AVERAGE- THE NEW BRAND

AVERAGE- THE NEW BRAND

A long hiatus, it has been. It has been a while since I experienced life and quite a while since I have output that outlook of life.  Writing has been an exhausting process and getting exhausted once in a while is good for my creative health. I have always needed to “PUSH” that button of creativity and switch off “Laziness” to drain down my thoughts. As Derek Walcott quoted “If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average”. So this essay (of the blog and the poem of life) would try not to be average. There was this school teacher of mine; a sweet lady called Tina/Tina Miss/Mrs. Who had already envisioned the most ideal remark anybody could write down on my Progress Report Card. Trust me, it defines Akarsha in a challengingly limited number of words. This was what she quoted. “Akarsha is just average. He always needs a push in whatever he does”. To this day it still holds the record of being the only positive remark on my progress report card. Completely feeling obliged and realizing the duty of satisfying the Newton’s Law of Motion which says “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”,  I was pushed down all the way until I reached the seventh grade.

But this time there was a twist to the story. I had pushed the boundaries of my mom’s anger (which made her take up the seventh grade exam this time seriously) and the impact was a percentage of 92.50. Hold on, I had faced the exam and by default the credits were automatically inherited by me. Then there was this magical moment.  Suddenly, life seemed much more interesting. The society had seen (or it thought it saw) a phoenix rise from its ashes. The over glorified success provoked the society to come up with a new definition of Akarsha in their dictionaries. Akarsha- Definition: Average Suddenly Exceptional. Synonym: Overnight Craziness.  It was a dangerous liaison and that’s when I decided to add my own Antonym to this sudden success. Antonym: Stop dreaming and be yourself.   I had failed in the very first exam of Physics in my 8^th grade. Vague images of Newton crying, my dad (lawyer)  concluding that this was a case of “Below Averageness” (if there is a word like that) the output of which cannot be judged even in the Supreme Court , the society worrying about the cost of reprinting this dictionary of mine every time, were the images of immediate trauma. Sticking to a true, soulful, absolutely emotional side of me I decided not to alter the version 1.0 of the dictionary throughout my high school days.

Unlike other schools my school was supposed to be a brand by itself, famous for producing the most number of distinctions in the state which implied that it could not tolerate below average souls like me. Parallel to this was my mom, who was tired of telling everyone that I was not up to the standard. I also forgot to mention that I was the captain of a TEAM B cricket team. TEAM B was not equal to TEAM A because of its average performance. Now coming back to the average performance I still remained calm and in seemingly indifferent to success and was still proud of my achievements until there was this moment of life which rewrote destiny. This was one such incident which instigates the brighter side of me even today.

I was now among the chosen few to compulsorily attend special coaching classes handled by some of the exceptional teachers. The readers might question the ordinary nature and the commonness of these classes in every school. But my school essentially branded it “Low achievers Class” and the name says it all. Coming out of the class on a hot afternoon, I went into a psychological turmoil introspecting me and my existence in the society. I had experienced the extremes of anger, hatred and self denial. A killer instinct had unknowingly rooted itself in me. Fueled by my mom’s constant encouragement and utmost patience I was able to stay focused and had sensed the need of proving, proving something big to my school.  Every day was constant study and continual replenish of memory.

Proving the old saying that perseverance and focused efforts would always lead to success I fared pretty well and was among the top scorers in the school with a percentile of 95. The “still hard to digest tone” of my headmistress who told that “ This is just a phase of Life, there is a lot to achieve” and her speech introducing me as one among the top scorers of the school still evokes a curiosity in understanding “Social Psychology”.

With the academic success came a couple of honors and constant praise. Also it paved the way for developing me a questionable ego and sadistic pride. But the positivity of the situation was after all, I had given the society what It needed an above average “Brand Name”. However this trance did not last long. A supposedly below average performance in a competitive exam had brought in mixed reactions. There were people who showed above average concern for a below average performance and there were below average remarks from the supposedly above average class of the society which inscribed an eternal question. “Is the respect you get directly proportional to the success you make”. The answer was yes with “Above average, mostly successful Brand Names” being the criteria.

Life still continued to travel to an unluckily below average destination. I had joined a relatively new engineering college with no absolute brand value. But as the saying goes fortune favors the bold this was where I learnt the most important lessons of life and realized that there was something beyond brand and success. I instantly felt connected to a lot of pre-defined below average guys like me. I also realized that life was just not about branded clothes, gadgets and money. I get emotional thinking of this college as it had brought in the true meaning of friendship through my buddies like Pavan,Shivaji, Keshav, Arjun, Shivraj and Kaustubha.

Again I stood there consistently performing below average in the vastness of society-defined below average people. My life has always taken a turn whenever there has been a trigger point. Another such trigger point was when I realized that only few not so famous companies looked forward to on campus recruitments which were open to only above average performers while good brand colleges had the best companies. I was engulfed by a opaque cloud of sadness and dejection and everything seemed pessimistic and unclear. I had decided to create a brand and was fortunate enough to get employed by one of the top three brands in the software consultancy domain.

An above average dream of pursuing my masters had begun to take shape and yet again with my average scores I landed in an average graduate school. It did not take time for the society to kick back in. I am also confident that I have not wasted time in giving back Internships with brands like ABB and EDISON so far.

So essentially does it mean that not associating yourself with a good brand value makes you average? For me, average is essentially a state of mind. I don’t care if I have not associated myself with IIT’s and STANFORD’s. I have always dreamed big, impossible things and made sure that I have done my part to reach them. I sincerely oppose the society of judging a man’s value by his success. The day I stop doing my duty of improving myself, that’s the day I call myself average. I want to grow based on my strengths like humility, honesty and emotional intelligence. I believe that nobody is born a warrior or a coward. It is our ability to grow up into being either one of them. It’s not the power of the car but how it is driven that matters. I want to mature to a state where I constantly give the society the success it needs, the brand value it needs but ultimately consider the harmony between me and my life as the ideal brand. Of course I love the brands like Guess, Audi and Burberry and I am sure to enjoy the pleasure of being branded. But I would love to reach a state where I have them but deny their brand value. I am proud of being average because I believe it gives me an opportunity to strive to reach perfection and in the process conquer all my dreams. So I believe that there is a new generation of average guys like me waiting for their potentials to be tapped. Without the society’s scorn and discontent we wouldn’t even stand a chance to grow.  This blog is definitely nothing more than average. I am average, but I continue to deny that state until I live!! Average is the new brand. It will explode!!!