Don’t live life your parents dream for you
On meeting my friend’s daughter who had opted for humanities after Class 10, I enthusiastically congratulated her for the selection of stream. Giving me a quizzical look and seemingly troubled by nagging emotions, she replied, “Uncle, I am now accustomed to these left handed compliments. I know I have not measured up to the expectations of my parents who want me to become a doctor.”
Seeing tears rolling down on her cheeks, I remembered my own school days. In our education system the path is straight from classes 1 to 10, when we follow our nose and fly as the crow flies. Having come off with distinction in Class 10, this straight flight came to end and like Robert’s Frost’s interlocutor in his poem, The Road Not Taken, I too was standing at a diversion with roads leading to different directions .
Future success hinged upon the choice I was about to make. Since my adolescent years, I had predilection for literature. The formulas of algebra, and the baffling scientific names of compounds and chemicals, would always give me hard times. I was unable to understand the rationale behind calling water H2O in scientific terminology when water seemed to be a lot more than that, the very mention of water evoking images of a cascade gushing out of the womb of mountains or the placid surface of a pond in salubrious surroundings. H2O sounded quite insipid.
Standing right on the cusp with the oft beaten and less beaten tracks, I was determined to do what my friend’s daughter had done in the face of parental opposition. I wanted to take arts. But exercising their own will my parents gave me only
Hobson’s choice and I had to opt for science. My own interest had no weight. Like a host of other parents, my parents too wanted me to see in the white coat of a doctor.
All of my pleas fell on deaf ears. When I saw Amir’s khan Movie Taare Zameen Par a few years ago, I could easily relate to the child protagonist, though unlike him I did not suffer from dyslexia in the conventional sense, but my condition was quite akin to a dyslexic when it came to understanding the vivisection of a live frog. So far I had only read beautiful poems on frogs. Whenever the teachers gave us demonstrations with blood spilling over their hands, I would be reminded of those lines about the frog: “I had a little frog. His name was Tiny Tim. I put him in the bathtub, to see if he could swim.”
Somehow, after the gruelling one year in the labs smelling of chemicals ended, the writing was on the wall for me when the results were declared. I had failed to my pleasure. Seeing no signs of remorse in me, thankfully my parents suspended their dream and allowed me to pursue mine. I was a fortunate child as just one year of studies went waste. I pity those children whose whole lives are wasted and at times cut short due to the wrong choices foisted upon them by their parents’ dreams.
LIKE A HOST OF OTHER PARENTS, MY PARENTS TOO WANTED ME TO SEE IN THE WHITE COAT OF A DOCTOR. BUT I HAD LOVE FOR LITERATURE