The Phoenix

" People never die, they become stars" grandmother always used to say that. I don't know about people but I can certainly say about dreams, they never die. 
When I was a kid , I used to dream to be a cricketer or an actor. I used to think that the heroes sing the song themselves while dancing. The wish to duplicate those actions scenes to feel like a mighty young man. Less I knew that life ain't a movie and the heroes neither sing and mostly doesn't perform stunts. In the evening when we used to play cricket, the feeling of hitting a six used to surpass any other happiness which I get today. The classic shots of Tendulkar or the big sixes of Ganguly, we were master at everything. Little did I understand that the ropes are too near as the concrete has engulfed our grounds. Today when I see people playing on roads with the same happiness, I get jealous of them and sometimes happy also. These people have hardly played on a grassy ground, but then I see them rejoicing these little things in life, and find that I have forgotten to be happy. 
So I was talking about dreams, when I reached secondary school I found that I could neither be an actor not a cricketer. The only thing I am more than average is study. But unfortunately in our society we all are pushed to be a good student always. The marks become more important than education itself. I ask myself what if the teacher doesn't know how to teach but gives good grades for whatever you write. Will you ever be able to learn things. These teachers shaped me also, they influenced my thought. I discovered that I can compose poems, though mostly written to impress girls. My love for poems enhanced over time until one day my teacher asked me to stop it for a while and concentrate on studies. I never understood till today how my passion for literature could hamper my studies? Aren't literature a part of the course. Any way, I got admitted in science stream in senior secondary school.
The dream of becoming a writer and my enthusiasm for literature almost vanished over time. It was the turn for physics. I fell in love with that subject. The subject where one need to imagine everything .. It gave me that creative freedom. But then there was Chemistry, the subject which I hated till yesterday. If you ask me today about it, I will say that it doesn't matter when we love or hate this subject but we need to learn few basics of it. Though the education system in India is pathetic , I never found any burden. I was free, solving maths and physics problems in biology class. The teacher knew that but ignored it. May be I was creating less trouble to him than others. Biology was never a favourite subject of mine but it used to intrigue me. Later in my life this subject became my favourite tool. Will talk about it after sometime.
As the days passed, my dream changed to engineering, the distant relative of physics. It was only because engineering was seen as a lucrative career and the place where best brains go. I never understood the concept of best brains, what if my brain functions in a different way, will it become worst then? Leave this aside for now, let's talk about the dreams.
My dream changed and I became an engineer. After four years of torture in undergraduate course, and with the will to give up studies, I dreamt of a happy life in a private firm. But again, dreams have no longevity. After joining the firm I questioned my existence and left it for higher education. Thought it was not easy to get a seat in countries best engineering institutes, luckily I ended up in one of them. That place changed me, it showed me the colours of dreams. It showed me what can be achieved. And then what else, I chose to be a doctorate from a master's student. Somewhere I was scared of my decisions when something good happened and I got a prestigious scholarship. 
Believe me my dream again changed. When I started the PhD I thought of doing something and getting a job as an researcher in some central govt funded institute. But today after receiving that scholarship, I believe that I can do something new. I can create something from the ashes. Just like the old dreams which got burnt with time, yet a new dream born out of it, like a phoenix. 
Today when I join the dots back, I find that my love for physics made me an engineer which gave me a chance to get here. And the biology, I found nature to be the best builder in the world. It could create wonders which we only reciprocate. And may be one day we would be able to create unique things , and show the nature that you are not the sole creator, even we can dream, we can create. The dreams never die, they just burn themselves to create new dreams, just like the mighty bird of Greek mythology - the phoenix