Random thoughts and Rants

Mr Kumar to Mr Prasad - "Hey kumar, you know what, my son got into IIT, this is one of the greatest day of my life, I am so happy. Thanks God he was able to make it this time, otherwise his future would have doomed".

Mrs Kumar to Mrs Prasad - "You know what, my son got into IIT, this is one of the greatest day of my life, I am so happy. Thanks God he was able to make it this time, otherwise his future would have doomed".

Aren't these conversations very common?. You just need to change the couples name and you can find the same words being spoken everywhere with two noticeable points -
1.The ultimate sense of satisfaction with an achievement as small as making it to IITs or IIMs.
2.The thanksgiving, as if it was GOD (if at all it exists) who wrote the exam instead of their son/daughter.

Both of them are the factors which anyone can use to ruin his/her life.

Now, this is not about criticizing any of Indian class in specific or any of the merit based entrance tests and courses or any of those who truly believe in existence of a super power above all of us, but this is just about how conservatively we all think and how satisfied we are with our ability to succeed among very few.

Here it goes...

The day a child is born in an Indian home, the first thing that everyone indulges into is THANKSGIVING.... no need to mention that it always happens towards GOD... however nobody knows what role did he/she plays in the birth of that child.

Leave the initial few days of upbringing when the kid is busy growing his tooth bcos they count for nothing.

As soon as the kid grows a little, say around 10-12 he's taught to indulge into all kinds of prayer and enjoy himself during 2^n number of festivals in the name of GOD... again no need to mention that there are more than 30000000 GODS and GODDESSES in our country... wtever is the exact figure, add one more to it, thanks to Sachin Tendulkar.

In between all this festive kind of environment devoted to God and Family, parents start dreaming about their kid's success. And where does their dream limits!.... either IITs or IIMs .

This is the worst part... conservativeness in dreaming... people here (few exceptions like NRN murthy and Ratan Tata) decide their life even before they start dreaming. And unfortunately they do the same with their kids too. No one is ready to accept the fact the Scahin Tendulkar, Bill gates, Narayan Murthy, Shahrukh Khan, Bryan Adams... were just ordinary persons and it could be their son or daughter standing next in the list. The thing that matters most is a peaceful life where you could eat you meal three times a day peacefully and probably increase your body weight to 100kgs by the time you are 40.

Now, where does this peaceful life comes from according to the mindset of a normal Indian upbringing?? It comes from a healthy and secured job with Government or with one of the reputed low paying companies (most of the Indian IT behemoths are like that and they are the places where biggest Indian so called skilled labor force works), where it takes ages to buy a car worth more than 5 Lakhs.

Ever thought about why do we have to think so conservatively? It because this is what has been embedded into all of us. This is what we have been seeing since ages and we just expect a little better rather than something big. Such thoughts follow generation after generation. Grandfathers expect little better of themselves from their son and fathers expects little better from their's. Exceptions which break out create history.

This doesn't have to do anything with ur love towards your parents. They of course are the most beautiful things on earth and you have to love them more than yourself. This is about opening up your thoughts, bcos irrespective of being educated or uneducated, working or non-working, most of the times they are not able to see and feel what you can see and you can feel. They might not be the perfect ones to frame up an advice for you or your career.If any of this was untrue, then there wouldn't have been only one of the types of Narayan Murthy and Dhirubhai Ambani in our country and they too have hardly succeeded in making there firms as global as Google or Microsoft.

The thing that matters the most to make it to the top is one's personal thought and approach but if you have been fed with craps like religious belief, rituals, name of 100+ Gods since your childhood, happiness and satisfaction in small achievements, then you try to see a very small part of the world (i.e. your immediate surroundings), you try o satisfy yourself and find peace in small achievements and by the time you realize that there is a lot to do apart form all this time wasting religious and family stuff, its already too late, so you start compromising and ultimately ruin your life like most.

Now for all the parents reading it( I wish some of them read it), please let your kid be free and independent. Don't make him look for reasons like festivals to celebrate. Don't make him believe in God just bcos you believe in it or just bcos you want him to be confident by looking upto GOD and thinking that OKAY there is someone above me because its not true. Just try to memorize, when did it happen for the first time that you came to know about God and the religious beliefs. It happened only wen someone told u. Nobody comes on earth with all this stuffed into his head. These beliefs exist just because we all are looking for a reason to protect us from everything and a reason to look up to. Don't make your kid such coward. If he has to look up to someone then let it be you. And most importantly, don't try to decide his future bcos this way u r just goin to ruin it. You don't bring a kid into this world just to replicate a better you, but to create a new and unique identity, so just let it happen. Don't just praise the soldiers who died or survived, only because they belong to someone else's home. Let one happen in your home too.

Believe me, this way the kids definitely return bak to you and respect you more than ever. I am saying this because I am also someone's son and I feel like returning to them every second.

And if you are not doing this, if you are trying to put your child under conditions and boundaries, or unknowingly forcing your beliefs on him then mind it that you are not protecting him/her, you are just running away form your actual job of Guardianship which actually means letting your child free and watching him groom from a distance. You are in no mood to see your child doing something which no one else has done.