From dusk to dawn: Story of the lady who loved literature

There are women who are striking, there are women who are gifted and then there are women who are tough. But one cannot be tough without having gone through the grinds of examination that life has the habit of conducting at the most unexpected of times. And ages.

So, there is a young woman who, being a young woman that she is, could have chosen to pursue a degree of a lucrative kind without being bothered about poetic notions like passion and pleasure. In fact, many men must have told her so. But there are some (there is one, at least) who marvel at the decisions she has taken. It does require a steeled resolve and every morsel of determination to brave the daily storms of life and yet walk through the moment with a gritty smile, and emerge on the other side triumphantly.

Due to a physical disorder, she cannot commute. Otherwise, she could have so easily got into a good college for chasing a degree in literature, her foremost love. But encumbered by this problem, she couldn't. Jadavpur University (JU) is just a stone’s throw away from her place. But one of the toughest things in academy is to get a seat in literature in this prestigious university or else she could have so easily persevered with that dream. But what I have observed, over the years, is that luck doesn't really favor the brave (whoever made that maxim certainly erred big time). On the contrary, people become brave precisely because luck never favored them.

So, disheartened at not being able to find a seat in literature, she ought to have succumbed to misery. Right? 
Of course, she had the option to reduce her standards and do a sit-at-home course by signing up for a distance degree in this subject. But that wouldn't have been acceptable to her conscience. 

At the end of the day, she was as far away from a degree in literature as dusk is from dawn. But some people can stay docile throughout their lives and it is only when a dark storm approaches that they realize how resurgent, how resilient can they be!

She created a second dream for herself.

"Dreams must be nurtured," I have heard from those myriad philosophers and poets. But what I have learnt from her is that "dreams can be created, reinvented." So, she submerged herself in history, her second love. She plunged into the task, cracked the entrance exam and found herself that rare seat in JU where having failed to qualify for literature, she ensured that she qualifies for history.

Around five years later, she is the most favorite student of her departmental head. As she sits on the brink of doing a PhD in the subject, I sit here beside my window and admire the choices made by her.

As for literature, she hasn't given up on it. Her heart, somewhere, is still loyal to her first love. But it’s not a question of ‘literature OR history’ for her but of ‘literature AND history’. She reads her beloved books daily on bed before closing her eyes for the day.

 She didn't die in literature, but was born again in history.

She smiled through the storm and eventually pushed me to claw out of my gloom, encouraging me, helping me find a seat in JU, emboldening my eyes to dream for literature. In her eyes, I see my eyes and in them I see her dreams taking flight.

She is the 'she'

She created her own dawn after life heaped dusk at her.

  [“This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus“.]