“I want to be remembered as a man who never sold out his people. But if that’s too much, then just a good boxer. I won’t even mind if you don’t mention how pretty I was.” – Cassius Marcellus Clay

So, some of us slept to or woke up to the news of Muhammad Ali dying.

When I read it, I gave it a moment’s thought and then carried on with whatever I was doing. Then a friend of mine who I was chatting with this morning for a long time on whatsapp about light hearted, everyday nonsense messaged me and he just said, “Muhammad Ali died.”, and I was like, “I know”.

At that moment I saw my friend’s face in my mind, and I saw a 40 year old man feeling and looking rather forlorn on this news. I saw him as a little boy in awe of Muhammad Ali, who, today is feeling sad, and not sad about reading a bad news, but sad like a close friend passed away. But Muhammad Ali was no close friend of my friend and then I was just thinking about why we need the Heroes in our life.

We need the Heroes because their stories, their struggle, their failures and triumphs make us feel we are not alone, someone else also went through it and managed to overcome. Heroes give us hope, that some day even I can be a legend, not necessarily legend in the world famous way but a legend in my day to day, we need the heroes because they inspire us to keep moving, and no we don’t think about our Heroes in our day to day lives, we just know that someone somewhere has made an impact on the way we see things and live life and in our quiet way we keep loving that stranger who we feel so close to. Heroes, give us the courage to be different, heroes make us channelise our passions into disciplines, and most of all heroes make us love a stranger unconditionally.

But the other side of Heroes is also that they are so big, so awe inspiring, so far that the mind can get confused between the Hero being the real person or a character created by this universe who is above us all, is invincible, someone who cannot be destroyed, someone who just cannot change and someone who will live on way after we are gone.

Our Heroes are not really are made of flesh, blood and bones in our minds. In our minds, our Heroes are made of passion, emotions, drive, courage, bravery, and strength. So when they die, we feel that life has cheated us, life made us believe that this ONE PERSON is invincible, is un-destroyable, and a constant, but was not. We get to know that unfortunately the Heroes are also made of flesh, blood and bones and they will suffer illnesses, they will become weak and they will die.

But the beauty is that in our minds, all we will remember about our Heroes is their passion, strength, things that made them different, things that made us worship them and we will continue to feel stronger and inspired and then we want to share the stories of our Heroes with our kids, our friends, our family and we make them live on.