Mumbai is a city of about 10 million people! 10 million forms about 1 percent of the population of my country. What is it about this city that brings people here by thousands everyday. With every passing minute, the city grows; grows in every direction; horizontally, vertically, commercially, population-wise. A walk on a street and by the time one comes back home and collapses into one's chair, one would have probably seen close to ten thousand faces; faces that one cannot even recall. They are just faces in the crowd, insignificant, unattractive, unimportant. And they live on, in their unending routine in their bid to survive and feed themselves and their families. Imagine yourself walking through that crowd and think how many heads would turn to look at you and how many of them would actually remember you at the end of their days. The picture to me is analogous to the army of ants that treads about around the door of my room labouring for their daily piece of bread, sugar, honey or whatever they can get their hands on. We disregard their existence. One can walk over them, stamp them, kill them and not feel a thing. They don't make any difference to the world. They are born, they live and they die. How different are we from them? What difference does the privilege of possessing the sixth sense make to distinguish us as humans and not just another species of insignificant animals inhabiting this place.

I ask myself this question a lot of times. And now, standing at the crossroads of my life, where I wish to choose a path to tread upon, this question has come back and hit me with full force. For the first time in my life, I am terrified with the realization that I do not have an answer to it. What is the purpose of our lives if we are just born, study in school, do a job, earn money, struggle throughout our life and die without anyone knowing about it. It would seem probable that even our relatives won't remember us after a few months. Do I really want to live a life like this?

What makes people great? Great people, huh! A few names crop into my mind, Gandhi, Newton, Einstein, Mozart etc. What is it about them that they have been conferred with the rank of greatness? Why is that people still remember them long after they are dead and people who are not just their relatives or kins or family members. What is it about Adolf Hitler, Alexander the Great and great may tyrants of this world that people care to remember them? Frankly, I could think of only one answer - These are the people who have made a difference to mankind, for good or worse. They dared to think different, do different, succeeded immensely or failed miserably but they stuck to their convictions, braved the world, society, believed in themselves and went about doing their work with utmost determination and passion.

In my life, I want to be one like them. One, who has made a difference to the world, for good or worse, though my efforts would be directed towards the former. I want to be one remembered for centuries. Maybe, through different eras. I want to have my name on the history books in a million years from now. I want to prove that I deserve to be called a human - a species that made a mark in the Universe through its gift of intelligence!

But for now, the question remains - How?