SUMMER OF ’09 … warm and sweaty…. Summers always have been the same story ,of heavy electricity loads, pepsi, those funky chocobars and “not so” funky Dermicools. One thing you can’t forget if you hail from this heveanly part of the state of U.P. are those mangoes….those glib.,Yellow,smooth, acts of ecstacy. Mangoes , to me, have been , like a savior, like a friend,like a wife. Now like a savior, because mango only came for my rescue when I was mercilessly raped by these tropical villains. Friends , as I had spent those countless summer afternoons with this yellow cutie and believe those noons were as pleasant as that night of first love. And of course as a wife because it gave me everything…..pain (when not there), pleasure (when there ), support (against that sun when it was inches away from my mouth).
But come this summer and I was devoid all the three. I became alone, lost a friend and consequently became a widower. Why….well…”AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, WHEN INDIA SWEATED, ME (WITH 2 MORE) WERE SET TO PERSPIRE IN JAIPUR. We were there for a networking course. That meant something , in fact many things, like downloading , uploading ,webhosting, but where was my fruit, my love , my life, my mango. It was not there, all downloading seemed empty, uploading seemed fake. All the virtual world of web was turning unreal for me. Until…… love finally spoke, it finally excecuted and gave me the reward. Next day, in the lab , with all the state of the art facilities , I got a username “M A N G O” Now …I don’t have words to describe it, 600 kms from my home , 600 kms from those dussehries , I got my love, though as a username but I got it. I was now all set , to climb up the virtual world….how wrong I was ..in fact how unknown I was …..
They say that this whole holy world is just a mere probability of interconnections, some times its there , sometimes it is not. For me this web world of internet was something identical.
So now I ,as a mango for the next 25 days, started gearing up , lets say for the inevitable. The next day, now it might be a cliché but I have to say that the sun rose for me, and me only ,the rays of the sun , pinching me , forcing me towards ruthless labour. That smooth sunshine inspiring me towards professionalism. Yes that’s the word, “being PRO”. The course, in a certain sense was null and void, ‘coz all I got in those tests were null and void, i.e. zero. 10 zeroes in a row. Physically I was exhausted, that sprawling Jaipur campus no longer enchanted me. Mentally , I was down in the dumps but from one anonymous part , I was all spiriited up, and that too unanimously.
For me those zeroes and those failiures were not emptiness , but a ‘suchness’ one cannot describe. Yes,I was unknown before as that virtual world was a real professional world we were climbing to. I guess this generation z (or z++) is quite crazy about professionalism , but perhaps while approaching that , we tend to loose it…..loose it all. There is a thin line between professionalism and practicality. We , quite often tend to forget that. Being practical , is more or less like being ‘I’, like being a mango, which is eaten by that mango itself, there are no ways, there are no possibilities, everything is for a specific reason, for that ‘I’. While being ‘pro’ was being true. True to the profession , true to the world , to the almighty. Those, are the professionals who behave like an ‘I’, serve the ‘you’ and targets the ‘us’. Those 10 zeroes and loads of internet told me all that as with each of them I was getting up close with my goal but not emotional towards it. I was getting truthful for it, not selfish.
These 2 things , Internet and the mango , told me a lot of things. There is hardly a day I pass without tackling my fingers over the address box, internet’s like a friend . like a mate sometimes, but for the net I am nothing more than a login id ,a code. Why? because its true , its pro it seves ‘you’ and targets ‘us’. Similarly the mango, my love whom I adore. But for it, I am just one of them , whom it has to serve, from season to season, orchard to orchard.
So now, back home , with dusseharies , bustling around me, I was in them, eating enchanting , caressing them all this time , a bit professionally.
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