“I do not know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

As you said, it is in our hands. Including who we elect to leadership. No point in complaining. Raise the right people to adulthood and to the throne (whatever form that takes) or suffer the consequences. Because every leader with the bird of our lives in his hand was once a baby, a toddler, a teenager and so on. And what his parents, family and society – i.e., we – did or failed to do, shaped and moulded him/her. He/she is our creation and so it is only right that we pay the price.

As for your comment about destiny and life’s path being preordained, I believe that it is a combination of two things; free choice, linked to the result of that choice. As when you stand at a crossroad, you are free to choose which of those roads you would like to take. But what is along the road is not your choice. It is preordained. It is and was always there. You encountered it because you chose that road. If you had chosen another road, you would have encountered different scenery and experiences.

Now, here’s the secret – you can take a U-turn and return to the crossroad and choose a different road. Like your character in the story, Manoranjan Byapari did. The first choice had imprisonment in it. The second had fame and respect of the world. Two opposites. What happened to him depended on his choices. The exciting thing is that just like we don’t know what we are likely to encounter when we turn onto a strange road, so also in life, we don’t know what it holds for us in the future. The best that you can do is to use all your abilities and resources to make the right choices. This is where education in ethics, values, and morals, has so much significance. Because it is only by these that we can choose correctly. Otherwise choice is animal-like, choosing randomly by sensation and desire alone, without any thought to its consequences. Because the truth is that we are free to choose but not choice is free. Every choice has a price tag.

I believe this is true of our lives. We choose the path. The path comes with its sights, sounds, encounters, friends, enemies, tragedies, and victories. As long as we are alive, we can retrace our steps and choose a different path. We can’t unlive or restart what we lived, but we can choose to live differently and use what happened as learning opportunities to live better.

Someone told me a lovely story about a young lad who was very interested in sculpting. He made a beautiful vase and decorated it with Lapis Lazuli, magnificent shades of blue. His teacher told him to display it in a famous exhibition that came to his city. But as he was placing the vase on its pedestal, it slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor and broke into many pieces. The boy was shattered. He was in tears.

His teacher said to him, “Collect the piece and stick them together but use this glue.” He gave him gold colored glue. When the boy finished, the vase was whole but every break was clearly visible.

The boy was completely perplexed. “Why did you ask me to join it with glue where every break is visible? People can see that it was broken,” said the boy.

The teacher replied, “It was broken. Now it is healed. And with the interlaced cracks in gold, much more beautiful than it was when it was whole.” The teacher was right because all those who came to the exhibition flocked to the vase.

Life’s struggles and apparent failures come to make our life more beautiful. Provided we get up from every fall and join every break with the golden glue of lessons learned.

Apologies. This became much longer than I intended.