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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

I am a free man

I want to walk into the CAT exam hall as a free man. I want to walk in with no strengths, no weaknesses and more importantly with no preferences. I want to walk in as one among the obscure 2.35 lakhs of people as against the 5000 best bets. I do not want to walk in as a SimCat topper, I do not want to walk in with feathers in my cap.

But I want to walk in with hope. Hope can set a man free while fear can hold him a prisoner. (Yes, I have done my idle time with a few good movies.)

And then again I do not want to walk in with just my hope riding on my shoulders. Who am I to hope for good times, alone. I want to walk in with your dream spurring me on , as well; for all other things aside, I have as much faith in your ambition as I have in mine. I respect you perhaps to the same degree as I respect myself. I want to live free as a free man.

When I walk in with my head held high every other test taker is my friend, symbolising for me my same dreams. I do not want to waste away and I do not want you to waste away.

Those three hours, I am a refugee of my own war unto myself.

I do not walk in for failure. I do not walk in for success either. I walk in for an intensely personal experience which at the same time is intensely universal. I am ready for that challenge.

I feel miserable at times, groping in the darkness of my misfortunes, staring at the voids created by my personal losses and tragedies, pining for love and help, listening out for a friendly whisper to enliven my numb days. I feel sunk at times. Sunk in the growing waters of my meaninglessness. Sunk by death and accident and tragedy. Sunk by the false sobriety of other people's music. Sunk by the irrationalities of other people's thoughts. Sunk perhaps by my inability to pay heed to the false calls of people and society. Sunk by discipline and order and paper and ink. Sunk by the horns and honks of vehicles behind me on the road. Sunk by organized thought. Sunk by my nation's ineptitute to keep her lands unto herself. Repulssed by the nonchalance of myself and others. I feel low at times.

I have every reason to shout, aloud and piercingly. But there would be too few to listen.

I feel drenched at times in the precursory rays of fortune and prosperity. I feel drenched in the love of new people and old. I see opportunity on the horizon and I have a fast car to reach there. I feel enlivened by unsettling music and radical movies. I gravitate without a second thought to feel the masculine energy of the primordial beats of man's being. I jump like a cereal-bean on the rise and answer the inner call of tandava. The savoury days are inter-mingled with the wretched ones and those days make living meaningful. I am often exalted at the partial realization of this meaning. I am happy at times. Happy that I can still sleep late, that on any day I can go lift weights or drink serious stuff, that I can run around with a few words in my mind to put in print. I feel drenched at times in bliss, in love, in expectation, in anticipation, in potential, in things to do and roads to build. I feel like a free man on some days.

I want to walk into the CAT exam hall as a free man. I want to walk in with no strengths, no weaknesses and more importantly with no preferences.