news. I just couldn’t believe it. I was so shocked that I couldn’t even cry. I was in the process of completing the Summer Internship Report at that time. I finished the report within 2 days & took the train home on 19th July. The journey, of about 30-odd hours, seemed to be the longest one I had ever taken…..

As my home drew nearer, a part of me hoped that she would be there waiting for me. She was always there, waiting at the gate when I used to get late. She was always there, laughing at my stupid jokes. She was always there, seeing to it that everyone had taken their food. I still remember the day I was leaving for KGP. It was the first time I was leaving home for studies & she cried, telling me to take good care of myself & eat properly. I still remember how I missed her when I first entered the mess in SDS. The feeling of not having her to wait for me anymore still haunts me. As I entered my house, I could feel the emptiness & the silence in the air. My little cousin was very happy to see me. He pleaded to me “Please, will you stay till Granny comes back? She is coming back day after tomorrow you know. And then, we can play together”. I couldn’t say anything, I didn’t know what to say.

The house was filled with relatives & we had lots of work to do to ensure that the rituals were conducted properly. Things went on well & then the day to go back arrived. It was a Sunday morning, 29th July , 4:15 am. I got up on the train, with my elder cousin & still couldn’t believe what had happened. Reality fails to sink in even today. I guess it takes a long time for me to let go of something, but that’s how I am and I can’t change it. The tears keep coming every now & then whenever I am alone. They are there now when I am writing this, sitting in my room with all the lights off, still hoping that I could see her, one last time. How it changed me? I think it made me realize the importance of FAMILY. It is something you always want to come back to, be it after a hard day’s work, or even after a splendid vacation.

Grandma, we all will love you always. I don’t know where you are, but I hope that you are happy & looking upon us all the time. But I just hope you were there when I come back home again…….

It is my humble request to the readers not to comment on this post. Thanks a lot for being so understanding…