WHO AM I?

Life is a funny bet-you win some and you lose some. In the end, humans cannot keep a score and give up on the bet. It is at the fag end of their lives that the humans end up auditing their lives, its bets and the one question that keeps haunting them is- Who Am I? This is a stage where the child inside humans returns again and many crave for a re-run as they finally discover as to who they actually are!! Fortunately, in the scheme of life there is no reset button and majority of humans rue their lost times and opportunities to attain the glory that was theirs for the taking.

25 June 1983, India had reached the Cricket World Cup finals at the Mecca of the game- The Lords. The pitch curator had nothing to lose as the host team England was already out of the finals and he left a grassy pitch for an encounter which was proclaimed to be an one sided affair. The mighty West Indians were just supposed to steamroll the meek Indians and pick up their 3^rd World Cup Trophy. The Indians had nothing to lose and they began with losing the toss as well. The bespectacled West Indian Captain Clive Lloyd has had a look at the grassy pitch and he called out his bowlers to have a go at the motley Indians.

The Indian Captain Kapil Dev was young but daredevil at heart. As he came back to send his openers out to face the mighty West Indian bowlers, he said, “Good luck boys, let us enjoy the game!”. How true it turned out to be!! The Indian team was reduced to 161 for the loss of 9 wickets and the gutsy Syed Kirmani hung out with an unsung Balvinder Singh Sandhu. Sandhu dug in his heels and the score reached 183 before Kirmani lost his stumps to the giant Michael Holding.

The Indians huddled together and the dressing room conversation was led by the Captain Kapil Dev. It is said that Kapil just told his boys to make the West Indians fight for each run and 10 good deliveries which can bowl them out. Kapil’s men knew that it was a unparalleled moment in their respective lives and each one gave his heart out to christen themselves from the Indian Cricket Team to the Kapil’s Devils. They had got the answer as to Who They Were or simply each one of them achieved the answer to the eternal question- Who Am I? Sandhu got Greenidge with a peach of a delivery, Kapil ran 20 yards back to take an unimaginable catch of Viv Richards and the wobbly Mohinder Amarnath gobbled up the West Indian lower order to stitch a historic win. The banter of West Indian fans reduced to a hush and the journalists in the ground had a tough time as they had to shed their crafted West Indian victory story into a new thought process. The 11 Indians shook up the entire Nation out of its slumber and achieved a forever “Hall of Fame” image. These men knew who they were and their lives were fulfilled forever as they entered their names into the life’s register forever as achievers.

Neil Armstrong was the first man to have stepped on moon. A look at Neil’s life reveals that he was an aerospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot and an university professor. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War. After the war, he earned his bachelor's degree at Purdue University and served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he logged over 900 flights. He later completed graduate studies at the University of Southern California.

A participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs, Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962. He made his first space flight, as command pilot of Gemini 8, in 1966 and thus becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. On this mission, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft, with pilot David Scott.

Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, in July 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent two and a half hours exploring, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command Module. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon; President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978; he and his former crew-mates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.

During his life after the space odyssey, Neil would have received unmatched attention. He would have traveled and met scores of humans, each one of whom would have just looked at him with great awe and pride. A mere shake of his hand and a feeling of rejuvenation would have criss-crossed the minds. Neil Armstrong definitely would have got the answer to the proverbial question- Who Am I? He had to clear many qualification examinations to be the first human to step on the Moon along with Buzz Aldrin. Did he ever know that after him and Buzz, there would a phenomenal gap which many astronauts are still dreaming to fill up!! The bar of achievements keeps on increasing to gain an insight into the question- Who Am I?

Almost all humans have the ability to decipher the “Who Am I?” conundrum. The strengths and weaknesses play a game in the mind and the battle is more or less won if the correct choices are exercised. The external factors too play a key role in the exercising of choices of the human mind. Humans can break all barriers if the odds are against them and it is only when they give up that the battles are lost. A streaker generates raw courage to storm the play field. So does an astronaut who just counts his nerves before stepping out his gravity less environment to take a space walk. A pilot encounters vagaries of G forces to carry out a breathtaking spiral as fuel ignites his engines at his command. A soldier picks up his gun and meets the enemy head on to live or let die. A student works hard to scale his aim. The examples are numerous and galore as humans stretch out in their quest to find the answer to their own “Who Am I” quests.

Life can never be a bed of rose. Each human has to go through its vagaries and the World strives on its inherent chaos. This inherent chaos in the World is a direct outcome of the varied solutions that humans generate to achieve their respective answers to the “Who Am I” theory. Someone has rightly said that time is a good healer. But the corollary is also true that time is a bad beautician. The earlier the humans achieve their answers to the “Who Am I” quest, the better they can deal with the speed at which time turns their lives around.

Herbert Spencer coined the phrase “Survival of the Fittest” in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones, writing, "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life." In their quest for “Who Am I”, some humans outrun the others as their aims keep on making them carry out deft maneuvers. Their lives are pacy, hectic, exciting and do have a tendency to taper off towards the biological end. On the contrary, the humans who do not reach the conclusion of their “Who Am I”, lead a tapered life from the start to the beginning. Their aims wander far and wide and in the end they get the tag of “also ran” albeit for some distance.

The one good delivery of Balvinder Singh Sandhu, that running catch of Kapil Dev, the wobbly action of Mohinder Amarnath and the first step on the lunar surface by Neil Armstrong are all some points of life where these humans got their answers to their “Who Am I” question. We all can keep scourging our lives in oblivion, reach somewhere, make no one happy and keep us away from attaining our respective “Who Am I?” answers. All through our lives, we can keep supporting other’s quests for their own answers to the “Who Am I”- that is what human life is all about. But all that we need to find is – Who Am I?

Have you found your answer?