“Main padhonnga, likhoonga aur ek din bahut bada doctor banoonga” (I
shall read, write and someday be a good doctor). Somehow the line stuck and I decided
to be a Doctor. The problem was I was not meant to study. Back in the day, I
remember this being the slogan of my country, India’s, literacy campaign and
how it piqued my interest, thereby making me decide to be a Doctor. Later I
thought studying till you breathe your last was the norm in the field of
medicine and incidentally, yours truly was never wired to connect with studies.
They say, when God sends
you down and gives you some qualities, he measures which ones you would
actually need. In my case, he must have thought, “You will be born in a middle
class background in a country that is obsessed with education. So, here are the
qualities I want to give you. Take intelligence, honesty, determination,
perseverance, incandescent talent of course and the will to study.” But just
when he was giving the last quality, I think I ran to the bathroom.
Every night when I go to
bed, I envisage my tomorrow to be better than my yesterday or today. Tomorrow
will begin the new phase of my life. From tomorrow, I will study for at least a
few hours just like most around me are doing right now. But that ‘tomorrow’
never comes and this goes on and on until I realize that I’m good at making
such bumper decisions. It’s late and I
slowly slip into a Good Night’s sleep.
It’s not that I do not
want to study. I do want to. You see, I’m a hopeful sprig of 28 and high on
capabilities. I can sit on a couch like an atom of dust with my books open and…
It’s just that God missed giving me the quality of learning something from my
study materials. If only he had thought, “You do the studying and I’ll be the
brain!” Anyhow, no sooner I sit down to
study than something really important creeps in. For instance, “Oh my god, I did not watch that
movie trailer yet!”; “Oh I had to make that phone call!” or sometimes even the
fact that “my water bottle is empty, it needs to be refilled. Let me first do this and then I will study.”
And these small but important tasks lead to another keep piling on and hours
pass by before it’s time to do something more important again.
The flair that I have to
avoid studies, the expertise with which I do this job and the commitment I show
towards not studying is commendable. If
only I had these toward something more meaningful - like not opening my mouth
to tell people the truth because they hate it - would have done me so good.
This post just happens to
come at a time when I had a much needed holiday. I had decided to study from morning through the
night but failed to open my book till 8:15 PM. At 8:15 I decided to study and
then thought its 15-20 minutes post which I will have to go for dinner. Ergo, I
will study post dinner. By the time I
was done with my supper and other important things, it was time to hit the sack
and as usual I decided, “From Tomorrow I will…Pakka”
Cheers!