The Slumdog Shantytown

Poster

Nestled in the vast slums of Dharavi, Mumbai, Rafiq Ali knew not much of the world that functioned around him until one fine evening, luck, instead of knocking on his door, crashed through the roof. His daughter, Rubina Ali, had been spotted by director Danny Boyle while playing in the streets outside her house. Boyle was there along with his casting director, Loveleen Tandan, to look for little kids to cast in their upcoming movie, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Although the cast wasn’t all that glittering, ‘Slumdog’ went on to become something of a revolution in India cinema. It didn’t matter to us that it was a Hollywood production, nor did it matter that Anil Kapoor faked a fake Indian-English accent in his dialogues. All that mattered was that ‘Slumdog’ was filmed in Mumbai, and it won an Oscar.

Rubina near her home

 

Many people who saw the movie before it became so acclaimed had a lot of nice things to say about it. Having been seasoned year after year with colorful and noisy movies with masala and entertainment on the house, the similarities they could have drawn between OSO and ‘Slumdog’ went unnoticed. All that seemed to matter was the two words: Mumbai, and Oscar. However, once the movie showed signs of garnering Oscar nominations by the bulk, the sliver of the local population that was actually interested in the art of the talkies drove to the theatre, paid for a ticket, and watched the movie. Up until now, Slumdog’s success was all about the fame and popularity and glam that the middle-class of India thinks their country deserves but, unfortunately, doesn’t get. Once people actually began to think and opine, they realized the movie was not so special after all. In fact, it didn’t take them long to deduce that the one thing Danny Boyle had effectively done was to show India in a poor light – as though the whole country was one large slum.

According to me, the movie has two aspects to it. These are not going to be the visual aspects and the optical aspects and all that, but those which defined the complete impact of the movie on the general populace. The first one has to do with what the movie did to Boyle and his team. By gracefully walking the fine line between order and entropy, the movie has immersed the message it intended to carry in a sea of noise, dirt and the inevitable thrill we derive from watching a rags-to-riches story unfold in front of our eyes. In accomplishing this, Boyle was rewarded suitably. But that’s only as far as direction and its after-effects go. Just because a movie has been shot to perfection doesn’t mean it is perfect. One cannot simply handle a camera well enough to be awarded an Oscar and then claim he shot the scenes to perfection. I concede that there are many ways to shooting a scene, but when it comes to filming a nation and its people together, such unboundedness is luxury. One must keep in mind what it is that one is filming. Looking at the total earnings of Slumdog, I can make the educated guess that Western cinema-goers have never been availed the opportunity to witness ‘on-the-house entertainment’ before, or at least frequently enough. In presenting an aberrant spectacle to the less privileged, Boyle has marketed the movie as one of a kind whereas you and I know now that it is, in fact, not. In all this celebration and the consequent hoopla, the one thing we’ve taken for granted is the talent of the children hired to play in the movie, the children handpicked from the slums of Mumbai. To us, the ‘general public’, the children in the movie were as much a part of it as were the crew working behind the cameras. To the crew, the children were as much a part of the cast as was Freida. But to the children, this sudden transition from the melancholic dirt and grit of their past to a present that promised a future full of colors was one unfathomable leap. To some, it was as if they had inadvertently traipsed into a dream of sorts. For their fathers and mothers, the amount of money involved was unspeakable. If they walked over to their neighbor in the slum and showed them a wad of $100 bills, the first conclusion would be a successful heist. These people, the downtrodden and the forgotten, are the spine of the Indian economy. They are the ones who bother to vote year after year. They are the ones who think money is earned only by breaking one’s back and shedding one’s sweat and blood. Computer and cameras mean nothing to them. To entice them with money and glory and then to blame them for having fallen for it is just plain wrong.

 

 

Rubina with her father

For Rafiq Ali, the spotlight was a wonder. Maybe he craved to step into it, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he wanted to give up his daughter for adoption, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he knew no other way, maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was all for the money, maybe it wasn’t. Even if Rafiq Ali did all these things, don’t thrust the cameras to inside his humble house. Yes, I know one’s love for his or her children must surpass everything else, but poverty and inexplicable attention can do a lot of things to break an honest man’s mind. I’m not saying Ali is honest, but nor do I want to say that he’s guilty. People like him will expect something in return from a world that just decides to acknowledge their presence through the beauty of one lucky man’s daughter. They are also one among us.

Longing Eyes, Pouring Rain

Imagine a dream. Imagine that you are free to pursue that dream. Imagine a world that imposes no constraints, no bonds, no chains of wrought iron that bind you down to the earth. Imagine you are part of that world, imagine you are free, and imagine you have only one dream. Would this be your Utopia? Or tell me, why would it not be? Is it not everyone’s dream? It is my dream, and I think that it should be everyone’s. Tonight, that dream is beckoning me. I dream that I stand in front of my class. I dream that one of my professors is asking me to promise the class that I will be a part of that class. That I will do what ever that class is asked to do. That I will not be different from any of them, and when they refer to the class, they refer to me, to you, to him, to her, to my friends, my enemies. I dream that I stand in front of such a class, and tell them of this dream. Would they understand? Would they understand what pursuing such a dream means? I think not. But, the class has not let me down. I have not let the class down by not being a part of it: the people around me mean so much to me. But all I can think of at the end of the day is that, am I any different? However, I know I am not. There is no individuality left in me. 

Our dreams, they say, are for us to dream. They make us do the same things, the same tasks. Again and again, till the work process becomes subconsciously triggered whenever I hear someone speak of it. They teach us the same lessons, but they say the difference lies in what part of the lesson we choose to learn. He learns the beginning, and he wants to pursue it till the end of his life. She learns the end, and she wants to pursue it till the end of her life. My friend learns everything, and he wants to do all of them for the rest of his life. They laud them, they clap every time such a dream is spoken. But why is that when I choose to learn nothing, they pity me? Isn’t not wanting to learn anything a lesson by itself? The world they paint in front of my eyes is not the world I want to belong to. My dream lies else where, and they choose not to recognise that dream. I don’t know why. They say they will involve my parents in such issues. Tell me, is that supposed to threaten? Because it doesn’t. Not one bit. And when I say I am only prone to laughing at such statements, they say I am mad. They say I am disoriented, and that I don’t where I am heading in life. Tell me, do choices exist that no one else has ever made? Because no one seems to recognise it. The only choices any one seems capable of recognising are the ones they have made, or the ones they have heard made. To dream is to lose hope in this world. It is not a perfect world, and now I know that it has never been. And a glowering fear inside of me dictates that I can never hope to be part of such a world.

When I stand in front of my class which such ideas in my mind, will they understand? I think that when I can, they should be able to. Unfortunately, they are not. Every where I turn, someone or the other has an explanation that reflects materialism. They fail to recognise that my happiness does, in fact, lie elsewhere. Again, the only choice they know exists is the one they could have made, would have made or should have made. A choice doesn’t exist that hasn’t already been made. What then is the meaning of a dream? I will always ask myself this. Perhaps one realises all of this only when one loses the grasp of a previous dream, a first dream. I question every corner, but they either hold on to a preconceived notion like a babe holds on to the finger of its mother a few days after birth, or they have already let go, surrendering their destiny to a stranger. There only remains a corner which I haven’t already asked these questions, but I don’t want to ask. Why? Because I am afraid of the answer the corner has in store for me. That corner is the small part of my mind I wish to leave open to explore. That is the kind of hope this world instills in me: a blind hope.

For the last time, imagine this: you are in a free world; that you are in a world that does not remind you of the ground; that you are in a world that does not remind you of your insecurities by asking you to remember that the sky is far, far away, and sometimes that it doesn’t even exist. Imagine you are a part of such a world. If this is the world you want to belong to, then ask yourself just one question: do you have it in you to sculpt such a world for yourself?   

Blowing off some hiatus steam!

Bouncing back is dramatic, and also a good candidate for cinematic. Bouncing back is megalomania, bouncing back is refusal to quit, bouncing back is getting back up after you’ve been knocked down by a rabid Tyson – someone you would hardly expect to be standing right outside your room. But bouncing back is not easy, especially when you’re recovering from losing your life’s work in a matter of twenty minutes.

I was left wandering aimlessly in the corridors of the heartbroken’s hell: the only thing missing was a beard but that’s not my fault, it simply refused to grow. One of the very, very few things I’ve ever put all my faith in – and money when I get it – is my writing. And I had embarked on the command of a dream to write a grandiose book, a book of comedies and tragedies. It was the kind of book that had me turn a deaf ear towards anyone who had anything bad to say about it. But my stupid and jealous laptop couldn’t stand it all and decided to crash. You’ve probably read about it before in one of my earlier posts.

But I must say there’s nothing like getting back up on your feet. You just have to learn to take it all in your stride, as though it was a sign. I’m a man of science, but since science had failed me (esp. the science of my laptop’s cooling system), I turned to the paranormal. I delighted in them, I abounded in their eccentricities! I made up a story I forced myself to believe, and now, I’m back. Oh, it feels so good to be back.

But ideas don’t seem to be flowing oh-so-easily-again. I’ve spent the past few days writing three proposals, all of them impeccably formal (yes, that’s a complaint), and now, it’s gotten into my language as well. Formality is to me as the British accent is to my ex-girlfriend: you spend too much time with it, it refuses to wear off later on. I need some glasnost going on, and so, I need to blog. I’d begun to write about political correctness yesterday, but since I wasn’t writing on my beloved Samsung keyboard, I kept stumbling into typo after typo. And believe me when I tell you I don’t like typos. They’re irritating. It’s like my fingers can’t read my thoughts. The first paragraph seems so perfect, and you expect the perfection to perpetuate. But no! Stupid typo! It rapes the perfection, it drains the flow. When I write, I like to be polished. Even if I were to jot down abuse, it would have to be sans any a spelling error. It has to have grammatic parallelism. It has to have commas at the right places. And ellipses irritate me. Those three dots seem to represent some kind of undecidedness on the writer’s art, as though he or she were not in a position to express something they could otherwise easily have. Then don’t write it!

But I know I sound like some terrorist hijacking the English language. Old habits die hard, you know. It’s hard to let go. I’m a man with a vintage taste. Most of my friends would like to head down to the club, dance around, have a couple of beers and talk about football matches their fav. teams lost the week before. Me, I like to sit by the fireplace, enjoy some black tea, watch ‘LoTR’, and listen to ACDC once the movie is done. I like the silence, I like the calm, I like the laid back.

The hard part is not be ashamed of it. I’m 20, and I’ve pretty much decided what to do with my life – these decisions I’m very proud of just because I made them. But I’ve never made my peace with the decision of  liking the laid-back. There is a feeble yearning that desperately begs me to surface, but I refuse because I find the roaring fireplace more appealing. I guess it runs in my blood – from dad.

In fact, let me tell you, I read a lot of Archer. Reading about his descriptions of large common-rooms in the Oxfords and Cambridges of the world, I had a secret wish to have such and such a room built – one fine day, of course – and host a literary meeting. Just some men gathered to discuss Leftism, Castro, the economic recession, smoke a bit of pipe, grab some black tea, lay back, and enjoy the weather. Yes, the weather.

Ah, well, all that seems verily distant to me. A long time to go for that, but I for one know those dreams won’t die out. See, I think there are two kinds of dreams in this world. One will always have to do with minting money like a machine, but the other will have to be about seemingly trivial things, but the things you find the greatest hapiness with. I have a friend who dreams of making it big with the money, just like everyone does, with one dream. With the other, he plans to become a philanthropist along the lines of Bono and Geldof.

I think I’ve written enough. The writer’s block is down, and I’ll get cracking from tomorrow (I like the feeling of how some bizarre and innovative strike you only if you take a break from all that you’ve been writing!). Oh yeah, also check out this link: HARO. It’s an entrepreneurial venture by media man and adventurist Peter Shankman. It’s something I do when I’m bored, and the idea behind it is pretty good as well.

Cheers!

(And “GO WORDPRESS!” for their new theme ‘Vigilance’ – it’s awesome!)

The Confused Politician: A Story

There once lived a confused politician in a small city in south India. His name is immaterial here in this story, but he had a name that spoke of an ancient hero and his more ancient heroics. He was born, as most confused politicians are, in a small village a few hundred miles south of the state capital. His father was a poor farmer, and his mother worked in the now decrepit mill, both for meagre wages. He had five sisters and one brother, all younger. One gloomy evening, his father passed away due to a fever brought on by dyspepsia. The confused politician was only five. His mother took care of them all by herself. She worked day and night, and toiled and poured her sweat into everything she did, just so she could send her children to school. However, there came another gloomy evening when she also passed away, and the confused politician was left all alone in supporting his brother and sisters. He had harboured dreams of his brother becoming a doctor and his sisters being married off to respectable husbands who held white collar jobs. As for himself, he’d like to think of himself as the man behind everything, the invisible puppet master who pulled the strings of their budding worlds.

Days passed. And so did months and years. The confused politician was older now, although not too old. His brother was a bus conductor – well on his way to becoming a doctor. His sisters were back in the village. He was proud of the youngest of them all: she had come closest to completing her high school education. But all this didn’t matter. The confused politician’s mind had begun to focus on a bigger dream, a larger dream, a more wholesome dream. He had satisfactorily overcome the challenges that life had posed to him as yet, and now, it was his turn to take the reins and ride his own chariot. The confused politician had decided to become a politician.

Some nights, before he went to bed in his little pyol at ten in the night, he could hear speeding jeeps on the streets with microphones held aloft by little boys. They would shout into the empty streets and sleeping houses about their Great Leader, a man of will and purpose, who would solve all their problems. They would plant flags in all nooks and corners, and they would brighten up the whole street with hundreds of tubelights strung out on wires that seemed to have appeared magically. And then, the confused politician would run out into the street to find himself one amongst thousands, all gathered to hear the Great Leader speak. And when the Great Leader said something about his nativity, his culture, or the foreign rulers, the crowd would erupt in cheers, and the confused politician could feel his blood rush in his veins and arteries. This was where he belonged, the confused politician thought, this was his calling in life. Opportunity had deserted his door in his little village, but now, in the Great Capital, it had come crashing through the roof. And so, the confused politician joined the party that appealed most to him, the Great Party.

The Great Party had its office on the Great Street. When the confused politician arrived there, nobody would let him in. There was a big bustle there throughout the day. Stupid looking men would stand near the door, carrying great black boxes pointed at a lady holding a black cyilnder, and they would talk to each other all day long about God-knows-what. Finally, one day, they let him through. The confused politician walked in, bewildered by all the people inside – most of them important going by the white shirt-white veshti combo. After a few minutes, he was before the Great Leader himself.

And he fell at his feet. The Great Leader laughed a grizzly laugh, and hoisted him up by his shoulders, and gave him whatever-it-is-that-they-give, and sent him back into the dark streets. You would think the confused politician would be sensible enough to understand how the system worked now, but the confused politician was in his early stages of confusion.

Years passed. The confused politician was the right-hand man to the Great Leader. Persistent hard work and relentless confusion had brought him this far. When the he finally felt that he had truly grasped the reins of the chariot of his life, the Great Leader died of a stroke. The party people were all sad, and the mood in the office plunged from exuberant to melancholic within a matter of a few minutes. But soon, it climbed back to mania when they all realised the confused politician would now take up the stead of the Great Leader, and would be a Great Leader himself. And so, they repainted the HQ a bright white, they wore their finest silken shirts, sported their brightest smiles as the confused politican stepped out of his new and white Toyota Qualis and into the room of the Great Leader. His room from today onwards for the rest of his life, and the thought made him smile. His right-hand man asked him why he was smiling, and the Great Politician said, “Finally, my turn to do something good for the people”.

Everyday, hundreds of the rich and the poor would walk in and out of the building, either giving large sums of money or taking small ones. The confused politician was now an important man. And he felt important, too. Whenever he walked outside his building, groups of men and women holding black boxes and black cylinders would swarm around him, and magically, he would see his face in the television that night. He always loved it when that happened. The knowledge of technology had failed to amaze him and he had abandoned it as a child. But that ignorance had deprived him of nothing, or so he believed. Over and above everything, the confused politician was a happy and confused man, and that’s a very happy man.

One morning, he woke up to find the sun shining bright and beautiful outside his window. The sky looked awesome, he thought. While he was smiling into the world outside and above his head, he heard a commotion below. He looked down onto the street to see some poor people fighting to get into the HQ. He opened the window, disgusted, and shouted at them to get away. He called his right-hand man in and barked at him to ask the watchman to let no one in. Today had started beautiful, and it would end beautiful. After getting back his calm, the confused politician switched on his television and saw his face smiling on the screen. He smiled even more. And then, he thought, why not do something today instead of lazing around? And so, he thought once more of those poor people on the streets, and wondered what they were doing here bothering him. He wondered why they weren’t at home, toiling away like his diseased mother and dyspepsic father, eager to send their children to school. And then, the confused politician and Great Leader realised these people had to pass exams. That’s preposterous, he thought! And so, he declared a reservation for the backward classes in the IITs and the IIMs for upto 27% of the total seats. There, problem solved! Now, they would be busy in the morning to send their children to school, and the confused politician could spend a more beautiful morning without having to shoo people through his windows.

The next day morning, he woke up to find a more brilliant sun shining in the skies, and little wisps of clouds here and there. He smiled to himself and cautiously looked down into the street. No poor people shouting at his gates. The confused politician smiled more. And then, a phone rang outside his office, startling him out of his Utopic visions. He gave a start and began to furiously walk toward the door. Just then, it banged open and his left-hand man walked in. He was holding what looked like a phone without wires in his right hand, and said, “Your supporters want to erect a statue in your honour on the Great Busisest Street”. The confused politician smiled. Today was turning out to be more and more brilliant! He immediately nodded his approval, and the plans were made, and the documents were signed, and the money was poured. The next thing he knew was that he was sitting in the front row of a gala ceremony organised by every conceivable organ of the state where important businessmen (with white collars, mind you) came to talk about the Great Leader. And the Great Leader smiled at his statue.

He woke up the next day and looked at the skies. He did not like the look of it, as was evident from the absence of a smile on his face: it was overcast, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. The air smelled damp and muddy, as though it had rained through the night. Indeed, it had. Glum, the confused politician looked down into the street. No poor people. He turned his head towards the door. No phone ringing. Something was odd about today. He walked out of his room. There was the usual bustle, and this restored the Great Leader’s faith in the normality he thought he had established around himself. Suddenly, his PA jumped up from behind him. The Great Leader was startled.

“What?!”

“Haven’t you heard, sir?”

“Heard what?! Tell me quickly!”

“There was a big accident last night, sir, on the Great Busiest Street. Your statue’s pedestal having taken up most of the space in the left lane, a lorry had hit it by mistake, skidded over to the opposite lane and crashed into a bunch of oncoming cars and vans.”

“What are you trying to tell me?!”

“22 people have died, sir.”

Today was a bad day. Today was a very bad day. Today was a very, very bad day. Today was a… I think you get the point. The confused poltician in the Great Leader pondered. Something had to be done. If the statue was not removed, then protest groups would rise up. The Great Opposition Leader would stage dharnas against him! He would lose the majority! But that must never happen. But what if the statue was removed? Then the Great Busiest Street would not be greeted by the stony smile of the Great Leader! But there was a deeper intention there as well: when the time came for the Great Leader to step down and for the Great Opposition Leader to take over, the GOL would have to have the statue removed for obvious reasons. That time, it would be too convinient for the Great Leader to stage dharnas against him! Ha!

But that opportunity was being robbed right from under his nose now! He would have to do something. And so, the confused politician announced a compensation of a lakh rupees for the family of the bereaved and fifty thousand rupees for those injured. But he refused to remove the statue.

Election day arrived. It was judgment day. Naturally, the confused politician lost. The GOL came into power, and he removed the statue, that’s the first thing he did. When the Great Leader called for a rally to oppose this blasphemous act, nobody gathered. Who would? The statue had killed 22 people! And the Great Leader’s office was taken over, and he had nowhere left to go. Luckily, his left-hand man had saved up some of the confused politician’s money, and had purchased a house with it. It was directly on the Great Busiest Street, and the confused politician took up residence there.

He awoke the next morning, and looked at the skies. The sun was there, bright and shining. No clouds whatsoever, and the confused politician blanched. It would be a good day for the GOL, he thought, which meant it would be a bad day for him. Things couldn’t get much worse: he was no longer smiling at himself through the television screens, and important people didn’t pass through his doors, and men and women with black boxes and black cylinders didn’t swarm around him if he took a walk outside. He was almost a nobody. Suddenly, he jerked out of his stupor when he heard a commotion outside.

Large earthmovers had assembled, and engineers and contractors were busy discussing something. He learned from one of the coolies at work that the GOL was having his own statue installed. The confused politican was enraged. He caught a taxi to the GOL’s house, his old house, and alighted to discover a large number of people shouting at the watchman on duty. He barged into the throng and began to shout at the watchman to let him in. The watchman didn’t respond. The confused politician got ticked off more and began to shout louder: something had to be done! Then, someone at the front door pointed up, and they all looked up.

A hand was outstretched out the top window, and it was shooing them away like they were mongrel.

(And it happens only in India!)

My most regretted mistake

is to have had a dream. It started a few years back, and I clung on to it as though it was the life of me. I know no other reason why I didn’t let go other than the fact that it seemed easy, natural and promising. It changed nothing about me; it did not, like JKJ says, “instruct, elevate and enlighten” my days in the sun. It was something that struck, and back then, I was glad that it did. The dream was of me writing a book. The dreams that ensued were all of the plots, and those that swept my mind in the nights were all of me winning coveted awards and deep throated announcers yelling into the crowds about how I was the youngest winner of those awards. You might know, such dreams are strong ego pills. You go to bed at the end of a pallid day, not happy at all about the state of affairs, be it the world or your home. When you wake up in the morning after such dreams, you care not which side of the bed you walk out of. There is an uncanny spring to your step which you yourself can’t explain, and ladies on the streets turn around and whisper between themselves as you pass by, and you can hear giggles and feel their sight stuck on your back, only hoping that you turn around and give them a wink. In short, you feel you’re the King of the world!

But when the only laptop you have ever had crashes four times in a single night, dragging all the contents of the external hard drive with it – along with some 203 pages of the book – to some unforeseen and unfathomable doom, you can’t help but regret dreaming about writing the book. I know I could have recovered the data after the first crash, but that seems futile thought when a puff of smoke erupts out of the ventilator. You can only stand back and let the chaotic orchestra continue. If I had been in possession of a video camera just then, along with the customary lighting equipments, I could have been witness to a symphony of sorts – with all sorts of weird and unearthly noises spilling forth in chunks. Believe me, I was hoping for a moment that the roof of my room would fly off and green lights would flash down along with a white beam that would bear forth the great Spielberg’s ET himself. But, ahh, that in no way whatsoever compensates for one’s loss of his life’s works, at least that which he prizes above all else which he ever prized or will. The loss of a dream stings and bites, it claws on your back when you’re in be, it sends ants crawling behind your neck. The blanket doesn’t seem long enough to cover your feet, and when you pull it up hoping it will magically elongate, it pulls down the hair down onto your face on its way down. It seems unnaturally warm while you can hear the A/C belching away above your head, and when you turn it up, the heat turns more oppressive. Pshaw! 

As much as you lament your losses and blame Lenovo and Seagate for their sorry attempts at recruiting a brand loyalist – which I would have become if not for this mishap – you ultimately end up mourning yourself. Could you not have done more, you stupid fat-head (fingers pointing at me, please)?! You beat yourself up even though they ask you not to, only hoping all the while that it hurts. But it doesn’t: all the pain decides to linger for ever in your head. That dream will be the death of me, I know. It is my most regretted mistake, yes, but I regret it a contented man. 

Chasing Dreams

There’s something about going after your dream, isn’t it? A dream. Such a wondrous thought, a wondrous word. It beckons you, doesn’t it? A dream seems like an open door and a narrow view of the hallway beyond. You don’t know what’s hiding where. In fact, all you can see and know is that at the very end of the corridor, there is a small window beside which you know you will find peace, or perhaps another door even to set you free. What is it that has us pursuing such an ethereal utopia without any second thought? We prepare to discard the comforts that an unchanging life promises us, we pack our bags, set out into the cunning world, all of a sudden ready to brave the gusty winds with gutsy confidence. A dream is like a call into the wilderness, where we think we belong, or even want to belong. And yet, we’re not so sure if that’s the answer at all. All that seems to matter is that it is a dream.

How many of you answered to the call of your dreams? Do we even know when it is that the call rings out around us? When do we know the pursuit we have unknowingly undertaken is the pursuit of what we wanted to the most? As a student, for example, I’ve met very few people who know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. The decision being so momentous in itself, some of shirk away, postponing the time for as long as possible. We hope that when the time finally dawns, we will have the experience and the judgment to go with it that will aid us in picking something out. Let me tell you something: even when you wait around for things to happen and your ‘experience’ to build, the answer to the question will always be the same. There’s nothing that can promise you a different answer whatever be the time you’ve picked for it.  Although your experience may have refined your opinions and judgment, what matters most is the YOU, your innermost desires, your strongest beliefs, and your most willing eagerness. When the time comes that you’re finally doing something and you feel natural doing it, as if nothing’s changed, as though you belong there, then that’s what you could do for the rest of your life without looking back even once. Now, that’s what I’d call a dream!

Me? I’m yet to begin the chase. I know I will soon, definitely in a couple of months, and for some reason, I know I’ll like doing it. It’s not something I’ve done for money before although it’s something I do casually. And I don’t know who stands behind that door in the distance. All that I know is that I’m walking towards it. When it’s time finally, I know I’ll step across the threshold because that’s where I belong. All this might seem a tad too intense, but that’s what delayed fruition has done to me. It’s had me lower my expectations and, at the same time, raise my sights. It’s made me realise what I’m capable of and what points I can stretch myself to. At the end of it all, somehow, I think I’m better set for chasing that dream. Open the doors wide, sir, I’m coming!

A Whole New World

I am a student of mechanical engineering but a journalism aspirant. I was averted from pursuing J for my under-graduate degree due to some personal reasons, but I find that interest now rekindled. I don’t know what the future holds for me after this, but I would still like to hold on to that dream. I’ve been running all over the place asking a whole lot of people, some of whom I am meeting for the first time, about this issue and how I can go about doing it properly. Do I take up mass communication? Or do I utilize my engineering background to do science journalism? Or do I throw all of them away and go for the money with business and economic reporting? Because I believe that as long as there is work to do, then there has to be someone who does it. And all the work in the world can never be exhausted in a lifetime. Today was a hectic day in that regard. I contacted some cousins of mine, asking if they had any friends who are journalists. Some of my distant relatives also received a mail, filled with all kinds of pleasantries at first, and then the questions I wanted answered. It felt weird at first, though. Some of these people I deliberately lost touch with, since I thought they might not be the people whom I will have to meet up with in the future. As it happens, I need them now. But I decided to leave all this behind for whatever came next, and to concentrate on the things at hand. I know I might be come across to be something of a selfish guy at first, but I hope these people look beyond it and forgive my behaviour. Anyway, I then went to my English professors at college asking for their opinions. Somehow, I have always maintained a good relationship with these people. English came naturally to me, which is weird because it is not my mother tongue nor the national language of the country I come from: India. I took up mechanical engineering because this one subject is so evergreen and options up a whole new world to those studying it: you can go from here to wherever you want to go. In the first few months of studying it, I decided I liked the logistics part of it better and to go for a Masters degree in Industrial Engineering. And then, when the LHC opened up in Europe, my brief tryst with nuclear physics called me back. I purchased some books I used to read as a school-going boy, and got down to it. But English has lingered on in my background, whether I did some serious work in it or not. I have always been writing here and there, for the school and college magazines, doing something with the lit. club, and so on and so forth. Even now, I don’t know which part of section draws me the most. I don’t even know what the different sections in English can be. I am not good at story-telling, I can’t spin yarns, I can’t even convey pieces of information without flavouring it with some of my opinions. Sidelining everything that I might want to do with my life, I don’t want to be sitting in a chair some twenty years down the line and interpreting numbers. I want to interpret words and tell people what I make of them, and perhaps leave some open to the readers’ minds.

My fingers begin to twitch at the sight of a keyboard and an empty screen. I sometimes get pissed when the cursor doesn’t seem to be blinking. I can’t write in Notepad because I don’t like the font. I can’t write in Word because the additional editing features distract me. But I also have lost the ability to write with a pen and a paper. Wordpad and WordPress are somewhere in between. I am also interested in photo-journalism, and I know I have the ability to speak volumes though a picture I capture with my old camera. I know writing is where I belong because, even when I am sitting idle and doing nothing about it, I can always get up later and churn out a series of articles. I take ten minutes to think of a thousand words to describe a scenario, but I take much longer than that to polish a piece of metal with a grinding machine at the workshop. Letting go of a dream is the hardest thing anyone can ever do, but the impact is somewhat blunted when you know it can be a sacrifice unto someone whom you care for. But when it is none of them, then whatever you are doing suddenly seems pointless. I have never understood the importance of time and how it never returns until the day I wondered what I was doing with my life. Why do I have to do four years of engineering when I know I could have spent the time writing and not dropping a sweat? Only time will tell. But I also know I am not letting go of my dreams again. And the only time doing which could have been the time for a sacrifice is also well past. No more sacrifices. And when some people can’t understand this, I will have to brush them aside even if it means loss of important resources on my side.

Sometimes, letting go of a dream is all it takes to get it back again. [:)]