Not so good with the title-making.

There is a cat on my head, an article on Jharkand’s malaria endemic on my lap, and stress about the future on my computer screen. Actually, the cat is on my lap, the article is on the screen…you get the gist.

I realize that this is the second entry in a row about being bekaar.  To readers in a similar predicament, I apologize if I keep causing your hand to extend in a disconnected manner towards that large pint of ice-cream in the freezer. To everyone else, welcome to airhead-geek space. (note - you should switch to low-fat if you’ve been bekaar for a while, that shit piles up)

Why is it that so many individuals in my age group don’t know what they want (career-wise at least)? It isn’t so at home – almost everybody I went to school with in Mumbai already knows what they are doing; for example, many are already married/engaged – bas life set. That last bit makes me doubt the amount of independence that all-girls’ Catholic schools claim to propagate. Okay, seriously though – a lot of MIG girls I graduated with are writers, doctors, MBAs, etc. and really enjoy their jobs. Almost everyone I know here in the US is either knee-deep in loans, in grad school (mainly sar-firaas like me) or working crappy jobs while trying to figure out what they want. Only a select few are already on desired career-paths. I agree that I have been a part of this country for 7 years and therefore part of the US educational process (at least till 12^th) I lovingly call mollycoddling. I remember being asked to name an example of a gas on my first day in a US school in 2003 – completely bemused, I answered hydrogen sulfide, due to which the chemistry professor thought I was mocking him. The correct answer was AIR. Saala taklu. As opposed to Ms. Ghorpade, who frequently pulled me out of my seat using my left ear as a lever, screaming “aamcha mulaancha yo!!” 

I digress. It is late, so for parting words I’d like to say something encouraging to all my fellow unmarried MIG classmates who have been victims of “oh you’re single? Umm, oh honey that’s okay!” – fuck them. They don’t know what they’re missing. Enjoy the next decade of youth.

Introduction.

I’m 22 years old and still in school. Mind you, not like the occasional 20-year old recluse you encounter in high school. I’m in my second year of graduate school, working on a bullshit Master’s degree and all the while salvaging a second, hopefully more useful Master’s degree (this one in Public Health). I have no idea what I want to do, I live in a building where Allston criminals hide regularly after their latest stabbing spree, and the one time somebody broke in to my apartment he didn’t steal anything but watched me sleep till I woke up and chased him out. I’ve called 911 twice this year just because of where I live. Can’t say my life is uninteresting.

People in the US always seem shocked to hear that we have to pick a career choice by the time we’re 15 back home. After being here for 7 years, I’m starting to feel the same way. Mainly because the direction my career is taking is about as straight as that of a bayl escaping from a tabela. I wonder if that’s what this country needs. Concentrated fear, instilled by the lectures you grew up listening to because you hadn’t saved the world using quadratic equations by the time you were 12. I’m constantly worried about what the hell I want to do with my life, and as much as I love my friends, I want to give them a dhakka when they say “You’re just 22! You have time!”

Going home to India has become something I anticipate as well as dread, like when you take a bite of that cheese you’re craving but aren’t sure if it has gone bad yet. I hate the “how long before you become a doctor, eh?” – jeez, all I want is some home-cooked pav-bhaji, why do you have to ask me this every 10 minutes? At this point I have performed CPR on a child, helped treat bomb blast victims, written a bunch of stories, received my Emergency Med Tech license, extensively analyzed Persian literature, taken Public Health classes, and have day-dreamed about being a lion-tamer. My closest friends are musicians, medical/nursing students, journalists, film majors, writers, engineers. I came to this country so I’d have more career options, among other things like toilet paper instead of a lota, and vacuum cleaners instead of a jhaadu. Too much of a good thing.

In the future I will write about many things. Health, food, politics, women, men, Bollywood, India. But most importantly, nothing important at all.  

Yes, I wrote this while I was in lecture. Gotta pack up so I can race all the cars on the way home with my bicycle.