Living the Indian Dream..what it means

I am sure that most of you have at one point or another heard of the usage "yeah that guy, hes livin the American Dream". Well, even though the american dream is no concrete list of things we all have a basic idea of what it might involve. A good home, a good looking car, an even better looking wife, a son and daughter who are basically replicas of barbie and ken (not necessarily in that order) and so on. The Indian dream however, is a mysterious thing.

Upon close examination one finds that it resembles a nightmare more than it does a dream.

Before I embark upon this there is something else I need to do.

"To all of you Indian boys and girls out there who have taken up professions other than being an engineer or a doctor, my hat (if I were wearing one) is off to you. I salute your courage and determination".

Now, I shall embark upon this voyage exploring the Indian dream. (Think of a scene kinda like when the titanic was pulling out from the docks, only this time there are no onlookers, just a bunch of pissed off turkeys (Why were the turkeys pissed? All in due time shall be made clear) and there were no joyous and merry people standing on the deck of the ship waving to the crowd (turkeys) theres only a couple of drunk homeless guys who are eyeing the turkeys while frothing at the corners of their mouths. Finally, there is no ship, only me wading out into the water and then feeling extremely stupid coming back onto land narrowly avoiding the gang war that has by now erupted between the homeless guys and the turkeys.

When I asked my little brother the other day "Hey man, what do you wanna become when you grow up?" he took about 10 seconds before replying "I wanna play in a band, and if that doesn't happen then I wanna be a computer game designer". He has this plan to develop a MMORPG which is so massive in scope that it will in effect be an alternate life that people can lead. The idea has some mind boggling merits and some mind numbing stupidity but then again thats why it stays an idea for the moment I suppose. I am proud of my lil bro because he wants to work in something thats fun to him. I hope he gets the chance.

I am working on an internship in jacksonville, its only for four months out of which two are almost done, but still I quake in fear at the thought of returning tomorrow to work. The work is killing me from the inside.

(funny reference: Killing me softly with this code, you are killing me softly with this code, coding my whole life with c sharp, killing me softly, ....crash...bleep...bleep...BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH)

My friends back in India they tell me about what they do and even they are deeply unhappy and extremely dissatisfied with the way things are going.

When we call home however, we have to pretend that everythings going great because otherwise our parents are going to worry that we have lost our way and so on. Therefore, in order to make sure that we dont have a bunch of angry and worried relatives staging some kind of pseudo intervention every time we sigh, we put on a mask everytime we talk about our work.

"Hows the job?"

"Fantastic, I am getting so many nice projects"

"Thats good, and you are doing everything properly"

"No, I shit on my code before giving it in"

"what was that?"

"Yes, I said, I fit in my code into what the company is doing"

"ok.....so looking good huh? career prospects?"

"Yes, definitely"

"Good, good. Now, your future is secure"

"No, its pretty much blown to hell"

"what was that?"

"I said, its pretty much blown to hell...."

"Explain yourself young man"

you can kinda get the picture about where this is heading.

Now, I am not saying that all families have the same kinda attitude towards complaints about work. One common thing however is that we are dissatisfied.

You go through school, college, higher ed and get a job and then its like you're in that car which after managing to struggle up the slope just kinda gave up and leaped right off the cliff but instead of falling or rising or doing anything at all, you are just suspended there like the butt of some cruel cosmic joke. Its downright depressing.

So what is the great indian dream? simple.

We shall never chase our true dreams.

We shall become software engineers, the pawns of the system.

We shall live hoping for a better tomorrow but never doing anything to get there.

We shall watch bad hindi soaps and curse them , but still watch em again.

sounds more like a nightmare to me.

peace.

Magus.