Destiny, where are you?

If the Scientist community invented a time machine and asked you to go to the places of your past, where would you go?

To your childhood days where there are only games and fun? or

To your school days and visit your first love, may be your school teacher or a classmate? Or

To your teenage where you felt yourself as top of the world?

Well, if I was given a chance there are few persons I would visit.

I would go back to my tenth class teachers and would ask them “You told me that if I got a good percentage in tenth, my life would be settled and I can relax. I secured very good percentage but as soon as I entered intermediate I had to study again” I would ask them why they lied.

Then I would go to my intermediate days and ask them, you said, “Secure a seat in good engineering college and you have reached your destination, but as I entered engineering I had to start studying again.”

And then I would go to my engineering professors and so on..

Did they cheat us? I honestly don’t think so; if they haven’t told us like that we would have never strived to excel in our younger days.

But I always wondered when can I relax thinking that I have finally reached? Where is my destiny? How will it be revealed to me?

Some say your destiny is where you find happiness, satisfaction etc

But I find them in many things, how to finalize one among them?

Fortunately life gave me a clue.

It was the year 2009. I was in my BTech 3rd year. Our classes end at 3:30 pm and as the class of that day ended, one of my classmates came to me and asked, “Gopi, have you paid the semester examination fee? Today is the last day.”

Then it came to me that I forgot to pay examination fee. Now I have a challenging task before me. The time is 3:30 pm and the bank in our campus will be closed by 4 pm and the highlight, I have no money!

I have to go to an ATM, draw the money, come back to the campus and pay the fee in the bank and all of this has to happen in ½ hour. The ATM is just two blocks away from our college. I thought I can manage even if I go on foot. So I started walking. On the way I entered a busy street and its then something happened.

I saw two boys playing with an old car tire. They are rolling the tire on the road and running along with it. This is a pretty common scene. But there is a third boy.

This one is different. You would recognize it as soon as you saw him. Society calls him “mentally challenged”. He is running behind those two boys and also maintaining some distance from them. Having a chance to enjoy with them at least from a distance overwhelmed him with such joy that he put his entire tiny hand into his mouth and is biting it hard. He is jumping, shouting, laughing and is doing all these things at the same time.

Time passed. It just passed. I lost track of time. It was such an innocent, pure, joyful moment!

By the time I became conscious of myself, I realized that I am standing in the middle of the street and I don’t know how much time has passed. I was just present!

There is never such a moment in my life! Neither had it happened before nor even after that. I witnessed something that made me joyful without any reason. Is it innocence of the moment? Is it the celebration involved in that moment? Is it the simplicity of the moment?

I think it has everything and that child told me where my destiny is! I started being more close to children and teens. I started observing how nature and nurture interplay and shape their character. I realized making them happy is what made me happy. It also became clear to me that destiny is not a place where I have to reach, rather it’s a journey.

At last I found the direction of my journey.

And yeah, forgot to mention, I missed the last date of paying my examination fee...:D