The world is a fine place and worth
fighting for - Ernest Hemingway
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Nawang's Dream
Everyone has a dream.
There are dreams about the things we want to do and what we want to
become. Most of us keep these dreams as our beacons and use them as our refuge
at darkest times in our lives. Some of us are fortunate enough to live out those
dreams. Nawang had a dream -- to serve the country, to be one with the ethos and
fabric of India. This was his dream as a child, as a young student when he
roamed the halls here at the Boys’ Academy.
He wanted , to serve in the Indian Army and to protect the India. He was
fortunate to give life to his dream. When I saw
him during the Passing Out Parade from
Officer’s Training Academy, he had a satisfied air of a man, who had reached a
milestone in life the way he had planned it. He was just commissioned in the 4th
Battalion of the 3rd Gorkha Rifles. The Gorkha soldiers
are most elite fighting force in the world, with a long and glorious
history of valour in the highest traditions of the Indian Army. When he wore the
famous black stars and the Gorkha hat of the regiment for the first time, it was
the proudest moment of his life and indeed a proud moment for all of us. The
pursuit of the dream for him was not easy, it was a hard road that he had to
walk, starting with deciding to leave
the cosy environment of Bombay. When he was applying for the army, he had to
reduce weight, almost 12 kilos in six weeks, to qualify. Nawang, who used to
love food had nearly starved himself, to lose that weight. And finally came
the tough training at the Officer’s Training Academy in Chennai to
fulfil his dream The funny thing with dreams is that they are easy to conjure
but difficult to attain. But in the end living a dream is as much worth the
effort as in attaining it. Sitting at home, sleeping, playing, dreams comes to
us, it talks to us and gets a life of its own. Attaining that dream is a
challenge, it pushes the limits of what we can do, it makes us discover parts of
ourselves that we did not know ever existed, it forces us to push to the limits
of possible and to break our own barriers. In living the
dream -- his dream, Nawang
discovered the best within him. When in Kashmir, where he was posted,
he found himself trained and compelled within
to rush to the rescue of an injured Jawan, in spite of heavy fire from
the militants. It takes more courage than we can imagine to feel the pain of a
soldier so much that you ignore your own safety and rush forward in face of
bullets. He was living out his dream. Like Lawrence
of Arabia says in the book Seven Pillars of Wisdom “ All men
dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their
minds wake up in the day to find that it was vanity: But the dreamers of the day
are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it
possible” Nawang lives
today with us as his dream. And while he lived this dream, he became bigger than
all of us. A Hero.
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