© Bikramjit Sen

It was raining cats and dogs. I was standing on my balcony facing the heavy downpour that brought the beautiful smell of the earth to my nose. I had a coffee cup filled to the brim with espresso. I still like it in the rain. Not that bad, is it so?

I was getting drenched, but I liked it that way. Suddenly, a loud thump on the wet road took all my attention away from the beauty I was enjoying. I spotted a man whose heart had still not given up on him. He was in terrible pain from the fall. He lay in a pool of blood around him. The blood everywhere was getting washed away by the rain. I rushed to his aid as soon as my eyes met his.

But sadly, before I could rush him to the nearby hospital, he died, uttering his final words, "Never stop dreaming, young fellow; I never did."

I had been reading the great Victorian poet Matthew Arnold lately, and suddenly a line from his poem, Sohrab and Rustum, inspired by an episode of Firdausi's famous Persian epic flashed in my mind and struck me hard. For a moment, the line "Truth sits upon the lips of dying men" started wandering in my mind, and I became numb.

I had lost all the movements of my limbs. I felt I would be dead anytime soon. Gone from this world to the heavens above where I know no one is waiting for me.

Oh my God, what should I do? Shall I sob while holding on to the dead? Or move away before it's too late. It is a case of suicide or perhaps murder. Who knows? Oh God, forgive me for my sin. I never knew this would happen to him in front of me.

I felt too sorry. I had to leave that dead man before anyone spotted me with him. Was that man helpless? Was I the one who desperately needed help, and he was just a light in the darkness that had engulfed me? Was I helpless? It was still a mystery to me. But that is not the point of this story.

#MyPresent

A month has passed since he passed away, and now I feel something of me died with him that day. Or else, how would I be in a better headspace than I used to be before this incident? Whatever I have faced it was horrible. The mishap shook me to the core and left me in tears of a different kind. But it is not for which I repent. I am more cheerful than I used to be earlier. I feel this about myself; I am a changed man and that too, for the better. I was good, perhaps. I became better. Now, I aim for the best version of myself. And, that is how it should be.

Whatever I was yesterday, I need to change that, even if a little. I remember the importance of kaizen, small steps but consistently taken in the right direction in the race to success. In my childhood days, I had read the fable of the hare and the tortoise.

It touched my heart to see how the size and speed don't matter if there is a will to progress; a determination to proceed further. And who doesn’t know, where there is a will, there is a way. I remember a quote from Abraham Lincoln, I may walk slowly, but I never walk backward.

I can touch my heart and vouch for it that I have changed into something extra today. I feel special deep within and I can feel there is some sort of an awakening. There is progress.

There is hope in my eyes to attain the unattainable. I know, I can,...