An Engineered life

The story began after my high-school. The rush and the madness for engineering colleges erupt. The unspoken words that are reflected from the eyes of one’s parents drive all other desires away. It’s the age when most have different dreams, different goals. It’s the age when budding cricketers shed their pads and upcoming Maradonas hung their football boots. The flair of the next rock star fades away and the passion of those select few authors gets absorbed in copying notes.

Parents push their children towards childhood obesity and their balls and bats are snatched and their backs stiffen from the load of their tuition bags. It’s the dream of those prestigious doors of IITs that drive everything else away from the minds of their fathers. It’s also the time where various mothers have a new gossip in their hands regarding how many test modules their child completed.

It’s the time when we for the first time learn the lessons of time management without meaning to. We begin that mad rush from the school to home to tuition to home again. It then that we are reminded that the time in bus is not the leisure period which we had during our childhood but the time to cram up a few more lessons. It’s the time where the brilliance of a kid is measured in terms of the Coaching institution he/she attends to the regular (note 6 days a week) program or a part time program he/ she is enrolled in. His Sundays are involved in dutifully revising  the chapters of algebra , organic chemistry and mechanics which his Zombie like "ex  IItian " teachers gave and  his dreams at night are haunted by the terrifying structures of kekule and pulley chains at the end of which he is sees himself hanging.

But slowly he realizes that this dream is just a dream. The gates of IIT fades away and slowly the structures of regional engineering colleges and other private colleges formulate. Their building seems more in sight. Unconsciously and maybe a little honestly everyone starts to draw a list of Colleges that seems more up for grasp. The thus the Great Indian Engineering Dream is crushed.

This begins our second tenure. The next start, that's of a college. A new dream. An important criterion which enabled us to choose our respective "second choice college” was that of the elusive placement scenario. The bright hoarding which showed equally bright and happy students moving from their colleges towards their respective jobs created a great pull. Everyone could visualize themselves in those happy souls. Their shining faces presented a hope which seemed too had drained away. And their 5 Star hotel like hostel`s picture filled us with wonder. Yes their is an institution where we could get a job, a future. And not just that, it has beautiful girls in its hoardings. And yes some of them look like a foreigner too. Wow wouldn't it be great to study in a college where people from other countries come to study. Screw the top colleges, we will study in an institute where beautiful girls from foreign exotic countries come, and thus we joined it.

And thus begins our second innings. But this time around it wasn't that bad. Sure we didn't have any girls from foreign lands talking in gibberish except two boys from the African subcontinent (the name of their country is still difficult to pronounce). Maybe they had also got confused with the hoarding trick as we had. Sure we didn't had any 5 Star like hostels and at night we had to rage a war against mosquitoes but still it was college , our college and we all had the time of our life (I will take this opportunity to include even those who got a college after a 1.5 lakh AIEEE rank ) .

One significant change that happened was that the big dream had ended and he was once and for all treated as mere mortals.
Mortals who weren't left with that baggage of IIT and performance. Some again took up their lost arts, while some engaged in a few new. It was the first time when few had the courage to take the road not taken. And on the road we met with some alien arts which included cigarette, booze, drug and dope. Yes the new road had some road blocks which included (if not exaggerated) a few class fails and semester backs.

But suddenly four years didn't seem that long. And in the end was again that looming fear. That fear of a career. It was then that we realized that hoarding, those advertisements, those pretty girls smiling was all a hoax. The distance between us and our future career was still as distant as it had been 4 years ago. And thus most of us again started that wild race to mug things up. It was a reminder to again become a true Engineer.  

Then was the fight to get to a "Core Company". Those few elusive companies finally came and after  an initial screening round based on percentage , then a written round , a couple of round of GDs and another couple of interviews I today find myself in this cubicle staring at my computer screen .

By now life has taught me that most things we perceive are actually in reality a hoax , a mirage created for us my our overlords. Like the girl in the hoarding, everything shown to us during the presentations for our jobs were also hoax. As a mechanical design engineer I am supposed to make data sheets , MS EXCEL is my primary and only software and CTRL + C and CTRL + V my primary tools ( God only knows how my company would have survived if Bill Gates hadn't gifted the world EXCEL ).

All those childhood dreams come rushing back to me. Was this the career we had imagined for ourselves in that mad rush for colleges? Is this the engineering we had imagined we would do? Are we even "designing”? Are we even justifying the word Engineer?

Isn't this a form of unemployment .Sure we are getting paid for the time we are spending in our allotted cubicle but what about intellectual satisfaction? Satisfaction of our minds?

There is a great divide between what we study (or at least are made to do) and what we are made to do in real time situations. Aren’t there few aspirations of a budding engineer? In rush to fill the college forms and the race to grab a quality seat we were made to believe that the final fruit will taste sweet. But instead the reality remains that we do achieve a fruit in the end but it doesn’t look like one. We get a job in the end which is devoid of any thrills of which we had dreamt of. We get a career which cheats us of any creative satisfaction.

I can’t help but think again of those unspoken words which were reflected from the eyes of our parents. Those eyes that spoken of our success. I don’t know an IIT could have had made any difference but I still sometimes think looking around at my work desk am I an engineer my mother dreamt I would be?