They
f*** you up, your mum and dad
They
may not mean to, but they do
They
fill you with the faults they
had
And add some extra, just for
you.
— Philip Larkin
I was fifteen years old
when I was asked to decide what I was going to do for the rest of my life.
I’ve often wondered at the stupidity of this — how can a 15-year-old
possibly make such a decision? The second thing I’ve never understood is
the way I was asked. I was asked to choose the direction of the rest of my life
from science, commerce and arts. Can all the millions of wonderful options in
life be classified into three things? Just 15 and they have already shrunk your
life.
I chose science. Not because of any deep passion for it but
because of a deep fear that if I didn’t become either a doctor or an
engineer, I’d become a failure as everybody reminded me. So I found myself
in the Delhi Public School, R K Puram, the national G-spot of IIT preparation.
An insurance policy more than education. No wonder I knew nothing about science
when I passed out and joined an engineering college.
My attendance
in the first year was 13% and I was banned from taking the exams. One of the few
nice things about private colleges is that they keep throwing you out so that
you keep getting re-admitted and paying them more money. Which meant I could
dump electrical engineering and start all over again. So for the first time in
my life, 15 months after I joined engineering college, I actually read the
syllabi of various engineering streams, and hopelessly fell in love with
computer engineering.
Ignoring the sniggers of my professors and
sighs of the college chairman, my dad patiently stood by my side as I took
admission in supposedly the most difficult stream of engineering (another
hilarious middle class myth). It’s funny but I topped the course, I topped
the college, and started a lifelong fascination with technology. Which brings me
to the third thing I never understood about education — why doesn’t
somebody tell students about the joys (and frustrations) of various streams
before they make these choices? Yes I know there are counsellors, and may their
tribe increase every day and may they be paid in millions, but why isn’t
there compulsory counselling everywhere? I ultimately did find a subject I loved
but it was by pure chance.
So what am I doing writing movies and
lyrics in Mumbai? Well, before I started writing screenplays and songs, I used
to make ad films, before which I used to be an IT consultant for big
corporations. That’s the point: I might want to make movies, write
computer software, design embedded systems for public utilities, write songs,
learn how to fly planes, turn FM radio on its head, and a zillion other things.
But does my education give me wings to fly, explore, change course? Which is the
fourth thing I never understood about education — why is it so detached
from our dreams? Why didn’t I have the option to dabble in a wide variety
of subjects while in college, so I didn’t have to spend a large part of my
working life searching for what I really loved?
I’ve always
had this funny suspicion that we are a nation of engineers who wanted to be
singers, doctors who wanted to be actors, and so on. This is partly because we
are a poor country and everybody makes life decisions based on how much he will
be able to earn. And partly because nobody ever advised us any better. And that
has made us a weird society. A nation which at all times is running on
half-steam because a huge percentage of productive citizens are just passing
time — because they’re not doing jobs they’d really like to
do.
And the fifth thing that always foxes me is what is this
fixation with higher education? What good is bothering about the IIMs and the
IITs so much, since they’re doing fine anyway? Shouldn’t we first
bother about millions of local schools and colleges all over the country which
are destroying our children, taking them away from their instincts and dreams,
with no chance of returning ever? Our schools lock children up in private little
hells where they learn the fear of failure and the fine art of travelling
through airless cells called careers where we spend the rest of our lives racing
each other to places we never wanted to go in the first place.
