I am a BIHARI

Pandit Nehru once said,"I am an Indian first and an Indian last". Our own-love me or hate me but you can't ignore me star SRK-refused to hear the names of the states in Chak De. Many more instances from life-both real and reel-go on to add to the same flow of notion without really making a difference on pragmatic grounds. I belong to the list of defaulters here. I am at fault but I was not always like this, not atleast when I started off, not when I was born and not when I took it on me to see the world through one eye for the sake of equity of vision. I was born little more than two decades ago in erstwhile BIHAR and thats how I began.

I was very bright when I went to kinder garden, but then who isn't? Its like half of India playing better cricket than Sachin Tendulkar. Did I understate? I started off in an english medium school only to switch to hindi because that apparently was the more convincing way of studying mathematics and by hearting those multiplication tables! I was not even four when I was almost programmed to know the aim of my life. Yes, you people are right, I was supposed to become an IAS officer. Bloody hell, the dream got embedded to such depths that it still takes lucid forms at times!

But life moved on and with it the dream moved as well. An IAS officer to a scientist and what not! Included that short lived dream to be a cricketer; though it didn't get the sort of appreciation that I was expecting after I revealed it. There is a famous theory in Organizational Behaviour which says that the chances of realizing a goal increases by 50% once it is revealed or made public. Only in my case it was crushed and beaten to pulp. Though my parents got me a full cricket kit which included a Sanspariel Greenlands bat from Calcutta, it was more to motivate me to study harder than to make a Sachin Tendulkar out of me.

My life was rather sedate, there was hardly any element of fun or adventure in it. Also I never realized that I had a jinx of birth associated with myself. In due course of time, I passed standard twelfth. And by then I was ordered to be an engineer, preferably, from some IIT. There is a special respect for any institution or job which begins with the word "Indian" back there. Well, I moved to the Indian capital to pursue my dream. That was a very big city I landed foot into. For the first time I saw roads so wide and buildings so high. I could only gaze in wonder and gasp for breath from time to time. The city promised to promise a lot and deliver a little. What a pessimist Am I even today! I never had that free and liberated mindset to do what I wanted to do. I lacked in courage and will. I was loaded with fear and apprehensions instead! I failed in the big city. I still try to figure out for myself if I failed myself or the city failed me? Were my dreams fragile enough or was the city that hard? Whatever it may be I was a brand of failure than success, a matter of insult than respect. My lovely acquisitions from the great land of dreams. A dreamer with the pulp of his dreams, irony!

Not only this, I got the first taste of discrimination in the big city. The first ever opportunity in my life which made me realize that I have to live with something I am hardly responsible for. The curse of birth as they put it in some places in the books of literature. Banters which pertained to my funny way of speaking my mother tongue and the alien language (read english) were the primary things of target. I realized I had to be something big to get ahead of them or to let go what is my own. Letting go what was my own is not that great a thing to achieve, not in my dictionary at least. So bitter as it might sound, reality was there for the taking and I took it right on my chin. I bled profusely. I wiped it up and moved. I sometimes sit and think I have been mostly a Nomad in my life, I have moved on pretty frequently.

This is how I built upon those pit holes what are the buildings of today. I sure still have that feeling and it goes on to hurt. It pinches and my muscles flex but I have to control them. It acts like an old twisted ankle which can never take a jerk on its own. But I live on. I read the constitution of our republic and I feel proud about it. I go deep into it and I feel I have been deprived of somethings at some points in time. But I let go. I let go because I am still intact with the core I began with. I added on quite a bit. I let go because there has to be a start where you let go and start reading and following those great men who saw a dream. Like me even they were dreamers. My dreams, remember, I had their pulp with me. I have managed to transit them to realities. Back from the pulp, I call them now. I look up, in the sky and feel liberated today because I can think and I can smile about the battles I lost and the recoveries I made. I owe it all, to you, my land!