It's still dark. For some
bru coffee drinking, bespectacled fellows, furiously hitting the
keyboard, its still a few hours away before they can call it a day or
rather good night. There are a few who need to leave the comfort of
their beds to work for a master who is a few seas and an ocean away.
Some kids are jolted out of their dreams with their first crushes
because they have to prepare for for a 3 syllabled exam like
JEE,CET,PMT,AAA,BBB,CCC etc!
Its a phase in life for
them. Its a way of life for me. Long mane, sometimes flowing,
sometimes tied into a bun. Face painted. Reading the most esoteric
of works ever written by mankind everyday. Not everyone though is sure,
if they were written by mortals. A non payer of tax. Revered by some.
Branded a fraud in other quarters. I play with fire. Eat in calories
considered fatal by the men in white coat and a stethoscope. Earn
filthy money, Yet, I don't demand any. I have the smallest of
wardrobes and the simplest too. Perhaps,some “normal” folks too
wear it once in a blue moon or a no moon day should I say.
Swamiji,Panditji,Bhattji,Gurukal,Shastrigal,Vadhyar
or whatever I may be called. I would have been a so-called priest. If
only, I was not doing Mtech.....
One of the most convenient
aspects of Indian tradition is the ease with which your sins get washed away. Five years back, when I stepped into an engineering
college, like lakhs of other innocent kids, little did I know how
grave a sin I would commit. And four years in college, sure the
punishment big.Yet , to be completely sure that I had washed away all my
sins, the first to-do list after engineering would be to tonsure my
head, sell my jeans to the nearest utensils-for-dress fellow and take
bath in the holy Ganga once.
Four years of trying to
make a program run 0.1 seconds lesser than what it ran before can
surely result in permanent tonsure(read baldness). Speaking a
language which only a computer can understand has made me forget the
language of love! And the reward for the 4-year ordeal is life-long
imprisonment in one of the cubicles of a giant company. And the
Indian middle class has a specific nomenclature for landing a job in
one of these cubicles. Its called, “uska life abhi settle ho gaya”!
Being a computer science
graduate, I am much used to throwing jargons. In the same vein, one
of the pre-requisites of a marriage is a settled life. Priesthood is
a turbo-drive towards settling in life. The only place where tens of
thousands of rupees is offered as “bhiksha”!
Income Tax Hikes? That is
the last thing to bother about. Petrol hikes? Increase the conveyance
allowance.Having studied marketing religiously in the summer
semester, boys after all being mere products in the marriage
market(“finished” products once they get married) need to
differentiate in order to find a suitable buyer. (buyer need not
imply dowry money!) Having an introduction which says, “Hi, am
Amith! I work in ADB corporation, I work on C, C++ (I know they sound
more like grades now.)” is the worst a 25-something guy can have
these days. Every other Tom,Dick and Harry starts with the same
introduction. Will my mane and the rather obscure profession help me
in the marriage market? Mostly no, Nevertheless, there is no harm in
trying.
And perhaps, my most favored way to pass time in the afternoons would be gossiping
about the technology students pondering over a “,” they missed in
their code which is giving them sleepless nights. Ironical it might
sound, but instead of paying fees, I would be paid fees for the
poojas in the very college that am studying. For all my criticism
of engineering, it might not have entirely been a waste of time
since the engineering education would
surely help me connect more with the IT crowd who could well be the
biggest donors for this poor Brahmin.
Nevertheless,
the life of priest isn't as rosy as it sounds. No more train tickets
to home every weekend, every festival. A festival inevitably has to
be celebrated at a client's place rather than my home. And it's not
only the festivals. While a doctor may or may not have treated a
patient in his death bed, its the priest who has to make sure his
spirit reaches his right celestial abode. At least that's what people
think. And most importantly, that's what we live on. Sometimes, isn't
it cruel for me to hear a broken mother's wails? How do I go home and
play with my kids after the funerals?
Being
a priest is so much like being a doctor. The famous patients,sorry
the big clients are the big fishes. Assuming in one year of
“service”, I did manage to land a few of these big fishes,
standing in line for the passport office might look a distant dream.
Rather, I would have enrolled myself in a soft skills course to learn
the art of “Kaapi” drinking with the officers. Like a doctor,
work timings too are never fixed. And sometimes, people think we are
philosophers too!
Since
a year of making my chance, and standing against my parents,
relatives and friends, I can proudly say that I have made a right
choice. From 4.30 am, when I wake my eyes up till 10 pm when I close
them back, its a life of principles. A life where every minute, every
second, I can see myself as one of the torchbearers of Indian tradition. Once in a while, when i see my old friends earning a couple
of lakhs more than me, there is a small feeling of having to go back
to my second home-computer science. The biggest reward would be to
sit back, observe the mad rush and live in another world. If only,
though.
