Wooing the lady...

For as long as I can remember, I have been quite a whiner! Oh! Not the average, run-of-the-mill ones who cry for pastries and marks, but the rather sophisticated and pessimistic old woman who cries about nothing ever happening in her life! (Wow! I really hate myself, don't I?!) Lady luck is one mean woman who's always been on the other side of the road... Sadistically waving out to me from other's homes... Making me want to punch her hard in the face with all my might!

Be it sport, music, dance or drama I've always ended the race a millisecond behind the winners! And the word 'frustration' cannot even begin to explain the trauma i go through every time! i quite vividly recollect this one time in my tenth standard, when my teacher made the mistake of starting a debate in my class. She ventured to help us learn with the seemingly safe topic of, 'Are you lucky or is it hard work?' It soon boiled into a huge fight with girls from all divisions pouring in to substantiate both sides! (Obviously, being a girls school, rivalry ran deeper than a debate between the sides, but we shall look past that for now!) I was in the pro-hard work team (not by choice completely...more because my arch enemy was in the opposite camp!) and fought my lungs out on the battlefield there.

I quite convinced the majority of the population that without hard work, you'd have nothing to be lucky in. Destiny isn't a chord tied to your back anchored in some star above... it is the vision of our dreams and only hard work can get us there. While my opponents argued that just because there isn't scientific proof and mathematical logic to validate the presence of luck, you cannot ignore it. After all, none of us have seen God, have we? Yet we bow our heads to some unknown Power wanting to be heard and having the faith that we shall! I had, then, scoffed and made little of their attempt at bridging the gap between Lady luck and God but now, after a little more life and a little more (dare I say) maturity, I look back and wonder... Is luck just a figment of our imagination? A ready excuse for our failures? Or is there an Almighty chord that chooses our wins and losses? That makes us rich and poor? Or makes us champions or losers?

There have been many a times when you and I have been so confident of the hard work we put in, in accordance with the talent we possess! Yet, somehow, unbelievably the unexpected happens and we lose out! Be it a worse player being chosen for the team or a worse student topping the class, we've all beaten inexplicably at different stages of life. Maybe they are not because of a lack of hard work or skill but happen for a purpose. Maybe Lady Luck is His wing commander who flits in and out of our lives in an attempt to make us look Upwards and cry...cry, curse, thank, whatever...I mean most of the world's logic still cannot explain the bull run a guy has at a slot machine when it's not rigged! or your friend's miraculous win of a fortune at the lottery! Somethings in life are meant to be left a mystery...for us to look,observe and ponder...And when we reach where i am now, we can do little but give a shake of the head, a sly smile and look upwards and say, "Naughty naughty..."

Road to Pilani...

With a harassed mind and an anxious step,
We climbed aboard the train, a nervous wreck.
But as we began to sit back and chill
We let ourselves cheer the thrill
That joyfully ran down our excited spine
In anticipation of the week ahead and the time
For we were on our way to a week of fun
Fun, cheer and sport in the sun!
With the name of our college on our back
And energy such, that we never hit the sack
Marched forth, we did, singing our songs
For that one brief week, together we belonged
The mornings began with Baba Viratkha’s yoga classes
And Miss Cosmo began to enload the masses
We linked our hands and screamed us hoarse
And cycled around, and let joy take its course
Then came the time to ready ourselves for the sports
In style, led Mastur and Tendulkar, with their peculiar pose
We battled our hearts out on the courts
We won some; we lost some, as the maxim goes
But so engrossed we were in cracking jokes
On Dhoklu and Dhannan, that the loss didn’t evoke,
The pain one normally thinks will come
For we were more concerned about what would become
Of the new-found romance between Sir and Bakasur
Or no.8 and no.19 of the team next door
So, all in all, Sunil and Sujoy’s work came to fruition
For the days retired with a lasting sense of elation
And so, in peaceful bliss, the week passed by,
And we alighted at Mumbai, with but a tiny sigh!