Part 7 – Stuck in a deep dingle
No it wasn’t raining. There were no cars in the golden night streets of Bangalore. There were no scooters either. When I exited my office that day, I was so high that I could barely feel the embarrassment of the slap. Plugging my earphones, and mounting my scooter, I strode out of the camp, yes the camp. Streetlight after streetlight I passed, and together, the music playing in the ears made it look like a scene from a movie, where the hero rides home quietly after being rejected by her. Dire Strait’s famous Why worry was playing, the high made the music so heavenly (I love that about being high on Marijuana) and very soon my thoughts paned out and started prodding into broader areas of concern.
23 years of age, twenty three years I had spent doing things which led to this night, riding home a defeated lover, a defeated dream, and sadly a defeated life. What had I done all these years which was anything near being worthwhile? I had studied for my tenth board exam as though it was the last exam I had to face. I had studied for my plus-two as though it was the last exam I had to face. Then after scoring average, or decent, or acceptable results, I had joined engineering, and had spent four years of it without ever questioning why I was doing it. After studying so hard all those years, during engineering I let go of myself and relaxed a bit. I smoked joints, I drank whiskey and I made love and enjoyed doing other such things which they vocally opposed. Then, I had searched for jobs like a street dog searches for broken crumbs of biscuit below tables. After landing the job, I had become finally the working professional, an eligible bachelor in the eyes of families, or a finished product in the eyes of society. A broken idiot, in my own eyes.
I returned to my bearing and found I was currently zipping through Silk Board Junction, which otherwise will be packed to the moon come morning, was completely deserted at this hour. Marveling at my mind’s ability to ride the scooter without consciously thinking about it, I weaved back into my thoughts. 23 years, like I said, twenty three years had passed by in a blur and I felt I had been purposely distracted from asking myself what I really wanted. Exactly who were distracting me, and why, I could not yet figure out, but I had the vague feeling that everyone was in on it, including of course, me myself.
I felt repugnant at the thought of my own thoughts when I was younger. Before joining engineering, I used to think like this;
Does it have scope? Does my branch of engineering have scope?
Thinking about it, I don’t even know what scope means even now! Scope, scope, I mean what the actual fuck is scope? And why was I asking such questions, which I did not understand myself, and basing its answers on deciding my future. Scope. Scope. I came to the conclusion that I was merely mirroring what others around me were asking. A friend had once asked me,
‘Bro. Mechanical Engineering has scope?’
Me, having absolutely no idea what even scope meant, had replied,
‘Yes. Full scope.’
Then, I had asked someone else the same question,
‘Bro. Mechanical Engineering has scope?’
And he had replied,
‘Yes. Full scope.’
And he had added,
‘Mechanical is evergreen.’
Whatever that means.
Like passing-the-message, we were involved in one giant pass-the-false-message. Everyone, including me, bleating like sheep, without ever asking why we were bleating, or primarily, why we were sheep.
Based on that, I had joined engineering and emerged from it, four turbulent years later, a half-drugged, half-drunk, namesake techie who had barely the motivation to work and abundantly the motivation to escape and get more high, and more drunk at each easy excuse. Somehow, these academic transits had beaten my motivation to ask the right questions down to a pulp. Weren’t they supposed to do the exact opposite? Were they not meant to encourage us to ask questions? And to take risks? And to thus, and hence, grow?
Right from school, I had been told to explicitly do this and do that, do not ask why just do it, wear the uniform, and then when engineering came, I knew very well that the next time somebody asked me to do this or do that, they were to be expressly disobeyed, because what good had obedience done me all these growing years? Like a system of mutual destruction and mutual distrust, I had disobeyed and yet still found myself doing something which I truly, truly hated. And together, everyone around me, including me, had deteriorated into lives of quiet desperation, spending time passing messages rather than asking questions. What am I all about? Now that’s one question. Who am I meant to become? Another question. What would my older self be most proud of doing, spending a life lived for others? Or spending a life lived for the realization of my true potential? Questions, I believe, are the starting points to any development process.
In the software world I worked in, we asked several questions in our line of work, What’s the goal of the project? What are its outcomes? What’s the budget? What are the resources needed and how much of it do we already have? Why and how did I not ask such questions about my own life until now? Something had to be done. If I never asked such questions before, I was at least starting to ask them now. Everyone tells better late than never, but I believe a better term for it is Now or Never, Fucker.
I zipped back into my spotlight consciousness, and I found myself parked in front of my house. A street dog barked in the distance and a train sirened into the night, and being high, I had somehow driven all the way from office without mostly being consciously aware of it. Some other song was playing in my earphones now, and I was still living someone else’s dream. Arjun, 23, B.E Mechanical Engineering, Senior Data Scientist, single, and stuck in a deep dingle.
Part 8 is out!
