Let me tell you something about the story of my life, it is now a lush green garden with the prettiest hued flowers, refreshing chilly breeze and a very fertile land that keeps me and many around me secured and joyous. But it wasn’t like this always. I too, had my fair share of rotten days; days you couldn’t even begin to imagine and even if you could, you wouldn’t choose to.
But I had a dream in my eyes, the only thing that made my eyes sparkle even when I had almost to nothing; it was my dream that kept me going, a dream to be better not than the rest but just me. I ran at times, strode too for quite a while and even crawled when I had to get what I have today. The world is a funny place, hilarious if you will; we all wanna be different yet we end up following the crowd and being the same. And for someone like me who couldn’t recklessly lay in shadows of the multitudes, they shunned, almost murdered my dream. But I kept going, even when my land was barren, parched and deserted. I didn’t want to be like the rest of them, I didn’t want my dream to die, I didn’t want to not work for it, I didn’t want to be hateful or impatient to it because to me my dream was my baby, and how can one murder their child. So, I didn’t. I kept going, believing foolishly that it’ll be my reality someday and it is now. I was the insane in a society of the sane ones and my insanity is what got me here, so I ask you, who was the sane one?
Now, there is an abundance of these shunners around me, following me, asking me with surprise in their eyes and hate in their hearts, ‘How did I manage to do what I did?’
I smile and say, ‘When I was hungry, there was nobody to feed me, when my skin dried up in the scorching sun, there was nobody to offer me water to cool it, and when the dream that I had from the very beginning of time was just about to die, there was nobody telling me to hold on a little longer. So I did this all for myself, picked myself up, cradled myself to sleep, hugged myself and motivated myself to be better each day. This is what got me here, and now I have everything and everybody. And you know the best part of it, even if I lose this all in an instant, I would still know how to get it all back step by step, so there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.’
I’m not gonna tell you what my dream was, because you have your own for that. To each his own garden; so, I just told what do you have to do keep your garden green!
Rishika Chopra is the author of My Mother’s Love