At 23, KL Rahul is playing test cricket for India. At 22, Hardik Patel is leading a fuming agitation in Gujarat. By popular opinion, the former is involved in a nobler work, while the latter is splintering the already splintered. But the popular opinion is not the cause of concern here. The point that matters is that they are doing something of relative importance for themselves at such ripe young age.
To be able to pull off what they have at such an age would have required skills. Skills not just of temperament and determination, but also the ones less spoken of. Skills such as believing in your inner voice, acting at the right time irrespective of what others want you to do, and maybe revolting and rebelling at the right time for your own good. Who knows where they would have been had they not practiced these practices at the right time and place. All of us in our early twenties need to learn something from them.
The end result doesn't matter, it is what you do that does. Hardik has drawn flak from the common populace but the fact that matters is that he has led a revolution successfully. To be able to lead so many people, be it by a constructive purpose or by a blatant disregard for the existing structures of the system, is no easy thing to pull off. The critics who say that such agitation spurs tension and inter-caste violence must ask themselves that why did it happen in the first place. If the public knew the repercussions of such a conglomeration, why did they unite in the first place?
Barack Obama, on his last visit to India, had said that India would prosper as long as it is not splintered along religious lines. He should have added communal lines as well. To collect the collective anger that had been building up for years and channelize it into a mass movement takes courage, and, however bad his intentions may seem to us, Hardik was successful in overcoming all the obstacles that he would have faced. Do you think that none among his peers would have opposed to the idea of a reservation led agitation? Do you think that the castes that proclaim reservation to be their birthright would have easily let another one compete for the same thrones as they do? Yet, the Patidars are well on their way to maybe defining another chapter in the history.
The pertinent question that I want to address through this is that you don't necessarily need to stick to the cliches to be successful. And by not sticking to them, you don't only open the doors of entrepreneurship as has been the popular belief, especially with college dropouts. Rather, anything that you feel is correct, irrespective of whether it conforms to the standard accepted procedures or not, is indeed correct. Whether it's dropping out of college to start your own venture or doing the same to lead an agitation. Both are equally justified.
There are no truths in this world, only perceptions. What you perceive as the truth is the truth for you, irrespective of what the world feels. Adolf Hitler felt that Nazism was the truth, and he had the courage to stand up for it, and look what he did. He might be a sinister being for the world, but for himself, he was a saint, because he followed the truth- his truth. And Patel, though not viewed as someone synonymous to Hitler, is by and large, an outlaw, but only for the world. Because for himself, he's a saint.
The crux being that you need to define your world and not the other way around. This is again a cliched phrase but there is a hidden meaning. Different people define their world's differently. So the definition of Einstein, Steve Jobs, or Kalam for that matter is as justifiable as that of the ISIS. What has mattered in the long run is their ability to impose that definition with all their capacity. If only the saintly part of Jesus and the good were true, there would have been no wars, no evil, no poverty, no discrimination. That fact that these are recurring parts of the world is a testament to the other side of the coin. Time and again, these two sides fight against each other seldom realizing that they are the part of the same coin. Only one of them can taste glory at a time while the other has to bite the dust.
To be able to pull off what they have at such an age would have required skills. Skills not just of temperament and determination, but also the ones less spoken of. Skills such as believing in your inner voice, acting at the right time irrespective of what others want you to do, and maybe revolting and rebelling at the right time for your own good. Who knows where they would have been had they not practiced these practices at the right time and place. All of us in our early twenties need to learn something from them.
The end result doesn't matter, it is what you do that does. Hardik has drawn flak from the common populace but the fact that matters is that he has led a revolution successfully. To be able to lead so many people, be it by a constructive purpose or by a blatant disregard for the existing structures of the system, is no easy thing to pull off. The critics who say that such agitation spurs tension and inter-caste violence must ask themselves that why did it happen in the first place. If the public knew the repercussions of such a conglomeration, why did they unite in the first place?
Barack Obama, on his last visit to India, had said that India would prosper as long as it is not splintered along religious lines. He should have added communal lines as well. To collect the collective anger that had been building up for years and channelize it into a mass movement takes courage, and, however bad his intentions may seem to us, Hardik was successful in overcoming all the obstacles that he would have faced. Do you think that none among his peers would have opposed to the idea of a reservation led agitation? Do you think that the castes that proclaim reservation to be their birthright would have easily let another one compete for the same thrones as they do? Yet, the Patidars are well on their way to maybe defining another chapter in the history.
The pertinent question that I want to address through this is that you don't necessarily need to stick to the cliches to be successful. And by not sticking to them, you don't only open the doors of entrepreneurship as has been the popular belief, especially with college dropouts. Rather, anything that you feel is correct, irrespective of whether it conforms to the standard accepted procedures or not, is indeed correct. Whether it's dropping out of college to start your own venture or doing the same to lead an agitation. Both are equally justified.
There are no truths in this world, only perceptions. What you perceive as the truth is the truth for you, irrespective of what the world feels. Adolf Hitler felt that Nazism was the truth, and he had the courage to stand up for it, and look what he did. He might be a sinister being for the world, but for himself, he was a saint, because he followed the truth- his truth. And Patel, though not viewed as someone synonymous to Hitler, is by and large, an outlaw, but only for the world. Because for himself, he's a saint.
The crux being that you need to define your world and not the other way around. This is again a cliched phrase but there is a hidden meaning. Different people define their world's differently. So the definition of Einstein, Steve Jobs, or Kalam for that matter is as justifiable as that of the ISIS. What has mattered in the long run is their ability to impose that definition with all their capacity. If only the saintly part of Jesus and the good were true, there would have been no wars, no evil, no poverty, no discrimination. That fact that these are recurring parts of the world is a testament to the other side of the coin. Time and again, these two sides fight against each other seldom realizing that they are the part of the same coin. Only one of them can taste glory at a time while the other has to bite the dust.
