Change is here. Again! No, Obama hasn't won his second term. Not just yet. After having completed my exams for this period the oh-so obvious realization has finally struck me that I am a student again. Officially.
I've always had this anal habit of doing most things different. Like eating with my right hand when everyone's eating with their left, standing right between a circle of smokers and not smoking, mingling with non-smokers and blowing smoke on their faces (I'm kidding), choosing chocolate chip because someone else in the ice-cream parlor is already gorging on butter scotch. I even stopped watching Formula 1 and the English Premier League when all of India suddenly found out they were crazy about it. How many desis can claim to have watched Michael Schumacher's 1999 British GP crash live?
Now that I've successfully established that I'm an anal attention seeking differ-o-maniac, I can get on with this post.
Note to Self - I must try harder to make a better first impression.
Note to Reader - Differ-o-mania is not a word.
Ok so let’s cut to the chase. You now know that I get an almost perverse high from going against the current. If it were up to me I'd not even go against the current; I'd produce my own current, make it flow out of my fingers and run on it. Of course that would have life altering implications -
1 - I'd never have to pay energy bills.
2 - An automatic spot in the X-Men franchise.
3 - USA would invade India to seize control of its newly found natural energy resource.
Note to Self - I really should stop ranting during my posts.
So a few years ago I started looking up possible majors I could take up for my masters. I wouldn't consider an MBA in India since everyone was dreaming of being in or currently was in or was moping that he was not in a B-school. Seriously, if you were to take a pebble and throw it on someone at rush hour at the train station, chances are it would hit someone from a B-school. And don’t for a moment be afraid that that someone would retaliate for the pebbling. No, it's not that we still follow Gandhi's path of non-violence, on the contrary we're further away from it than ever before. It's just that the copious amounts of various kinds of pollution on the streets of India has numbed our senses and possibly mutated our genes; we don't feel shit.
Note to Reader - If you put an Indian in a room full of 100% pure oxygen, he's gonna choke and rush to the nearest vehicle exhaust system for some fresh air.
Back to my anal educational search. I couldn't opt for any medical majors as I shunned biology during my college years. Wouldn't choose engineering again as I was one of 450,000 engineers who graduated in 2005. Being another one of 200,000 in 2012 would just kill me! It just had to be something fantastically different. And of course something I would love doing even if it killed me.
Knowing that I could not/would not pursue anything my homeland had to offer, I started looking elsewhere. Most of my friends/acquaintances that had or were pursuing masters at that time were pursuing it in USA. You guessed it right – this implied a No to my homeland and a resounding no to homeland security as well. You know the stuff I wrote above about the pebble + mutated Indian = B school. That stands for any student stepping out of any terminal of an international airport in India as well. In short, pebble + Indian student at airport = USA. There would however be one difference. The just returned student would probably be hyper-sensitive to touch and would bleed to death on being struck by the pebble. I would replace the pebble with soap bubbles. But would still fire and run for my life, just in case
Note to self - Top of the last para: anal education. HA!
So thus far it was a no to everything I saw people studying around me and everywhere they studied it. This directed my search to more exotic locations - middle east, upper middle east, lower middle east, middle middle east, south east, south west, between south east and south west ..... wait, that's south. Long story short: I researched every major and every geographical location I could. Now Indians have a peculiar sensibility about them. When they really want something hard, they pray like hell to the deity that governs that something. So you have invocations for rain, summer, lightning, lighting striking your boss, the wind sweeping him away to the sea, the sea taking his carcass away to the arctic. I think I've made my point. Of course we love fantasizing and song and dance is part of every invocation. Yeah right! If song and dance would get people somewhere, I wouldn't have two left feet. See the paradox?
Getting back to the shit at hand. Now I believe in just one God (it makes his name easier to remember) and have an aversion to song and dance while praying. But I still have that Indian sensibility to do something that would at least give me a sign or a direction of where to head. So here's how the sensibilities translated in the ever churning fantasy-land that is my brain -
I'm breaking this up into 'Country considered' - 'Stuff I did for God to give me a sign' thingy ->
South Korea - Look at dogs as edible animals
Japan - Do not put chopsticks into your nose
China - Buy old electronics from the dump yard and mummify them
China - Eat Chow Mein with respect
Note to reader - China was never on my map. I just love Chow Mein.
UK - Support their tennis players in the Wimbledon (Even if they're always gonna lose).
France - Make a sincere attempt to like Nicolas Sarkozy.
Italy - Respect Don Corleone. Wait...I already do that.
Spain - Throw all the tomatoes in the fridge on the street.
Canada – Wait. I always thought Canada was ‘Some more America’.
Well I go on and on with this list. Cutting short to the chase I finally settled down almost purely on a gut feel to an MSc in Operations Research in Netherlands. Operations research, for those who don't know, uses math to simplify and optimize real life thingies.
What makes the fact that I'm here so awesome is that in hindsight I always had the signs that said I would be here -
1 - Orange has been my favorite color ever since I can remember.
2 - I always found high school math pointless and questioned my mother how obscure looking formulae could possible be of any practical use in real life.
And here I am. God does have a funny and if I may add unparalleled sense of humor.
Note to Self - I can now eat Chow Mein with disdain.
