Ambition

So, the placement season is finally over. I now have a job. A “decent” job, by my middle class standards. I can now tell my relatives and family members (in that order of priority), that I have always been career conscious. But what did I actually want to be? Which sector (in management lingo), I wanted to go to? Honestly, I don’t have an answer.
When I was in school, I had always wanted to become an engineer. And this ambition of mine was there even when I neither knew what an engineer did nor could I spell the word correctly. But an engineer was all I wanted to become, because my father wanted me to be one and most of friends wanted to be one.
The first serious thought I gave to my career was during my class X board exams, when I watched my first porn movie. I had this bright idea of becoming a porn star. This seemed to be a very lucrative career option and imagine, being paid for having sex, without being a prostitute. However, that idea died down as fast as it had emerged. And then on, it was back to becoming an engineer, till the day, I opened the book, “IIT Mathematics’ “, by ML Khanna. It was then that I started giving serious thoughts to being a doctor. I did not have any other option you see. Telling my dad that I wanted to become a journalist would have resulted in him kicking me out of the house. Only engineers and doctors earned, chartered accountants too did, but for being a chartered accountant you had to study commerce, a social taboo in itself.
Anyways, I did become a doctor, but would treat neither the human beings, nor animals, but plants. Come on, plants too have lives! And they are supposed to be treated. So our euphemism for the students of agriculture came out to be “plants’ doctors.”
Now, studying agriculture alone does not serve any purpose, so you need to go in for higher studies, which would be either an M.Sc. in agriculture or an MBA. I did both. Another change in my career plans happened, dangerously close to the placement week. I wanted to be a manager but wanted to apply the knowledge of the subjects of master’s degree as well. So I had certain organisations in my mind, which would fulfil this ambition.
I also cleared the first screening stages of these organisations and found myself comfortably close to fulfilling this ambition. But then I got a spot offer from another organisation (I did not know what it did, till five minutes before my interview was to begin), and accepted the offer.
Life is full of uncertainities. I had always known this sentence to have existed. But its existence was re asserted a week before valentines’ day of the year 2010. Just the other day, I was listening to the Bengali song “Aami bhobo ghureyi hobo eitai amaar ambition” (I will be a wanderer and this is my ambition).
What is my ambition? Well, am I left with any choice anymore?