Requiem for a Dream

"Is life just one never ending 12-12 job ?"

Pardon me for being away from updating this page for a long time. In fact the major reason for my absence was that I am now a salaried person trading my time and skills in lieu of seeing a five digit figure flash on my bank account on the first of every month. When I had started penning down my thoughts on this page, I had been a hot blooded energetic and enthusiastic individual living his dream day by day. And here I am today sitting in this corporate jungle inside an AC room in front of my DELL LCD screen amidst a crowd of software zombies whose lives are ruled by the smell of some green notes, a professional status that makes them counted in the society and an urge to make some practical usage of their national identity and foreign offerings (read: passports and H1B visas) to venture into a land, more than 10 hours behind us. Much of that energy and enthusiasm is missing now, as I surge ahead to synchronise myself with this new found way of life. Yet I am still moving on in the pursuit of my dreams. Meanwhile, my self realisations keep flooding me with questions that are beyond the reasoning of my intellect.

Remember the time we were growing up as kids... Our dreams and needs were pretty childish and a blend of both materialism and innocence. As kids, a chocolate bar, a simple toygun or toycar or even an ice cream was a million dollar bribe for us. We always sought temporary bliss and permanent happiness was an obsolete ideology for us. As times changed and we grew older, we lost our innocence but our materialism and the lust for temporary bliss refused to wither away. If I am not wrong, during our college days when our spirits were high and morale boosted up, we all wanted to grow up faster to get closer to attaining the dreams that had resided in us for long. As we grew older, our attention got diverted towards meeting our daily requirements, earning money, raising a family, paying heed to family responsibilities and as a whole just surviving life and our dreams got slowly and slowly erroded from our memories. And finally as we were rendered immobile by the shroud of senescence, those dreams returned to torment us for betraying them and pushed us into a quicksand of ruefulness. No matter however happy we are, unaccomplished dreams are unforgiving and hurt us the most, decimating our hard-earned happiness.

Coming back to the topic of concern, we belong to that faction of society which believes greatly in legacy and ancestry. There is nothing wrong in it and I am in fact proud of it because it keeps us motivated to perform better and reminds us of our responsibilities towards the society. But sometimes we take it a bit further. The society frames us in such a manner that it becomes mandatory for us to follow the populist norms. Our society is built around such a framework that allows an individual to either tread the path of his antecedents or the way of the common social being. A farmer's descendent is expected to plough his land, a businessman's descendent is expected to carry on with his business, the son of a priest is expected to become a priest while the child of an entertainer/busker is forced to become one like him. I have witnessed umpteen such instances in print, media, gossips and person. Take the case of a teleplay, that I had seen when I was pretty small but could never forget, about a guy who wanted to be a painter but for his father's adamant persuasions ends up as a money minded doctor doing things he had always hated. When he becomes a father himself and his son tops the medical exams but opts out to become a painter, he decides not to let his son bury his dreams like he did and gives him the much needed freedom of choice. In fact if we start looking for instances, be it in movies like Ardhasatya or real life cases from our neighbourhood, there has been a constant trend of others' ideologies prevailing over an individual's. Now check this out... There has always been a surge for availing populist jobs in the country. In the pre 80s, it was lectureshp while in the period starting from the 80s till the mid 90s government jobs became the cynosure of all eyes. And then came the software boom and everyone wanted to relate to it. The prize catch of our times has been a management degree that would make a prince out of any elligible fortunate post graduate. Quite logically, family pressure, peer pressure and social pressure make you fall prey to these glossy obligations because of the fat paychecks associated. Then you start asking everyone what is more important the huge flashy paychecks or living your dream everyday ? No body answers, may be because no body wants to confront reality. I have seen hugely talented people with their hearts in arts, sports, science and other such wide and diverse but uncommon genres, ending up as a normal engineer with a software firm or a doctor with a reputed nursing home or a government official just because they were also good at it and not because they were interested in it. Why is it that some things like quizzing, singing, acting, sports, writing, gaming etc. are appreciated as hobbies but that is the limit upto which they are tolerated? Why is it that people can pay to watch movies, sports games, plays and dance programmes, read books but not let their kids be actors, players, dancers, singers or writers? Why is "out of the box thinking" not appreciated? When will people abandon materialism for satisfaction? All this inspite of the fact that the persons who have made a mark in this world and have brought about radical changes have all been different from the common lot and had followed their dreams.

Times are changing though with more parents allowing their children unearth their vast repository of talents and invest in what we better know as extra-curricular activities. This is not because of letting their children follow their dreams but more because of the big bucks associated with these. Well if things continue the same way, dreams will get lost somewhere in old hindi movie song lyrics and english poetry and life will get more and more mechanical. I have my dreams and am too young to say whether I can achieve them or not. What I can wish for is that the zeal that I have now never ceases and I don't bow down to the pressure of my society, abandoning the very purpose of my existence - my dreams. Because when you lose the purpose of survival, life becomes just another never ending 12-12 job.


P.S. : The title for this article has been taken from a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby, Jr. adapted into a 2000 film of the same name, directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starring Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans.