Dear friend K, you inspire me!

We really can find inspiration from random things or random people’s lives. We need to be able to observe the things carefully to be able to do that. Let’s take this man for an example. Let’s call him K. In reality, he’s one of my oldest friends. We’ve literally grown up together. Same school, same mohalla, basically most of the times together when we were young. 

So, this man is to me a real source of inspiration. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about a world beater friend of mine here or anything. But he’s inspiring to me nonetheless, he’s inspiring because of his absolute casual, nonchalant way of approaching life. I remember, during our teenage days when I was training hard for badminton, I used to tell him about how we need to decide what to do in life, be focused on our goals, need to plan things out, set smaller targets in life to achieve the bigger ones and blah, blah, blah. He used almost everytime reply that he didn’t have any target. He’ll just go with the flow and take life as it comes. 

A few years later, I moved to Thane from Kolkata in search of better quality badminton training. But whenever I went back I used to give him tips about how to approach life in a more serious, focused way. I used to tell him, ‘ektu serious hoye ja life niye’ which translates to ‘be a little more serious with life.’ Unsurprisingly, he used to be the same as always. He was always like, ‘Chhar! Oto chaap nish na’ which literally means ‘Dhondu, just chill’. Now I realise that maybe I used to bore him with my lectures. 

K now resides in Delhi and he’s still the same as he was before. Even now, if I ask him anything about his career, future or his prospective marriage, (he’s not married yet, apparently doesn’t want to take so much chaap/load) he tells me his usual thing, ‘Oto chaap nish na’. Live life freely just for the moment and don’t take too much load is his mantra. I believe this mantra has really served him well in his life and his professional career as well. He might not have become a world beater(he absolutely doesn’t want to become that either) but he’s completed his Masters’ in biotech from IIT-Bombay, currently working in a very good position in TCS R&D and also about to finish his Ph.d from IIT-Delhi. And ofcourse enjoys life to the fullest.

His story is really inspiring to me in a particular way that is different. Nowadays, I see a lot of people/kids/literally everybody just grinding it out to become the next big sensation, earn more money, fame and what not. I see people setting goals, targets to just hustle more in life. But maybe, just maybe life is really meant to be enjoyed a little bit more. Usually many of us tend to think that life is to be enjoyed post retirement. But then what about now? Who knows the future for certain? Nobody. I think we can definitely take our foot off the gas pedal sometimes and take the chance to just let the wheels role on its own.

Oh, and one more thing, I’ve hardly ever seen him study to be honest. Most of the times when we called him for an adda he used to join us back then. God bless you K.

Om Shanti…..?