I shall overcome!

The heading sounds a bit familiar, no? We all remember by heart the immortal lines of Tagore,” We shall overcome some day, …”Infact, this poem was one of the prayers we used to sing with a great sense of joy in the morning assembly sessions. So, why this minor tweak of replacing we by I? Moreover, doesn’t it look narcissistic and excessively individualistic on my part that I dared to tinker with the lines encompassing a lofty ideal of collective victory, and whatnot! Well, no doubt, I might be guilty of this not-so-minor breach, but for heaven’s sake, spare me this ‘self-indulgence, pardon me for being self-centred in this case. Let me put forth my case as to why I dared to commit this sin? This is the first time I am writing something, or rather mustered courage to pen something, on my blog since I formed my account a couple of months ago. I made up my mind many a time to do the “Shree Ganesh” yet failed on each occasion. Self-doubt,fear of committing small mistakes,grammatical ones in particular, fear of being laughed at for my silly ideas and pathetic writing style blah blah blah. These all have been my faithful companion all along this journey of procrastination and dilly-dallying. They kept me de-motivated thoroughly, nipping in the bud any thought of going for a shot at writing that ever occured to me.I literally suffered a lot, for nothing could be more nerve-wracking than the fact of a law-student being unable to put coherently few lines on paper.His career can very well be deemed over even before the taking off! Needless to mention the poor results I got both in my board exams in school and the first semester exams i wrote in college. I had to ‘restrict’ and ‘suppress’ the creative urges that occurred to me in this duration. Well,I found myself stuck in the situation the famous Hindi phrase “marta-kya-na-Karta so lyrically portrays. I tried cramming grammar-its damn hard to get hang of those pesky little rules! Vocabulary was not that big an issue for me, for I have been a vocab-buff for a considerable time now. I love mining new words, knowing their meaning, and using them in fitting contexts-its almost like discovering new pearls in an ocean! But the big elephant in the room that successfully kept me far and away till now from realising my dream of writing is the lack of conviction and courage in me, that I can even write, arrange passages logically, create a beautiful write-up, and many more dreams that unfortunately didn’t come true. Hopelessnes! Sheer frustration! Hitting a cul-de-sac! Then, out of nowhere, a ray of sunshine in form of the invigorating lines of Tagore struck me: we shall overcome, we shall overcome…. But my colleagues and friends are exceptionally good at writing,they keep churning out books, articles and papers at regular intervals,the only loser is me! I have flunked like anything, hence I required a very powerful line capable of reminding and pushing me to keep writing and creating friction between pen and paper. That’s why this not-so-good-looking line: I shall overcome!

I