Sometimes, what you wish to achieve in life and what you really achieve may not match but it is within you to fill that gap. After all what you wanted of life and what it gives you in the end is a business deal between you and life. And the big lessons you learn usually happen much earlier, when you yet need someone to tie up your shoe laces.
I was the sole girl in a group of boys almost all of my childhood and so the games I played were never girl like. And being neither fish nor fowl, I was always at the lower rung of any game. If it was kite flying, I had to keep watch of their multicolored kites. If it was cycling, I had to always cycle tail end. The jumping games had my line drawn nearer than the distance I had actually covered. And finally one summer they decided fishing. And as in every game, the boys defined who would hold the baits, the fishing rod and the container. I really did make efforts but somehow even after an hour I had managed to catch nothing. Then I had a comrade in similar distress,Ar**** but he didn't catch fish because the religion he was born into prohibited it. So he and I were left to watch the fishes from jumping out the impoverished containers while the rest of the successful patriarchal fishermen were busy competing for number and variety.
My soft headed friend lamented that we alone had no fish to own. That defeatist statement irked my sense of being a free being and so I suggested to my equally outraged comrade that we could get down to the edge of the pond and try our luck with our hands. He was worried about leaving the fishes in the container unguarded and winning the wrath of the 'real' fishermen. I solved his problem by closing all the containers as tight as I could. And then we reached the edges of the pond and to our delight we saw differently shaped tailed fish like things easily available. He looked at them apprehensive but I was delighted at what i had managed to achieve. So Ar**** and I caught as many of them as we could using hands and a scarf. Well, they did look different as we placed them into a container but then I was too exhilarated at having finally caught fishes to ever examine them critically. After an hour or so the rest of the gang returned and to their dismay and mine found all the fishes dead. It didn't strike that by freezing a jump out, I had also frozen the gill. And just as they were cursing each other for having left two dumb fish out of water cogs to guard, I held out my container of achievement out. They burst out laughing, "tadpole" they shrieked together. I watched my achievement squirm but then all that mattered was the way I filled the gap between what I wanted to fish for and what I fished by. To cut bait,I assured my lost comrade that though it was not fish still it felt fish like. A fishable wish can fill any gap.
