Dear Hardik bhai,
Young age can make us do silly things. I remember when I was your age, I was slogging my butt off to do well at my engineering college and fulfil the purpose of my life – a job at an IT company. Burning the midnight oil, if you like. I can see you know a thing or two about burning.
But that’s not all. Before that, I had slogged even more to get into engineering college, starting coaching from class 11 in single-minded pursuit of that elusive IIT. I gave up my interests and hobbies. I gave up sports. Tayal sir and Geeta ma’am became my icons instead of Tendulkar and Ganguly. I would attend coaching classes in the evenings and spend my weekends in temples for hours hoping for that extra edge.
How misguided I was.
Thank you for showing the light. Thank you for telling India that hard work is for fools. The smart people can just mobilise a crowd of lakhs and threaten governments into giving a quota. Why spend time working hard to become successful when you can burn a few buses instead?
You know, I used to think that Russell Peters ruined the name Hardik (along with Ramandeep) forever for me until you came along and made the name relevant again. Now everybody is only talking about Hardik Patel, the 22-year-old who has raised the all-important topic of reservation for Patels, the most downtrodden successful community in India.
So what if Patels are among the most prominent business communities in India? So what if little Patel kids are teeming all over small towns in Edison, living the American dream? So what if Patels are far from being a backward community? This is actually living up to the entrepreneurship spirit. Why bother working hard for education or jobs when a rally and rioting does the job?