A leaf out of My own Book

Like many others and unlike the rest, today again I shall take a leaf out of my own book.
When I look back at my younger days, I often wonder the volume of trouble I had to go through to reach where I am today. I am where I should not have been, somewhere I never thought of being in. Its not about prestige, money or position, it is about me. My frenzy for books and novels never allowed me to think beyond being a writer. But the world was not sympathetic. Instead of penning romance and speaking into a microphone, I found myself struggling to keep up with the innumerable chemical formulas and movement of rays. The only piece of solace I found in a day was my English class. Years passed on and after many sleepless nights and in-house fights I reached what can be dubbed as the darkest phase of my life till date, class 11. A decent class 10 result had over-confidence brimming in my interiors as I took up science to study with. The first few exams passed with my failing in every other subject save English and Computers. Teachers came and went, chapters moved on but I could never grasp a single syllable of what was being taught. Fulfilling all expectations I failed the year and moved on to another school for class 12. Another few miserable results came along but I eventually passed the year without any decency in my school leaving grades.
Engineering was inevitable and I chose IT. Further humiliations pursued as I stumbled through the first three semesters. One bad relationship and another disastrous one kept me going till the 4th semester, and my results never went beyond 60%.
The 5th brought me back to the gateway of where I stand today. I would never be able to define any one cause of change I went through. My grades started to show promising numbers as did some other activites. The change was probably the result of a failed relationship. At times you have no choice but accept the fate, I chose revenge instead. Projects came, exams went and success seemed to suddenly smile down on my scarred face. The boy who had failed a class acquired a job before anyone else could and passed out with a 75% average.
Now, all said and done, I can never claim to be that underdog who made it big, but I can certainly can claim to be one who made a change all by himself. Looking at me, my father can never really relate to the student failing in subjects with the marketing official today, and I do not feel the blues to accept that I too find it difficult at times.

Now that I have decided to write this let me start it with one of my most early lessons - There are five senses prevailing in the human bodies, touch, taste, smell, hear and see.
These are the five attributes Mr. Bill Gates, me, and most of you share even though we might be quite apart. But then again, there is one question I would like to ask the biologist who had fished out this theory, how would you define silence ?
I have been witness to situations where despite of being fully equipped with the five major senses, the mortal one had to let silence take over. The moment when my little sister has asked me, if my parents were married in 1987, how come I was born in 1989, where was I during 1988, I found out how at times silence comes in handy. I am hoping my next generation would be smart enough to come up with an answer.
I could touch silence, the day when I saw my uncle, decorated with flowers, sleeping with utmost pleasure (or so it seemed) being driven away. There was chaos everywhere, from the sound of some familiar voice sobbing, to the smell of the incense sticks, and some unknown voices calling out to god, nobody looked tired. I stood there in the middle of the sounds and felt silence embracing me.
I tasted silence, while my second girlfriend raved on about how bad a kisser I was. Mindless slobbering of tongues did amuse me for a while, but after that I could taste nothing else but silence on my lips, and it tasted silently weird.
I smelt silence on the roads of Sikkim early in the morning, when the only notable thing around me was the dark pine forest. As the snows of Kanchenjunga took a pale yellow color and pines around me looked up to the blue infinity, I could feel the smell of silence that gave itself away to every visitor in the hills, amidst the shades of pine, every morning when the snows turned pale.
I heard silence when sitting in the wooden deck of a forest bunglaw, I succumbed to the charm of whisky and heard the forest enjoy their deep slumber. The wind did not bother to rustle the leaves and the cricket flies didn't bother to call out. In the dark beauty of a no moon night, the forest of Dooars pulled my ears to the sounds of silence.
And of course, I saw silence on the faces of my parents every time my results came out, on the face of all those who had been bribed by me to read what I wrote, and in your apathy my dear readers (if you have retained your patience till this).