My nephew Vineet is impassioned about music. He wants to pursue a career in music. Obviously he is conspicuously aware about the different branches and twigs in music. And he is very clear which branch of music he wants to pluck and savour the taste of its fruits.
But with this particular decision, he became an iconoclast and tittering at the edge of being ostracised from our business oriented, money feverish society. I didn't want to be pusillanimous and bow down to this prodigious, portentous majority. So I advised him to decipher the obscure, vague yearnings of his heart and then not to betray it and then take an infallible stand so that he is not disgorged by forces embroiled in prejudices, dogmas, preconceived notions and anachronous beliefs.
After a long, impassioned discussion I deduced from the discussions and acute observations that he is under the thraldom of music. He has also dabbled precociously in some aspects of music and created his own music.
But it is very flagrant that he will suffer flak not only from his own logical, pragmatic and rational mind but also his immediate, extended and interminable family which would want him to strive for a secured life by taking the conventional, tried and tested, traceable route of earning a degree, landing a job in some heavy-weight, multinational company and to pursue music has a hobby not a career in defiance of the quote "Make your hobby a career".
This is not an isolated event or a mere anecdote that one can ignore. It is the unveiling of a perennial war between the so called Gen X and Gen Y. We have talked a lot about generation gap. But let us look at the other reasons.
Expectations
When we are born, we don't arrive with our mere microcosmic body and our macrocosmic soul but we arrive with a weight of unreasonable, unfair expectations that assails us relentlessly when we enter the hellish cavern of adolescence, the age when we are blamed for instability, indecisiveness, the age where we are impelled to explore through the crevices of the fortress of prejudices, dogmas, atavistic prides, superimposed nepotisms to find the unalterable truth precipitated by our insatiable urge to find the meaning of life, the age when confusion is an unwavering companion and clarity is always elusive. Obviously this is not applicable to the majority, this is applicable to the misfits, non-conformists. Applicable to people who are courageous enough not to conform to the society's obstinate standards but who are wise enough to listen to the subtle yearnings of the conscience, soul. When these misfits enter the age of adolescence, they unconsciously undertake an abortion of their parents expectations. This leads to a Cold War between the parents and their children whose growing becomes a constant bereavement exacerbated by the apparitions and ghosts of their tiny versions when everything was merrier and sanguine. Everyone stays in the same house (particularly in Eastern civilisation) but there emerges a relationship equivalent to a relationship between a landlord and a paying guest where the communications are superficial, formal and sporadic. Where roles are performed, duties are carried out perfunctorily and not with an iota of emotion which distinguishes us from inanimate objects.
Prejudices
Conveying to philistine particularly middle class parents that you want to pursue a career in music, acting, writing is considered unarguably blasphemous, akin, to a demolition of a temple. As such jobs are not considered to be adequately remunerative particularly if luck acts truant and most importantly such jobs, careers are considered to be ignoble, vile particularly characterised with smack, philandering, alcoholism. In short a satanic life. Whereas engineers, chartered accountants are revered ,placed on a varnished high pedestal almost to the ludicrous point of apotheosis. I recommend them to watch "The Wolf Of Wall Street".Now instead of using such flowering language, I will use just one word "PREJUDICE".
Holding on
I am sorry such a naive heading but this an uncommunicable irony. Like the way parents in Western countries leave their sons around the age of 18 to fight on their own for their very survival. Indian parents mostly hold on to their sons advising, imploring them till the very ends of their lives. Their interference seems interminable constantly adding on their obnoxious spices in the frothy soups of their sons lives. Every Indian parent wants to see their sons " SETTLED DOWN". And this concept of settling down is so vague, obscure and so utterly subjective that the children are hemmed in the box of the brougham carriages driven by the old wobbly hands of their parents till their very end, or till they are wearied down incapable of holding the reins anymore. Settling down means having a beautiful wife, adequate cash bells ringing in the bank accounts and a decent, dignified business or job and a sound mind devoid of any illicit fetishes or lascivious demands and etcetera. Etcetera this is what keeps the parents holding on to their children till their very wind pipes are crushed and their larynx is choked off. Surrendering or letting go seems an alien concept to Indian Middle class parents.
I hope against hope that my nephew Vineet pursue a career in music but the storm of whatever we mentioned above is so violent, tenacious that it can dislodge a tree from its long winding, deepened roots. But I would always tell him like I always tell myself in the face of these unfathomable forces "The one thing that doesn't abide by a majority rule is a person's conscience".
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