Why I smile so much

During my entire life as a kid, I never even in my wildest dream thought that I would ever get to see any place outside of Mizoram. There were rich kids in school who had been to Silchar, Calcutta, and some even to Bombay and Pune! And kids with 'rich' relatives who'd bring them gifts from Madras, Guwahati, and Kathmandu - fancy pencil boxes, tiffin boxes, pretty pencils, and erasers. I thought them the luckiest people on earth.

I read a lot, books were a way of living a life I never thought I would get to live. Because traveling and owning fancy things was for kids with wealthy parents. So all I ever did in school was look on with envy. And read, and wrote, and dreamt. And slept with National Geographic magazines with their tauntingly beautiful pictures of the world.

I remember the day I first saw the Taj Mahal...how I was thinking back on those school days, and how happy I was for the fact that I'd finally been to some places outside of Mizoram and even get to see something like the Taj Mahal.

When I passed out of college with a Bachelor's degree, my only dream was to get my Masters. Zoology was one of the very few things I was really good at, and it was all I wanted to do. Then my mom said no. With 3 other siblings in college, it simply wasn't possible, there just wasn't money for it. I cried and she told me God will have other things for me to make up for the education we couldn't afford. But I hated her and I hated God, and I cried for months.

I don't know how things turned out this way. I know prayers are answered, but I never asked for all these. It's been a dream, living has been a dream -

I have eaten food that I've only read about and seen in books and on TV....
Drank exquisite wine and champagne that I thought only the rich drank...
I have seen and touched animals that I thought lived only on 'Animal Planet' in my world...
Now I know what kangaroo meat and crocodile meat tastes like :D
I know how it feels to dive into the ocean and jump out of a plane and freefall thousands of feet up in the sky...
I have met people I read about in books and saw on TV....
I have done things I have only secretly dreamt about, and things I didn't even know about to dream about them...
I found out America isn't really sprinkled with gold dust and that people in fact do take off their shoes before climbing into bed :-)
I also found out neither America nor Australia is filled with 'racists who don't treat us third world citizens as human beings' like I've often been told. They're full of kind, wonderful people...
I have lived in a luxury apartment in the tallest residential building in the city, swam in the highest indoor pool in the southern hemisphere...

All these superlatives and me, I joke about it to my old friends and family and it makes us laugh. But when I sit and think about it, the wonder of it all astounds me. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if everything's real - right down to the bed I'm sleeping on. I mean really wonder, not just as a figure of speech. It may not be a lot for many people, but for someone who never had anything, everything I do, eat, buy, every new place that I see, they're all a miracle to me. And more so to my family.

When I saw the Taj Mahal, I thought "Now that I've seen at least one of the seven wonders of the world, I can die in peace now if I were to die!" But now that I know how many possibilities are in this world even for poor kids and poor people, I just don't want to die at all. I want to live and explore this possibility. I want to keep living and see what other wonderful things life has to offer.

Australia has been a dream. And now I'm finally heading back towards the truest dream of all - Mizoram.

...where I rambled as a child
Makes me cry and makes me laugh
My reflections on the past
And the family, friends, and faith that shaped my life
It makes no difference just how far I roam
I still cling to that part that is so dear to my heart
My faith in God and memories of home -
The mountain angels sing
A bittersweet refrain of my Smokey Mountain Home!

Merry Christmas everyone! I wish everyone has the best Christmas this year, better than any that they've ever had, I wish everyone could be happy, and satisfied...