I am yet another girl. A girl with no ambition but plenty of dreams. Dreams that might have drowned the need of ambitions in my life. Crowded Dreams that did not allow Ambition to crop its head up like the New York city’s skyscrapers will never allow a tiny warm cottage to survive. Dreams that might have killed my urge to have an ambition. Or may be Ambition was too lazy to prove its existence and thereby the more active Dreams replaced the dormant Ambition and gave my life a new reason to survive.
I was a girl whose dreams gave her a reason to live and yet again these dreams bring the doom of futility to her life. I am yet another girl with plenty of dreams but not a single ambition to live for.
My dreams are petty giving me a chance to dream regarding every little thing that marks a scratch in the papyrus of my life. I remember there was a time we used to live in these tiny quarters with very little space and comfort yet adequate happiness to dwell on. Every little thing brought with it a little bit of sunshine that overall turned my day into a bright and happy one. A particular kulfi-seller passed our quarter block every afternoon. My mother was almost always sleeping then and I was generally painting or writing on my notebook sitting by the window. I would have this insatiable urge to buy at least a small kulfi from the man but whenever I tried to convey the feeling to my mother she would shove me aside and mumble “Ice-creams ruin your teeth” and fall asleep again. I saw how hard he worked, sweating profusely in the mid-summer afternoon trying his best to sell the kulfis as quickly as possible to prevent them from melting. It had suddenly dawned on me like the truth had dawned on Lord Buddha under the Bodh Gaya tree that my life’s entire purpose would go in vain if I do not become a kulfi-seller when I grow up. I had thrown tantrums, cried endlessly for days and stopped talking to everyone when my parents did not agree to my decision of not pursuing studies anymore and going to apprentice with the kulfi-man.
Many of such dreams were short-lived. I forgot them as soon as I had something else to pursue, something else to divert myself to. My parents had bought me a small play doctor-set when we went to the monthly fair. It had a beautiful stethoscope, a pair of scissors, scalpels, an oxygen mask to put on the doll I preferred making my patient, a small doctor bag, et cetera. I played everyday with these toys and once I grew tired playing with my doll I would make patients out of human beings. Sometimes mother whenever she could take time out of household work and her afternoon siestas, father when he returned from office and was not busy watching news, everyone took turns in being my playmates. Unfortunately I had stopped considering it to be a game a long time back. Now I had this serious dream of becoming a real doctor. I say serious dream because I had learnt at school that what you want to become when you grow up was considered to be a serious dream, an ambition. It wasn’t until later when I could distinguish between dreams and ambitions. Anyway, my parents were proud to hear that their daughter wanted to be something substantial.
As I have mentioned before, this being another of my short-lived dreams did not last more than a few months. Once I was given a wooden ruler (those were the latest trends in stationery then) I used it less to draw lines and more to hit the dolls that were my students as I acted out to be a teacher. I wrote on the walls alphabets and new words that I had learnt recently at school and used my ruler to point at them. Another of my silly dreams.
When a new desktop computer was brought home by dad I immediately formed the idea in my head of becoming a computer engineer. As a girl of 10 years my still to-be developed brain could not imagine that when a person used computers they could turn out to do any job other than of a computer engineer. This dream had lasted for quite sometime, about two long years. However once I started realizing what one might have to do or, much unpleasantly, study as an aspiring computer engineer I swear it was no longer high on my list of priorities.
Dancing rehearsals for our school or college cultural programs would drop a hint to my heart that “may be if you would try a little harder you could actually end up in a great dance show”. I would practice profusely for the upcoming programs and imagine myself on the reality shows but all I could manage in that one month long rehearsal was picking up the steps and performing gracefully. Once the curtain fell on the stage, I would cover my dancing dream away.
Reading travelogues and watching the videos of tours to different places made me wish to go traveling the world for the rest of my life kind of “Around the world in 40years”. It did not sound all that bad in my imaginative and inexperienced brain. Sketching gave me the idea of creating cartoons, caricatures and large canvases for exhibitions.
Whenever I read good books (which I did all the time) I wanted to write. I had this yet-another dream of writing something phenomenal, something so different and nice that people would stop to talk about my book after reading but all my stories remained unfinished as I could never think of putting up any unique climax to them. However since I continue reading quite furiously even now I guess this is one dream that I can not really give up on. Yes dream and not an ambition because I did not take it seriously and will never take it either. Dreams never cease to be a part of one’s life but ambitions are necessary to have a proper stance in life, it prepares a ground for you upon which you can stand proudly and claim that you dream, dream to do many things in life. However I realized it quite late but not too late to stop dreaming at all. I am yet another girl dreaming, dreaming to finally have an ambition, to do something productive in the future.
I was a girl whose dreams gave her a reason to live and yet again these dreams bring the doom of futility to her life. I am yet another girl with plenty of dreams but not a single ambition to live for.
My dreams are petty giving me a chance to dream regarding every little thing that marks a scratch in the papyrus of my life. I remember there was a time we used to live in these tiny quarters with very little space and comfort yet adequate happiness to dwell on. Every little thing brought with it a little bit of sunshine that overall turned my day into a bright and happy one. A particular kulfi-seller passed our quarter block every afternoon. My mother was almost always sleeping then and I was generally painting or writing on my notebook sitting by the window. I would have this insatiable urge to buy at least a small kulfi from the man but whenever I tried to convey the feeling to my mother she would shove me aside and mumble “Ice-creams ruin your teeth” and fall asleep again. I saw how hard he worked, sweating profusely in the mid-summer afternoon trying his best to sell the kulfis as quickly as possible to prevent them from melting. It had suddenly dawned on me like the truth had dawned on Lord Buddha under the Bodh Gaya tree that my life’s entire purpose would go in vain if I do not become a kulfi-seller when I grow up. I had thrown tantrums, cried endlessly for days and stopped talking to everyone when my parents did not agree to my decision of not pursuing studies anymore and going to apprentice with the kulfi-man.
Many of such dreams were short-lived. I forgot them as soon as I had something else to pursue, something else to divert myself to. My parents had bought me a small play doctor-set when we went to the monthly fair. It had a beautiful stethoscope, a pair of scissors, scalpels, an oxygen mask to put on the doll I preferred making my patient, a small doctor bag, et cetera. I played everyday with these toys and once I grew tired playing with my doll I would make patients out of human beings. Sometimes mother whenever she could take time out of household work and her afternoon siestas, father when he returned from office and was not busy watching news, everyone took turns in being my playmates. Unfortunately I had stopped considering it to be a game a long time back. Now I had this serious dream of becoming a real doctor. I say serious dream because I had learnt at school that what you want to become when you grow up was considered to be a serious dream, an ambition. It wasn’t until later when I could distinguish between dreams and ambitions. Anyway, my parents were proud to hear that their daughter wanted to be something substantial.
As I have mentioned before, this being another of my short-lived dreams did not last more than a few months. Once I was given a wooden ruler (those were the latest trends in stationery then) I used it less to draw lines and more to hit the dolls that were my students as I acted out to be a teacher. I wrote on the walls alphabets and new words that I had learnt recently at school and used my ruler to point at them. Another of my silly dreams.
When a new desktop computer was brought home by dad I immediately formed the idea in my head of becoming a computer engineer. As a girl of 10 years my still to-be developed brain could not imagine that when a person used computers they could turn out to do any job other than of a computer engineer. This dream had lasted for quite sometime, about two long years. However once I started realizing what one might have to do or, much unpleasantly, study as an aspiring computer engineer I swear it was no longer high on my list of priorities.
Dancing rehearsals for our school or college cultural programs would drop a hint to my heart that “may be if you would try a little harder you could actually end up in a great dance show”. I would practice profusely for the upcoming programs and imagine myself on the reality shows but all I could manage in that one month long rehearsal was picking up the steps and performing gracefully. Once the curtain fell on the stage, I would cover my dancing dream away.
Reading travelogues and watching the videos of tours to different places made me wish to go traveling the world for the rest of my life kind of “Around the world in 40years”. It did not sound all that bad in my imaginative and inexperienced brain. Sketching gave me the idea of creating cartoons, caricatures and large canvases for exhibitions.
Whenever I read good books (which I did all the time) I wanted to write. I had this yet-another dream of writing something phenomenal, something so different and nice that people would stop to talk about my book after reading but all my stories remained unfinished as I could never think of putting up any unique climax to them. However since I continue reading quite furiously even now I guess this is one dream that I can not really give up on. Yes dream and not an ambition because I did not take it seriously and will never take it either. Dreams never cease to be a part of one’s life but ambitions are necessary to have a proper stance in life, it prepares a ground for you upon which you can stand proudly and claim that you dream, dream to do many things in life. However I realized it quite late but not too late to stop dreaming at all. I am yet another girl dreaming, dreaming to finally have an ambition, to do something productive in the future.
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