This time when I had started for my home from Gurgaon, I was highly apprehensive. Fear was obvious, I had to keep myself ready for numerous expected questions & explanations which earlier I had clarified to my parents were now supposed to be shot from my relatives and sample of questions :) ranging from "why u didn't rejoin corporate after masters when u had such deep interest in automobiles", "we thought after master's u would be earning more but why do u earn less when your peer group who did graduation along with u is earning more" "why r u wasting ur time on this work" .............. [at times i feel as i hv done a really bad deed that i need to explain myself everytim...may be even a murderer would not be questioned by so many people for his act :( ]
After passing out of IRMA, I had two visits back home but I didn't step out of my home, didn;t meet any of the relatives, "intentionally". Possibly the fear of explanations stopped me!! . But we being social creatures cannot escape "eternally" from them, though "momentarily" its possible and Now this "momentarily" escaping was over.
Reached home on 19th and 22nd was my cousin's marriage and so meeting the relatives was imperative. For a moment I thought let me not share what I am doing and either remain silent or tell a lie which will avoid all that apparent embarrassment emanating from explaining everything, to some who will understand and to many who won't.
On the way to Jabalpur where marriage of my cousin was scheduled I was accompanied by one of my distant cousin whom I met possibly first time. She is studying in kindergartern. To hide my anxiety, I started chatting with her and asked what all she learnt in "nursery" and what's new in "KG-1" and like a parrot she narrated everything. And then among the numerous questions on alphabets and numbers which I bombarded on her, one was how many legs we have and came a stunning reply- "11". I was kind of shocked, I tried to explain her, its not 11 but 2. She replied see my miss told me when we put "1" on the side of "1" it becomes "11" and our legs are like that, in Nursery it was like 1 and 1 make 2 but now in KG-1 "1" and "1" make "11". My goodness, she was right in her own way, but our age-old mathematical and conventional mindset can never accept this fact that we have 11 legs instead of 2 and so I continued the argument. She like a valiant fighter stood firm on her view. Discussion which followed must have appeared very childish except for the fact when she said " See my miss told that 11 is bigger than 2, if one leg has pain or is removed, we will have to walk on support of stick or someone's shoulder and if our legs were only 2, removing one should not make walking so tough but since we have 11 legs removing 1 makes us "budha" (old), ".
I was speechless, who else other than me knows how i spent last two and half years with those recurrent acute leg cramps, when Suman, Shashank, Sajid, Rajat and many other friends used to shoulder me. I accepted her argument and so as reader u also better accept "we have 11 legs" :) or else she might complain to her miss!!!.
This "11 legs" saga gave a big lesson. She in her own logic knew she was right. She was convinced with her current understanding and there was nothing wrong in the way she viewed the numbers, she might later on contradict herself but that would be her own new "experiment" and a new joy of learning ( or Unlearn in word's of Prof. Raju). My lost faith on my convincing skills got resurrected and I decided to face the questions and answer everything to the best of my "11 legged" understanding and today when I am leaving home, I am happy, leaving few, most of the relatives are now convinced with the decision and some even intend to support the cause.
तेरे सपनों कि उडान अभी बाक़ी है
अभी तो केवल हार हुई है, जीत का असली मुकाम अभी बाकी है
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अभी तो केवल हार हुई है, जीत का असली मुकाम अभी बाकी है
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PS: For those awaiting news on personal front, Its "almost" final, in a few days from now when "almost" gets removed and only final remains will share the news with everyone!!.
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