It’s so difficult to tell at what point dreams just quietly turn themselves into illusions. And since we can’t tell the difference, so we unknowingly keep running after those illusions, believing all along that it’s our dreams that we are pursuing.

Problem is both illusions and dreams look so similar. Both have a touch of fantasy and a touch of yearning. And so often feelings that dreams inspire, illusions are able to fake them very well. The last is the most dreadful bit of the whole thing. Even long after your heart is no more there in something that you are pursuing, still you keep running after it, just because till very late, you never realize that it is not what you want.

And that’s not all, if you are smart enough to smell the rat then illusions have other tricks up their sleeves. First they try and confuse you – in trying to keep up the masquerade they repeatedly tell you they are not what they seem, if that fails than they threaten you by trying to tell you that if you turn away now, you would lose more a great deal more than what you are ready to bargain for.

So, one need to get through all this before he can put his foot down and tell himself that there won’t be any more running behind illusions. And then begins far more difficult journey to find those dreams that got lost somewhere while you were too busy running behind illusions.

I don’t know how many people succeed in covering the distance between smelling the rat and belling the cat. But may be its too harsh of us to stand at finish line and judge people just by their success in crossing the line. Sometimes, what takes more effort and guts is not running the full course but stopping mid-way and letting everyone pass as you stroll towards a bench by the track. To stop and to quit are two very different things I guess.

-siddhartha

Song recommendation for the day:

Totally unrelated to the post, this is one beautiful song that I discovered yesterday and no points for guessing that it is now playing for almost 24 hours on my lappy :)

अच्छी नहीं सनम दिल्लगी दिल-ए-बेकरार से

क्यों रो रहे हो, छेड़ा था हमने तुमको तो प्यार से

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Rather than writing the entire lyrics, I tried to get a bit techie and upload the audio here.But for reasons best known to Google that didn't work out. But its a nice song Kishore-Asha-Pancham-Gulzar combo from the movie Rakhi and Hathkadi ( What's in a name anyways, however tacky it is !!!). So try it.