A Hybrid Dream

He was in the seventh standard in the nondescript village school. One sultry afternoon, the class was yawning over the dead leaves on the sprawling ground surrounded by one-storeyed building around. The air was still, and so was time. The social science teacher was perhaps the only one to hear the sagging voice of a standing student as he tried to go through the chapter as well as the period. He was reading aloud a chapter from the political science book.

“Civil Services!” the burly teacher stomped his stick onto the ground, and many a student came out of the siesta, especially those at the far end of the rows.

The students came to their senses. “It’s the highest job in the country!” he informed. “You can become one!” he accusingly pointed towards the one who was reading out the chapter in his moderately shrill voice.

Nobody in the classroom raised a suspicious eyebrow. Why? He after all had been the class topper since they remembered. Shackled by the ignorance and absence of real competition, they thought this ‘intelligent one’ could outwit anyone with as much ease as he did in class.

That was the first time he heard about the much coveted civil services. Sometimes he had heard his father, a government employee, referring to words like IAS. However, his teacher’s proclamation did not leave a significant mark on his student soul. He was just a good student, nice and obedient, who at least would not prioritise wallowing in the pond with buffalos over doing his homework. Only this much! He simply knew that good students sit over their books more than they play errant after the school hours. They work really hard and cram up homework—even sometimes not understanding any bit of it—in order to keep people labelling them as the first student. In fact, they are extra eager to carry that tag at the cost of cut in their childhood fun and floridity.

Without much trouble to his numero uno status in the class comprising farmer’s children, who cared more for anything else in the world except studies, he cleared matriculation. It was a very good first division and top position in the school with a percentage of 78. He was surprised when most of the villagers said resignedly he is good enough for a top position in the district. But then he will do better at the next level, they concurred. In that small world, they had come to believe in his numero uno position at any level, irrespective of the bitter realities of the harsh competition in the larger world.

His teachers liked him, so did most of the people around. The reason? He was thin, docile, slightly better than average looking, and enclosing himself in these boundaries—almost never allowing himself the littlest transgressions like many others of his age—he just crammed what the teachers demanded. Looking at the standard of the rest of the students, even the teachers’ demand from him was not that high. They just expected him to stand first in the class, because to them he was an ideal student ready to take up the simple challenges thrown at him in that small almost uncompetitive world.

However, studying non-medical at the senior secondary school at the district city, he found himself continuously slipping down from his former position. It was a bigger and more competitive world. Reason? The unmindful and ever-relaxing science teacher at the village school hadn’t taken the trouble to load their (and his) young minds with anything related to science. All they had done was to be asked to read the next chapter by themselves and learn the solutions to the problems all by themselves, no explanation whatsoever. Starting from a scratch and still cramming and not knowing many things, he managed to pass senior secondary with a good first division. He had not scored any position in class and there were many who had scored over him.

Much to his surprise, again those who knew him said the score did not showcase his true potential. Reason? They never found him doing anything un-studently.

“Science is too limiting!” some luminaries came forward with their protective suggestion. “Open him to the vast vistas of arts and humanities where 2+2 is not always equal to 4.”

He thus did his graduation from a college where everything went right except for education; a place where only a decent studently behaviour could fetch the honour of a topper.

Again the teachers and fellow students provided him his favourite position. Somehow, he was always far from the real big bad competitive word. So always, some way or the other, came to occupy a position that made him the darling prince of the little dimly lit cave. Beyond was the bigger world with its higher parameters of excellence. Alongside, he had an interview for the NDA, the patriotic National Defence Academy. He had crammed well to clear the written part, but thanks to all his limitations, he was totally out of wits during the four-day gruelling session including psychological and physical tests to access the personality. Returning as a loser and still confounded over the ways of sophistication in the bigger world, they still patted with sympathy, “It’s due to the corruption that prevails in the selection process!” “Army job is just for average students. He’s an excellent student. A cut above the ones who just serve in the army. He is brand cut for the civil services,” others concurred.

His father, who had spent more time in reading books than anything else he had done, was a big fan of his habit of sitting over books for long hours. Similar were the proud sentiments of his grandfather, a former teacher. “Failure does not count much, as far as you are working to the farthest limit of your sincerity,” the wise old man told him many times. Being a good student was more important to them than succeeding every time. So it did not create much ripples when he fell short of good two percentage marks off first division in graduation. People simply had not lost faith in him. He had come to be taken as beyond all such little considerations of just marks and all.

“Forget about your marks! The IAS does not require you to score first division at the graduation level,” the whole lot around him egged on the sulking student. So without knowing much about the nitty-gritty of the toughest battle ahead, over-confident and a bit diffident by now due to excessive confidence put by others and lack of knowledge of the real ground position, he declared from the tiny study room on the upper storey in the village that he will clear the IAS from there itself; without equipping himself with an MA degree or coaching from one of the so many institutions in Delhi.

Optional subjects were to be chosen for the toughest exam in the country. He mulled over his level of calibre and intellect, and Philosophy stood out to be the natural choice as one of the optional subjects. The funny limitation of his perception came to surface an year later when he fell headlong at the first hurdles and lost one precious (out of the four) chance in the bargain. It was simply as good as fighting for just three chances as a general category candidate. They sympathised, “You failure does not mean your unsuitability for the job. It’s just that you missed coaching. That’s it!”

The moment others showed confidence in him and there he was involuntarily being drawn into another misstep. The reason? He thought that there is always one sure way to reach the next sub-target. However, the modern times are such that each and every step needs coolest of a smart calculation, objective deliberations and consultations from as large a group of well-wishers as possible. Cocooned in a lonely world, basking in self-inflicted glory, he rarely consulted anybody to expose any bit of ignorance he was wallowing in. So of course, quite naturally, he did not know the ground realities of the coaching quagmire spread out in Delhi. He simply read an advertisement in a newspaper and like a lamb walked into the den of some academic lion, who easily decided that he should take history as optional for the prelims, simply because the teacher himself specialised in history, apart from his repertoire of most of the subjects falling in the humanities domain.

Later, cramming historical facts in a class of 20 odd students, he and another fellow from Assam were the only two who qualified for the gruesome mains stage. Preparations for the mains involved another optional subject, general studies and essay. The teacher too liked his spirit, but despite best of his intentions the old man could not help him except boosting his already full quota of confidence. Still against all odds, it was a good performance. He just fell a whisker short of qualifying for the interview.

“You have definitely all that needs to be a civil servant. It was just that bloody coaching institute’s resources were not enough to guide you properly. Go to such and such institute, they churn out IAS like you have the chaff cut from the cutter,” the educated lot from among the little world of farmers suggested.

The coaching was expensive though. Then there was lodging and other little expenses. He was thus furiously drawing into the not-so-deep pockets of his father. His father was retired from the services as he slogged it out for the third time in Delhi. The lump-sum cheques did not stay in the family patriarch’s pockets for too long. He remoulded the house; married the eldest daughter who had reached marriageable age long time back; another daughter waiting for marriage; younger son doing graduation; and the pride of the family having a go at the UPSC in Delhi. It was their little world and he the pole star of all their expectations, the panacea for his father’s disappointments in his utopian world. The family patriarch sincerely believed the lives of all siblings will change for the better forever if his elder son became an IAS. He was preparing himself to forego thousand other miseries in life so far, only if this success landed up in the family.

It was his third attempt in as many years. This time he stood up to the people’s expectations and qualified for the interview for the most coveted job in the country. The surrounding countryside in a diameter of 10–15 kilometres around his village gave a rapturous applaud like a deciding goal had been scored in a football world cup final. It was the last year of the old millennium, and the world in that countryside was famished for such academic glories, so people were very much eager to grab whatever landed up in their poor plates. A good proportion of these illiterate, semi-literate peasants, low clerical job holders, and police and military people believed he had already become a District Collector.

The last but the most crucial hurdle was still upface. The chairperson of his interview board was a former defence secretary, TK Banerjee. The five-member panel was surprised to find so much of confidence in this rustic guy. So in their subtly invasive ways, they tried to gauze the depth of his confidence. It was just a thin layer that he had forced upon himself and like a pack of cards he gave in. The qualities for the coveted post involve maturity of opinion, diplomatic conversation, behavioural sophistication, and so on. So once dislodged from the safe scaffolding of his confidence, he babbled miserably and gave shaking, stuttering one-sided imbalanced views to the burning issues of the day. The result was that again he had taken a longer, tiresome circuit to his failure. All this against some pinching facts: He had scored 53.4% in the written (a very decent score) and just 38% in the interview. But then failure too has bitter-sweet rewards, especially in the UPSC. It carries such a big name that even interview discards are taken with some respect of sorts. He too had many that came his way except the selection. “Don’t forget that you are still left with one more chance!” people just won’t lose hope in him. Needs are multi-fold in the countryside. People just look with the reverence of a devotee, if there is a chance for somebody to hit big and rid them off the rural miserable shackles. Everybody had his or her share of expectations from the lucky go guy. He was simply supposed to be a panacea for all the maladies.

This time he took a break in the sequence of years after three years of slog out. He tired himself out amongst the big heap of exam material collected over the years. Now it was a multi-pronged strategy keeping in mind all the three stages of the examination. Having crammed syllabus many times, he felt like a master of his subjects. The risk at the prelims stage did not occur to him even once. Life is all about the jolts that we get when we least expect. Shock exploded on the family’s head. They had almost mortgaged their well-being against their civil services expectations. Now the full-stop had been slammed against their flowery sentence. It ended up meaning a big tragedy. His father could have literally died of the shock. It was unbelievable. Failure at the first stage and that too in the all crucial last chance! Unbelievable! Too cruel on God’s part! The mourning lasted for weeks.

As they say nothing goes waste, the failure this time brought many tragic sufferings and songs from his sensitive heart. Of and on he had been writing poetry during the grind and grill of the exams. The predominant element was of loss, deprivation, failure, tears, and still more. He showed these suffering cooings to his father. His father still wanted to stick to his dream of his son making big. The father’s literature-loving soul that considered the artistry of the written world to be the highest in the universe went gaga over these outpours. He declared that India was full of civil servants and every year they churned out more. How many poets and artists it produced? It can be counted on fingers. Poets and writers were thus more esteemed, loftier species. They thus again salvaged their next dream. Perhaps we have to set up and improvise our dreams; otherwise it becomes difficult to survive.

“Your failures have squeezed your soul to draw out creative juices!” his crestfallen frail figure tried to pump courage in his weak body and the son as well.

Poetry is too soft and wispy for the modern time’s cackling phonetics. An endangered form, it needs to be supported by the poet’s own vocal cords and pockets. The father thus did not dither from contributing a significant amount from his own pockets on the publication of his son’s book of verses. Again these disjointed English words created huge ripples in the countryside pond. A book and that too in English! Well that was too much for the simple farmers around who croaked endless accolades like frenzied frogs in monsoon-fed pond. Eulogies did not stop pouring in for months. If we put the economics of the venture out of the way, he got everything out of the investment. Illiterate people just gleamed over the glossy cover page of the thin volume, holding it like a precious diamond carved by somebody whom they always expected to hit the top. Those who could join letters to make words, meaningful or otherwise, termed it as the work of a genius. Hardly anyone could draw out meaning of these utterly subjective and mournfully abstract, reflective outpours. The more they could not understand it, the more he earned laurels! So the next target was well set up for him to become at least a nationally recognised writer.  

His fourth and final attempt to breach the impregnable fort of the civil services having been turned a disaster, it was a veritable anti-climax to the historic struggle. The indefatigable academician in him was blown off its feet by the shock waves. He still could not believe that he had fallen at the first hurdle after reaching the interview stage in the previous attempt. Despite all reasoning, it was inexplicable and not acceptable at all. Still the chapter had to be closed now. Countless times the family was lost in the sea of gloom whenever the thought raised it head. And it did quite often. The more his sulking silhouette found him in a pensive, suffering trance, the more he wrote poems. However, very soon he realised the commercial unreliability of this panacea to his soul, his escape route from the deadly reality that was still too close to his sensitive heart.

“Try more, you have it in you to be a writer!” his father’s ever-supporting baritone voice was like silver lining to the darkest cloud he had ever encountered.

Now when the glorious sun of the civil services had set for the first time, the people, at long last, seemed to be getting rid of their obsession of their big dream about him. He even felt that they were ignoring him with his failure. Far from the limelight, and slogging out like a sullen donkey, he wrote a big one, a work of fiction. The typeset itself hurt his father’s financial interests still further, but given his taste he bore this literary bruise quite happily. Very soon he realised that finding a publisher is far onerous than writing the best book in the world. Within a couple of years, the enterprising and proud search turned into a desperate scramble.

However, the doors to the civil services had not been tight-bolted completely. Just a couple of lucky days from the final date of submission, some well-wisher told him about his home state PCS examination. Like a weary veteran, he cleared both stages of the written test. Nonetheless, at the interview stage the board’s constitutional discretion ensured that nobody got selected except for the ones who managed to walk the political path of seeking blessings. The range of marks from as low as 5/75 to as high as 72/75 did not leave anything in the candidates’ hands and made it an all about manoeuvre of those sitting in the corridors of power. This stage was ‘make or break’.

The PCS is such a muddy river ridden with mighty crocodiles, putting one at risk—while seeking selection—whichever way one might decide to place an escaping foot to reach the opposite shore. Given his studious ways and almost nil political manoeuvring, he got minimum possible marks in the viva voce despite being one of the toppers in the written examination. People condemned his apolitical approach in not placating the bigwigs at the helm of affairs.

“Seeking political blessings for selection to the PCS is also a part of the examination,” they tried to put some smartness into his dull hardworking head.

“From interview to the final selection you require the best of your 99% effort, and 99% of this 99% is political lobbying,” a successful candidate from the previous batch tried some prudence with him. “Since they gave you almost fail marks in the interview, you need to work double hard to muster up pass marks on the loyalty chart of those in power!” he was soundly advised.

He did not get his mark-sheet of the failed attempt for the next six months. During this period the newly selected batch was consolidated and cemented into legitimacy. He meanwhile again rummaged through the syllabus because the notification for the next year’s examination had already appeared in the newspapers. Then one day his mark-sheet stealthily crept in. Twenty out of seventy-five in the interview. Even twenty-five would have fetched him at least an HCS allied post. Taking lessons, now more than his studies he was thinking about the invisible manoeuvring to pile up his score in the viva voce column. Appeasing the CM was the easiest way out. The literary purpose arose to draw out again from his father’s famished pockets who was by now nursing his conscience against him for the old pensioner had been forced to beg a private loan to get his second daughter married a few months ago.

With cooing literary stars in their eyes they self-published a book. It was a political dedication and it worked more than his studies across endless hours into the depth of nights. However, the favour by luck in one compartment was undone by a mis-stroke in another. Before they could join the state assembly was dissolved and elections were announced. When the opposition formed the next government with unbound vigour, it got busy in whitewashing all the rights and wrongs of the past government. The last government had been doling out jobs in thousands. “They are cheating the youth!” the present destiny-makers had shouted from their opposition benches. Now was the time to undo the former’s doings. Many recruitments were scrapped and quashed. Like a cowering herd of goats the PCS batch took shelter in the judicial precincts. They pooled money to engage the best lawyers in practice. At considerable costs to their struggling resources they just got dates after dates. Who stands a chance against a belligerent government in such a high-profile case!? Nothing was progressing. Their fates had been sealed in some unknown invisible judicial quagmire. Every new dawn brought new rumours. Everything changed except for their fate. Even standing against the rumours became a gross challenge. It was a terrible vacillation between hope and desperation.

They didn’t know that High Court functions as part and parcel of the state government’s machinations. This reality was to unfold slowly over the coming months and then years. The government supported some disgruntled unsuccessful candidate in filing writ against the recruitment. The selected candidates were made a party to the case. Like a petty criminal he got his summons for being selected to the PCS. It had started as a tragedy and was now turning farcical. He celebrated his thirtieth birthday as a ‘would be junior civil servant’ as still the most optimistic of those around him continued to believe in the goal. For months he had been explaining that they were on a constitutional safe-footing. However, as the spool of law kept on upturning the endless thread for months and then years he had to stop this explanation.

“We’ll surely be called for the job! But when? Even God does not seem to have a clue to it!” was his favourite refrain now.

Yes, we missed something! During the time he was waiting for his appointment, he was still writing. Nursing his injured conscience, subduing impotent anger, trying to escape the stranglehold of helplessness and consequent depression, he would say, “But I cannot waste any time. I have to utilise every moment!”

As the months piled up into years again people forgot him and his civil-servantship. It had been years now and in between they raked up memories sometimes. The case was as good as forgotten. It was better to forget it. The long wish seemed to have been buried very deep in the ruff and gruff of circumstances.

“Well son, here it might come at last!” his father seemed to say sometimes through the fading zeal of ill health and broken dreams.

Providence had not been kind to the old man. He had numerous memories to feel beaten by the greater forces beyond his control.

The fallen prince of the village was ultimately forced by failing financial resources and creeping requirements to take up the job of a content writer in a company in Noida. Past thirty and as part of the team of fresh graduates, he sometimes wished for the stroke of luck in the form of positive order from the court, or call it the government’s nod explicitly or implicitly. He was in a lonely corner suitable to reflect over success and failure. He had a sour trail of experience behind him that allowed him to reflect over things, particularly the topic of success and failure, from different aspects and angles. The perennial query staring the face of humankind, the question of our role in shaping our destiny, or fate’s invisible tentacles moulding us like a lump of clay into something predetermined, pricked him in its irritating acrimony.

“Whether we create circumstances; or circumstances create us?” he was mulling over the question, after being tossed by incidental waves and his particular efforts to reach a specific destination, and now churning out mundane words for online marketing portals and websites as a content writer.

A corporate job requires you to be a mini-politician. You have to manage the affairs. Just sincere hard work can put you in a tougher situation than the circumstances born of almost no work. Despite his tireless efforts, because he was just master of written words and worked hard, he had a long trail of failures. He now had this hesitatingly vouchsafed assurance that he would get his appointment later or sooner in life. Looking at that would-be-success he found himself in a twilight zone where the paradoxes intermingled like day and night; where contradictions seemed mixed up in a vague, mysterious but somehow explicable mixture. He kept his PCS hope alive while busy in the rote rut of churning out as many similar-sounding words as possible from 10 to 5 in the office. The dream drew inspiration from another dream his younger brother had while the initial setbacks to the PCS were shaking the ship of his destiny. His brother dreamt that he, the family prince, was standing in a row of PCS officers and when he saw the profile he could see him as a grey-haired, middle-aged man. Jokingly, they used to say that he will be a PCS officer well past 40 years of age.

His brother, in the eyes of their father had destroyed his career. There were enough chinks in his armour of careership that seemingly bore witness against him during charges and counter-charges.

“Despite being decently talented—he had scored 77% in B.Sc.—you are utterly, callously careless, complacent, uncompetitive that ruined your career even before it started!” the frustrated father voiced his agony, trying to latch onto some hope at the younger son’s end, while the elder one seemed to have been taken in by the mundane forces of survival.

His younger brother bore all the best habits of a decent boy, had not picked up any wrong manner, strictly moral in all senses of the term, but surprisingly landed in a cocoon of impassivity after graduation. Right after graduation he had cleared the entrance examination for Masters in Information Technology from a prestigious university, but was lethargic to go for counselling for he simply had not checked about the results. At the turn of the century when the IT sector was a hatchling to become the behemoth that it later became, it would have been a fine start to career in the IT during the boom and bust that followed. He had asked his friends to find out about the results which they never did and he missed the bus. Of nice stature and fine height he was drawn to a career in the army; and appeared nine times for the SSB interview. All retired army officers concurred he had all it requires to be a commissioned army officer. Success however mysteriously eluded.

And here they were, the brothers, in a position to talk about luck, fate, destiny, and hard work. Talks can bury the deepest scars. These can even make life appear purposeful even in the face of endless gloom. These can even raise hope for the future. Talks help life in moving on. Talks are rewards sometime. 

S:The mystery defies all explanation. Do we create circumstances that in turn prepare the outcome for us, or are we just poor products of our circumstances?

A:I think it’s we who create the circumstances. Good or bad one must have the honesty and guts to own up the bouquets and bricks with equanimity. The logic is as simple as this: you get flowers if you sow them, and prickles if you plant thorny seeds.

The younger brother started from the assumption of himself believing in the doctrine of ‘man creates circumstances’ because the little negatives of the charges against him regarding career stood self-explained. Everybody knew he had the talent, but just had been strangely complacent, almost criminally negligent—as his father often accused him of—in not using it. These bitter accusations and chidings of the near and dear ones made the point clear that he had almost destroyed his career.

S: No, no it simply can’t be that simple. If it was that simple then the world would have been either turned into heaven or burnt in hellish fire. Why? Because we have either good or bad plans. But it’s not so. Life as a whole belonging to the whole humanity seems grinding in a paradox. And while it gasps in its multifarious ways we get an open-ended riddle. The very reason that the world is neither heaven not hell proves that we are not the makers of our circumstances in all our sovereignty. There are some factors. Human destiny does not operate on the physical science principle of input of energy and output in some form. Between our endeavours (good, bad, whatever) there is a zone of inexplicable circumstances that most of the time mould our effort, or influence in such a way that the outcome is sometimes good, bad, inexplicably tragic, tragically tormenting or heartfully ecstatic, and so forth.

A: I just give 10% to this so-called unseen hand in moulding our destinies. But for 90% of the rest we are responsible.

S: It’s not the question of quantifying it. We can’t compartmentalise circumstances and efforts separately, for these operate in a single field, in an inseparable domain. It’s just like putting 10% ink in 90% of water. The combination changes the colour. I’m not for the one or the other. I just look at them working concurrently, simultaneously, still retaining their separate identities. It is simply a great mystery. Take for example, how many things are under our control in pursuit of a goal and how many aren’t that either help us or let us down. Suppose you are preparing for the civil services. Even the very act of preparation is bound by certain conditions that could have very easily been otherwise. After all not all of us prepare for this examination. A particular set of circumstances guides and motivates us. Who knows a different set of circumstances would have motivated us to become a doctor, an engineer, or not any of these at all, like you have chosen not to be any of these. Even one’s birth in a particular set of circumstances is beyond our choosing and is quite inexplicable. Let’s come back to the preparations for the civil services. Guided by some chance idea, some intuition, some calculation either in your own mind or some of your peers, you choose 2/3 of syllabus and focus on it, considering it to be most important. Now whether you get topics from this chunk or not isn’t in your control. Suppose you get the topics that you had prepared well, what you write during those three hours would be still bound by certain external forces beyond your control. Given the same information level, you might write at different levels of legibility and level of expression. It we move further into the incidental play of circumstances, I’d prefer to call it beautiful or chaotic interplay of incidental hits of various factors. The chance factor predominates visibly, invisibly. It arises at the time of evaluation of the answer sheets. I’m more particularly taking the example of social sciences (for in physical science there is 2 + 2=4, but even without this factual parameter there is great scope for subjectivity), there are chances that the write up might or might not match the evaluator’s frequency. His mood—destructive, constructive, positive, negative, happy, sullen, and many other swings—are the externalities that decide your fate.

A: At least in my case I’m thoroughly convinced that I mis-planned or didn’t plan my career. That was the blunder I committed in cold blood. Earlier I used to think that it was unfair on their part not to select me in the SSB, but now when I come to recall all those blunders I committed during the interviews my rejection appears credible to me.

S: These were no blunders at that time. These were just limitations bound to you by your circumstances. These might have been blunders in the eyes of the selection panel just as you consider them to be now. Had you known these, you would have definitely avoided them. But you didn’t know. Do you think, you are solely and wholly responsible for your blunders that I term as simple limitations imposed on you by the circumstances beyond your control? No, because it was not you who committed these mistakes. It was a young human being—a product of circumstances—styled by your schooling, the environment you lived in, the foundation that these factors have provided you, and these in turn depend on varying circumstances, and this goes on and on linking perhaps all of us on earth in a mysterious shackle of circumstances. A giant rippling wave carrying causes, effects, good and bad in it, crests and troughs of shaping destinies, highs and lows. You were circumcised by your limited, mediocre schooling, carefree rustic society, and family where expectations seem to fulfil the job of career development.

A: It’s a horrible theory. By this logic even the most heinous crimes do stand free, for it’s not he who commits a crime but the circumstances that made him such stand accused in the dock.

S: Well, in a generalised form, good circumstances and good effort if happen to meet at a good time, at the cusp of productive chance, results are good. And if the reverse or the combination isn’t right we see a struggle; as for the crime, hasn’t somebody well said, “More than the sinner the sin is abominable!” This sin here is not only a noun; it is a whole phenomenon of negative circumstances linked in an interminable chain of cause and effect across globe or perhaps beyond. So more than the sinner, I pity the circumstances and the pathological agents that create such circumstances.

A: It means you purely support the idea that we are the products of circumstances.

S: Helpless puppets...made to dance on the stage of life! No, no! I didn’t say that either. I just realise that there are enough examples to substantiate both assumptions. Quantity-wise one outshines, but quality wise the other inspires further. Furthermore, if the cords of circumstances had been totally under predetermined hands, we would have either reached the goal of universe or God would not have needed to create us at all.

A: But there can be two ways. Either the circumstances are fixed as per a pattern of premeditated destiny, or these occur haphazardly. The latter would rule out the possibility of the existence of God. Well, returning to the question. I think these are just opinions and analyses of success and failure. The victorious, in order to increase the stature and sheen of his achievement, will say that tiresome and unflinching effort definitely fetches good results; we are the makers of our destiny. The failed ones, on the other hand, will try to repaint the black colour on his face, blaming it on the adverse circumstances, luck or bad luck as you have it.

S: No, we just can’t confine these two tormenting facts to mere reactions of two particular set of people on the outcomes of their efforts. In that case you forget to mention the people who have experienced both. In fact most of us face the fluctuation of both things in life. It only means these coexist in some mysterious combination. My initial effort to prove the existence of uncontrolled circumstances was just to bring you down from the singular stance of ‘man creates circumstances’; it was not even to nullify your hypothesis. It was just to convince you that the thing is open-ended both ways. Both things do intermingle in such a manner to turn it sweet-sour and sour-sweet game that life is.

A: Then what is the way left out for us stuck up between these two incalculably heavy grinding stones?

S: Hope, expectations and desire of some favourable draw in your favour shouldn’t hinder your practical, labouring foot on the path of your goal; while the tireless, sweating, heartful slogging on the path of your goal shouldn’t make your eyes dreamless of good luck as well.

A: Just like you! Kept on slogging, walling up one breach after another of your limitations and flaws. But this toil didn’t stop you from pulling at God’s apron whenever you found time for rituals through your hymn-reciting entreaties! Luck! Both ends achieved. Well, maybe you are right. Life is too broad a thing to be underlined by one statement or the other. Maybe both provide us a track of existence on which we can chug ahead. Well, wish you all luck for your final set of circumstances! Wish the circumstances take such a draw in your batch’s favour that your earlier result declared by the State Public Service Commission is authenticated by the court!

S: I have done my lot as circumstances allowed me to. With my limitations and capabilities, I’ve just tried to improve while furtively trying to draw from the pool of my efforts and the binding sinews of circumstances around.

Mr. K arrived on the scene. A silent slogger, he had lugubriously moved ahead on the path of his career without hurrying and without facing any perceptible troubles. In a cool and simply calculating manner he had become a software engineer. A man of moderate and amazingly balanced calibre, most of his finely pulled out cards had fallen in his favour. He had just moved ahead without any dissipation and burning of unnecessary energy.

A: What do you say of him? Did circumstances bless him, or he stoically went on creating them?

S: Oh...my? As many stories as there are people on earth. All with their varying interpretations. Just to keep the sanctity of what we have agreed upon, let’s please close the chapter; otherwise it’ll boom out of proportions. It has taken a lot of work by our tongues to fish out some meaning of the riddle. Now involve someone else with his own specific story and it will again change colours. The chameleon!

K:A... you have done that course in software science.

A: But who cares for distance courses?

K: I’ve just got a promotion. Now I’m in a position to recruit you as a paid apprentice in my company. Within a couple of years you will be earning a decent salary...if you work hard!

S: Here he arrives with a load of good circumstances for you.

And they laughed heartily.

That’s life is. A string of fragmented dreams, falls, runs, talks, agreements and disagreements. It goes on. Unmindful of victories and failures. In its constant, permanent swipe, it takes away the varied, impermanent dust scattered around. Under the broom we rumble and tumble and make noise. Of agonies more often. Of happiness sometimes.