I live on a beautiful campus. With all the lakes and the picturesque green surroundings, one might mistake it for a lake resort. On one of the lakes there is a jetty. My friends and I spend a lot of our free time at the “jetty” talking about everything under the sun or just gazing at the natural beauty. It was a late Saturday afternoon. The sky was overcast. It was going to rain soon. I was sitting alone at the jetty enjoying the enchanting sight of a monsoon evening. My friends were busy watching the Wimbledon ladies final match. I am an avid follower of tennis but that day I was not feeling quite myself. I was throwing small pebbles into the lake, watching them create ripples in the water and disappear.

“Hey, stop that!” a voice said.

I looked around and saw a wizened old man sitting on a bench nearby.

“Did you say anything?” I asked.

“What?” said he.

“Did you say anything?” I repeated.

“What?” he replied again.

“Forget it,” I gave up.

I resumed throwing pebbles in the water.

“Hey, stop that! You are distorting me,” said a voice.

I looked around. The old man was gone. There was no one nearby.

“Who are you and where are you? I cried.

“Look into the water,” said the voice.

I looked into the water. There was my reflection.

“Hi! I am Jayant. Who are you? Why are you distorting me?” asked my reflection.

So it was my reflection that was talking.

“I am Jayant. You are just my reflection and I am not distorting you,” I replied.

“What do you mean that I am your reflection?”

“Well, it just means that I am real and you are not.”

“What do you mean by real?”

“ It means that I am a human being having a body – a head with a face, a neck, a trunk, two arms and two legs.”

“I too have a body – a head with a face, a neck, a trunk, two arms and two legs. I resemble you.”

“Of course you do resemble me because you are my reflection. If I had a different body, I would look different. You too would look different from how you look now. You would look like what I would look.”

“Then I would be a different person. I would no longer be Jayant.”

“No, you will still be Jayant.”

“How?”

“I do not know.”

For sometime there was complete silence again. Then my reflection spoke again.

“We can be great friends.”

“How? You are my reflection.”

“You have answered your question yourself. I am always there with you. I am what you are and what you will be.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Isn’t it surprising how little we know about each other?”

“Yes, it is true. Till some time back, I believed that I knew everything about myself. But over the last few days, life has come up with situations that have shaken my self-confidence. Now the world seems so confounding.”

“I’ll tell you something. Listen to it carefully.”

“I am all ears.”

“The key to understanding life is to understand oneself. Uncertainties arise because we are unsure about ourselves. We assume that we know everything about ourselves. Actually it is an illusion that we are most of the time under. This illusion of overconfidence is dangerous.”

“When I was young, I never felt unsure about life. As I have grown up, I’m becoming more and more doubtful about myself and life seems so unpredictable.”

“I know that. I will tell you a little story from the Upanishads. Listen:

Once upon a time, there were ten young men who lived in a little village. They were good friends. They studied together and spent their leisure time together. One day they were invited to attend a wedding feast in a nearby village. This village was located across the river. It was the time of the monsoons. They began crossing the river by swimming. No sooner had they reached the middle of the river, than the flash floods came.

With great hardship, the friends managed to reach the other bank safely. They were completely tired and decided to rest. After sometime one of the friends decided to do a head count to check if any of them was missing. He counted them and found that they were only nine of them. Aghast, he counted again. Again the number was nine.

Then he asked all of his friends to line-up before him and counted by touching each one and still the number added up to nine only. So, another friend decided to re-check. So he interchanged his position with that of the friend who counted the first time. He counted them the same way as the first friend did. He also got only nine people in front of him. So now they all agreed that indeed they were one man short. This was terrible. They had lost one of their dear friends. They were overcome with sorrow and started crying miserably.

A sage was passing nearby. On hearing their heart-rending wail, he approached them and asked about the problem. Still sobbing away, they retold the whole story. The sage comprehended the whole problem immediately. He told them that there was no need to cry and that there was nothing to worry about and everything was fine.

The sage asked them to form a single row. They did as they were told. Then he asked the first man in the row to count each one of his friends. He did that and the sum came out to be nine. At this juncture the sage interrupted and said to him – you forgot to look at yourself. Then the man counted himself too. The sum now was ten. The friends were overjoyed. All of them were safe and no one was washed away. They profusely thanked the sage for his wisdom.”

“That was a great story,” I said.

“To seek answers in times of crisis, you should first look at your own self and then outwards. In many cases, the problem turns out to be caused by lack of self-awareness. All of us want to know about the future. But we can never predict the future. The best we can do is to be ready for whatever it has in store for us. To do that what we need to do is to know ourselves inside out. Most of us just look outwards for solutions. These solutions are incomplete and inconclusive and end up making life as obscure as before. So we spend most of our lives chasing a mirage. When we really become cognizant of ourselves, it is too late – close to the fag end of our lives.”

“I agree with what you said. But I feel that if I had a friend who could guide me in times of trouble and keep me away from danger, it would make life better.”

“You know who are your best friend and your worst enemy?”

“I have had many friends and some enemies too. But to say who my best friend is and who is my worst enemy, is very difficult.”

At this point my reflection laughed and said, “I’m your best friend as well as your worst enemy.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Yes it is true. If you know me, then I’m your best friend. You will always be confident about yourself and do the right things. You will see life’s unpredictability as welcome challenges. You will succeed much more. Even when you will fail, you will not blame others for it and thus not be crestfallen. Your life will be beautiful. You will not think evil of others, but good of them. Your life will be full of friends. You’ll think of yourself highly whenever you’ll see your reflection.”

“What about the enemy part?” I queried.

“If you don’t know much about me, you end up harming me. You come up with solutions that don’t work. You end up blaming everyone around you, life and me for your failures. You think the whole world and me are your enemies. You curse us. Then you try to rectify your failures by devising even worse plans, which fail again. You are ashamed to see your own reflection and blame it for all your miseries. Thus you enter a vicious cycle where you make me your own worst enemy.”

“I understand what you are saying,” I said.

Then I heard a cacophony in the background. People were applauding and cheering. I rushed to the hostel situated nearby, to find out the cause of this celebration.

I returned after about fifteen minutes.

“I am back,” I said.

There was no response.

“Hey Jayant! I am here,” I said again.

My reflection did not reply.

I tried a couple of times more, but without any success.

Meanwhile, one of my friends was passing by. He had been watching me. So he came over.

“Did you drop something into the lake?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Then?” he asked again.

“Well, I have a play coming over next week. So I was just trying to rehearse my dialogues,” I lied. I could not have told him that I was trying to talk to my own reflection.

He seemed to have been convinced and walked away.

“Where did you run away?” asked my refection suddenly.

“I went to the hostel to find out what the celebration was all about. Serena Williams has beaten her sister Venus to claim the Wimbledon Ladies title. She played superbly well. No wonder she won.”

“That reminds me. Do you know the secret of winning?” it asked.

“Of course I do – it is hard work,” I replied triumphantly.

“No, you are wrong. If it was so, then why only a few win?”

I smiled sheepishly.

“It is because hard work is not the key to winning. Winning has three dimensions to it or the 3Ds.The first D is desire to win. It is the burning passion inside you, the zeal that wants you to excel. It is the most important one. Without it you cannot even think about winning. The second D is diligence. It is earnest and persistent labour that is required to win. The important thing is to do the right thing. Practice makes a man perfect but, if you practice the wrong thing, you become perfect in doing the wrong thing. The last D stands for discipline – self-discipline. It helps to concentrate the first two qualities to make your journey towards your goal simpler and removes many hurdles. It prevents you from straying away from your path and ensures winning.”

“I am grasping some of the things,” I said.

“Ok. Let me try to make this thing simpler for you to follow. Your life is like a long journey towards your goals. You come up with a route after a lot of deliberations. To be able to travel on this route, you need a vehicle. That vehicle is your desire for winning. Now the vehicle cannot run without any fuel. So you need diligence to run the vehicle. Now the vehicle is ready, with a full tank and you are the passenger sitting inside. The vehicle driver is your discipline.”

“But suppose due to some reasons which are beyond my control, the road that I have taken, leads me to a dead end. In that situation what should I do?”

“Yes, it could be a real possibility. In that scenario, you must not be discouraged. All humans make mistakes. The important thing is to acknowledge your mistake and learn from it. You should stop your vehicle, find out the reason for taking the wrong route and find a new route to your destination. Remember – it is not wrong to commit a mistake, but it is reprehensible to repeat the same mistake.”

Raindrops had started to fall. My reflection became wobbly.

“I have one question that has been constantly nagging me for a long while.”

“Ask.”

“There are situations where there are no correct answers and no wrong answers. What to do then?”

“Yes, there are questions which don’t have any correct or wrong answers. That is the truth of life. The best that you can do then is to reflect,” said my image as it dissolved away into the agitated surface of the lake.

I rushed to the hostel to prevent myself from getting drenched.

Jayant Biswas is a PGP II student at IIM Calcutta and shares with you this essay that made it to the top 250 at 33rd ISC Symposium, St. Gallens, Switzerland.

Regards,

CHRM

"To win...you must stay in the game" - Claude Bristol