5 feet 5 inches and standing tall!

As a kid, I didn’t have many dreams about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I just went to school, secretly followed by my super intelligent dog whom I had to take back home after discovering her presence during the prayer meeting! I was neither clear about what profession I would get into (we hardly understand that you have to make money to live then!). But, if there was one thing I was clear about my future, it was NOT to end up as a Shorty! Though now I think that by being short, one could naturally be environmentally friendly. I’m not kidding! Shorter people would mean smaller houses (lesser wood, so more trees!), smaller vehicles (lesser fuel consumption, so lesser CO2), lesser food and water consumption, and if you think deep enough there will be a million things that they save and reduce. No matter what aspect of life you look at, shorter people are better for the planet, period.

I couldn’t analyze so well back then, since all I was reading, rather memorizing, were when a bunch of people fought each other, or what comes out when you multiply 15 by 23 (boredom I say!). All I prayed for, standing second in line during the prayer meeting, is for the guy in front to be hail and healthy every day. The problems didn’t stop there. I sat in the first bunch, so I couldn’t fall asleep during the lessons, and of all the things, the pretty girls in my class were taller than me! This continued for a while and over the years, the childishness in me gave way to more pressing issues during my engineering. Things like, how do I pass my exams without reading anything? How do I keep walking straight when I kick back four shots of vodka?

After four years of fun, I sat down to get serious. I tried to freeze the world and understand what it’s made of, the way it works, and the kind of people that make it work. I tried to pick role models, people I would really admire, people I want be. I sifted through the icons that I came across, but the only one I could truly revere……. is the master blaster. I was in awe, because this man kept the match alive for India no matter what the situation was, and it’s not just his excellence on the cricket field, it’s also the things he says and the things that brought him to where he is today. Things like the little Indian flag on his helmet, his century for India during the very next day his father died, comments like “I am a very proud Maharashtrian, but first, I am an Indian” for which he received a lot of mindless flak from Bal Thackeray, or the essence of what Harsha Bhogle said about him – the story of Sachin Tendulkar is not just about his talent, it’s also about his passion and an extraordinary work ethic.

The gist of what Sachin and Bhogle said, Indianness and work ethic, values that exist deeply within us, are what I guess are getting muddied in Indian society. It’s like having a telescope, but not being able to gaze at the stars because of hazy skies, or strangely, something like the way people understand ‘Jai’. Did you know that the Mahabharat was originally called Jai? That this great epic ends not with the Pandavas winning over the Kouravas, but with Yudhistira understanding what it takes to ascend to the Heavens? The word jai has a completely different meaning from the word vijay. In vijay, there are winners and losers, but in Jai, there are no losers. It’s a state where there is compassion, where things are in perfect harmony with the laws of nature. If people could only think what their words really meant before they said Jai Telangana or Jai Andhra or Jai Maharashtra or Jai whatever, may be they would have a better sense of what to do. Life is short, so is Sachin Tendulkar, but what life could grow into is only determined by how well we understand the word Jai, and whatever you add to this little word, doesn’t matter at all.