All children are asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" (It is a different matter altogether that after a certain age most children are told what they should become, rather than asked what they want to become.) I was asked this question in Class 3. We were to draw 'What I want to become when I grow up'. I drew myself in front of a table with a cat on it. I wanted to become a vet.
I don't quite know or remember what the others in my class drew. But from what I remember of unending chatter with my friends, we wanted to become things like doctors, and lawyers, and engineers, and pilots, and policemen, and army men, and teachers, and singers, and dancers, and painters, and geologists and historians. And, in many ways, by our parents and teachers, we were encouraged to be what we wanted to be. We were sent to various kinds of classes to learn so many different things. We learnt how to sing and dance, how to write and recite, how to learn and imagine, how to build and create.
Most of us now, of course, do things entirely different from what we had then imagined. One of the biggest reasons, of course, was the phenomenon called 'computers'. It changed every bloody thing, didn't it? But did it, really? I, for one, still want to open an animal clinic someday, even if I did not study to be a vet.
And then, of course, was the phenomenon of being an 'MBA'. When in college, I had once considered studying for CAT at an institute near my college. I went there and made enquiries about class timings, and realised that it would be a toss-up between joining CAT classes and theatre rehearsals; I would have to pick one. I chose the latter. I will still choose the latter.
It had taken me a while to understand that people who study engineering usually end up being salespeople. They don't go door-to-door of course, but that's what they effectively do. So, say, I study how to build bridges, and then spend the rest of my life convincing people that a soap will make them fair. Or, I study how to build grand machines, and then do a clerk's work in a bank. All this, of course, is entirely justified simply by the money I get paid for it. Who cares what I could have done with what I learnt! And who cares what I wanted to be.
By now, I know people with young children. I wonder whether they ask their kids what they want to be when they grow up. Do the kids still say that they want to be professors and lawyers, or painters and dancers? Or do they say, "I want to sell Axe deo when I grow up?"
There was a time when the best of human minds were engaged in building better things, improving the quality of lives, understanding the deeper meaning of how things worked, pushing the limits of human creations and imaginations. Now, they sit in neon-lit cubicles and contemplate their next pay cheque and vacation.