This is about the two great personalities of India whose every success makes its hundreds of millions of people elated and whose every failure makes them lament silently. These are the men who have touched hundreds of millions of lives without having added anything concrete to their lives.. These are the men who can bring together a nation by simply putting their skills on display. These are the men who are always present in the collective consciousness of people as icons of india . They are Sachin Tendulkar and A R Rahman. There might be other people from indian soil who are equally succesful in their carees but no one has occupied so much space in the minds and hearts of people of india as them. What did the magic for them to have reached such heights and exude such an aura?.. This is partly because of the mass popularity of the fields they are in. Cricket and movies are like bread and butter ( or rather daal n roti) to Indians and they appeal to us in no ordinary way. Hence Sachin's cover drives electrifies the crowd more than Vishwanad Anand's chess moves and A R Rahmans's melodies mesmerizes us more than M S Subblaxmi's classicals.
But equally importatnt is their unmatched passion towards their arts.Both Sachin and Rahman are gifted geniuses, yet possess a great passion for what they do. The passion which drives one through their highs and lows and gives the joy of pursuing an art for the love of it. Money, fame, ambition, nationalism and everything else are secondary. These are too mild tonics to achieve something pehenomenal like them. Sachin could not have started his career wishing he would score his 100th century one day or break every existing record on earth. If he did wish, I think he would not have achieved this feat. It is just the love for cricket which drives him through evrey innings and makes him perfect the way he work the ball into gaps adding beauty to the game and thus giving sheer joy to millions who watch him. It is also the love whcih has not faded a bit and urges him to continue playing even after 23 yrs of association with the game and achievieng everything one could possibly conceive of. And similarly Rahman's passion is evident in the hard work he is said to put in and the soulful music which comes out of it. His reclusiveness and simlplicity tells a lot about his priorities. Hence I believe the magic lies in finding out one's calling and devoting oneself to it completely. Real happiness is found in doing that. If one does that everyrthing else like money, fame and awards automatically start pouring in. A bit idealistically ,they are just the byproducts in one's pursuit of happiness. Finally these words of Ayn Rand defining happiness, I feel are true in every sense and are close to the values embodied by the duo I mentioned.
"Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions."
This is a small tribute to the two people I admire the most.
