A YEAR OF LIBERATION

"And now, dear children, we present to you a wizard who will entertain you with his tricks and share his knowledge of magic. Let's hear some applause !", announced the host of the event as a bunch of primary and middle school kids looked on curiously at the table placed in the center of the stage for the upcoming performance. The firm's CSR team had helped the school establish its own library -  furnished with books and a desktop computer, a luxury most schools in rural India cannot easily afford. This small institution, a walled area of barren land in the village of Neev, a major detour from the city roads in Gurgaon, was among the few to have acquired these necessary school facilities. This was a day of celebration; the library had officially been launched.

As I walked up to the podium with a balloon in one hand and a soda bottle in the other, posing as a sorcerer to the innocuous and clueless group of little children gathered in the courtyard around a peepul tree planted in the middle of the small compound they call school, I decided I would tell them the truth. There is no such concept as magic; it is merely an art of playing with science. Magic lies in craftily deceiving your audience, cloaking their minds with the mist of fantasy that they cannot see through. My purpose today was quite the opposite - it was to make them aware of this mist and implore them to follow logic and reason so that they could someday conjure their own magic tricks.

I took my place in the center stage under the light of the morning sun. I looked directly at the crowd of little faces staring expectantly at me, and opened with a question that elicited a favourable response from the majority of children.

"How many of you would want to become magicians when you grow up?"

At once, scores of hands shot up in the air.

"Thank you dear children", I continued. "That is an encouraging sight to see. Now let me tell you something about magic."

By the end of the twenty minutes for which I occupied the podium, I had told them about the far-reaching possibilities of science. I had demonstrated experiments embodying various guiding principles of nature. I had encouraged the kids to think out loud, and maybe ignited a spark for inculcating scientific temperament. I had spoken to an aspiring girl pilot, listened to a young boy sing, and suggested drawing tips to a bunch of pre-school kids in the activities that followed. While doing so, I had spent my time on something I really liked, something that fetched a different kind of contentedness no amount of money can proffer - something I haven't been able to accomplish in the last few years.

That day, I finished my work efficiently and returned home from office earlier than my usual schedule. I logged on to youtube, looked up 'guitar lessons' and plucked at the strings of my Fender for the next hour. Music has a rejuvenating effect - it carries you away into another world, curing your fatigue and soothing your senses, making you forget the problems and miseries that daunt your mind. I closed my eyes, and after a while, the only sound reaching my ears was the cadence of notes bouncing off the soundboard, resonating in the closed room. I am not a seasoned musician, not even a dilettante, but the beauty of a guitar lies in its ability to read its master and play along. Those erratic, uneven chords gradually acquired rhythm as I strummed an unknown tune, played my own chords and hummed my own song.

That was perhaps one of the best days in the year gone by. A welcome deviation from normality. A day of realization - that there are things more meaningful and impactful than a routine corporate job, that you can find happiness in sources richer than money, that you are capable of magically changing lives, including your own. A day when I had acquired control.
A day of liberation.

2013 was crammed with work and travel and preparation for that coveted business school degree. Now that I don't have to bother about one of these anymore, I think I now know what my new year's resolution for 2014 is going to be.

CROSSROADS

It was my last term in SJA as I would soon leave Dehradun to live in the North-East for the next few years. The academic results of standard four were out, and I was a little apprehensive regarding my Hindi grades. I was relieved when I noticed that I had been able to manage a five star rating on my report card, indicating an aggregate score of over 90 percent across all subjects.

After my parents had thoroughly examined my grades on the report card along with the teacher's comments, and had discussed my overall progress with Miss Sheetal, my computer instructor cum class teacher, we headed to the school canteen to buy chocolates for me and my younger sister as a reward for my good performance.

The canteen was run by a rather aged man with white hair and wrinkles on his face. He immediately recognized me as the boy who asked for candies during recess time. After knowing that I had done well in the final exams and handing me over two large slabs of Milkybar, he added a small lollipop as a token of his own appreciation. As I gleefully accepted his present, he asked me a question I had not been prepared for :

"Arnav, tum bade hokar kya banna chahte ho?"

As a young lad of ten who had not given any thought to his future career, I had no answer then. 
"Pata nahi, Uncle." was my honest reply.

"Koi baat nahi. Baad me kabhi aaram se soch ke batana."

Over dinner the same day, gorging mouthfuls of my mother's delicious aalu ke paranthe, I pored over the canteenwala's question. When I could not make a decision by myself, I turned to mom for help. 
"Mummy main bade hoke kya banu?"

She smiled at me, and replied :
"Beta, jo tumhe accha lagta hai."

I rummaged my brain for all possible vocations I could think of, to see if there indeed was something that I could engage in as a prospective career when the time arrived. It was a difficult exercise balancing the pros and cons of known professions as they would appear to a child.

I didn't know what an engineer meant then. 
Perhaps I could become a scientist, just like dad. I was curious to know what was so interesting about the subject 'physics' that he sometimes used to teach me; what lay hidden within the fossilized rock samples he once brought home from remote oilfields which he studied with so much diligence. But I didn't approve of the way he used to come home tired from the office late in the evening after sitting at his desk all day, with little energy to play badminton or cricket with me outdoors. So a 'scientist' seemed like a good back-up option, but probably not my first choice. 
Being a doctor was not much fun either, given that I was not the least fond of disease and death. I didn't like the gloom that descended in hospital corridors, the unnerving silence that prevailed in a physician's clinic. I almost loathed medicines and syringes, and couldn't imagine myself administering the same to a fellow human being. 
There were a number of lawyers in my extended family. From what I had observed on television, I realized that a lawyer had to debate like a fierce orator and often lie, which was not really my cup of tea. The longest I could speak in public was the time it took to recite a poem in the school morning assembly. It was only when I was much older that I started participating in debates and extempores. This vocation too, therefore, was out of the picture.
I couldn't become a teacher seeing that my experience as a class monitor had been horrible and I did not like to be burdened with too much responsibility. I liked playing cricket, but being a full-time athlete seemed to be boring and exhausting. For similar conflicting reasons, a policeman, actor or politician were also ruled out. It looked as if I was arriving at a dead end.

What else could it be? 

And then it struck me. A profession that was both noble and exciting, which commanded respect and provided some peace of mind. A profession that was different from the rest.

On the day the school reopened for the next academic session, during the lunch break, I visited the canteen once again and declared to the old man with an air of self-assurance :
"Uncle, main army me jaunga."

When I said this, I never thought about how much money I would make, or how successful or popular I would become. It came straight from the heart. A soldier was gallant, and he was patriotic, clad in the most graceful uniform adorned with stars and medals. He lived in the midst of beautiful nature in lush green establishments like the IMA. He helped the community in times of crisis. He was brave and strong, and fought the nation's enemies with guns and tanks accompanying him in the battlefield. And at the end of his honourable life, he died a hero's death, wrapped in the tricolour with a crest of flowers and laurels upon his chest and the salute of guns bidding him farewell. That was all that fascinated me. Nothing more, nothing less.

Fast forward thirteen years, and I am an engineering graduate working as an analyst in a multinational consulting firm, aspiring for a masters in business administration from a prestigious business school. "What happened?", you might ask. Well, my parents thought it was too dangerous to join the army or the air force. So I joined the rat race in my quest to land the perfect white collar job that would entail a hefty pay package and catapult me high into the upper strata of corporate hierarchy. And that's how I ended up here.

Today, most of us find ourselves at a crossroads, struggling to find the right path from amongst the multiple routes that diverge in different directions from where we stand. I am no different. I have no idea where I will be in the next five years. I might have completed my postgrad by then, but what comes after that is anybody's guess. It's not as if I don't have a plan, but these are uncertain times; who knows if something would not force me to change my mind once again. It's like a game of chess, where your next move depends on the situation in which you find yourself. 

Now when I ask myself the same question as I was faced with thirteen years ago, once again, it is difficult to come up with a definitive answer. I guess it is not that simple anymore. Times have changed, and so has the definition of the right vocation. I no longer have the luxury of being able to make a decision only with my heart, for now the mind has started to dominate. And because the world around me has grown too mean to let the heart take charge.

THE VACATION-VOCATION PARADOX

There are no bound limits to human wants and earthly cravings - one always desires for more. Be it a small child longing to experience the fervor of a brand new playstation, a shopaholic whiling away time lavishly on the latest gadgetry and fashionable attire, an amateur entrepreneur aspiring to reach the apex of corporate success, or a famished pauper searching for crumbs of bread within mounds of trash disposed of as useless by higher echelons of society - with each fulfillment is coupled a sense of inadequacy and avarice that propels us further towards still unrealized dreams and ambitions, and life continues to revolve in a circle around a central object, only the latter metamorphoses intermittently as time rushes by.

From velvety cholcolates to miniscule gadgets to swift bikes to good grades, most of my demands have been met to my contentment, albeit with censure and sometimes after much hullabaloo and tantrums from my side. There has been one in particular which has eluded me each time I come to wish for it, not one that can be realized by tangible means and measures - an extended vacation.

A day lost in travelling. Another spent remunerating for the hours of sleep the common IITian has so often been deprived of - at times cramming volumes of ominous facts and on rare occasions sweating it out on the badminton court (yeah, people do that at Cautley Bhawan !) or watching a critically acclaimed movie.
A brief excursion, lots of TV, occasional games of football, half a novel, a few mouthfuls of mom's blissful cookies; and before you know, it's time to pack your bags and head back to the land where unrelenting professors barge into your dreams and untimely exams draw out the little energy that remains after each wadded, eventful month.

If you've been working for what seems like eternity, you wish holidays were near. If you happen to be jobless for a long time, you look for better, fruitful endeavours. A holiday is seldom a pleasant respite from monotonous activity. It is a welcome change all right, but more often than not a pretext for shifting to some other selfish pursuit that is only somewhat different from our regular engagements - this especially holds for a B.Tech 3rd year undergraduate faced with the dilemma of choosing between a peaceful holiday and a promising, ambitious career.

Perhaps for now a 'holiday' is forbidden. But I'm waiting for the day when I have so much time just to lay back on nature's carpet in the beautiful sunshine and observe the clouds drifting across the blue sky - that I would truly call taking some time off.