The buck stops here...

The experience of working right after college comes with its own share of highs and lows. The highs are earning your own buck, giving yourself the luxury of hitherto deliberately avoided concept of hanging out at fancy restaurants, splurging on brands that you would never even think of as a student and being able to give your near and dear ones the gifts and treats that they, and you yourself would have thought of as too expensive or ostentatious. But sometimes, what high-on-adrenaline youngsters feel the lowest low of a job is not being in that constant “ecstatic” college mood. In fact, many lament being stuck into high paying jobs where you cannot leave the job because it pays you an obscenely rich salary, with benefits unthinkable of at any other place; and you don’t enjoy the work culture because you are surrounded by folks who are already into their middle ages and have a completely different outlook and priorities in life.

While the above may sound like a clichéd juxtaposition of two extremes, this is true to various degrees at different places. On social gatherings of the office, initially many new joinees are scared of getting bored to death by the typical discussions of “family” and “work”. In course of time, things do ease out as people begin to gel with the environment and family gets its rightful share in their lives, but the beginnings are similar for most fresh college graduates.

In one such over-the-lunch discussion at office, two people were discussing about their family commitments and priorities. Not that I was interested in their discussion, but a sentence that one of them uttered just forced me to think, that sometimes, just like the perspective of an experienced senior or an elder in the family infuses a strange, but relieving calm into our hot-headed youthful manner of tackling different situations, probably it should also be true vice versa. I do not mean to say that our voice should add a dash of adrenaline into the decision-making process of the elders. But sometimes, a fresh perspective just helps. The way we have grown up, we have witnessed much of globalization and liberalization impact our own lives in many ways, which haven’t always been positive.

So, when somebody said, “The best thing that one can give to one’s children is financial security”, my ears cocked up.

Most in my generation form the first wave of engineers in their families, where the idea of getting a vocational degree was so much infused in our bloodstream that nothing apart from Engineering ever crossed our thought process while choosing our careers. The good side of it is that we are a much more financially secure generation than the previous generations. Financial security allows us luxuries that many of us chose either to postpone till we start earning our own salaries, and at the same time, many amongst us also resorted to lying at their homes to funnel the money given to them to do what they wanted to do with it. To simplify it, let me give you a very simple example. A school kid, in his early or mid teens, takes tuitions and is often given the fees by his/her parents. The fees should ideally go to the teacher who gives the tuitions, but many in not just my generation, but in the older and the younger crops as well, did resort to other options. While in my generation, “other” ways of spending that money were, among other things, watching a movie or hanging out with friends, the present crop prefers spending on cellphone bills, having a boy/girlfriend and taking him around town, getting that latest “Justine Beiber” or “Lady Gaga” CD.

Not that the older is more chaste than the new- but beneath all this lies a hitherto rather unasked question of not just ethics, but also of how our priorities in life influence the choices that we make. And indeed, as Professor Dumbledore famously remarks-“It is our choices that truly make us, Harry, far more than our abilities.”

A more stark example that can help you connect the entire discussion with the “financial security” thing is a small experience that I find worthy of sharing at this point of time. Almost two years ago while my parents and I were on our way to Chennai for getting my eye check up done, we stopped over for the afternoon on the Patna Junction for boarding the next train. The favourite pastime that my father and I share is our love for reading. My father is a newspaper addict and never ever stops us from reading as much as we want to (of course, within our means, that means I couldn’t splurge on my favourite novels till I was a student). So here on Patna Junction , Mommy was getting bored while Papa and I were taking turns reading different newspapers. After some time, while we were done devouring the news and the editorials, Papa noticed  that a seven-year old boy had been sitting beside us for quite some time. Out of curiosity, Papa began a conversation with him, in course of which , we got to know that this kid was from my hometown, and had run away from home in the same train that we had taken to Patna. His father was a vendor selling eatables on the road side at some locality in Bhagalpur that I have never been to and figured out that it was too far from my home, and the reason that he cited for his “running away” from home was domestic violence. Quite big decisions being made by a seven-year old! My father, in his usual benevolence, tried to convince the kid, “Ghar se bhaag ke kahan jaoge? Patna mein kaun hai tumhara?”. The kid had relatives in Patna, but even then, he acknowledged that he couldn’t live with them for a long time.

“Paise hain paas mein?” Papa asked him.

“Nahin.”

“Kuch khaya hai subah se?”

“Nahin.”

“Ye lo kuch paise, kuch kha lo aur agli train pakad ke wapas Bhagalpur  chale jana.”

The kid accepted this favour from a stranger. He didn’t have the option not to. But, here’s what he did next. He ate a measely meal and went ahead to a stall and bought himself guess what? A Newspaper.

I love Papa for his amazing observations in many situations.

“Bacche ki samajh dekho, ghar me kitni bhi pareshaani ho, chahe khaane ka thikana ho ya nahi, padhai peechhe nahi rehni chahiye!”

Within a short span of a few hours, my Mother saw another boy, slightly older and in his early teens, sweeping the platform and asking the passengers for money for doing the cleaning. When he got some money, the first thing that he did was buy himself a bottle of Mountain Dew from the food plaza. NOT that I mean to say that the lesser privileged must not have the access to or the desire for the things that are within the reach of the more privileged, BUT the difference in the choices of the two boys in this small anecdote.

A mushy Hindi film might have juxtaposed the two boys from this incident as Amitabh Bachchan & Shashi Kapoor of Deewar, but life is much more than a Bollywood masala.

Clearly, the seven-year old didn’t have even have “emotional security” that every child needs, let alone “financial security”. But his choice was what put him apart from others. Probably our choices frame our value systems. But more on that sometime later.

So “What is it that we need to give to our younger generations apart from financial security?” is the question that the young inexperienced generation of my kind asks. And we do need to ask this to ourselves because we have made almost all decisions in life in accordance with achieving this goal of financial security. And, in fact, many even give up the simple things that gave them a sense of fulfillment, like pursuing their own interest areas and their childhood dreams. Again, I would like to emphasize that I am not being authoritative to the present Moms and Dads, but just presenting a different perspective, which would help by giving the society more balanced individuals, rather than ATM machines.

We must not forget, that before liberalization “opened the floodgates of numerous opportunities” to the Indian Society, being a History or Sociology topper from the local University had almost as much weight, if not more, than being an engineer. What more, Delhi University wasn’t the only apparent place where non-engineering aspirants could safely pursue their subject of interest. And being a teacher or a professor was a matter of pride rather than an issue of “lack of greener pastures”. The stress element wasn’t as prominent as it is now, not just among students, but also among the management of most companies- big or small. People used to have the patience to prepare 6-8 years for that prestigious job- a sarkari naukri, WITHOUT  having to resort to suicides for not having cracked any particular examination . Have we given money more importance than it should actually deserve? It is a question that does bring some more questions into perspective. Like, has the desire for rapid success and more money and a better lifestyle actually made us lose focus on the fact that the journey is what makes the life enjoyable, not some utopic destination where all things are picture perfect and where you can have all that you want? And in course of all this we have forgotten to take failures with as much enthusiasm as success- thus denying the “lessons learnt from a struggle” the rightful place in our lives. Struggles are a part of that journey, and are as much important, if not more, than the destination.

An aunt once told me the tremendous amount of pressure his son had been facing while preparing for his attempt at the IITJEE. She said, “Tumhare uncle ne usko bol diya hai ke beta, agar kisi achche college mein admission ke liye tum khud se compete na kar pao aur mujhe donation dene ki ya zyaada fees bharne ki naubat aaye, to ye yaad rakhna, ke hamaare ghar ki ek taraf railway line hai aur doosri taraf Ganga ji. Mere liye yehi do options bachenge.”

Where financial constraints force you to make compromises in every decision you make, financial security is indeed a big thing to achieve. But so much are we engrossed in solving this problem that we refuse to even see that life is beyond just this much. And parents constantly doting on their children can cause more harm than good, though with all the purity of intent that they can have.

The focus on getting into a good college and getting into “that plum job” was so much ingrained into the entire fabric around us that every time we had something, the question before us was “What next?” The heavyweight words like “destiny” and “destination” so much so included in our vision that we hardly had time to enjoy what we have , and would rather fancy for a newer and stronger craving every time- a stronger brand to associate with, a great starting salary, a host of degrees….the list is unending, just like our desires. The joy of living with a family was so much overshadowed by the pressure of examinations, and more examinations and then umpteen competitions to crack, that many of us were hardly able to enjoy a fun meal together with our families except on Sundays, because after school you have tuitions to attend, and then you have your time for self study, and then your mother quietly keeps your dinner covered on the table while you burn the midnight oil as the entire household and neighborhood is fast asleep. I am pretty sure many of our homes didn’t need any “uniformed” security to drive the thieves away at nights!

The future generations might have different problems to solve, but the basics of a good life, that is, a life of fulfillment, remain the same, irrespective of the constraints of time and space. It is this idea of leading a wholesome, complete life that goes with your value systems, that is as much important, if not more, than financial security. If financial security were the sole goal of our civilization, our founding fathers would have declared India to be a Capitalist country a long time ago. We as a society need individuals who are more aware of themselves, so that they can calmly take decisions for the betterment of their own lives, as well as for the good of society in general. We do not need machines.

It is here that a popular writer’s words come into my mind-

“Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which

we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of

nature’s design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. I must add,

don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a

balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful.

Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are

all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup.

There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not

enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes – Life is a tough race, it is a

marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of

those races in nursery school, where you have to run with a marble in

a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point

coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the

marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your

life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling

of being excited and alive, will start to die.”