When I was in ninth-grade, I used to spend hours wondering why God created me on Earth? I could find no plausible answers, I was not the smartest, tallest, handsome, or even worst kid in the whole class. I wasn’t somebody people use to talk about (like my mom always wanted, and she still wants). I had no hidden talents or special powers (I always thought if I was given three wishes, my first one will be to become Superman, the second to have world peace and the third one to have three more). All-in-all I was a pretty average kid, with my parents always wanting me to study. (One reason I think I got through IIT and also, why I have to wear glasses.)
So to find an answer, I started reading the Gita (I’ve never finished it, yet I always plan to start again). But, a ninth-grader could hardly understand what is written in there. (or at least, an average guy like me couldn’t.)
Time passed, and I reached college. When you are not doing well in courses, you are surrounded by people lot more smarter than yourself, and a system that keeps driving home the latter point again and again. You find self-doubt sets in as an affliction, until it becomes a part of life. You know this is no good for your own good.
And so, I started to look for answers yet again. And this time, like a good engineering student using my rudimentary powers of logic and analysis - I came to the conclusion, that it is the life-duty of every human to every task that fate brings about in the best possible way he could. (Now you either hate me or love me or you are just confused.)
But life as they say is great (merciless, is a more fitting word) teacher. (Though I feel I have no rights to complain, comparing myself to majority of the world I feel I have a royal life). So you try to best in whatever you do - and pretty soon you realize that average joes’ like you are meant to be just that - “average” . So you might keep breaking your head (practicing) over all those maths sums and spend hours practicing your lines - but, the “best” you could manage would be a passing grade and a passing glance from your weekly crush. (An average joe definitely has the advantage of choosing from a wide variety of women for his crushes, ‘coz that’s where the buck stops)
Anyways so you realize that you are trying to do your “best” - but you ain’t having fun. Then it dawns on you that maybe that this is the world’s best kept secret - “Life is to have fun”. So you care less and less about your grades, and more and more about how to woo the next monthly crush. (Less stress on academic excellence definitely leaves more resources to be utilized elsewhere.)
Well when they said - “Life ain’t a bed of roses”, they weren’t even close. It’s more like Jassi said - “Life is a bitch”. So I get a couple of F’s and the heat from parents is on. Suddenly you are no longer a would-be Nobel prize winner (another of my mother’s ambitions), but a lazy-upto-no-good-careless-kid. Yet, I somehow post-graduated (thank’s ma for reminding, as if somebody else cares!) and got me a great job. (Well, it became average once I actually stepped into the office.)
But unlike college, time appears to come to standstill when you are employed. Workdays are long. And, weekends are even longer - unless, you have a pet pastime - something like ruminating on the ‘meaning of life’ is a perfect hobby to have. (After all, scores of guys like Plato, Cicero, Socrates, Kierkegaard - have shown us that if you do it right, you can impress mindless mortals to do great deeds of brushing teeth after waking up and before sleeping every day. I sometimes have suspicions that all these guys were pretty bad in their english literature courses, so they all ganged up and made up a new subject - philosophy - where they could get themselves better grades, don’t you ever wonder why one guy keeps referring to works from the another guy?)
So now you understand that having lot of free time makes men like me. (”You and I are not so different” - Dr. Evil) But even great men like me have wasted their lives in finding an answer to whether we are really experiments created by rats and Earth is a supercomputer or we just happen to be a result of random collision of atoms. Even though I’m a student of science, I sometimes find the former assumption better than the latter - maybe because then I can find a definite purpose for my being, rather than being just a random outcome.
And, yet all hope is not lost. For, I was almost grateful to hear this phrase that gives a very different perspective at life.
* - Ref: “Serendipity” (2001), a film by Miramax, screenwriter Marc Klein.
MY Esperanza, an iconic campaigning ship of the environmental group Greenpeace, docked at Chennai Port this morning for a week-long tour of the sub-continent to highlight the fragile beauty and vulnerability of India’s coastal and marine ecosystems. This is the Esperanza’s maiden voyage to India, although the country has played host to the Rainbow Warrior and the Arctic Sunrise, part of the Greenpeace fleet, on three prior occasions. (read more: 
