Something about our education system, left behind by our conquerors, sucks. Curricula are varied and frenzied, busy being everything to everybody. Schooling grooms us intensely in a bland homage to sameness. We by-heart maths tables, chemistry equations, poetry passages—training our brains to memorise.
Discipline was a big part of academics for the longest time; slapping and caning still goes on. Children were taught to toe the line, rewarded for remaining mute. Your parents made a sibling for you only when you scored 100 out of 100 in KG. ‘Ma, mein first class first aaya hoon!’ was tattooed on all Hindi film heroes’ foreheads.
The path is straight and narrow. If it ain’t remunerative, if it can’t be monetised, if it won’t give a steady income, you will permanently displease your parents, whose eyebrows will never climb down from the shock of seeing you stand there elbow-deep in paint calling yourself an artist. A career as a poet sometime ago was akin to one in porn today.
Even after the advent of the so-called international schools with pretend proms and horse-riding, and back to nature varsities where pupils sit under trees chewing neem, the importance of financial independence—aka salaries—never goes away. Imagine hospitals full of doctors who’d rather be ballerinas or courts full of lawyers who’d rather play the saxophone... On the other hand, finding actors in a play who would rather be medical consultants or legal advisors is rare.
Yes, storytellers and candle makers and martial instructors and influencers are coming into their own, but for many this is too little too late. Traditionally, one unquestioningly trudges on and on till perhaps they hit their fortieth birthday—then a mini breakdown could precipitate a change in perspectives. Some take to the hills, some are off to a beach, most begin to farm. It is that time of existence when all internal frustrations come out to play on the face.
So A grabs a guitar to find his inner Beatle and B rolls pastry in an ashram in what is politely called a mid-life crisis. Professions are thus biology, decided at one’s birth. But then a longing bubbles up the blood sooner or later, singing, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want...’ Like caffeine to the soul. At first it may be a misstep, a momentary lapse, a self-conscious decision, but real passion is a magnetic force. There is an inborn something we are here to do—what only we can and do it best. Beyond being someone’s dad or daughter, there is a reason universe put us here. People die bitter not because they did not make money or married wrong, but because they did not do what they were meant to do.
Shinie Antony shinieantony@gmail.com
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