“Allah ke bande has de, Allah ke bande....
Allah ke bande has de JO BHI HAIN KAL PHIR AAYEGA..."
The song couldn't have come at a more appropriate time for me. I was down and out. I had nothing but negative emotions surrounding me, stabbing me from every angle possible, and drowning me in knee-deep water. I was compelled by myself to see the ‘glass-half-empty’ rather than watching it ’half-full’. I was at my negative-best. Sometimes one failure is good enough to take us into deep deep shit. This shit is created by our own mind, so we can’t even get away from it.
I had failed to pass the most important exam of my life. This exam means my life to me. I have spent two years of my life now just to be eligible to compete. Last year, I had it close; close enough to squander the chance at the most opportune time. Maybe Life doesn't give second chance. So I was a fool to miss the first chance. But I felt that as I was that close in the first attempt, I deserved to get a second one. When that second one came and went, I didn't even understand. It was like in a flash of a second something struck me bad.
One bloody line conveyed it to me- "Sorry, your name don't figure in the list of successful candidates." (In the tragedy of that moment, I still noticed the grammatical error committed in the sentence most tragic to me. What to do? Can’t change the wiring of the brain.) Some SORRYs help to cool down your hurt ego while some help to console you. I didn't understand what this SORRY did to me. It did a bit of both while also bringing some of my 'inflated' ego down.
So there I was, in between a thousand emotions which arise from various questions engulfing me. Questions like- “What went wrong? Didn't I prepare well? Wasn't I able to handle the pressure? What next? Is there enough fuel left in me to undergo the same pressures all over again? Is there enough PATIENCE (the biggest casualty of all this process) left?” I didn’t know the answers. I just kept staring nowhere. I got severe headache. For the first time in my life, I had to apply balm to my head and switch off the lights to sleep, which also got so hard to come to such an obsessive sleeper like me. This was all still the easy part. The difficult part started the next morning...
I started to read an article on some ‘CWG corruption’ issue from the newspaper. I had a habit of noting down important points from any article which I felt necessary for the exam. I started to make mental notes of the issue given when it suddenly struck upon me that “It was all futile.” If at all I get a chance to write about this issue next time in exam, it would be directly one-and-a-quarter year later by which the said issue may get irrelevant. It dawned upon me that all this while of the last one year whatever I have studied is plain futile. No other feeling frustrates you more than the feeling of FUTILITY. What added to the frustration was the fact that “I was better prepared this time to face the test than the last time.” I had managed to iron out the loopholes which had rendered me inefficient last time round. I had studied my mistakes and taken steps to prevent them but alas... After a closer analysis of ‘what-actually-went-wrong’, I was disturbed worse. Going into the exam, what I had marked out as my strength actually brought me down. It was no mean strength. It was as if after 4 hours of uninterrupted tennis, at a crucial point of saving the match, Roger Federer was let down by his strongest shot i.e. his forehand. It is as horrifying as it is to watch his forehand come crashing into the nets.
Other disturbing part is to reply to the consoling messages from friends or talking to the family members whose demeanor kept changing from something like “End-of-the-world-for-you” to “Its-ok-there-is-always-a-next-time”. As they say, THE GREATER THE EXPECTATIONS, THE GREATER THE HEARTBREAK. Sometimes, the heartbreak really gets impossible to handle.
So, where and how you go from here? How you pick yourself up from this mess? Is ‘time’ the best solution or some inspiring words?
At this point, if some song like “Allah ke bande” falls on our ears, it gives the best feeling in the world. It explains us so subtly that whatever was there to come will come by again. We should stop ruing the ‘what-could-have-been’ factor and begin to smile as the world is not over and we are not effortless. Maybe we’ll have better chances; maybe we’ll be able to achieve bigger things than the what-could-have-been. It is just up to us to change this ‘maybe’ into ‘definitely’. What’s needed is “optimism”. Only optimism is what can rise us up from our most pessimistic view. After all, as I had read somewhere,
“Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it’s exactly like love in three ways: it’s pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it..!”
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