Yeh Dil Maange More

Unending assignments, sleepy lectures, long studious hours spent in the canteen sporting unshaven, unkempt mawali looks, frantic project hunts (taiyar maal), running from pillar to post for photocopied notes, bluffing confidently in the vivas, scribbling incessantly in the papers, praying for that dreaded 50 percent deadline, cursing our luck for having landed in this godforsaken place - and just about everything that I did in the past two years has finally borne fruit. Landed up a job with Satyam Computers.

Sometimes what we believe are momentous times, the turning points of our lives just don't turn out to be so and sometimes some things just creep in so softly and slowly that they become an integral part of our lives before we realise it. Landing a job, having a girlfriend, buying a new car - all these acquistions seem predetermined. Things that are bound to happen sooner or later. They do mark the beginning of a new way of life but fail to induce any significant changes in an individual. And on the other hand - falling in love, finding a new friend, discovering a new passion - as I did for blogging, all can bring about momentous changes in an individual's persona, his life and his character.

Acquistions - material or otherwise serve only to fuel our desires for more. The mere act of possession brings alongwith itself truckloads of pain and sometimes for the uninitiated, shorts bursts of joy mingled with longer ones of "Give me more" demands. Both such joys and sorrows are slow poisons that corrode an individual into either a false sense of security or one of pessimism.

True joys and sorrows never appear in bursts. A feeling of equanimity helps us sail through these mighty waves of joy and emerge from the depths of despondency. This tranquility is present in an individual battered by the sorrows of his life. A person who realises that joys and sorrows are like clouds passing us by on our journey of life. He realises that the only true joy a man finds is not in transcending the clouds but in going by our work on earth with due diligence. A life spent towards improving ourselves will bring in all the requisite acquisitions as its byproducts.

The essence of all this can be summarized in what Lord Krishna said in the Gita. " Karmanye adhikarastu Ma Faleshu Kadachit." which means to work without expecting the fruits of our labours.