Not so rare as it sounds

PRAKASH SPARSHA

From the sublime to the ridiculous, I happened to catch her in a grotesque manner. Her jolly countenance par excellence had changed dreary. Quite dejected, she was puffing a cigarette in a bakery. It was hard to believe my eyes, I approached her to ensure my guess by intending to ask her, if she were who I assumed she could be. Yes, she indeed was.

No sooner had she seen me, she stood close, urged me to go somewhere aside, and began narrating her gloomy story. She said of what she had dreamt of studying after SLC, what she was imposed with, how the heavy days she passed off, how she failed and why she started smoking.

Actually, she was my student, a leading girl. Upon overcoming the Iron Gate, she was highly inclined to study management, to top the college, to lead and to be a Chartered Accountant ultimately.

But, unfortunately, she was forced to study science to fulfil her parents’ dream to see her as a doctor. She got admitted unwillingly, in contrast to her long-held big aspiration. In a great fit of pique, she spoke up, “Sir, I don’t and can’t be a doctor, but my parents insist that I must be a doctor at any cost. This incompatible ideological struggle led me astray.” She continued, “Sir, are only doctors, engineers and pilots humans, the other are not?” Her eyes drowned into the stream, and so were mine. It had been a compelling situation.

She failed in the board exam, went for the devil, and the deep blue pressure. She was left helplessly in the lurch. Frustration turned into regression, she was caught thereafter in the addiction. How a vulnerable, beauteous and brilliant student got her pristine aim flared up. How full of the joys of spring of her life turned to embrace hell. Is it what the parents wanted? Are the wards obliged to fulfill the unpalatable desires of the parents. What if the parents can’t understand their tender dream?

All the parents must reckon on this big lesson. A child is privileged to opt for a free cup of tea to pursue-be it unlike what the parents crave for. Are you elated to see your ward’s hopes dashed, desire slashed and career smashed?

For me, at least, just to be there to seize the cigarette butt from her fingers and throw it aside, was a rare happenstance.