Fire in the Belly

There's No Career Other Than Being an Engineer 

Not really the type to rant in script (I much prefer verbal diarrhoea), but sometimes me thinks some things are better left unsaid (not unwritten). For long, the coveted career of choice for sons was engineer/doctor (still is, it seems). You'd think the vast number of new, unconventional careers popping up would have reassured the average Indian parent that your child can really become anything. But not really.

It doesn't matter what you do after you earn that engineering degree - MBA in marketing, career in law, or financial laundering, as long as you have that hallowed degree. In college, girls chose science or commerce, and boys choose only science. Wasn't that how the parochiality worked? If you don't follow convention and get that most sought after of B.Sc's, then shame on you! How will you earn lots of money? (because nothing else matters, not even doing something that you like). How will you get married? (because apparently a B.A. makes you unqualified for marriage). 

Sure there's doctors, but let's be honest here, they're a special breed. Unlike an International Operations Consultant or a Manager of Special Corporate Affairs or what have you not, a doctor does not need to explain what he does. A person just says (s)he's a doctor and immediately (s)he gets respect. If they say they're a surgeon, then respect overload. But to get there needs a lot of brains, hard work, dedication, perseverance, money (money, rather a lack of it, has squashed more dreams than Simon Cowell has) and most importantly, the ability to not get squeamish around blood and guts.

That's why, for squeamish people, the next best thing is to be an engineer. Unless math utterly baffles you. If you are like me, you could learn all the formulae by heart and be able to recite them backwards in morse code just as you have fallen asleep, but you just don't know how to apply them. So rather than suffer in perpetuity through engineering school and the afterlife, we chose anything else.

And thence starts the passive-aggressive communication between parent and spawn. Those not-so-subtle references to somebody else's child who did become an engineer and now, lives in Australia and earns more than the GDP of Peru. Then, while your net worth increases at the same pace as the continents slide towards each other, the not-so-subtle references turn to obvious remonstrations. So while you thought that this weekend you could slouch in front of the TV doing an uncanny imitation of rigor mortis, your procreator thinks you need to get a life. 

Which is why, before the metaphors start flying thick and fast (You don't have the fire in the belly to do something with your life!), get an engineering degree and then do what you want.