Back to you, Barkha...

I work as a humble economist in a corporation, entrusted with the work of forecasting various economic variables for the next few years. By humble, I do not necessarily mean being completely oblivious of my CV. By humble, I mean a suitably nincompoop, irrelevant existence. In around December every year, my colleagues and I sit around a table; discuss endlessly about where GDP or inflation or interest rates are projected to grow; and in the process significantly deplete the pantry’s inventory of tea, coffee and biscuits. We discuss on and on as to how mining is projected to perform; how domestic demand will pan out; is Pranab Mukherji serious about a 10% plus growth next year, how many infrastructural projects are to come out.......or, maybe we could simply telephone Ms Nira Radia. If we weren’t such a ‘humble’ entity; then perhaps the maverick lobbyist cum PR agent who has enough muscle to shape governments; could also pull some strings at the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI; yes they have a ministry by that name!) to oblige us with figures close to our forecasts.



But what hurts me today is not that my ambitious numbers of GDP for the next three years will most probably be rubbished by the official figures when they come out. I am hurt because Ms Radia has effectively rubbished the sanctity of the average Indian’s intellectual icons. A middle-class Indian battles through endless exams, trials, tribulations, degrees and jobs – all to one day add a dash of education to his or her opinions, when an occasional spare ear pops up. Even then, the average ruminating opinionated Indian remains incoherent in expressing itself. Listen to the audiences at talk shows - people who raise their hand for the mike (and ultimately get it) mostly seem to be groping for the exact words and the precise opinions. In some part of the sentence, they tend to lose the plot. It seems more like they are saying things aloud to themselves, in an effort to understand clearly what they had thought of in the first place.



In this regular confusion, anger, incoherence and frustration of expression and communication, emerge people like Barkha Dutt, Prannoy Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Javed Akhtar, Aamir Khan, Chetan Bhagat, Suhel Seth, Arnab Goswami (coherent?) or Vir Sanghvi, to name a few. These people happened to frame the right sentences in the right tone in front of the right medium and at the right time. They were deft with words, looked convincing on the screen, had good make-up artists and were friends with cameras. Suddenly the muddled-up opinionated masses heard an articulate pronunciation in the cacophony. An evening show, an odd movie, a well-written book or a small stormy media event; and these people got catapulted to the thrones of demigods in the fairy tale world of media. People started watching their shows, reading their editorials, quoting how successful they were......and most disturbingly using their opinions to shape their own.



So when in the recent transcripts of Ms Radia with Vir Sanghvi, I realise that she is almost dictating his editorial piece; I am rudely shocked. This is the man who recounts fond journalistic stories of valour and has now retired into a ‘Travel and Living’ existence, writing fancy reviews of five-star hotels. Consider the transcript below between the two, that is out:


VIR: What kind of story do you want? Because this will go as Counterpoint, so it will be like most-most read, but it can't seem too slanted, yet it is an ideal opportunity to get all the points across.


RADIA: But basically, the point is what has happened as far as the High Court is concerned is a very painful thing for the country because what is done is against national interest.


VIR: Okay.


RADIA: I think that's the underlying message.


VIR: Okay. That message we will do. That allocation of resources which are scarce national resources of a poor country cannot be done in this arbitrary fashion to benefit a few rich people.


RADIA: That's right.


VIR: Yeah. That message we will get across, but what other points do we need to make?


RADIA: I think we need to say that you know it's a lesson for the corporate world that, you know, they need to think through whenever they want to look at this, whether they really seriously do give back to society.


VIR: So I will link it to the election verdict. The fact that there has been so much Narega, that Sonia has committed to including everybody, that it should be inclusive growth. It shouldn't just benefit the few fat cats. It shouldn't be cronyism. It shouldn't be arbitrary. That's how the message for this five years of Manmohan Singh should be that you have to put an end to this kind of allocations of scarce resources on the basis of corruption and arbitrariness at the cost of the country, otherwise the country will not forgive you.


RADIA: Yeah, but Vir, you have to keep in mind that he has been given the gas field by the Government to operate. He spent ten billion dollars on it.


VIR: Okay.


RADIA: Anil Ambani is getting the benefit without spending a cent on it ¦


VIR: I'll make those points, no?

RADIA: Yeah.


VIR: So I'll make those points. The people, because the system is so corrupt and open to manipulation, by manipulating the system, by not paying anybody you can get hands on resources. Therefore the only way Manmohan Singh hopes to survive is to get a handle on the resources and have some kind of way of allocating them that is transparent, fair and perhaps done by him.


RADIA: But there you will be attacking Mukesh only, no.

VIR: Why, why, why, explain that.


RADIA: You see, because a resource has been allocated to Mukesh in this case.


VIR: So, what point do you want me to make?

RADIA: The point I'm making is that here, the point is limited to the fact that you cannot have a High Court deciding on this. You cannot have a tribunal deciding on this.


VIR: What about ministers?

RADIA: Even ministers.


VIR: Spectrum and co is ministers, no?

RADIA: Yeah, even ministers. You want to really look at, maybe there's an EGoM [Empowered Group of Ministers] that got set and is looking at the pricing issue, and natural resources should be decided not by any of this arbitrary mechanism. It has to be one for the country. And there should be some sort of a formula that Manmohan Singh has to...


VIR: Yeah, that is the message, you know. There should be a formula by which resources will be allocated in a transparent, non-arbitrary sort of way. That has to be a message, no?


RADIA: Yeah. And also, you know, going to court.


VIR: That the people want resources, they have to be back to society. They have to pay the Government. They have corporate social responsibility. They have to care about the people who are going to be displaced, the people who are going to lose things. You can't just go ahead and rape the system.


RADIA: Yeah. But you want to say that you know, more importantly that here a family MoU has taken precedence over national interest, and what the judge has done. I mean you'll have to attack the judge here because the judge has, what he's done, he's given preference to an MoU. He has held on to the MoU and said, 'Okay, this had to be implemented.' But he has forgotten what's good, that's why it raises a bigger constitutional issue.


VIR: Which is?


RADIA: Which is natural resources is really a constitutional issue. It has to do with the country and the nation.


VIR: It's not between two brothers and their fight.


RADIA: It's not and therefore the judge's interpretation of an MoU


VIR: Yeah.


RADIA: It cannot be the basis of the way how we can proceed on these sorts of issues. I mean, you have to attack the fact that the judge has only gone into the MoU. His entire judgment is on the basis of the MoU.


VIR: Yeah.


RADIA: And therefore a judgment between two family members cannot be how you decide the future.


VIR: Okay. Let this Rohit come, let me explain to him, and I'll talk to you and tell you what line I'm taking.


RADIA: Okay. And you'll do it for next Sunday, is it?


VIR: No, no tomorrow
So the editorial I would have read on the ill-fated ‘tomorrow’ with the sagacious snapshot of the illustrious journalist, Mr Vir Sanghvi on the top of the page; was nothing more than Mr Mukesh Ambani’s publicist’s press statement. All of a sudden I feel like a classic idiot. How many of such op-eds and intelligent points of views had this person pedalled at the behest of vested interests? So when I tune in to listen to a Barkha or some other ‘intellectually’ articulate media friendly face making a point vociferously, gesticulating and asking seemingly pointed questions; they are no more than petty models, modelling somebody’s interests. In the transcripts of Barkha with Radia; it almost seems as if the duo were deciding on behalf of the nation who gets to be in the cabinet. A power broker is what has become of the once outspoken journalist on the Kargil front. Hand in glove, with so many vested interests; speaking out for her as of now would prove to be quite a career-threatening move.


A friend of mine who was in the media industry until recently; had a more sympathetic view of this entire revelation. She reasoned, “Why are people so shocked? Why does everyone suddenly have to take a high moral stand? This is how the media industry works. You need to humour lobbyists to find out the internal news. Or else how would they get to know what is happening of political parties and corporate houses? It happens all the times.” She took a breath and the erstwhile dormant intellectual rattled on, “All these people who are shocked....come on, everybody takes a bribe, doles favours, etc. Its just that the spot light is not on them and its quite convenient to sully somebody’s good name.”


True. But aren’t these media moguls the same people who immediately run to high moral ground while reporting a scam? Don’t they all assemble with their serious faces asking the ‘Shouldn’t this’ and ‘How could this’ and ‘What was the role...’ prefixed questions? Aren’t they all screaming out “I’m first, I’m first’ whenever an Adarsh society or a CWG comes by?

Or should we simply conclude that the poor victim taking the beating was simply the guy who had a lazy, incompetent PR agent?


Perhaps my friend is right. It’s how business may pragmatically happen in a TRP hungry, insecure industry. And that I may be a foolish novice to believe in everything that a Barkha, Vir, Chetan and Amir churn out. But I also happen to believe in the CBI and ED. I have faith in the courts of the country. I have faith that the Reserve Bank of India governors are out there protecting the interests of the common man through their monetary policy. I believe in the fact that despite thousands of grafts running in this country at this very moment; I am not residing in a banana republic. But tomorrow if a CBI officer is found corrupt, a Supreme Court judge tainted or a minister cheating the exchequer of crores of rupees where India regularly overshoots its budget; I feel vulnerable. My tomorrow will not drastically change with the editors of top media houses compromised. I would still be in that conference room, developing acidity from endless cups of coffee and doing my job. It’s just that all this makes me feel vulnerable.




Somehow, the statement, ‘Back to you, Barkha’ charms me no more......

Mohenjodaro, Mujhe Dil Se Utaaro

Robo ko coco mat kaho……..

My first Rajnikant movie. Till date I had only known Rajni as the guy who believed in splitting bullets into multiple fractions. He was in stark contrast with my school maths teacher’s hero, Amitabh Bacchan. We were told, “Multiplying two matrices is like an Amitabh Bacchan fight sequence. There may be a lot of bad guys around him at a given point of time, but he finishes them one by one.” Surely Rajnikant’s idea of kicking one bad guy who like billiard balls floors five other bad guys- would have thrown his golden rule of matrix multiplication in utter doldrums. So Rajnikant lived in my imagination as the guy who visualized Physics the way perhaps Stephen Hawking did- except that the latter had a thing for mathematical proofs. Infact I had never really got down to see any south-indian movie as a matter of fact. I lived with the generally accepted notions that the hero would be overweight, the heroine uncomfortable in the bosom department and all the villains were amateur rapists. The heroine’s arm was up for grabs in every alternate scene.

Robot, Rajnikant’s latest ‘blockbuster’ cost me two hundred and fifty rupees to sit in a packed multiplex. We had reached around fifteen minutes late; and as I slid into the PVR seat, Rajni had already taken centre stage. It was exactly as I had thought. Huge tuft of hair that suggested lack of moisturizing shampooing. Three piece suit. Alternately casuals in a shocking cocktail of colours. And a guy who looked distinctly out of depths in any scene where he had to say non-confrontational dialogues.

Within the first thirty minutes, Aishwarya Rai breaks into the first of the innumerable dance sequences that her contract with the producers must have specified. Rajnikant is now sitting on a hammock in a desert (wearing a red outfit I think), walking on the sand and strumming a guitar while Aishwarya does a worm-like wriggle on repeat mode. Fifteen minutes late, and it seemed we had missed nothing. Hell, I think I could now visit the loo that I had ignored in the rush to get to the film. This was a really nice, accommodating film indeed. No pressure to be on time. Didn’t require you to stare mystically at a spinning top wondering what level of inception the movie was talking of. Simple dance-incident-fight-dance-incident-fight-dance sequence.

Which is why there didn’t happen to be too many dialogues. Verbal communication had been kept to its parsimonious minimum- just enough to jerk the plot ahead or justify a dance or fight in the next scene. No fancy poetry, no emotional brouhaha. Coherent one line instruction-like dialogues. “Oh no, iske andar khatarnaak red chip lagaya gaya hai.’ ‘The internal electromagnetic field attacks the neutrons which diffuse the gamma rays. SO THIS ROBOT IS SAFE.” Or “Maine tumko banaya hai. Mita bhi sakta hun kabhi bhi.”
See; really simple. No unnecessary drama before the sentence. Only bullet-like delivery.

Oh, and I almost forgot; the android. The beauty of the scheme is that in the guise of a robot, all the actions of Rajnikant seem justifiable under the tenants of technology. He can twist his head by 360 degrees, break buildings, fire bullets from his fingers, negotiate with mosquitos…….you get the picture don’t you! There is an evil avatar of the robot; and it seems like the discerning audience in the south want villains who have a touch of Ravana in them. So every now and then after the intermission; ‘He He Haw Haw’ is roared out whenever the villainous robot is planning on his next move.

And yes, bad guys are all…….molesters. Aishwarya Rai in a tight kurta seems to be the ultimate pornographic crescendo for the sinister villains. Most of them have a fetish for swords, daggers, chains, sickles- basically any thing that gleams in light and has potential for a very gory confrontation. Evidently the idea of leaving a forensic trail is lost upon these merciless mercenaries. There must be atleast three scenes where Aishwarya is wriggling herself out of a potential rape scenario with all of them crowding her. And yes, even in this movie; Rajnikant refers to all of them with his priceless- ‘Rascalas’.

Ah, and finally humour. There is a wide spectrum ranging from pulling the bad guys’ pants down to beating up a sidekick with a shoe. But the real comedy was in those dance sequences. I never thought I would ever be atop a hill with dancers all in a horizontal line vigorously gyrating with the hero in front of them, and the heroine at a distance blushing and worm-wriggling. The last time I saw something close must have been some defunct Hindi movies in the nineties where a Juhi Chawla or Raveena Tandon would dance with the dancers led by a Saif Ali Khan (the pre-Dil Chahata Hai version that outperformed himself out of the market), or Ajay Devgan (the silly-smile version, please). But here I was on a Rs 250 seat wondering what plot could possibly generate a dance every fifteen minutes.

But it’s the last twenty minutes that really tests the limits of your imagination. The special effects chase scene would keep Godzilla at bay and match any other monster-rampage scene in English movies. Twenty minutes; and we are left battling a huge serpent, giant ball, cylindrical barrel and a huge giant- all assembled of mini human robots. As robotic as you can get!
Two fifty rupees; entirely vasooled. No film had ever made me feel that way. This was a film where Rajni tells you, “Listen, I know that is very hard-earned money. So I am going to make every rupee work hard for you. I am going to sing, dance, fight, laugh, decapitate monsters, seduce girls, collide trucks and smash villains to pulp…so that you feel that you have got your money’s worth. No wonder they have huge posters of Rajnikant back in the south. It’s a value proposition!

Will I go to see another Rajnikant movie again? Currently I think I have already overstuffed myself in the buffet. I also had Dabang before this, and though that seemed like a school play in front of Robot; that had a sound dosage of incredibility to it. Anjaana Anjaani was plain unpalatable though the initial garnishing looked good. But enough of these heavy lunches. Give me some light, continental Aparna Sen for a change. Perhaps some tossed Chinese Aamir noodles? Or how about some art film salad? 'What do you suggest...what's today's special?' I ask, shutting the menu card.

Idiots in the Box

One train rushed into another. The aftermath looked exactly borrowed from a child’s imagination when two of his toy trains are made to collide with each other. I remember having created many macabre mass catastrophes as a child with my arsenal of aeroplanes, cars, trucks and trains. One wagon is flattened; the other is thrown twenty five feet in the air, crashing onto an overhead bridge; the rest of the wagons jerked out of the tracks tilted in agony. ‘If God were a child, this is one hell of a tantrum’, I thought as I looked on aghast at the images of Uttarbanga Express crashed onto the Vananchal Express on the news.

I came to know of this accident after I returned home from office. My mother usually develops a dramatic touch the moment she has gathered all the facts and figures with regard to a piece of news; so her depiction is usually replete with pauses, gesticulations, adjectives, conspiracy theories and opinions. And she would say all of it, calmly seated on the sofa; relating the story in a piece meal fashion, as if blurting out all the information in one go would demean her reputation as an effective raconteur.

To expedite the entire process, I switched on the news. Consider some of the options that the Indian press gave me in lieu of my mother’s ace reporting. A Hindi news channel. Their reporters somehow feel that a salt and pepper beard helps lend them a Clint Eastwood charm and makes the issue at hand look as grave as a Clint Eastwood movie. So this reporter ventures into one of the smashed compartments, raises his left hand towards the ceiling of the train and says (in Hindi), “So as you can see, this compartment has been completely destroyed. All the seats and windows have been smashed. The scene looks terrible......”, looking around briefly wondering what else evident things he could extract out of that debris. “Imagine you were sitting in this compartment”, he suddenly said as if a brainwave had just struck him “Imagine what would have happened to you!”

I actually took a moment to reflect what the reporter had just suggested me to think. What would have indeed happened if I were in a compartment that was reduced to pulp? ‘I don’t know, let me see...I think I would have died, you ass’! I screamed internally.

Click, next channel. I get an animation movie here. The entire catastrophe is now presented like a case study, with one cartoon train rushing into another cartoon train. And a red flash and bang! One bogey flies up and hits an overbridge above. The sequence is then again repeated for the people who missed any particular second of this self-explanatory analysis. Meanwhile a person in the background is busy dissecting the one sentence statement issued by the rail minister; discussing with gusto the minister’s career plans henceforth.

Click, next channel. ‘Ah, NDTV’, I think relieved. ‘Atlast some decent stuff to look forward to.’ A senior reporter is on the scene with her fashionably faded kurta and distraught look. She spoke in a condolence filled tone, “What has happened here is truly tragic. People are frantically searching for their loved ones. I have with me one of the villagers..... ‘ Kya aapka koi kho chuka hai’ (have you lost anyone)?”, she asked switching from English to affected Hindi.

“Humra bhateeja huspataal mein hai. Taang tut gaya. Baanki to log honge andar.” (My nephew is in the hospital with a broken leg. There must obviously be others inside still)

Not satisfied with the nature of this villager’s personal calamity, she again tried. "Aur aap”, thrusting the mike before another bemused villager. Before he could complete his sentence (which did not seem to be having much potential for sensational grief), the reporter nodded her head vigorously and snatched the mike back. “As you can see, people here are frantically searching for their relatives. This is a very painful situation indeed. How long will this ordeal last? This is..... reporting. Thank you (pause, glance, pause) very much.” she finished as if she was on stage. And then suddenly turning to the villagers, added hastily; “Asha hai aap logon ko sab mil jaata hai” (Hope you all manage to find everything); as if they were out there searching for lost marbles.

And finally came my personal favourite- Arnab Goswami, and his media circus on Times Now where he invites every night half a dozen guests as audience to listen to him talk. As a viewer, it looks a bit confusing with seven passport size photos all talking at one go, and from the centre Arnab Goswami bellowing like a raging bull. “What happened to the anti-collision devices? What is wrong with Mamata? Are you trying to tell me that the rail minister has nothing to do with this? No, no, no...this is not done...” Ultimately one or two of the guests have to take the onus to calm down the moderator to prevent him from suffering a mini stroke on the sets. On one of the windows, Suhel Seth with his grey dishevelled hair gives company to Arnab in his Mad Hatter’s Party. Pronouncing his English words with an erudition that suggested that he had ultimately fallen in love with his own voice, Suhel Seth went on and on in an orgasm born out of eloquence; not realising that with every passing sentence he was making even lesser sense. By the time Mr Seth stopped to take a breath, it sounded like unadulterated nonsense to me. Why Times Now was making me listen to an adman’s commentary on accidents, politics and safety devices....remained entirely lost on me.

In this cacophony of the irrelevant and the ridiculous, my mother brought me my dinner and in my mind I quietly awarded her the best journalist award. Going to the TV in search of crispier news was perhaps too ambitious of me to expect. Indeed if we were on the look out for the best way to desensitise any disaster in India, I strong believe that the press owns very capable hands. The only channel that could be exempt from this dubious reputation is perhaps ‘Lok Sabha News’, which in pursuit of its own sensibility; was showing a snapshot of Delhi’s Commonwealth plans while other news channels had their cameras trained on the mangled steel remains at Sainthia.

Moral of the story – mom’s always the best. Well, usually atleast!

Retirement Benefits

I am retired. Retired of studies. I will be remembered by maximum two generations of juniors, after which I will join the crowd of unknown faces and names. Or, I might also become somebody really successful some day and be heralded as a case study in my institutions’ career prospectus brochure. I talk benevolently of days that have passed, to anyone who cares to stop by. Or doesn’t care much, but has been unwittingly trapped in a situation where the only way out is to hear my rambling days of the yore. I talk of those tough courses I had taken. Of professors. Of friends. Of foes. Of exams. Of results. Of ranks. It’s all part of a proud album now.

Somewhere in this album is a photo with my parents standing in the background beaming at their son. Somewhere there will also be tucked a photo of my father’s disgruntled face over a botched entrance exam. Somewhere else my mother would be explaining to some ever-inquisitive ‘aunty’ how her dear son is not actually lost in life; but is actually completing a brilliant secret science project underground. Somewhere in that album, my father would be juggling before me words like CA, CFA, MSc, BTech, MBA with unnerving adroitness. And somewhere in that album is a picture of my parents inviting all their friends over to celebrate their son’s first campus placement.

Which brings to my current state; having encapsulated atleast six years of textbook toil in the past two paragraphs. Now I go to office daily. Sit in a cubicle. Open my laptop; an instrument that had stopped looking dashing after my very first week at work. Attend meetings. Work against deadlines. Occasionally if things go right, I receive a pat on the back (literally, and no more!). If things go wrong, you go back home licking your wounds, being philosophical about life as a whole and the world as a globe. At the end of every month, a pay cheque comes- usually enough for me to watch new film releases, dine expensively and buy myself a monthly gift. But still it is dimunitive enough for my father to still nod his head disappointedly and say, “You can do better”!

People like my parents, and probably yours, and probably thousands and millions of others who expect a race horse out of a child…..come under the butt of a lot of idealistic disdain. Movies are made denouncing their mentality. Newspapers columns bemoan the poor child. ‘If the child wants to paint, let him’ ‘It looks like with the child, parent is also studying’ ‘Why make your child join the rat race’…….are things that are regularly intellectually hurled across to the average middle-class parent in India.

I had joined a theatre workshop recently. These are the kind of things that I’ve realized bored corporates often catch fancy for. It joins right in the category of salsa, pottery, guitar, piano, cha cha cha or yoga. Whenever some colleague gave me a questioning look on spotting me running in jogging gear from the office restroom; I reply quickly saying ‘theatre workshop’ and the person nods his head understandingly as if to say, “It’s okay, this too shall pass!”

“Hi, I am actually a…….model”, a pretty face sitting to my right said. “I have done print ads mostly. And yup, I am interested in acting”, she ended with a smile that carried from one end of her petite face to the other.

Others went on introducing themeselves; and I ended up nodding my head in acknowledgement to an array of actors, models, air hostesses, choreographers. Finally eleven pairs of eyes finally rested on me and I gauchely replied, “Hi, my name is Aurodeep. I am an Economist.”

‘Haanh?’, an audible hush went around the circle. “Wow”, the instructor finally said as if summarizing the group’s sentiments. “So why acting?”

“Imagine that the person is standing opposite you”, the instructor said in a droning voice as we all stood facing the wall. “Suppose you are mad at the person in front; how would you say this dialogue? Come on, shout.” Twelve people started barking like a pack of rabid dogs at the wall. “You are angry”, she continued, raising her voice and moving behind us like those really agitated coaches do in American movies while addressing a defunct basket ball team or an army unit. “You are very angry. That guy in front of you is your enemy. Come on more louder, Louder, LOUDER”
“Aurodeep”, she yelled as she came near me. “Be more fierce. More angry, I can’t see it in your face”, she ranted as I was increasingly failing to draw inspiration from a blank wall.

Additionally I was quite disturbed by the others. Pack a room full of people gesticulating and shouting their lungs out at the walls, and the end product looks sickeningly disconcerting. But on the top of everyone’s voices, one voice bellowed with great intensity, “Arrghhhhh, Mera aur main kaha baanki bancha hai !”, he screamed with theatric extravagence. He was a tall guy; handsome built, deep, resonating voice, a hero-like swagger. I looked around the room; and realized that there were actually quite a lot of my classmates who, like him had turned red and flushed in their faces, fuming and puffing at the wall. I looked back once again to my strip of the wall and muttered under my breath, “Sorry but I can’t offer you anything better.”

On the last of the six days, owing to incessant rains, I decided to share a taxi with four others in the group who were also going in the same direction. It wasn’t exactly a physical impossibility, since the other four with their showbiz aspirations had kept themselves conveniently thin to accommodate any such contingency. So I got seated in the front seat with the rest fitting themselves in the back. The guy with the vehemence and swagger was also in the group.

“Arre, koi contacts de na”, C asked him. “I want some serial roles.” R quite matter-of-factly pulled out his cell phone and announced as if he was giving dictation, “Duggu….93******. Then there is Aki. Aki; runs an event management company. Accha and take this number too…..you need to pester him a bit, but strong contacts hai uska”. The girl who had by now recovered from the frenzied typing on the mobile asked curiously, “You know so many people, man….how many years have you been in Mumbai?”

“Two. This September would make it two.”
“Wow, so any assignments?”

“I did a small role in a serial. My ad with Nokia will be coming out soon. And I am currently shooting one for a garments’ company. Arre you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Bas. Life is set. You know the guy who starred in Udaan? The lead role. He was a no one before that. One ad film. The director noticed him, and bas….I am doing theatre now to work on my acting. If you are a good actor, some day or the other, you will get the break.”

“Where do you exactly stay?”
“Evershine, Lokhandwala.”
“PG?”
“No, five of us have rented a flat.”

“My parents in Allahabad still think that I am doing hotel management.”
“Even me!”, another girl chimed in. “My father strictly told ‘no’. In our family everyone has studied something or the other. I didn't feel like doing MBA. I have auditioned for some plays, but getting into professional theatre is tough though. Mostly there are these close knit groups; there is hardly any scope for auditions. You need to be really good.”

"Auditions, na", another girl joined. “Does any one of you know how auditions for films work. Tried so many. Abhi tak kuch hua nahi (nothing has worked out yet),

For quite some while, having no such experience to contribute to the conversation, I continued to look ahead at the road and listen to transition plans of an airhostess into a model; a model into a hero; a choreographer to a model and a theatre artist to a film actor. All of them spoke fervently- of dreams, of aspirations, of hope and latently of desperation.

In an effort to be more social, I twisted my body and looked at the back seat packed with pretty people.
“Hey, what is your job like,” one of the models asked, as if in cognizance of my stunt.

“Well its basically understanding and forecasting economic variables. Forex and interest rate modeling. We give economic intelligence to companies- regarding growth prospects, industrial production, inflation…..”

As I went on, alarmed at how intellectual and heady I was sounding even to myself, it suddenly dawned on me why the tall guy was executing every instruction in that workshop with such aggressive meticulousness. Why others would look pained the moment the instructor would say that she expected better. Why most of them would shout, scream, jump, cry, breathe in, blow out…..all in a do-or-die fashion.
What was hobby to me, was profession to them. For me the workshop was a recreation. For them, it was a flight of stairs to another set of stairs, up a seemingly infinite staircase. A six day workshop had got over. ‘What would they be doing tomorrow morning’, I wondered. Call up some regulars for work? Scan newspapers for an odd audition? Preen themselves up for some forgettable shoot? Go for an appointment with a photographer, or a shady modeling coordinator, or beautician?

What would I be doing tomorrow?
Going to office.

I might like gallivanting from theatres to movie to workshops. I might enjoy reading plays throughout the day. I think I would love to play Hamlet. But waiting for a big break, seeking material salvation; I don’t think I would have liked to be in their shoes. I would not like to not dispense off with a nice, monthly pay cheque. I would not like to do a mental calculation before servicing any expensive desire.

They are indeed very brave people to have embarked on that path. Of uncertainty and personal calling. But somehow the coward in me is satisfied under the garb of a company ID. For all the tyranny that I faced from the education and social system; I think it atleast spared me of the war that I would otherwise have to fight on the street daily. I am glad that my parents stuck to their guns, put their weight behind me and pushed me up. I am glad that I burnt the midnight’s oil behind some excruciating exam. I am glad to have been beaten, and in turn beaten some in that conventional rat race. And I am glad that somewhere all that pressure and unambiguous communication of academic aspirations that an average Indian child receives dictation of; somehow worked in my favour.

In conclusion, I am glad to have lived the life of a slogging student.....and comfortably retired now! Making anything beyond office seem so much like an idyllic post-retirement cruise!