road not taken

begin at the beginning, come to the end and stop. this piece of wisdom was imparted to Alice while she was wandering about in wonderland; by the red king. as she was bewildered by the events happening around her, i too am bewildered by the past and trying to remember where was the beginning!

i suppose, it was somewhere in the year 1975, in the month of june/july in mumbai iit.

i remember the famous poem by robert frost, 'two roads'

The Road Not Taken

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By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

when i cleared ssc with ok marks, getting into the iit took my fancy. i declared my intentions to parents who agreed and decided to put me in a pune college and coaching class. it was the great Fergusson college and Zambre classes. 

i did the college and class sincerely. and appeared for iit entrace.

there were only five iits then, with bhu-it as a step-sister.

i got admission to kharagpur and bhu.

neither me nor my parents had any idea about the programs/prospects, opportunities or anything else. so we went and met a engineer in midc, who was non-committal. nothing wrong there.

went for the admission/selection/interview to powai iit.

there circumstances went against me, i don't know what came over me, and i turned away from getting admission to iit.

came back. fortunately, my parents accepted the decision without too much grumbling. now i realize what they could have felt. however, 1975, iit was just another engineering college. not the glamosous place it is now.

after coming back, it was decided that i will stay in aurangabad for the class XII (first year) and pursue medical career. 

why this tectonic shift? god knows. 

some administrative hassles at university level were necessary. they went through. i scored acceptable marks and got admitted to the government medical college, aurangabad. i had also appeared for the sevagram medical college, and got admissionn there too. appearing for the aiims entrance was another attempt, but it did not work out.

and on 16th august, 1976, i began my medical career.

. 

the road i took was not less travelled. it was a well trodden path. however, things may have been completely different had i taken the first road.