Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Management problems

In a buffet lunch, I always take a little of everything. I want to make sure that I haven’t missed out on anything, at all. (Subtract most things because I am a vegetarian.)
And in my desperation to not miss out anything I stuff myself to no end. Even if it means skipping three meals preceding the aforementioned buffet lunch.

At the end of the lunch I would have had one bit of a leaf of cabbage from the Greek salad , a nail sized drop of caramel custard , nibbled a bit of rice dumplings with a piquant coconut sauce.(Idly with chutney, if you please).

I wouldn’t hence be able to write a decent review of even one item on the menu.
Now, this is my approach to life in general. And this quote is the medicine I should feed myself each morning.

“There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.”


When I finished 12th STD, I had done an oxymoronic mix of science and arts.
I was interested in chemicals and resonance structure and tried to look at the world chemically, reducing emotional states to chemistry and pathofying the crap out of life .But, it fascinated me.
I liked genetics and how one single protein in a gene sequence of millions of proteins determines whether the feathers of a parrot will be blue or red on the head.
I liked literature. I liked tearing the result of a poor poet’s moment of peace
Into a million bits. Analysing anything fascinates me. Dreams, advertisements, speech, boy language...Okay I meant body language but if you wish you can catch me for a Freudian slip there.
I’ve considered all careers ranging from biotechnology, law, environmental science, chemical engineering.

Finally I realised I want everything but I want nothing in particular.
So I thought of journalism. Where I could work on something different everyday. Where I could review a play on one and write about seahorse DNA sequencing, the next. Write about wine tasting sessions and do meaningful journalism, you know. Write about under privileged people from their perspective, not in romanticized publishing pictures of glazed eyed children way.
As if the world could be changed so easily.
Write travelogues on the south of France in a room with yellow lights that will see me typing on a laptop, sprawled comfortably on a large Victorian type bed.

I keep having stints with journalism. I interned, I freelance, and I study it in college...
But oh I am straying. How do I finally choose one path, one career.
Advertising and market research fascinates me also. I mercilessly cut up an ad and come up with my own judgements about its intentions, its target audience and secret manipulative powers. (…evil grin..)
Besides , should I just settle into a corporate job because it is safer and richer and air conditioned with five star lunches.
Forget career . I can’t even imagine belonging to and following one religion or marrying one man .
Anyhow , so how do I whittle the world into a more manageable size??

2 comments:

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ratna said...

i like the part about why you wanted to do journalism the best. never knew, so funny no how we don't question so many basic things about ppl we know so well