“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Questions are never difficult, what makes them difficult are their answers, and sometimes the questions which seem to be easiest are in fact the toughest. It was some six years back I got an opportunity to read Nehru’s Discovery of India. It was neither by choice nor by chance but it was just a part of my course curriculum, I had to study it. There was a chapter in the book named Life’s philosophy. I toiled with best of my health and spirit to get the essence of it. But I was not mature enough to digest it. Though there was not a single difficult word in the chapter nor the way it was written considered bad, in fact good writing skills was the only worth quality of Nehru. The fact is topic itself was difficult and philosophical one.

How can we define Life..? In fact we can’t define anything. When we try to define something we are just putting our opinion about that, that is bounded by its traits and characteristics. Till yet I never got a satisfactory answer of the question who are you..?? There are many thousands of people who share the same name along with same Father’s name. Everyday millions of people born at the same timestamp, so what makes us unique to define ourselves..? Anyhow being human we learn the art of confusing very soon if we failed to learn the art of convincing. But still there are some questions which fascinates me and they include What is Life..? What is the sole purpose of our life..? and what is the irony of our Life..?

Well when we entered this world we are loved by everyone, when we left this world we are admired by everyone but in between these two, the amount of love and admiration we got defines our life. Everyone dies but not everyone truly lives and the irony of our life is it goes on. When a child is born, his world is limited to his parent. According to him their exist only two persons in this world and that are his parents, because they are the only one whom he saw, but as he grows up he meet new faces and create his own life. His life in no way then dependant on his parents even when they left him he lived in the same way and so the life goes on.

The irony of our life lies in the fact throughout our life we desire to let the things happen in the way we want them to happen. We have certain expectations from our life and when these expectations remain unfulfilled, we lost the essence of life. Life is not only a bed of roses but also a path of thorns. Those who accept this fact truly smell the fragrance of life.

We have to realize the fact that the life we are living actually comprises of moments and these moments are unique, once they passed away they shall never be back. Sometimes we wanted to get back in life to say sorry to few persons whom we lost because we didn’t apologize at the right time. Sometimes we wanted to get back in life to confess our love for person whom we deeply loved, but never expressed because we didn’t have courage, without realizing that the two most painful thing in our life is when our lover loves us and he/she didn’t tell it to us and the other one is when he/she didn’t love us and we fell it. Life is a one time opportunity which must be spent precisely and carefully. When we were born we were the sole owner of our life but as we grow up we realized that we are someone’s brother, we are someone’s son, we are someone’s friend and lastly but significantly we are someone’s heart. So our life is not only ours and hence we must be conscious to build best out of it.
The irony of life lies in the fact that there is always a true love and unforgettable heartbreak in every life, but the more ironical is the way we break after such heartbreaks. We never want anything wrong in our life. We want the persons whom we love to be with us throughout their lives and if by chance they left us we walked away from our life. How can and why should we waste our life for someone who doesn’t worth it.

The irony or our life lies in the fact that dreams always fascinates us, we dream to be someone else without realizing that we are unique and by doing so we ourselves are killing that unique identity. We look at those who are above us but we forget that their exists a world below us. We laughed at someone if he’s not fair looking without realizing the fact he is not at all responsible for his looks. We wanted to be single when we are committed and we wanted to be committed when we are single.

We can create our life in the way we want. In fact we are solely responsible for everything that exists and happens in our life, so we should never regret about anything because if its good, its wonderful and if not then an experience. We have to realize the fact that everyone can make a living but not everyone can make a life..

There are few things in the world, which give us immense pleasure and one such thing is the feeling that one gets in sleeping again after waking up, with a stupid excuse. In order to get myself devoid of this feeling, I used to keep my mobile atleast 5 metres away from me so that I can recall in my sub conscious walk,  that I’m an Infosys Employee.

Anywaz it was a different saturday morning for me, there were two reasons for it. The first and the logical one was I don’t have a test on Monday and the second and the stupid one was I watched a movie till 2:30 in night. So I make a promise to myself that I’m not going to wake up till 11:30 next morning. But all vows, promises and resolutions came to an end when at 10:30 I found someone pushing me up by my leg, with unspecked and half opened eyes, I tried to recognize him but my mind refuse to do so. “Sir, can I please change the sheet..?” He was house-keeping guy. I wanted to kick him out of my room, but even in that unconscious state, I remembered the most pronounced word of Infosys i.e. AASHI. I found it too risky to think on his eligibility criteria of imposing an AASHI on me. I sat on the chair, while the guy was changing the sheet, after sometime he was gone and so was my sleep. I dropped the idea of further sleep. I had no other option than going to class.

I went to class and as always, the first thing and the most common thing that I used to do is to check my mailbox. There were 6 unread messages with 4 bearing the same subject and the rest 2 having the same subject. I opened the one from two which stating something that it was some ridiculous photo taken 100 years back, you should get good luck in next 15 mins if you forward it to 10 more peoples. I recalled that I don’t have a module test, I deleted it. Opened the one from the list of four, It was stating something like .  “Today its world Cancer Day”, though I’m not good at learning dates, but I remember the dates of “World Cancer Day” and “World No Tobacco Day”since I was in class 10^th, crosss checked my knowledge from Google and feel myself pretty satisfied. While I was emptying my MailBox I came across a mail that I got some one month back and that was from a  NGO named Pratham. It was a flagged mail, indicating its importance. I recalled in the first week after joining Infosys I gave my name as volunteer. After that twice I got a mail from there stating volunteer meeting. But due to training overload, I didn’t find it feasible to go there, But I really wanted to go. Thinking it was the right opportunity, I dropped them a mail stating Volunteer participation. After 15 mins, I got a reply saying that the NGO wouldn’t work on Sundays and they had a knowledge bridge session on every Saturday at 4:00 pm. If I’m interested I can attend that. I desperately wanted to go there. I wanted to meet the children and knew them. I believe that there can’t be a better way of enjoying a weekend then devoting it in some social work. I know I’m lucky being educated but I feel myself luckier If I depart this knowledge to those who really need it. The next quest was to find out someone who can accompany me. I aksed few of my friends for same, but they were bit busy with their studies and wanted to devote in the test prep that was on Wednesday. But we all have some friends who are always there to accompany us in anything we do. I called one of my such friend asking her to accompany me, She liked the idea and finally we left for Pratham. It was a typical address, we called on the number that was  there on the e-mail. The guy explained us how to reach there and with little difficulty, we reached there.

It was a small building, on the main road looked more like a house than an office. We entered it, there was a big room having a computer on one table and a laptop on other. There was a showcase having different books on different subjects. There was a chart lying on one corner that had some beautiful words encrypted with wax caryons, stating “The way a man answer the questions depicts his cleverness but the way a man asked the questions depicts his Wiseness”. Perhaps those were one the wonderful lines I had ever read in my life. The chart itself was speaking that its been made by some child not more than 8 years old, but it immensely impressed me that how can one think so deeply. Finally we met the person who was  incharge of that office. He welcomed us, and told us about different programmes that Pratham runs. He told us that they had seven locations in Mysore with 500 students where they run knowledge bridge sessions. Volunteers go there and deliver sessions on any topic which can enhance knowledge of those little children. Since it was our first time, he suggested us to go on any of the seven location and watch the session so that we could get an idea. He then show us a clip, that was devoted to the poor children in India, stating certain facts and figures on illiteracy rate in india. The clip was really touching with an emotional feeling. It was all about children who had to leave their studies because of one or other reason.

Finally we reached one such location, It was in some remote part of Mysore city. The location again resembles more a house than a school or office. We were welcomed by bunch of children, in the age group of 8-15. The children look better than my expectations. They were clean and smart. There was a lady who told them something  about us in Kannada. They were around 25 in number. Each one was having a notebook and pen. The children started conversating with us. They all seems to be intelligent. One of them asked us our name. Me and my friend introduced us to them. I aksed them how many of them knew English, around 15 of them raised their hand. We again asked how many of them understand Hindi, around 4 of them raised their hand. There was a kid who stand up and told me that he knew four languages i.e. Kannada, Telugu, Hindi and English. That was more than a surprise for me. I aksed the children what they studied on the last Saturday and how many of them went to school nearly all raised their hand and one told me that on last Saturday they studied on savings. Water Saving, Electricity saving and Money Saving. I was impressed.  I asked one of the girl who seem to be eldest in the group, how can we save Water..? Irrespective of my expectations she knew each and everything from water cycle to chlorination. I was extremely happy. My friend asked them If they are interested in playing quiz. She told them what actually quiz is and told them that she would ask questions and anyone who knew the answers should raised his hand. The first questions she asked was What is the capital of india..?  Around 6 children raised their hand, one glibbed out Delhi. She told him it was not Delhi but it was New Delhi. He got confused. Next question she asked was how many colors are there on our national flag. I was answering it in my mind as three. But one child answered it as four. I saw at my friend and smiled perhaps she knew the reasons and just said I expected it from you Dumbo. Then she asked many questions like Who is the prime minister of country..? What is the capital city of Karnataka..? Which one is bigger ½ or ¼ and many others.. When we were told that the person who had to take their session had arrived. He was a tall handsome guy. He shaked hand with us. He introduced himself as a localide who was in his final year of B.E., We watched him teaching those small child for sometime, say good bye to them and then left out.

There were mixed kind of emotions going on in my mind, Seriously speaking I had learnt so many things from those small children. There can be 100 excuses of not studying but 1000 hurdles can’t prevent you from studying if you really wanted to study. Education is the basic moral right of every child and to exploit this right is a crime and against human nature. Our Govt. spent millions of rupees for the betterment of these small child but the sad story is not even 10% of it reach in the right hand. We human beings have become so selfish that we can even snatch share of a 5 year old kid. A share if once given to him, he will not live his complete life as labor or as criminal. Man is a social a animal but these days he is howing his animal nature more than his social nature.Things have improved a lot and are still improving, hoping the day is not far away when we have litteracy rate of 100%.