This is a true story based on a funny incident involving three friends.

Vishal, Das and Suraj are three friends and also members of an NGO fighting for men’s rights. Suraj has filed cases against a State Government for alleged injustices against him. He wanted to ensure whether warrant has been served on the police officers against whom he had filed the cases.

However, Suraj does not stay in the city in which the police had done injustices to him. Vishal and Das were however quite conversant with city routes. They were supposed to go the office of the Deputy Commissioner of the Police. Vishal and Das had a slight idea of the place. They hire a taxi to the place. The driver drops them a little further from the spot. So they walk a little distance.

However, unable to trace the spot, they asked some local bystanders who guided them to the spot telling them it’s walk-able from there. But on the insistence of Suraj, they hire another taxi. Barely 200 meters into the taxi and the driver inquired, “Is this the place, you want to go?”

Suraj answered with a stern and confident NO telling that he knew it’s a little further ahead. The driver keeps going. After coming about a kilometer ahead, on inquiring again, they come to know it was the same spot the driver had told a while earlier.

And so they are forced to take a “U-turn” and reach a place 200 meters away after traveling an unnecessary 2 Kms. After reaching the spot and while alighting the taxi, Vishal tells Das, “This was the Most Unwanted U-Turn ever taken in my life.

This incident tells us something very important about life and its involved myriad complexities. Suraj is involved in multifarious litigations, initiated by his wife in a bid to separate him from his only and beloved daughter and is using the entire state machinery against him at her disposal to satisfy her whims and fancies.

The kind of opposition that Suraj was facing from the societal attitude towards him, the myriad laws pitted against a husband and a father, any person would have easily succumbed to but for Suraj backed by the most prominent men’s rights organization in India. The stark opposition and the unrelenting attitude made a commando outta Suraj who vowed not to bend down before injustice but fight against it.

However, as he went into a 24X7 mode of fighting, he could not think of anything else other than his fight against injustice. Suraj was secretly enjoying his fight as it gave him a psychological kick and his focus on the issue made him a sharp-shooter. However, what Suraj forgot was that even a sharp-shooter takes off from his shooting practice and performs silence to sharpen his shooting skills and firing finesse.

This is very important. If we do not take the much needed periodic mental, psychological, emotional and physical breaks we end up taking “Unwanted U-turns” in our life. Choice belies with us – whether we want “Unwanted U-Turns” in life or “Planned Sharp Turns?