Thursday, November 28, 2019

The Alchemist

"Why dont you like your favourite book anymore?"A friend asked me when I told her that I didnt regard The Alchemist as my favourite anymore. "But why?", she was curious because I had told her the story with high spirits, of course without mentioning the end and I raved about its influence on my thoughts and life.

I had no convincing answer to give her nor I could understand why it was so.May be I have stopped dreaming about my future. May be I didn't  believe in dreams and mirages and hallucinations anymore.

Why?Why? Why? This time I asked myself the question. The same friend had told me that I overanalyse everything and think in detail about every minute thing. As she would say make a kheema out of it. So my mind started rewinding itself on all the memories available on The Alchemist.

What did I learn from The Alchemist?  Follow your dream, it said. I was fascinated by the idea of the universe responding to my desires if I wanted something badly. It motivated me enough to pass a test and reach a goal. I even recommended it to my friends who were also chasing some dream or the otherbut in most of the cases they were not sure of what they wanted. I was sure and felt very happy (may be vain too) about the fact that I knew exactly what I wanted and was confident of getting it too.

In the months that followed my thoughts changed. I had forgotten my own goal and my mind was immersed in other things. So when the results came I was not able to appreciate the glory of reaching my goal. I felt  that this sucess was was a hallucination I didnt deserve. It was a mighty accident after all.

I forgot that I had chosen this path fighting my parents' dream of me becoming an engineer. I knew I would have made an unskilful engineer at that and chose to learn literature instead. It was the thought of books that fascinated me. Yet I forget it all and about The Alchemist too.

I got curious, what was in that book which motivated me so much. If it put me in my right path once, it can do it again. I read the book for the fifth time. Now this time I understood that the book didnt hold the same mystery for me. I realised that though the book remained the same, I had changed.

Finally I understood that the book was a milepost and a traveller can never hold on to a milepost. It is a treasure of the heart, something that taught you a lesson but at the sametime it urges you to move on. The next time you tread the same path, it is not a stranger anymore but the reminder ofyour first journey into the unknown.

Afterthought: I want to regain whatever I have lost because I thought I didnt deserve good things.



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