The rainbow and the pot of gold

So I was watching an old episode from Scrubs - season 1, when something caught my attention. By the time I blinked, the object of my attention had disappeared. But my suspicions had been aroused and so I made a straight dive for IMDB.com.

Holy cow. I was right.

The nervous microscope-holding lab technician Franklyn who probably had a total screen time of maybe five and a half seconds on Scrubs was none other than the very popular Hiro Nakamura on the TV series 'Heroes'!










I don't really follow 'Heroes'. Maybe cos I just don't like any of the 'heroes' in it. Except of course, Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura. He's the best. If he was the only 'hero' in the show, I'd glue myself to the TV. But I only come across the show during channel-surfing. If I see him on the screen, I pause just enough to watch his scene and then continue surfing.

From being the token Asian guy on Scrubs to the golden globe nomination for Heroes, Masi Oka has come a long way. And I started to think about what his thoughts would have been when he'd auditioned for the role of the lab technician in 2001. Would he have thought that he would get noticed, get a bigger role, be talked about, get interviewed, and have gazillions of adoring fans (including celebrities like Tyra Banks)? Would he have looked at the lab tech role as one the things you have to do to get into showbiz (a la Joey playing Al Pacino's butt double in Friends) or was it just a source of money in hard times? Did he ever think he would 'strike gold' like this? Was it a planned move - a dream he achieved - or was it a 'Take it as it comes' strategy? Was it persistence or was it sheer good luck?

Then I started to think of other people whose lives had also turned around like this, bringing in success and prosperity. Think Saif in his 'Aashiq Awara' days. Think Shilpa Shetty in her leopard tights prancing around SRK in Baazigar. Think Rani singing the 'Yeh meri sasural hai' song in 'Raja ki aayegi baarat'. It took time, but they've all struck gold, they're all in a better place now. So at first glance, the lesson seems to be - no matter what your dream is - that great job, that great fortune, that great love - if you never give up, you will eventually strike gold.

In an ideal world, yes.

But in the real world - how many of us strike gold - fulfill all our dreams - before we die? How many of us already have had our lives turned around? How many of us will have our lives turned around in the future? Is it really a cosmic rule that each of us will make it big after the initial struggle? How long does the initial struggle take? What is the 'big thing' that's going to happen to us? How big is the big thing? Do we have to do something or will it happen on its own? How golden is the gold we're going to strike? Is it going to be shinier than my neighbour's gold? Who will strike it first? Will it be my gold or will I have to share it? When I see it, will I recognise it as the gold, or will there be smaller misleading pots of gold on the way? I These are all questions that pop up in our minds, but we brush them aside because they make us uncomfortable.

My sister showed me some of the parenting websites she visits. She has subscribed to a weekly newsletter personalised based on when the subscriber's baby was born. So your seventh issue is all about your baby's seventh week, and what the baby should be doing by then. My niece seems to be doing everything the newsletter says she should be, in the correct order. Looks like they have figured out the steps and their correct timing of what babies should be doing at each stage of their lives. But is there something similar for us grown-ups? After the nappy happy days of sitting up, crawling, walking and talking, what’s next? Is there a newsletter somewhere that says "You are now forty. By now you should be doing blah blah..." and if we're not doing that blah-blah perhaps we're on the wrong path?

Life is tough. We're taking risks all the time, hoping that one/some of them would pay off. But what if the risks don't pay off? We can always make idealistic statements like "Oh but you have to take the risk. Otherwise you're not doing enough." but the truth will hit us hard on the face - some risks are wrong decisions. Yes, you pick yourself up, scrape the dirt and move on, but what's next? And when? What if you walk and walk till you reach the end of the rainbow, and there is no gold and no time to walk any further? Would your life be a story worth telling?

Many of my friends have jumped into the MBA bandwagon. Maybe that's their ticket to turning their lives around. Maybe a few years later, I'd be holding Forbes magazine and proudly telling people "This XYZ used to sit on the floor of my living room and have my home-cooked pav bhaji. Now he's the CEO of Google and the bugger refuses to recognise me." It's true - some people seem to have it all figured out. They don't go "Uhhh.. ummm..." when asked at an interview "Where do you see yourself in twenty years?" They have specific, well-defined dreams for a perfect life. Dreams carefully calculated. Correct to two decimal places. The dream income, number and gender of kids, number (and gender) of spouses, number of houses, number of cars. Others have a vague idea – happy marriage, sufficient money, goodkid(s). Will it happen for all of them? If not, what about the rest? Will it never happen or will it take longer?

Let’s move idealism aside for a moment. In a life full of struggles, how many of us will really make that million bucks, win Wimbledon, climb the Everest, go to the Moon, get the perfect love, be a best-selling author? Aren't the sky and the earth too small to accommodate everyone's rainbows and pots of gold?

It's at times when questions like these pop up in my head that I see my own split personalities.

All three of them.

The optimist in me says everyone has a rainbow and a pot of gold. You just gotta keep going and eventually you will strike gold.

The pessimist in me says that some of us don't have rainbows to follow and pots of gold to discover, we are just part of the gold that others find at the end of their rainbows, we are meant to be the adoring fans instead of having them.

And the negotiator between the two says take life as it comes, but do remember to take some risks. If they don't turn out right, stand up for them still. And at the end if you don't strike gold, you just gotta look back at the good things and the good people that happened to you and call that your pot of gold.