7 P.M. Cool and pleasant evening. I was on an evening walk.
I was almost pulled by the rhythmic beats of Mridangam (a type of percussion instrument) from behind the hedge.
Raja (name changed) was practising, looking at the notations by his side. He could hardly read the notebook. He was sitting in dark at the farthest corner by the side of the eastern express highway in Thane.
For over five minutes Raja didn't even realise that I was standing by his side watching him play the Mridangam. My wife was watching patiently from a distance. She is used to such foolish halts of mine.
With a little bit of inquiry (finally when he looked at me), I came to know that he stayed in a rented shanty. His workplace was a few kilometers away. And that he sometimes came to practise in this corner whenever he got time. Once in a month he would go to his native near Murbad about 100 kilometres and take lessons from his Guru there.
What a commitment towards one's passion!
Whereas it is very easy to get spoilt (with smoking, drinking and chewing tobacco) in a metro city like Thane or Mumbai, the boy chose a corner and Mridang. The young boy (at 20 age) was pursuing his passion by the noisy and polluted roadside after work hours.
The reason:
His neighbors would complain to his landlord about the 'noise' of Mridang.
No room inside his room that he shared with a couple of partners.
Many 'innovate' hurdles to complain of 'why and how a thing couldn't be done' even after the corresponding resources were available in abundance. The young boy instead found solutions over his hurdles while nurturing his passion, staying alone 100 kilometres away from his family.
Sure to grow into a real life RAJA (King) of his passion if he continues to nurture it with consistency (rather than Passion as a Fashion) and self-managed supervision like Ekalavya.
Actually while I was writing this blogpost, my wife showed me a WhatsApp ping. It wrote "Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, that was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities.
This experiment raised several questions:
In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
If so, do we stop to appreciate it? " particularly when it comes free!
May be the boy is still to go far as a percussionist.
But what I wanted to appreciate was that that's how big names get made. In fact most successful people in various fields have left similar trails in their individual lives. They had little more patience to turn tables over while their problems were hell bent on testing them.
Their passions won over their problems by miles!
Big names get made when people find opportunities in problems without complaining about lack of resources, if any.
Big names get made (with holistic satisfaction as the result) when people find and nurture their passions rather than running after the run-of-the-mill careers.
Who knows (like Joshua Bell) sometime in life the boy may become a great percussionist if not Padma Shri Zakir Hussain!
In his humble mind, perhaps he already is!!
Here's my Haiku poem over the learning of the day:
Passion isn't a Fashion
Also read a few relevant blog-posts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.
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