My mother loved to tell me stories about our past, and they always fascinated me. She had been brought up along with eight siblings. Her marriage had been fixed with an exchange of coconuts. When she moved to my father’s place, they had at first struggled financially and she had faced a lot of drama from her mother-in-law. She would also tell me about her experiences with me and my sister, and the trouble we had given her. While sitting there that afternoon I told her about my dream to travel around India, and she in turn narrated my paternal grandfather’s story.
Sonepur was a small kingdom in the colonial era. Circa 1920, a motherless Brahmin child was seen crying in front of a temple here. His father had brought him from the other side of the river to sell him, and then embark on a Chardham Yatra, a pilgrimage to four major religious sites of Hindus: Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri and Rameswaram. Travellers often feared that they might never return, so they usually did their own shraddh, one of several last rites, and settled other matters, before heading out on the journey. It so happened that a Brahmin couple were doing a yangya, a ritual, inside the same temple to fulfil their dream of having a child. The couple saw the crying child in front of the temple and they decided to adopt him. That child was my grandfather.
Travel, it seems, was in my genes. My grandfather had travelled to most of the places of religious significance to the family, as had my parents. And now I planned to join their ranks. Travel was on the cards but what I had in mind was not a pilgrimage tour.
‘You were the topper in school, right?’ my mother asked suddenly. I didn’t see how this question had any connection to what we were discussing. ‘Are you happy?’ she asked. ‘Is this what you wanted to be?’ This question gave me some idea of where the conversation was likely headed, and I spoke honestly. ‘No.’ She just smiled. I was in my mid-twenties by then, working with an IT firm, and earning well. Being from a small town, middle-class family, I thought my parents were happy to boast about me in the neighbourhood. But I was stunned by her thought provoking question. My mother’s world starts at our house and ends three houses to the left and four houses to the right. This is her tiny world and her observations and comments are centred there. She told me that at least one person from every family near our house had become a software engineer. I had never thought about it before, but that was so. The booming privatization of engineering colleges in the last ten years had made the dream of becoming an engineer the easiest one to achieve. What was the point to my being the topper then? Was every Indian child’s dream really to become an engineer?
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That question kept haunting me: why do most people compromise on their dreams at an early age and choose the stereotypical paths of engineering or medicine? Do we lack in creativity? Does parental interference and societal status force students to choose this path? Why do people fear to follow their passion, to chase their dreams to become what they really wanted to be? There were a few more incidents that made me think about this again and again. I am a big movie buff, and many movies have made me introspect. I was envious of the protagonist of the film Slumdog Millionaire. As the story unfolds, a youngster tries his hand at many things to survive, working as a beggar, selling goods, selling toys on trains, working as a tour guide, a photographer, providing chai to corporate workers, seeing the workings of a BPO. He did not have to think about what society would think about him before taking decisions regarding his next career step. If you don’t have anything, there is no fear of losing anything.
Another movie that inspired me a lot was the Aamir Khan starrer, 3 Idiots. It presented an altogether different approach to choosing a career and a passion. The beautiful message in that movie struck a chord: Don’t run behind success. Go behind excellence and success will follow.
Between 2006 and 2009, while working in the IT sector, I realized that I had entered the wrong profession. I had planned to do a master’s after my engineering degree, and I was clear that I didn’t want to compromise on the subjects of my interest. I wanted to do a master’s in HCI, which is a combination of computer engineering, psychology, and design. There were a few universities in the US that offered the course. But here too, the main problem I faced was English. I needed to crack the GRE. The Graduate Record Examinations required mugging up a few thousand words and more. I could not get through it, but the preparation helped me crack other competitive exams and earn a seat at MICA in Ahmedabad, the management institute noted as a school of ideas. Nothing could have been better than that. I had finally found the right track to move forward. With those questions repeatedly bubbling in my mind, I came up with an idea. I would travel around India and try my hand at a range of professions in different places. This would be a good way to explore a variety of jobs in diverse settings while, hopefully, observing people who were living their passion.
Excerpted from 28 Jobs, 28 Weeks, 28 States, by Jubanashwa Mishra with permission from Speaking Tiger Books.