The settler

Not that I was much bothered what my name meant, but it was always a little uneasy for me; when a rather curious person - A friend's over-zealous father or a talkative Professor or an ice-breaking HR manager - affronted me with this question. My answer used to be - 'Why should a name have meaning ?', 'When I go from this world, I would have given a meaning to my name?' or on other bored days, I used to say - 'Its some complicated Mythology. Something to do with some river in the heaven? ' I don't know if the answers amused anyone, but it made myself happy by concealing my ignorance, in what I beleived to be a smart way.

The way to the answer was obvious and simple. Google search ! On a lazy monday-morning as I surfed internet (on my still a week-and-a-half-old laptop) I casually typed 'Adnan meaning' - Enter. Voila ! I am the settler ! Peace !

But how settled am I ? Somewhere deep down I have always been fascinated by the life of a Vagabond ; A wanderer ; A taker-of-life-as-it-comes-by. Like the words of R.L.Steveson ...


The Vagabond

Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river -
There's the life for a man like me,
There's the life for ever.

.....

-- Robert Louis Stevenson


Or like Larry in Somerset Maugham's "The Razor Edge". No ! Not like him. If I would have been him. I would have taken a job with the Maturins. (And the confident side of me says - "I would have gone on to make a grand sum and earned 'infinite' wealth"). I have treaded the worn-out path. (But not always, I have gone on many a trails in the forest and the hills and have got lost and it's all been good). From Vijaya High school in Bangalore to The National College, Jayanagar and there to Mumbai :

Prima in Indis,
Gateway to India,
Star of the east
With her face to the west.

(From "Midnight's children" - Salman Rushdie)

IIT Bombay. Oh ! wait ! Did I break a convention there. The well-treaded path would have led me to IIT Madras. But then, there was a green grassy path to IIT-Kanpur as well. Compromises ! Were they ?

'Face to the west' - I am headed to America. A stamp of approval for 5 long years lie on the fourth page of my passport.
Five well settled years ?
A clean road with spacious lanes ? Gleaming straight and perfect-perpendicular through the Infinitidue of Corn-fields ? Through little-neat rows of houses of Indians and Chinese ? And dreams ? ambitions ? fame ? pride ? money ? values ? family ? satisfaction ? (No ! don't bother about the order)
The settler will be settled happy, won't he ?