It may sound pompous of me but I am willing to take that risk to say that I used to find my school friends’ pursuit of ‘dreams,’ of which we often spiritedly talked about, too easily conventional a narrative formula and I thought the kind of animated level-headedness and canny shrewdness it takes for oneself in order to get mentally get prepared to sit for entrance exams (at the drop of a hat) was not really my humble idea of building a career for myself.
The idea of gaining potential name and fame by studying well so that I could be fiercely “competitive” than most others could manage was highly off-putting, even schizophrenic for the delicate soul on my person to contend with.
A Different Perspective
"You have to dream before your dreams can come true."
- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
I decided I won’t exhaust myself to compete and achieve something – or as they say: make your dreams come true – over my friends’ share of challenges and obstacles, their failure to turn their dreams into reality, was not at all a perspective that motivated me in my life. My obligation, which is essentially a feeling of solidarity, with my fellow men was of paramount importance to me and their dreams became my dreams, their failures my failures. Complicated? Hard to believe? Believe it.
To put it a little more elaborately: I mean do I have to experience the world in the way I have been told? It helps, maybe, but what helps more is your own instinct to achieve miniature victories in the pursuit of your dreams. Therefore, for me, it was enough to say that ‘talent’ is the only way to go forward, ‘genius’ isn’t; for genius is made and talent is inborn. If both this stuff doesn’t make their presence felt then ‘persistence,’ ‘determination,’ and ‘imagination’ are some of the other bona fide sacred cows that can help you milk your dreams into reality. So press on, for this world is already so full of educated derelicts and just don’t throw in the towel to realize your dream.
Throughout the formative years of my school life, I shunned all that out of my mind to live my life freely without undue fears and anxieties of unholy competition that nag you no end. I thought keeping those haranguing lectures of the chaotic market space of entrance exams, competitive exams, and what not at bay will be well worth it than to subject myself to the mental suffering that would know no joy, no life.
I was happy with my pond life; life’s adventures across the seven seas were for the derring-do heroes: complicated career-building predators whose hunts for a name, fame, money, and the kind of privileges that their life could afford in an alien land was certainly not my cup of tea. If life is all about going to a distant (mostly western) land to seek easy glories of unworthy money and alien privileges, I better not seek it. To sum it up I'd say: They have all the lives they will never live back home.
Tuning in to western music, nursing a beverage or two at a socially provincial gathering/party or regularly having inspired western-sounding names like Josh, Natasha, or at the most Nina for their little ballerinas, Little Singhams, Pikachus, Shin Chans, and Power Rangers echo the re-imagined life that they will willingly want to live – far away from the motherland (of tropical climes of mango pickles for lunch, curd for the night and the mandibular mastication of paan and gutkha as evening snacks!), not to mention the deeply entrenched local habits and values of their oddly amusing brothers, sisters and cousins and their idiosyncratic bondage to their elderly parents having their own sweet agenda of clipping your life into using two-wheelers for taking ration or at the most a small car for commuting to a distant place of worship, a temple! Such a sweet almost spiritual life no longer appeals to them. What appeals to them is the radical new possibility to live their life out of the country of origin in a land that is far more economically advanced, glamorous, and attractive than the plain consciousness of an ordinary Indian way of life can offer.
No more of the sadhus, sants, and sanyasis of the erstwhile socialist ‘non-aligned’ country; new chips, rather kids on the block want their newly acquired scientific tempers to blow the trumpet of their success and achievement to the biased, materialistic world. Boy am I glad I didn't do any of that.
"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:”
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare
For most schoolmates, career-building was like rock-and-roll stuff; stringing its electric guitars or bajowing the tabla of attention-seeking behaviour to one's preeminent advantage happened to be their innate forte: a theatrically showy deal that is done with a mindset I thought so rude that it will make you give them and their non-existent friendship the ax.
For me, however, it was just not more than a humble Sitar-vadan which took its own sweet time to reach, if at all, a crescendo of sorts: a final marker for my laid-back efforts towards a career-building activity, and when it finally did kick in, I mean the crescendo, I was better off left to my good offices to carve a niche for my own sake in a post-financial liberalized economic world that was increasingly opening up for new-age competitors (read career contenders) jostling like unleashed cow-herds to make hay while the sun still shone. They used to say unanimously “Wherever it sticks, Howlay!” I think their motto to excel in life couldn’t get any better than the words used for their so-called ambitious enterprises.
Back in the day as a student at the central school, the term ‘Howlay’ (\hau-lay\, meaning fool/stupid) was considered indecent or low-class to use. (Maybe, it still is). But sometimes, whenever necessary, in order to drive someone up the wall or wanting to playfully piss off someone we indulged in using such a slang language to drive home a point or two! That was fun though.
‘Howlay’ was perhaps slightly ear-friendly than the less appealing word ‘Howla’ which sort of sounded inelegant and garish and so it was used but sparingly. Indeed, it used to be a great deal of fun whenever someone among us had to shout out loud such prickly lingo in the fond hope of pulling someone’s leg (lankier the better) or crack a joke (quirkier the better) or just for laughs and giggles. No doubt, our teachers considered them as derogatory as, say, shouting or talking too much or too noisily (and even nosily!) in class (or gamely utilizing someone’s ‘lost-and-found’ PT shoe instead of a proper ball to play football with often at the back of our large high-ceilinged breezy classroom). So, obviously, our teachers did not approve of our playfully using such ‘tasteless terminology’ for language expression, which for the "greater common good" must not be practiced at any cost.
Medicine Was Not For Me
My morally compelling picayune conscience sat as a heavyweight feather upon my soul for the longest time that I can remember. People give an arm or a leg to do medicine or engineering whereas I had to afford an exorbitant price for just, as it's been said, ‘a mouthful of the sky’ that never accommodated 'engineering' as a career option in the scheme of things. Rather hoping to take up medicine was my only way of revolting against the established norm per se of preferring to do an escapist engineering degree for a qualifying career.
Good on me, I guess because I don’t know if I could have made it through the traditional wagers of conventionality and conformity of doing engineering that goes on to satisfy other peoples’ expectations of you rather than your own. Such a career choice almost always resulted in some mechanical and electronic lifestyle I absolutely was not attuned to leading. I despised being an engineer at all costs possible. However, getting down on the mat to do medical science was a nebulous day-dreaming activity I thought was worth partaking solo, without troubling anyone about how passionate I was to pursue it.
I do admit it was a huge rock of risk for not having followed in the general direction of the cow-herd, of which my debonair school chaps were so flatteringly proud to be a part of; they wanted to become engineers at all costs possible. Others like me with softy dens of delicate souls and happiness had a different sense of career fulfillment. So I did what I could do best. But I too ended up becoming an engineering snob (of course, never been a show-off big-talker about that thing) after all (in computer software), albeit in a sort of way that IT geeks/nerds/techies call themselves as the new breed of software engineers. Yeah yeah, I know, so much for my cock-a-snook and holier-than-thou battles that I had so blatantly waged with the fine school guys who went on to become…what?...piteous Engineers?...with the kind exception of a couple of them passing out of medical schools to become medical professionals, at least.
I say chaps: that’s a good herd mentality or crowd wisdom of cooperative thinking there that I should have been a part of right from the start. But, on second thoughts, no, I beg to differ on that style of reasoning and functioning and I am thankful to myself I wasn’t one amongst your group. Had I been one, it would have been really more regrettable or been similar to being boiled alive in oil or something!
For you fabulous guys though, I guess it handsomely pays to be in a cow-herd and follow its attendant diktats as opposed, fairly and squarely, to seeking the life-changing opportunity to be a solitary reaper heading out on a road less travelled by. That’s just the thing I have a soft spot for, and goodness, it was really a unique something that had stuck with me through thick and thin as being able to handle the good times as well as the bad times with much alacrity.
So Medicine Was Ruled Out, Forever
The sight of blood, gore, and the stench of vomit, etc. were simply too much for this dilettantish type to bear with a sense of astute professionalism, so to speak. Accordingly, Medicine was ruled out pronto. I suppose when you’ve got a coy personality like the one I used to have once upon a time I probably will, as I’ve come to realize now, derive no sense of professional or personal gratification from pursuing the noble field of medical practice. Do hesitant or coy persons have less chance of pursuing a career in medicine? Enlighten me.
The sight of a dead rat on the courtyard or a mashed-up cockroach in the toilet or an upended frog by the creek or a hurt bleeding lizard on a boulder would always result in a terrible loss of appetite for several days, even months together. Maybe, had I been even a slightly more obsessive about doing medicine, I figure, I would have – with my bust appetite whatsoever stopped taking food and continued living on fluids, for life – become an MBBS doctor. I am hardly exaggerating; it’s the truth and nothing but the truth I am hard-wired to speak.
While this is not something to suggest against taking up a career in medicine to become a medical practitioner, not at all, far from it, it is merely but an avalanche of, shall I say, half-baked thought processes – albeit childish! – of a seemingly capable Doubting Thomas who didn’t try to go the extra mile to achieve his childhood (and later youth) dream via the tutorial factories of his beloved country.
Having said that, the world, I am certain, is definitely not all the poorer if I hadn’t made a decent attempt to become a doctor of medicine. What dreams may come? Trust me it’s definitely better off, without me as a doctor. Amen to that.
By Arindam Moulick
Postscript: The above essay is the second sequel (part 3) to the main essay titled "That Good Old-Fashioned Existential Angst" published in November 2018 on my blog site Pebbles on the Beach. More on this 'dream' theme in my next blog.
Click here to read the first sequel (part 2) titled "A Dream That Will Never Come True" published in December 2018.
Click here to read the main essay (part 1) titled "That Good Old-Fashioned Existential Angst" published in November 2018.
The idea of gaining potential name and fame by studying well so that I could be fiercely “competitive” than most others could manage was highly off-putting, even schizophrenic for the delicate soul on my person to contend with.
A Different Perspective
"You have to dream before your dreams can come true."
- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
I decided I won’t exhaust myself to compete and achieve something – or as they say: make your dreams come true – over my friends’ share of challenges and obstacles, their failure to turn their dreams into reality, was not at all a perspective that motivated me in my life. My obligation, which is essentially a feeling of solidarity, with my fellow men was of paramount importance to me and their dreams became my dreams, their failures my failures. Complicated? Hard to believe? Believe it.
To put it a little more elaborately: I mean do I have to experience the world in the way I have been told? It helps, maybe, but what helps more is your own instinct to achieve miniature victories in the pursuit of your dreams. Therefore, for me, it was enough to say that ‘talent’ is the only way to go forward, ‘genius’ isn’t; for genius is made and talent is inborn. If both this stuff doesn’t make their presence felt then ‘persistence,’ ‘determination,’ and ‘imagination’ are some of the other bona fide sacred cows that can help you milk your dreams into reality. So press on, for this world is already so full of educated derelicts and just don’t throw in the towel to realize your dream.
Throughout the formative years of my school life, I shunned all that out of my mind to live my life freely without undue fears and anxieties of unholy competition that nag you no end. I thought keeping those haranguing lectures of the chaotic market space of entrance exams, competitive exams, and what not at bay will be well worth it than to subject myself to the mental suffering that would know no joy, no life.
I was happy with my pond life; life’s adventures across the seven seas were for the derring-do heroes: complicated career-building predators whose hunts for a name, fame, money, and the kind of privileges that their life could afford in an alien land was certainly not my cup of tea. If life is all about going to a distant (mostly western) land to seek easy glories of unworthy money and alien privileges, I better not seek it. To sum it up I'd say: They have all the lives they will never live back home.
Tuning in to western music, nursing a beverage or two at a socially provincial gathering/party or regularly having inspired western-sounding names like Josh, Natasha, or at the most Nina for their little ballerinas, Little Singhams, Pikachus, Shin Chans, and Power Rangers echo the re-imagined life that they will willingly want to live – far away from the motherland (of tropical climes of mango pickles for lunch, curd for the night and the mandibular mastication of paan and gutkha as evening snacks!), not to mention the deeply entrenched local habits and values of their oddly amusing brothers, sisters and cousins and their idiosyncratic bondage to their elderly parents having their own sweet agenda of clipping your life into using two-wheelers for taking ration or at the most a small car for commuting to a distant place of worship, a temple! Such a sweet almost spiritual life no longer appeals to them. What appeals to them is the radical new possibility to live their life out of the country of origin in a land that is far more economically advanced, glamorous, and attractive than the plain consciousness of an ordinary Indian way of life can offer.
No more of the sadhus, sants, and sanyasis of the erstwhile socialist ‘non-aligned’ country; new chips, rather kids on the block want their newly acquired scientific tempers to blow the trumpet of their success and achievement to the biased, materialistic world. Boy am I glad I didn't do any of that.
"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:”
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare
For most schoolmates, career-building was like rock-and-roll stuff; stringing its electric guitars or bajowing the tabla of attention-seeking behaviour to one's preeminent advantage happened to be their innate forte: a theatrically showy deal that is done with a mindset I thought so rude that it will make you give them and their non-existent friendship the ax.
For me, however, it was just not more than a humble Sitar-vadan which took its own sweet time to reach, if at all, a crescendo of sorts: a final marker for my laid-back efforts towards a career-building activity, and when it finally did kick in, I mean the crescendo, I was better off left to my good offices to carve a niche for my own sake in a post-financial liberalized economic world that was increasingly opening up for new-age competitors (read career contenders) jostling like unleashed cow-herds to make hay while the sun still shone. They used to say unanimously “Wherever it sticks, Howlay!” I think their motto to excel in life couldn’t get any better than the words used for their so-called ambitious enterprises.
Back in the day as a student at the central school, the term ‘Howlay’ (\hau-lay\, meaning fool/stupid) was considered indecent or low-class to use. (Maybe, it still is). But sometimes, whenever necessary, in order to drive someone up the wall or wanting to playfully piss off someone we indulged in using such a slang language to drive home a point or two! That was fun though.
‘Howlay’ was perhaps slightly ear-friendly than the less appealing word ‘Howla’ which sort of sounded inelegant and garish and so it was used but sparingly. Indeed, it used to be a great deal of fun whenever someone among us had to shout out loud such prickly lingo in the fond hope of pulling someone’s leg (lankier the better) or crack a joke (quirkier the better) or just for laughs and giggles. No doubt, our teachers considered them as derogatory as, say, shouting or talking too much or too noisily (and even nosily!) in class (or gamely utilizing someone’s ‘lost-and-found’ PT shoe instead of a proper ball to play football with often at the back of our large high-ceilinged breezy classroom). So, obviously, our teachers did not approve of our playfully using such ‘tasteless terminology’ for language expression, which for the "greater common good" must not be practiced at any cost.
Medicine Was Not For Me
My morally compelling picayune conscience sat as a heavyweight feather upon my soul for the longest time that I can remember. People give an arm or a leg to do medicine or engineering whereas I had to afford an exorbitant price for just, as it's been said, ‘a mouthful of the sky’ that never accommodated 'engineering' as a career option in the scheme of things. Rather hoping to take up medicine was my only way of revolting against the established norm per se of preferring to do an escapist engineering degree for a qualifying career.
Good on me, I guess because I don’t know if I could have made it through the traditional wagers of conventionality and conformity of doing engineering that goes on to satisfy other peoples’ expectations of you rather than your own. Such a career choice almost always resulted in some mechanical and electronic lifestyle I absolutely was not attuned to leading. I despised being an engineer at all costs possible. However, getting down on the mat to do medical science was a nebulous day-dreaming activity I thought was worth partaking solo, without troubling anyone about how passionate I was to pursue it.
I do admit it was a huge rock of risk for not having followed in the general direction of the cow-herd, of which my debonair school chaps were so flatteringly proud to be a part of; they wanted to become engineers at all costs possible. Others like me with softy dens of delicate souls and happiness had a different sense of career fulfillment. So I did what I could do best. But I too ended up becoming an engineering snob (of course, never been a show-off big-talker about that thing) after all (in computer software), albeit in a sort of way that IT geeks/nerds/techies call themselves as the new breed of software engineers. Yeah yeah, I know, so much for my cock-a-snook and holier-than-thou battles that I had so blatantly waged with the fine school guys who went on to become…what?...piteous Engineers?...with the kind exception of a couple of them passing out of medical schools to become medical professionals, at least.
I say chaps: that’s a good herd mentality or crowd wisdom of cooperative thinking there that I should have been a part of right from the start. But, on second thoughts, no, I beg to differ on that style of reasoning and functioning and I am thankful to myself I wasn’t one amongst your group. Had I been one, it would have been really more regrettable or been similar to being boiled alive in oil or something!
For you fabulous guys though, I guess it handsomely pays to be in a cow-herd and follow its attendant diktats as opposed, fairly and squarely, to seeking the life-changing opportunity to be a solitary reaper heading out on a road less travelled by. That’s just the thing I have a soft spot for, and goodness, it was really a unique something that had stuck with me through thick and thin as being able to handle the good times as well as the bad times with much alacrity.
So Medicine Was Ruled Out, Forever
The sight of blood, gore, and the stench of vomit, etc. were simply too much for this dilettantish type to bear with a sense of astute professionalism, so to speak. Accordingly, Medicine was ruled out pronto. I suppose when you’ve got a coy personality like the one I used to have once upon a time I probably will, as I’ve come to realize now, derive no sense of professional or personal gratification from pursuing the noble field of medical practice. Do hesitant or coy persons have less chance of pursuing a career in medicine? Enlighten me.
The sight of a dead rat on the courtyard or a mashed-up cockroach in the toilet or an upended frog by the creek or a hurt bleeding lizard on a boulder would always result in a terrible loss of appetite for several days, even months together. Maybe, had I been even a slightly more obsessive about doing medicine, I figure, I would have – with my bust appetite whatsoever stopped taking food and continued living on fluids, for life – become an MBBS doctor. I am hardly exaggerating; it’s the truth and nothing but the truth I am hard-wired to speak.
While this is not something to suggest against taking up a career in medicine to become a medical practitioner, not at all, far from it, it is merely but an avalanche of, shall I say, half-baked thought processes – albeit childish! – of a seemingly capable Doubting Thomas who didn’t try to go the extra mile to achieve his childhood (and later youth) dream via the tutorial factories of his beloved country.
Having said that, the world, I am certain, is definitely not all the poorer if I hadn’t made a decent attempt to become a doctor of medicine. What dreams may come? Trust me it’s definitely better off, without me as a doctor. Amen to that.
By Arindam Moulick
Postscript: The above essay is the second sequel (part 3) to the main essay titled "That Good Old-Fashioned Existential Angst" published in November 2018 on my blog site Pebbles on the Beach. More on this 'dream' theme in my next blog.
Click here to read the first sequel (part 2) titled "A Dream That Will Never Come True" published in December 2018.
Click here to read the main essay (part 1) titled "That Good Old-Fashioned Existential Angst" published in November 2018.
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