I too had a
planned trajectory.like one should. like everyone else had. School, college,
job - that was it. I enrolled into a professional course as it meant job assurance
and straight out of college I took up a job. I was playing by the rules and not
wasting time. I was the early bird and I had a worm but once I had it, I didn't
know what to do with it. Still, I held on to it. They said Bombay was the place
to be if you were in television and so I went. I trudged on and perhaps would
have continued had it not been for some bitter experiences of my twenties.
Thinking back, I often question the
straight-jacketed approach that was ingrained into me. No doubt, it was the
easier approach. It was easier to put on an existing tag than to create one of
my own.
In my formative years, I studied in
a convent. Moral science was a must and for a child whose household assigned no
particular value to religion or rituals, moral science classes, replete with
their stories of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong were fascinating, to say the
least. Outside of the class, sermons delivered by the nuns and the beautiful
serene chapel within the school compound stirred in me a belief that remained
unshaken almost till the end of my teens. It never occurred to me to question
the message that was being delivered via those terse sermons and stories. Never
did I think of questioning their version of right and wrong or good and evil, I
simply accepted. I accepted the definitions that were put in front of me. I
accepted that if I wasn't the early bird there would be no worms for me. I never took a moment to think if I wanted a
worm in the first place.
Perhaps, I was an inhibited and
gullible child but perhaps, my school was a microcosm of the belief system that
our society perpetuates. Labelling and conditioning
of choice or choices is central to almost every society’s functioning. It is an
unease of not knowing, of not being able to neatly box/ contain /put a name to
an entity that creates an urgency to assign labels. Labelling possibly facilitates
a smoother system of functioning in totality but what bearing does it have or
hold on a subjective individual level?
Looking at my immediate circle of
friends and acquaintances I find a number of us, including myself are looking
at career changes. Banker turned artist, engineer turned musician there are many of
us. Some managed to shed their labels earlier while the rest of us are still
trying to figure our way out. There are also those who are effectively paddling
both the boats, a job they do and a career they want. Most of us grew up in the
90s when choices were limited but there was also a limitation on our thinking
outside the norm.
The ‘boxing’ syndrome is not
limited to career and life choices. Be it religion, class, caste, region, gender roles, sexual orientation and all
other categories that accompany a diverse society such as ours, the syndrome is
ubiquitous. There are floaters who bother the complacency of routine from time
to time but they keep to the fringes. Events of the recent past where states of
a country have demanded and in some cases coerced a forced exodus of its
citizens are further indicative of how the institutional setups use
homogenization as a political tool.
Perhaps, heterogeneity is
a myth propagated through anthems and advertisements.
