My friend called me a fattu

(Fattu, as in a coward)

My buddy of 20 something years and I met after a long time. As the conversation goes by I’m telling her, for the 100th time maybe, about my dream and what I want to do with life and a little bit of what I’m doing towards it. She sits there looking at me and snap came her response: “you know Nisha, you are a fattu!”. I was speechless. Nobody had ever called me a fattu, EVER!

For a long time I brooded over it.. How could she call me a fattu? Am I really one? Goodness, is that what people think of me?

What stops us from doing what we desire to do? From taking that leap into uncertainty? Sometimes we even refuse to do things that make us happy.

Is it the fear of failure, the fear of judgement? Letting oneself and others down? Fear of rejection? Fear of the unknown? Is it one of these? Or all of it and many more?

So here I am sitting on a 13hour flight and binge watching movies – neither of which I frequently do. And the theme that’s coming to me is ‘Courage’. Courage, not to go save a life – well, that could be the end objective but it was the courage to take the right decision under immense pressure. A decision that could affect not just one’s own life but also have an impact on a whole lot of other lives and give direction to a whole generation as well.

Many of us live on the verge of ‘I could have’, ‘I should have’. We invent a zillion excuses for not doing what we want to do nor what we ought to do. A lot of times we are on auto pilot – following a routine, a pattern and drifting from one thing to another. We are happy to be normal and to fit in, to think and act like everyone else around us. Why take the risk of being unique? After all, wouldn’t it take courage to stand out, to be different and to be exceptional? Too much work – phew!

As I take time to write this, I realise courage is never the absence of fear. Instead courage gives us the freedom to express ourselves. To not follow the herd and yet to completely be at peace about it.

As I take baby steps towards what I want to do with life – the fattu in me never thinks twice to say “Dude, are you sure about what you’re doing?” But, will I ever learn to fly if I refuse to spread my wings and take off?

Am glad my buddy called me a fattu, for all I know she was nudging me towards acting on my dream and not just talking about it forever. For, what use is an idea or a dream if it is never executed?

In the end she also said with a shrug, “you atleast know what you want to do, I don’t even know that”.

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