The Road Not Taken..

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What has been the aim of life of most people in my generation? There was a well-defined path in the career front paved by people who were older and we had to take the same. The reasons being:

    1) It lead to a safe life style, a proven one with less chances to falter.

    2) We were unaware of any other path or had very less knowledge to boldly venture into        one.

    3) Our parents were afraid that if we do not take the used path, we may end screwing up        our lives.

    4) Parents did not have the time or money to support our dreams.
    5) Parents were unsure of how a job like musician or writer or instrumentalist could help          make a living. 

    What has our path been (at least to most of us)? We had to score high in our Higher Secondary Board exams as well as any and every entrance exam that made us eligible to join a Engineering course. Then choose a specialization of our liking (in Engineering, of course) if we had the privilege to do so (this is influenced by many factors like dream of our parents, cut-off marks we got, whatever course is available after all quota reservation, etc., ) or go with the one we were able to select at the counselling session. Score 70% and above in all Engineering papers so that we were eligible to sit for campus recruitment, fail in one or two aptitude tests, practice hard and crack the third one, clear interviews and wait eagerly for our names to be announced by the company HR in the selected list. 

    Many of you must be remembering how elated we felt at that moment, name getting called out in the selected list!! Woah, as if the whole world is under our feet! :D

    Join our first jobs with great excitement, work hard in training sessions, harder in the project we are assigned to, earn the goodwill of manager, start trying for an on-site opportunity and get one (this depends on many factors as well, let's not dig deep), work double the time we worked off-shore, get frustrated, switch companies, get a PR and citizenship of whichever country we work in, buy property, get married, indebted, think that we have got settled and be happy as if we have achieved everything in life just because "that" anna or akka did the same. 

    That had been our benchmark for at least a decade.

    Oh yea, there are ones who realized mid-way, "Oops, this was not what I wanted to do with my life" and started pursuing their passion - but this, at least in my generation, is a very less percentage, though this is on the increase - thanks to social networking, internet and ubiquitous computing.

    And there are others who want to pursue their passion but cannot really do so as they are afraid of losing monthly income, they are so indebted that they cannot afford to lose job even for a month!! 

    And there are also the ones who think that they were born to live the way described above and be happy and content with it - I respect you guys and would love to be like you, just that there is a problem with this heck of a mind of mine.. :)

    Looking back, I wonder what did I want to do with my life when I was 10, 12 and 15 years old and what I am doing now - My path has definitely got deviated from dreams of becoming a teacher, writer and architect to what I am today because of one of the reasons listed above. I am unable to get back to my dreams mid-way as I belong to the category of indebted.. 

However, there is still hope. I can still support someone who wants to live their dream - that someone will be my child. Yes, we can definitely support our next generation to live their dream life and help them realize and unleash their potential to the maximum possible extent. I am happy to see that kids of today do not have the "Following" mentality, they are more original and independent. With access to a whole world of information and contacts at the click of a mouse, the current generation possess what it takes to realize it's dreams and also make a living out of it. 

I would like to quote here my uncle's daughter Malini Venkatraman. She is a budding writer. Her imagination and creativity at the age of 8 is very mature. The flow of thought in her stories and the language amazes me. She is an example of how talented our next generation is. Her parents are very supportive of her and would still support her when she wants to take up writing or arts for a career. I am sure, this will happen with many kids of our generation. 

The next generation will have no regrets about the road they were unable to take because there will be none. 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
     I took the one less traveled by,
     And that has made all the difference.

Storyline

What happens when a girl who does not want to grow up, who does not want to get into the "adult world" (as she calls it) has to go through events like marriage and child birth? What happens if she gets called "Aunty" by other kids when within herself, she is not even mature enough to be a wife?

What happens if a girl wonders at the task given to her at office - "how do they trust me with such a big responsibility?", what happens if a girl does not realize how old she is and what her responsibilities are and wonder at others of her age who act like "big" people?

Have you ever heard of a girl who wonders what her own personality is when she is just about 30 years old and feels lost? Heard of a girl who is in search of who she actually is and where she lost her identity in life? Known anyone who always attributed herself with people who she is related to and not build up a character of her own? Have you been friends with a girl for whom recognition from close ones means life? Know a girl who is always dependent on others?

Know a lady who does even the smallest thing wrong and gets corrected always and falls short in all ways? Who never gets appreciated for her small acts and so thinks that she has to work harder? Know a lady who did not realize what her self worth is for most part of her life?

Ever heard of a woman who realized all the above said when she was just about 30 and started mending her life? Picked up shattered pieces of her personality lost along the journey of life and put them all together to build up a whole new her? Who started realizing what self worth and self respect is? One who ponders often how does one learn to be responsible? How does one become mature?

I am thinking of writing a story about her. She who can be described as above.
What do you think about this girl? Please let me know. All inputs are welcome.

Thankful! 

Random

Thank you Mr J for your statement - "Don't blame your child, you are lazy" (the man in my life is sitting behind me, reading as I type and says - "Idhu ennamo unmai dhan" - This is true :D ) - it woke me up early today and made me write this post.

It is so wonderful how the mind works, going from one thought to another requiring a simple connection between the two. An example follows. I saw a girl who was crossing a part of the road between two volvo buses that are very close to each other, back to front. She is also on a call with someone. I wonder how is she able to do that without any fear, I would not. May be she trusts herself that she will be able to quickly move away if required. May be she trusts the driving skills of the volvo bus driver.

As I think of this, the thought of my "Things to accomplish in this year" comes to my mind. One of them being "Learn to drive a car". As I think of learning to drive a car, I see how congested the road is, and how skillful a person must be to drive a vehicle on such a road and wonder if I would be ever able to drive a car on this road. As I wonder, I think of why am I not confident enough when there are so many others who can do it (On the side, another thought is going on - my mom and dad both learnt car driving but could not drive it on the road because they were 40+ and were less confident. May be I am getting old, OMG so old that I lose confidence? Horror and no-am-not-so-old feelings cut this chain off while the other chain still continues). Then there is a determination to enroll myself to driving classes (till date it is not done!).

All of a sudden my attention is drawn to that one small piece of music from my favorite song (When one song becomes my favorite, I make sure that I listen to it to death, till I know all minute beats. A song looping for a hundred times is a very usual thing in my life) that I have missed listening to for so long. Yes, with all the above thoughts going on in my head, I was listening to music and suddenly the 2:56th minute of a 4:25 minutes song catches my mind by it's throat chocking the chain of thoughts. Then I keep repeating that single piece of music again and again wondering how did I miss this and Whatsapp my cousin Karthik about this and we wonder together :P :P :D :D (Anyone relate to this? Me and Karthik often do this, he recommends songs and I recommend pieces from it back to him)