Never underestimate the power of your childhood dreams.

My parents brought us up as free spirits ,always giving us space to blossom in our own way .Dreaming was part of it and many a times I would sit back with my dad and talk about what I dreamed about, those were some of the happiest times spent with dad ..I miss him.

Some time back I chanced to watch the last lecture by Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. His lecture, given to colleagues, has become a bit of an international phenomenon.

This inspired me to revisit my childhood dreams and write about them. Dreams are magical and I believe they help you discover yourself and blossom from within They make you the person you are, as an adult. It made me think of all the things I wanted to do and wonder why I never achieved most of them.

The earliest memory I have about what I wanted to be or do, is, living as a gypsy girl in a caravan and traveling to far off places. It seemed like an adventure of a life time, and then there was a phase of being a trapeze acrobat in a circus. Mesmerized by the performances of the Russian acrobats, I too wanted to join the first circus which passed my city. I was always a rebel and a wild one and dreamed of doing the craziest things. I still follow my heart.

As a high school girl, I wanted to form a band of my own, with me as a lead drummer or maybe sometimes a guitarist. All the utensils, cutlery, boxes, table tops became my drums, as I dreamed about my first stage performance and world tours. Learning Hawaiian guitar reinforced my faith in achieving my dream. I was part of the school choir and loved it.

Those years were spent idolizing my super heroes, Imran Khan, Bjorn Borg and many others, with their posters all over my room.

Alas! Those dreams became part of my subconscious as I entered college.

I was always fond of nature, so my first trekking programme initiated the burning desire to become a forest ranger, a wild life photographer or maybe just an explorer spending years in wilderness studying those wonderful creatures or spending months aboard some ship, studying marine life. I realized some part of it by going for camps, traveling to virgin places across Himachal n Uttaranchal.