Requiem for a Dream

He nervously walked up the stairs leading to the stage. 'Tap, tap, tap...' The noise of his shoes echoed throughout the theatre. Kartik was giving a competitive public speech for the first time ever in his life. Making his way to the podium, he stood there, tapped the mic twice to ensure he won't make a fool out of himself. He looked at the crowd, took a deep breath and started his speech.

"A rat race. What is this 'rat race' we so often hear about? A rat race is defined as any exhausting, unremitting, and usually competitive activity or routine, especially a pressured urban working life spent to get ahead with little time left for leisure, contemplation etc. Hah! So a rat race is a synonym for life basically. What you and I are doing every single day... Trying to be happy, I guess."

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Kartik Kale and I'm here to speak on the topic for the day, "I Have a Dream" The title of the topic might be in the present tense but at the age of twenty-five, my life has already converted it to the past tense. I had a dream, ladies and gentlemen. I had a dream as a child to be happy, to make an impact on whoever I meet... 'Wherever you are, make sure you're adding value to the lives of people around you' a quote I had read as a young man and have strived to do so ever since. But unfortunately adding value to people's lives doesn't add value to your coffers, does it? If it did, the rich would be the good human beings, the ones who take care of others rather than just grow themselves. It's the humans who want to see the world be a better place rather than see their material possessions grow in stature. Alas! Adult life changed the dream of a child and like the falling feeling in sleep, woke him up with a startle and told him... welcome to reality."

"I had a dream and I was welcomed to reality, where you wake up every day in the pursuit of success. Success being the equivalent of money and net worth. I have never seen a poor yet happy man called a success yet a rich man with stark sadness will always be called one. The ways of the world are strange indeed. It's like being in the production line of a cold drink factory. Row after row of empty bottles being filled with the same thing over and over again for decades. Capped and packaged with the same labelling and sent out into the world to be sold. It is really amusing to me how before every job interview, the advice you are given is to sell yourself with every sentence... this same world has the audacity to further frown upon prostitutes. Shame on all of us! We are selling ourselves every day to societal pressures. Get a job, give nine hours of your life every day to an organization which will replace you within the blink of an eye. They don't care. We're just another packaged bottle of cold drink ready to be bought by some other organization to eventually do the same thing over again. What is the point? I would like to ask all of you today... What is the bloody point? To live from vacation to vacation? That too IF your organization permits? Haha, freedom you call it. Weird world, honestly. People giving you money for doing the same thing every day. It's as good as slavery, just a more sophisticated and sugar-coated form of it. Corporate slavery, you might call it. What hurts me the most is that none of us, not even myself have the nerve to say, screw it."

"We should but we cannot... We cannot because we are prisoners of society and social media. All these so-called influencers who do nothing more than bare a little skin and post about the most inconsequential of things tend to have an effect on us. We see their lives and we compare it to ours. Their lives seem to be full of travel and best friends and fame and what not and ours is merely a nine to five job with a monthly salary. Another thing about social media amuses me that if you are famous, you are automatically good at absolutely everything. The absolute dog excreta that 'an influencer' or an actor, for that matter, posts is regarded as a commandment from Moses himself. I had a dream, ladies and gentlemen. A dream, to live my life on my own terms. A life, where I am satisfied in even the littlest of things happening around me. I had a dream that the sunrise brought with itself a sense of joy of the beginning of a new day rather than the anxiety of having to face another day ... and then another and then another and then one more till it's time when my bosses feel that I should take a break. A break being temporary happiness for a week and then I'm back like a hamster running in the wheel. Tired and forced. "

"What if I went to the Himalayas, opened a little shack for myself and a few travellers... did not earn lakhs of rupees but still smiled at each sunrise and took every day as an opportunity to learn? Would that make me successful in the eyes of my parents? My relatives or my friends? Or will it be me dogged down by pressure, looking forward to the next day more than the present one. Battling through to earn money enough to satisfy the norms of society that will be deemed successful? Do all of us need to be remembered in history? Or rather are all of us going to be remembered? The person who is happy with a meal twice a day will meet the same fate as a person who feels his happiness lies in his BMW. What about the people who don't want to be remembered? What about the people who are satisfied? Shall they always be frowned upon by the money makers or will they be accepted as equals? This is a dream I have, ladies and gentlemen that people who want to live the present day as best as possible are treated equally with the people who plan and think long term. I have a dream that there is a day where the money is not a criterion for success rather it is the nature of the human that counts for eligibility."

"It is uncanny, how a baby when born cries as soon as he/she enters this world. A being, dreaming of a life like being in the womb... a life where happiness is natural and there is no judgement, no monetary influence, no societal pressure involved. A being, dreaming of a happy life opens his eyes and his/her first breath smells pressure. A pressure of being like someone, being somebody... The first cry of a baby is not him/herf alive, it is a requiem. A requiem for the dream he had."

Kartik looked down at his notes that he'd got along to help him remember what he had written during the speech. He got his head up and looked at the crowd with a certain shock... He realized, after the first paragraph, he had just ranted his heart out rather than recite his speech. There was pin-drop silence in the audience. 'Tap tap tap...' his shoes echoed as he walked down the stairs of the stage. Kartik did not care about the competition any more. He was a winner in his mind already.