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Which is My Star…
[Before I start this blog, let me tell you that it is an incomplete blog (I cant say whether it is a story, article, stream of thoughts or something else...). I started it sometime back and for long couldnt give a justified ending to it. Thus I give whatever it is, in its raw and crude form, knowing perfectly well that it doesnt do any justice, but then it left me thinking for a while and it may do the same for you too... Still if you feel like complaining, be my guest...]
As a kid, like all kids of my age, I used to love stars… almost every night after dinner, I used to go to my terrace and stare at them for long hours. I used to search patterns in them and faces of known people. As I got in my teenage, other factors kept on coming, as besides seeing the stars,
an occasional luck to peek at face of the girl in my neighborhood who also used to come to gaze at stars…
In school and college, I used to love astrophysics. My favorite physics professor saw my interest and he used to give me extra doze of the subject. He also took me once to the solar observatory in our city. I dreamt at that time to be a scientist one day… what a dream it was…
Then came a time in life where in your dreams and aspirations are rather directed by people around you. I too started seeing my interest in what others surrounding me were successful in doing. Some were doctors, others engineers and accountants, but the thing which was hot, was IT, aka software…
Ok, I will agree that computers attracted me, but who will it not. There lies a machine which combines your TV, VCR, cassette player, video game, and well for some naughty stuff too. But then I never saw it as what software and the IT world used to see it. A dumb – idiot machine which needs to be explicitly told as to when to lift the pen, to what height to lift the pen, to…. Well I don’t care… Common, even in my school days, I used to like my computer practicals only because I used to play that space game on it whenever our lab in-charge was not there. I must never have made a single program my self then, or even at college in my graduation (hushhh, don’t ask how I cleared my exams – God bless all my wonderful friends ;-)). I was supposed to be a good student, but when it used to come to sit in front of that dumb terminal and type in some commands on that dull screen (the color of which changed from black, to white, to what not). I don’t know why they make the IDE so dull, it actually de-motivates your spirit to type your programs… ok may be not for all….
On public demand and, I would say the typical Indian family pressure, where parents want to see there son become an engineer and work in some crappy government office earning few thousand in salary and few tens of thousands in upper ki kamai, I was also kicked off by them in my career. I will not blame them. After all, what more or different a middle class family could think of. I didn’t have a family business like my friends, which could have saved me from the torture of those engineering years and more which was yet to come then. And in a small city, from where I came, there wasn’t much scope for innovative and creative thinking (which I still doubt if I have in any)
Ok, I went to college and succeeded to pass out too as a software engineer with ok ok results (remember what I said before, I hardly ever made any programs even in pracs then).
Job was not difficult, what with all these US companies suddenly finding us Indians as their messiahs, who could take away all there problems (and also many of their jobs). I never understood the concept of outsourcing. Why the heck you want to disturb your years old system with your most trustworthy people and give it to some one sitting thousands of mile away ready to screw your running system and happiness of your loyal people, and might be yours too.
But ok, at the end of the day the payer is happy, so who could be blamed. Let the projects run over cost and let most of them ending up some multiple times initial time estimations. But again that is not my point of discussion here.
When in college, they ask you to be innovative, creative, work on some real complex assignments. But they don’t tell you that son, in real projects, you might be working on a thing so simple that even a non matriculate kid could do it with the same efficiency. They also forget to tell you that you might be working on the same 1-2-3 programs for months and sometimes years at the end. Even worse, if you start with a mainframe project, you might actually start from rookie to manager in the same system… is it all worth the craze? Well it pays, so who’s gonna complain.
Even bigger reason. It sends you to different worlds. For us Indians, going on foreign land has always been a distant dream. Actually how many of our people even today have a passport. I doubt not many (which includes my parents too). This is simply because, for us it is something which is distant even in our dreams… may be I could compare it with going for Haj. Life’s greatest and ultimate dream.
But this far stretched dream became a common household term with the invasion of software in the country. Suddenly, one couldn’t find a suitable groom or bride, because all the good candidates were supposed to be the one’s who were onsite and had a H1B or greencard there…
Ok, I need to accept here that I too was one of them with a dream of going on a foreign soil and then cursing the system here right from infrastructure to people to quality of life, to what ever I could of India. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know that you are always a second class citizen in those countries. The color of skin is deep bound…
But then the best thing about this industry is that it doesn’t let you think too much. Before the blink of eye and before you could sit and ponder on what’s happening of your life, you have actually spend years and are bound to spend the remaining ones too.
Ok, I was telling that after college I joined a wonderful MNC as a developer. What a developer means and does, I have already explained. The job came with the ultimate dream – going to the US of A. the moment I landed on their soil, the world seemed to be so bright and lovely, for a moment I must have forgotten that there could be poverty, illiteracy and all those other things with which till now I had associated my country in this wonderland.
Ok, I know that most of you who have been there might have felt the same. What’s the difference…
The difference lied in my life…
AT THIS MOMENT, I AM ABRUPTLY PAUSING THIS STORY (hello, this is not my story by the way…) AND AM NOT GIVING AN ENDING. YOU, THE READER HAS THE CHOICE OF CHOOSING THE END WHICH YOU WOULD LIKE TO VISUALIZE IN AND SHARING WITH THE REST OF US (that’s what comment is for). GIVEN BELOW ARE SOME IDEAS TO START OFF…
[Yeah, before you start screaming at me for stealing this idea from Jeffery Archer’s “One Man’s Meat”, I will, like a rooky writer, my self give the credit for the idea to the original author. For those who haven’t read that story, plzzzz do so, its an amazing one…]
I Dare To Be Different...
One day I made a mistake which took me to where I am today, and shall I say a pleasant mistake... The mistake was that I sat one day thinking whether it was this which I wanted to do in my life. The mistake was I remembered the day when I used to gaze at stars and in that small city of a rusty country of mine. And then I realized that may be after I left college and joined the wagon of hordes trying to run the business for the world, I have never actually gazed the stars… One reason could be that I don’t have a space of my sky. I am surrounded by tall concrete structures with a magical world, but I cannot see the blues and the whites…
That mistake actually made me restless. Now I was working but their was no motivation behind my work. I wasn’t able to find or justify my existence. What will I do when this IT will burst again, when the US would find some other better pastures or even worse, when I would want to tell my kids what it means like gazing the sky…
…
…
Life’s Like That…
But isn’t it late for me now to think on what I have lost or what I am going to loose. Anyways, I cannot change my past. Even if I want to, my life is cemented to this culture and life. My family doesn’t want to change it either… And why all the hue and cry for losing the culture and values. After all, we Indians also originated from the Aryans who came from Mongolia and we formed our different culture. Mongols/Chinese or whoever are the descendants of Aryans now, don’t curse us for changing the culture and all. And after all, the culture and values could never have given me this lifestyle and luxuries. Ok, I am a mean and selfish person, but I hold the right for it from whatever constitution you want to name…
…
…
Balance Is Possible...
One day I sat and wondered as to what I was doing with my life. Whether 10 years, 15 years, 20 years down the line, I will be a happy person, or would I repent on how I have wasted my and my family’s life just in search of some mirage which never existed. Whether I would be accepted and taken as one over here within this new world or whether I will still be rooted with my origins in India.
And I sought for help from everyone who could have helped me. Be it my parents, my family, my ol teachers and my soul. I had seen many friends, colleagues around me who were not happy after a struggle of their life….I didn’t want to be one of them… So I sought for a balance…
…
…
[Savy’s Note: Why did I write it if there was no sensible ending… well may be again, here’s something just to tickle your grey cells. Something again, to make you think, is it what you wanted to do and thing are equipped with the best of skills to do?
Honestly there could not be any right or wrong ending. It is very subjective and I respect what ever ending you feel is the one for you.
My ending is still undecided, as I need to go first to US to feel that :-))
As a kid, like all kids of my age, I used to love stars… almost every night after dinner, I used to go to my terrace and stare at them for long hours. I used to search patterns in them and faces of known people. As I got in my teenage, other factors kept on coming, as besides seeing the stars,
an occasional luck to peek at face of the girl in my neighborhood who also used to come to gaze at stars…
In school and college, I used to love astrophysics. My favorite physics professor saw my interest and he used to give me extra doze of the subject. He also took me once to the solar observatory in our city. I dreamt at that time to be a scientist one day… what a dream it was…
Then came a time in life where in your dreams and aspirations are rather directed by people around you. I too started seeing my interest in what others surrounding me were successful in doing. Some were doctors, others engineers and accountants, but the thing which was hot, was IT, aka software…
Ok, I will agree that computers attracted me, but who will it not. There lies a machine which combines your TV, VCR, cassette player, video game, and well for some naughty stuff too. But then I never saw it as what software and the IT world used to see it. A dumb – idiot machine which needs to be explicitly told as to when to lift the pen, to what height to lift the pen, to…. Well I don’t care… Common, even in my school days, I used to like my computer practicals only because I used to play that space game on it whenever our lab in-charge was not there. I must never have made a single program my self then, or even at college in my graduation (hushhh, don’t ask how I cleared my exams – God bless all my wonderful friends ;-)). I was supposed to be a good student, but when it used to come to sit in front of that dumb terminal and type in some commands on that dull screen (the color of which changed from black, to white, to what not). I don’t know why they make the IDE so dull, it actually de-motivates your spirit to type your programs… ok may be not for all….
On public demand and, I would say the typical Indian family pressure, where parents want to see there son become an engineer and work in some crappy government office earning few thousand in salary and few tens of thousands in upper ki kamai, I was also kicked off by them in my career. I will not blame them. After all, what more or different a middle class family could think of. I didn’t have a family business like my friends, which could have saved me from the torture of those engineering years and more which was yet to come then. And in a small city, from where I came, there wasn’t much scope for innovative and creative thinking (which I still doubt if I have in any)
Ok, I went to college and succeeded to pass out too as a software engineer with ok ok results (remember what I said before, I hardly ever made any programs even in pracs then).
Job was not difficult, what with all these US companies suddenly finding us Indians as their messiahs, who could take away all there problems (and also many of their jobs). I never understood the concept of outsourcing. Why the heck you want to disturb your years old system with your most trustworthy people and give it to some one sitting thousands of mile away ready to screw your running system and happiness of your loyal people, and might be yours too.
But ok, at the end of the day the payer is happy, so who could be blamed. Let the projects run over cost and let most of them ending up some multiple times initial time estimations. But again that is not my point of discussion here.
When in college, they ask you to be innovative, creative, work on some real complex assignments. But they don’t tell you that son, in real projects, you might be working on a thing so simple that even a non matriculate kid could do it with the same efficiency. They also forget to tell you that you might be working on the same 1-2-3 programs for months and sometimes years at the end. Even worse, if you start with a mainframe project, you might actually start from rookie to manager in the same system… is it all worth the craze? Well it pays, so who’s gonna complain.
Even bigger reason. It sends you to different worlds. For us Indians, going on foreign land has always been a distant dream. Actually how many of our people even today have a passport. I doubt not many (which includes my parents too). This is simply because, for us it is something which is distant even in our dreams… may be I could compare it with going for Haj. Life’s greatest and ultimate dream.
But this far stretched dream became a common household term with the invasion of software in the country. Suddenly, one couldn’t find a suitable groom or bride, because all the good candidates were supposed to be the one’s who were onsite and had a H1B or greencard there…
Ok, I need to accept here that I too was one of them with a dream of going on a foreign soil and then cursing the system here right from infrastructure to people to quality of life, to what ever I could of India. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know that you are always a second class citizen in those countries. The color of skin is deep bound…
But then the best thing about this industry is that it doesn’t let you think too much. Before the blink of eye and before you could sit and ponder on what’s happening of your life, you have actually spend years and are bound to spend the remaining ones too.
Ok, I was telling that after college I joined a wonderful MNC as a developer. What a developer means and does, I have already explained. The job came with the ultimate dream – going to the US of A. the moment I landed on their soil, the world seemed to be so bright and lovely, for a moment I must have forgotten that there could be poverty, illiteracy and all those other things with which till now I had associated my country in this wonderland.
Ok, I know that most of you who have been there might have felt the same. What’s the difference…
The difference lied in my life…
AT THIS MOMENT, I AM ABRUPTLY PAUSING THIS STORY (hello, this is not my story by the way…) AND AM NOT GIVING AN ENDING. YOU, THE READER HAS THE CHOICE OF CHOOSING THE END WHICH YOU WOULD LIKE TO VISUALIZE IN AND SHARING WITH THE REST OF US (that’s what comment is for). GIVEN BELOW ARE SOME IDEAS TO START OFF…
[Yeah, before you start screaming at me for stealing this idea from Jeffery Archer’s “One Man’s Meat”, I will, like a rooky writer, my self give the credit for the idea to the original author. For those who haven’t read that story, plzzzz do so, its an amazing one…]
I Dare To Be Different...
One day I made a mistake which took me to where I am today, and shall I say a pleasant mistake... The mistake was that I sat one day thinking whether it was this which I wanted to do in my life. The mistake was I remembered the day when I used to gaze at stars and in that small city of a rusty country of mine. And then I realized that may be after I left college and joined the wagon of hordes trying to run the business for the world, I have never actually gazed the stars… One reason could be that I don’t have a space of my sky. I am surrounded by tall concrete structures with a magical world, but I cannot see the blues and the whites…
That mistake actually made me restless. Now I was working but their was no motivation behind my work. I wasn’t able to find or justify my existence. What will I do when this IT will burst again, when the US would find some other better pastures or even worse, when I would want to tell my kids what it means like gazing the sky…
…
…
Life’s Like That…
But isn’t it late for me now to think on what I have lost or what I am going to loose. Anyways, I cannot change my past. Even if I want to, my life is cemented to this culture and life. My family doesn’t want to change it either… And why all the hue and cry for losing the culture and values. After all, we Indians also originated from the Aryans who came from Mongolia and we formed our different culture. Mongols/Chinese or whoever are the descendants of Aryans now, don’t curse us for changing the culture and all. And after all, the culture and values could never have given me this lifestyle and luxuries. Ok, I am a mean and selfish person, but I hold the right for it from whatever constitution you want to name…
…
…
Balance Is Possible...
One day I sat and wondered as to what I was doing with my life. Whether 10 years, 15 years, 20 years down the line, I will be a happy person, or would I repent on how I have wasted my and my family’s life just in search of some mirage which never existed. Whether I would be accepted and taken as one over here within this new world or whether I will still be rooted with my origins in India.
And I sought for help from everyone who could have helped me. Be it my parents, my family, my ol teachers and my soul. I had seen many friends, colleagues around me who were not happy after a struggle of their life….I didn’t want to be one of them… So I sought for a balance…
…
…
[Savy’s Note: Why did I write it if there was no sensible ending… well may be again, here’s something just to tickle your grey cells. Something again, to make you think, is it what you wanted to do and thing are equipped with the best of skills to do?
Honestly there could not be any right or wrong ending. It is very subjective and I respect what ever ending you feel is the one for you.
My ending is still undecided, as I need to go first to US to feel that :-))
posted by Savy | 4:29 AM
|
3 comments
