ACKNOWLEDGENESIS

It’s an usual evening dinner with a close friend. Just back from a very usual trip to a once exotic destination. And I bite the edge of my tongue as I look onto my little gizmotic pda. It slaps me in the face. I’m just 2 months away from turning 25!

25 – that’s when I’d once expected to have travelled around the world, made a million, owned my own house, run my own company, written a book, lived a relationship worth being in and made my first feature film! Talk about crazy expectations and dreams. After all these are the dreams of a child. They are meant to be AMAAAZZINGG!! But hey, some of them have been attained nevertheless.

The funny thing is, this crazy slap hits me every year. Year after year I relook at my dreams and goals in life, I check them against reality, acknowledge where I stand at the moment and adapt and evolve those crazy things into realistic little mini dreamlets or goals for the time ahead. And it doesn’t come easy. The most important thing it does, is keep the spark alive.
Come on, let’s face it – NOBODY pursues a goal just the way one pursues a dream. And it’s near impossible to not be disillusioned by life if you only and purely pursue your dreams without any grounding in reality. (If for some strange reason you do manage to, you end up as the poster face for some lameass corporation advertising their con-plans on your name, selling their cheap concoctions of inspiration to hopeful masses around the world.) Reality checking dreams time after time, helps keep my little pieces of sanity that I have left, in check - without ever losing sight of those big bright stars I hold dear in my heart. That’s what fuels me to achieve even the small, not so glorious dreamlets and goals that I set for myself – on the way to the big dream.

25 – I’m almost there....
Travel around the world? I don’t even have a fucking passport! Bloody
criminals and politicians can get one, but I can’t! WHY? Cause I have
a freakkin 10 foot pole of morality up my ass that stops me from
bribing my way to get one. So I guess it’s time to get that pole out,
bribe those fucking babus, forge some papers and get a passport once
and for all.
Made my million? Yes, been there done that.
Written a book? Written yes, published NO! Why not? Coz no fucking
publisher will touch a book that goes against certain political
parties. No matter how subliminally you have uttered the truth.
Made a film? Well, won an international filmmaking competition,
written three screenplays that bollywood is scared to make as is and
im too emotional about diluting them just to feed the masses, and one
script that I would usually never write that is well....Where it must
be....

This and that, this possible, this difficult, this crazy, this for
real – an endless little juggle goes on and on in my head for over a
few nights before I can finally reach a bridge where I lay my soul to
rest.

The bridge between my head and my heart. The bridge where I’ve evaluated my dreams against my realities, acknowledged the facts, adapted and evolved them into attainable prospects, keeping the passion still burning bright as ever in exchange.
That bridge between my dreams and reality, that’s the bridge of ACKNOWLEDGENESIS.

-Pushkaraj Shirke