Live your childhood dreams !!

The stage is set. The music is loud to the point where a slight increase in volume would shatter your ears rendering you deaf for the rest of your life. You are mesmerized - at the mercy of a bigger force. All that you do is – head bang - a westernized rendition of a villager captivated by a tantrik baba. The artist gets into his amazing solo. Your hands go across the guitar strapped across your body and you play your version of that solo. Your locks are all over the place giving you that unique look that only Rock stars own. And this goes on for a while.

Phat!!! The song ends. The bubble bursts. Suddenly, the guitar in your hand is gone and all you are left with is good-guy-crew-cut. The villager is out the tantrik’s captivity. And you start panting!!

It has been about eight months since I had listened to Randy Pausch. His talks about fulfilling your childhood dreams seemed all relevant to me. But thanks to my undoubted “strength” – procrastination, I have not been able to do that still. But later I realized that there is something more to it. All that I dreamt as a child was still unfulfilled or partially done at best. So, how much of an inspiration would you find in making a list that is full of unchecked boxes.

But things change. And for me, it changed during the long weekend. It was a first check on my list. Visiting Niagara was a big dream waiting to be fulfilled. With that across the way, it was time to make a note of my childhood dreams.

As demonstrated above, the first unchecked one would be learning to play a guitar. Yeah! A guitar in your hand would look much better than bare fingers playing a solo. Even though you flirt with your impossible dreams, there has to be a reality-check - especially when you are talking about something as definitive and difficult as learning to play a guitar. Okay fine! I downsize my guitar dreams. I should at least be able to roll out the standard Hindi guitar songs – Papa kehte hai, Allah ke bande, et al. But kehte hai na – Allah meherban to gadha pehelwan. Who knows, I might even learn to play some of my favorite solos. ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘comfortably numb’ would top that list.

So, the guitar dream is defined. The next one in the list is to whistle. Every time I saw SRK in a movie whistling his heart out, I would think – will I ever be able to do that? I have been mocked quite a few times, Abe yedus tu siti bhi nahi mar sakta? All I can do is – to play out that two-handed-conch whistle. The two-fingered-whistle, one-fingered whistle, free-hand whistle – the types overburden me. I should be able to learn at least one of those types. So there goes one more in my list.

I would say that the above two ones on the list were quite timid. The ones I could gain with practice. It is time to write down my biggest dream. Ohh! We have all dreamt of it. Cool as hell!! You remember that scene in ‘Mission: Impossible II' where Tom Cruise stands atop the mountain and the camera rolls all across the extended landscape. Or even in ‘Braveheart’ where Mel Gibson does a Tom Cruise version – albeit before him. That is so cool!! Sometime, before I die, I have to do that. I would stand on top of a mountain (let’s say somewhere on the Grand Canyon or Harishchandragad/Sahyadri) with a video crew flying on the chopper capturing my coolest moves and all of the amazing landscape around me. And I could ask Rahman to put up some cool music on the background.

And on and on, I go with my list.

I often remember these lines - "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intent of arriving of safety in an attractive and well preserved today, but a try to skid sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, with the body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming- woo hoo. What a ride!! Remember, life is not measured by the number of breathes we take, but the moments that take out breath away." So, true.

Some things seem risky.Some things seem impossible. But we always love the risky and impossible ones, don’t we – especially when we don’t know our limits. That’s what we often did as a child - dream of things, irrespective of whether we would achieve it or not. I wanted to be Sachin Tendulkar, make my way through the space onto the moon, to lead a life on a tree house inside the Amazon or sometimes just fly like Superman and save some damsel in distress. So often stupid – but we would just Dream!! But as we grow older, we become more ‘practical’ and more often than not - stab that child in us – who would often dream of things in a plane – where he doesn’t belong. If Randy is correct – and I know damn well, he is – there is a unique satisfaction in living that childhood dream of yours.

Even if you cannot achieve it, at least write it down – there is some childhood-fun waiting to explode.Go ahead and live your dream.

Note: For all those, who have not seen Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture – please do see it. It’s worth its weight in gold.