Sunday Tales — November Thought’s — 20
Just a day after we celebrated the south India’s favorite festival of lights “Karthikai”, each household displayed variety of earthen and new generation lamps as a greetings & welcome good tidings to the almighty. This south Indian festival is celebrated on the full moon day of Karthikai month of Tamil calendar has many legends but truth is all temples in south India look their splendid best on this special evening!
Well it was that evening as we were arranging lamps; we met the Tamilian couple staying opposite to our house. We had a good natured banter on many places we had lived in India and the way various festivals are celebrated; my neighbor then narrated his first time experience in Delhi after he had completed his masters and PHD from IIT, Chennai. Moments after he completed this conversation my wife interjected with bit of awe “This is the first time I am meeting an IITian” with almost a revered air.
Well this incident made me think about most Indian households and their pre-determined single minded zeal to make their children an Engineer. In that route, IIT is the Holy Grail for every family having children, prepared to invest in any coaching class as they stretch their meagre income to ensure the coveted engineering degree for their child. In this struggle IIT is the pinnacle of success for the child; in reality more a matter of absolute pride & prestige for the parents! But honestly most parents still feel very happy if their son or daughter gets an engineering degree enrollment from any college.
So this absolute attachment or obsession to an engineering degree in India and especially for south Indian families in the last 2 decades is truly remarkable. In fact in the early nineties, most cities would be dotted with arts and science colleges and a few Engineering colleges around the cities & many of the engineering aspirants would be willing to travel to those far flung REC’s across India to make their mark. But today it’s a role reversal. If you travel across any city in south India, you would see umpteen number of engineering colleges with mammoth campus and state of the art facilities lining up and lighting up the road!
Many a time during family or social functions, the curiosity to know about the children’s academics and marks have become more important than enquiring about the well-being of family or friends. This in turn has put undue pressure on the children. It seems after crossing 8Th standard none of them grace any family functions as they become so busy with many coaching classes and tuitions. Personally the last few marriages that I have attended, have been a learning experience, with myself being part of the youngest ones attending the function — @ 50+ .
The point of writing this article is not to discourage any one from having ambition to become an engineer. It is just to highlight that there are many career options in today’s world and your option does not start or end if you fail to become an engineer. You do have multiple career options suiting your passion and skill, provided you are willing to work hard with that goal in mind.
Writing about this topic took me back to my own childhood days; I was always a back bencher, only teacher’s punishment used to take me to the front bench for a few days. Talking about punishments of those days, we had some hilarious ones apart from the regular slapping or pinching. So at our co-ed school, any errant boy would be made to sit between two academically inclined girls as punishment for repeatedly talking in the class. This was considered absolute insult as many of us would sit very sullenly in the girl’s benches.
Second punishment I remember distinctly from those days is even more hilarious and considered downright insulting. So if someone fails in all subjects or behaves very poorly, he was made to wear a girlie frock/gown and paraded around the school, class to class as a lesson to others. Sometimes even lipstick was applied, with ribbons tied around the hair in this bizarre punishment. Surprisingly I remember only boys getting this punishment.
Coming back to the cliché of back benchers in a depreciating manner, many of my friends from the back benches had successful careers with few of them presently running their own organization and for that matter even some of the rank holders have also struggled when it came to work environment. So to be honest someone has to sit in the front bench and someone at the back in any class / any institution across the world. You just cannot have only front benchers!!! Honestly where you sit in a class room alone does not decide success or failure, it is your positive attitude, perseverance and hard work makes you tick.
Today’s topic for this article was something close to my heart, as there are no right or wrong answers in bringing up children and it also brings into perspective what success is. Well more on that for some other time …
Let me sign of the week with a quote
“Success seems to be connected with action, successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit”