The Romance

Hazaaron Khvaahishen aisiin ki har Khvaaish pe dam nikale
Bahut nikale mere armaan lekin phir bhii kam nikale

Hazaaron Khvaahishen and each one special. Beautiful.

On a tangent, or perhaps not. I love the romance of not knowing what you want to do in life. The ideal is to live each moment with grand ferocity and grander passion. Way leads to way.

A man who started out as being a sound technician at the local radio station. Then got enlisted and worked as sound engineer in the navy for a bit. After the war, went to University and after graduating, joined a travel and tourism company, in-charge of designing and executing marketing campaigns for holiday destinations. Did well. Was sent to many exotic and far-flung locations to build campaigns there. Left the company. Started a consulting enterprise of his own. Struggled. Persisted. Built credibility. No job was too small. No job was unimportant. Many years, projects, magnificent successes and Herculean mistakes later, he was traveling the world - imparting the pearls of his well-earned wisdom to some-keen-eyed-some-not-so-much students.

Do we belong to the generation that demands us to know exactly how life will turn out? Where all B-school forms have questions on ‘long-term’ and ‘short-term’ goals. Phrases such as ‘logical reasoning’ and ‘clarity of thought’ are bandied about. Where you are not only expected to know where the yellow-brick-road of your life is leading to, but also to change the course of that road to lead to your, well, long-term goal.

Yes, we live in those times. And it has its moments. But I yearn for the romance of not-knowing. And I revel in it.

I started my walk at the foot of the hills
With a mellow sun for company
The undulating landscape had me arrested
I never realized when I left behind my narrow confines

I saw new kind of birds
And tasted strange berries
I danced a bit keeping time with the spring
As it made its way down somewhere, to the sea

I met other travelers, some were old
They all gave me beans
For every bean that made me feel funny
There was one that filled my dreams with music

It was a strange walk
And when evening came
I didn’t know where I was
I knew I wasn’t the same

Of all my great adventures, this was the greatest
Because the journey was as beautiful
As the knowledge of having reached someplace
Even more breath-taking than what I had set out to