I rant, therefore I am …

Sometimes I lie awake at night just staring at the ceiling fan (ok, so they were bright moonlit nights) go round and round and wonder whether at the end of it all, it was all really worth it. The great MBA hype! At one time, all that mattered was completing my engineering degree and getting a job. How wrong I was, for that was not all that mattered. Well, not to my parents at least.

The reason why we can’t follow our own dreams in a country like India is because of having to fit into stereotypes, loads of ‘em. Right from the day we’re born, we’re constantly being compared with some other kid who lives across the street who’s probably having a bumpy ride in the journey of life himself because he’s being compared with some other clueless kid who lives at the end of the road.

My earliest memories of my mom giving me a hard time (they’re as fresh as cow pie in my head) are of her yelling at me that so and so’s kids were doing this or that because of which they were doing so much better than me in something and so I ought to do this or that too so that I’d do better in whatever it was too (well better than I was at that point in time atleast). But did anyone care to stop and wonder whether the person who at the end of the day was supposed to do whatever it was that he was supposed to do (me, I think), did not want to and would actually be extremely happy if everyone just let him be and allowed him to make mud pies (and occasionally eat them too). But the powers that be would never have any of it. Only-children are condemned to a kind of cursed existence where every waking second of their parents’ life is spent in doting on them. This could be a great thing years later when you’ll always get pocket money to splurge on stuff, from one parent or the other but when you’re really little, you sometimes wish you were dead let alone have a brother or a sister.

The reason why most people decided to have one child is because by their own admission – they’d rather have one perfect angel than a couple of brats. Well we all know how that ends now don’t we ;) ? Another reason is because it was a miracle they were able to produce one in the first place and they’re thankful for that and decide to leave it at that. My parents belong to the former category (trust me, I know) and it irks me to no end to know that that’s the only reason I was condemned to suffer in solitude. Now don’t get me wrong here. It’s not like I absolutely detested growing up as an only child. Like I said before, being an only child has it’s perks too. Perks, which have been pointed out to me by countless teary / ‘black’ eyed kids who had, from one brother or sister, to an entire football team of siblings. I have thanked my stars time and time again for being ‘single’ (years later I would curse myself for being the loser that I was for precisely the same reason but that shall be left for another discussion).

The very parents, who decide that it would be in our best interest to have ‘one perfect angel’, don’t realize the extent of the irreparable damage they do unto us in the process. The intention is perfectly honourable, I’m sure, but it’s the pressure they subject us to keep up with the Jones’ kids (if I might) which really gets to us. Now, it’s not like they got it all wrong and we might have turned out a lot better if we had brothers and sisters. Only-kids are smart. Some of the smartest, most intelligent people I know are only children (or atleast wish they were, as a result of their being smart ... er ... right !)

Why am I saying all this? I’m only approaching the subject for which I established the premise in the first two lines of this seemingly directionless monologue, from another direction. I’m sure you got all of that :D. Did anybody pause to ruminate about whether I myself wanted to be rich and successful and to be ascending the proverbial corporate ladder? No! If I were left to my own devices I would be playing lead guitar for a band in a club. At the end of the day, I might have even been happy that I was doing what I loved and was getting paid money, however little, for it too. Why do parents say that they force us to do stuff and exert pressure on us all through our short pathetic lives to ‘achieve’, because at the end of the day they want us to be happy and they care for nothing other than our happiness? Well, I’m not saying that they don’t. I’m sure that in their own twisted way, they mean us no harm. But are we really happy with what we’re doing? Some people might say that I’m saying all of this after getting through an IIM and therefore reek of hypocrisy in every word that I’ve spoken so far. Well maybe I am a hypocrite and then again maybe I’m not. But if you can see my words as being hypocritical, I’m sure that our parents can be seen for the hypocrites they are too. Didn’t they say that they wanted us to be happy ... really happy? Well, I feel happy but I don’t really feel overjoyed. Maybe it’s the weather or maybe it’s just the fact that instead of being the lead guitarist of a metal band playing in the metal underground, I’m a consultant (ah, consulting) today.

I’ve always felt strongly about this and have no qualms whatsoever about reiterating the point of view that I’ve had for a long time now. The MBA degree is the biggest farce that I’ve ever known. Everybody knows this but only ‘subject’ themselves to some management course or the other because it’s the quickest path to a higher paycheck, period! Have you heard the answers that emanate from the mouths of CAT aspirants before they’ve honed themselves for interviews and GDs through one of the hundreds of CAT preparation institutes, when posed with the infamous ‘Why MBA?’ question? The answers are a revelation in themselves. Students in India don’t usually have the foggiest as to why they want to do an MBA. At the end of the course, they all look like they don’t know what hit them and still don’t have a clue why they just did what they did for the duration of the course. Despite all of this, truckloads of eager CAT aspirants still line up to buy the CAT application form year after year, so that they too can jump into the MBA bandwagon and ride away on the path to success and glory. Do they pause for a moment and wonder if that’s what they really wanted to do or whether it’s in reality what their parents wanted them to do?

A peek into any matrimonial would indicate that an MBA from an IIM has almost become a ‘caste’, what with the actual community that a person belongs to being sidelined and the all important MBA degree itself getting privilege. Is this what our parents actually had in their devious minds all along? For, in a country such as ours, being ‘happy’ and ‘settled’ have so many different connotations and meanings.

From our birth till we get ‘settled’, all that we’re ever going to be are test subjects in a complex experiment that started on day we were born … and you thought that the possibility of the existence of the ‘Matrix’ was shocking. Very few of us really have had control over what we’ve done or ever decided to do and that’s a fact that we’re going to have to 'live' with and die knowing that there we never ‘lived’ anyway. More on this later.

El Pollo Del Infierno hath spoken …