It was March, 2006. I was writing my 10th standard board
exams, unaware of the things, which were yet to arrive in my life.
Somehow managed to score 90%, and then a teacher asked me,
"What's next, Ketan? You should take up science, all intelligent students
do so".
And since I was intelligent, I took up science too, because
that is how you make decisions when you're 15.
December 2007, a friend of mine asked me, "Ketan, what
are you planning to do, after your 12th?”
I never gave a thought about it actually, I said, "May
be engineering".
He replied, "Okay, you mean B.Tech?"
I said, "No, not B.Tech, I said I will go for
engineering".
Later on (after a year or so), I realized that both are one
and the same thing and I still laugh to myself thinking about the incident.
In 12th standard, my friends went mad, filling the forms for
IIT, AIEEE, and a dozen other exams. I thought I'd lack behind if I don't fill
these.
So I filled them up too, just to be on a equal position as
they were. And that's how a guy at 17 reacts to situations and takes so called
career related "important" decisions.
Luckily or unluckily, managed to do well somehow in those
entrance exams. Got a decent college to pursue my engineering, but was yet to
decide my stream for the same.
A thought strikes your mind, that you like
"computers", why not "computer engineering". And necessary
to mention the external factors which play a crucial role in shaping your
decision.
Your neighbor aunt's relative's son, your dad's friend who
has seen computer engineers do all the awesome things, then your friends
backing up your decision, make it very easy, and your destiny is decided.
You spend 4 years in an engineering college and you keep
waiting for the day when you'd actually find interest in the things you do, or
the subjects you study. But it never happens, at least in this case.
Ultimately you get placed in a reputed firm, which doesn't
give a damn to where your interest lies, but assigns you with the shittiest
things/works, which are way too boring to be done with zeal.
Inside you realize, "this is not what I wanted to do
with my life, this is not how you want it to be in future, you're meant to do
some other things, bigger things, may be".
You plan for an MBA, the latest trend in the Indian markets,
and then some old classmate or some relative's son, whom you haven't talked in
years, would meet you incidentally and would say, "If you had to do MBA,
then why did you took up engineering in the first place?"
And you feel like breaking his head with a flower pot kept
inside your drawing room, very honestly!
Man, at 15 you expect me to take such decisions, regarding
what I would be doing for the rest of my life? I mean is it fair, you tell me
honestly?
But the story doesn't end here. You land up in a top
B-school, studying with the best the minds of the country. And then you're
expected to attend the lectures which teach you nothing, but induce sleep in
your eyes, cause you were busy copying assignment last entire night and
sacrificed your sleep for such to attend this lecture.
You laugh to yourself, and feel that you've been in a trap
again. You don't know really, which way to go, and what would bring you peace
and where your actual interest lies.
And the day you really figure out your interest, you're
actually working for an MNC, and you realize that it is not the right time to
think about your interest, you should rather concentrate on your ongoing
project.
I don't really know what all decisions I took wrong, and
what all things I did right in my way. I just know that life would have been a
little better and much pleasing, if I had listened to I, rather than listening
others, the entire time.
It’s never too late to give it a start, and now when I know
what "I" want to do in life, I surely will achieve it!
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