All iz well.....Think Again????

The amount of euphoria and delight which Aamir's new film has brought to us is quite unprecedented. Making a  funny film is one thing but raising some important questions through humour is one art which i think Rajkumar Virani has perfected. The film strikes at the core of the problem which is our flawed education system. The film raises many pertinent questions which even the greatest of scholars and geeks would find difficult to answer. The amount of peer pressure and the expectations which the society thrusts upon us is alarming. Every Indian parent dreams his kid to be an engineer, doctor or an MBA ,but are these professional courses worth doing. A guy pursued the dream to get into an IIT which never materialised so finally ended up landing up in a decent engineering college and pursuing a course which promised him a secure career ahead. Ambition propelled him to do MBA from a very reputed B-School in India because now having an MBA after B.Tech is the latest fad. Cut to the present the guy is a confused soul who still craves for Nirvana. As you grow up with age one tends to realise how things would have been different only if you had done things you enjoyed. If you love your work then everyday is a holiday for you because you are enjoying what you are doing and nothing has been thrusted upon you.

The greatest gift  from internet are the social networking sites which give you  access to all your friends activities and keep a track of what they are doing. Surfing through the profiles you find people who are content with what they are doing without having any flashy degrees or professional courses. Their happiness is not derived from the degrees or the courses but from the satisfaction of doing what you love to do and enjoying life. Most of our career is driven by rote and following the rat race. The race to the top driven by endless desires and ambition somewhere tends to push you to doing things from where there is no return. We plan our career but soon the career path which we choose tends to design our way of living and after that there is no looking back.

There are many important lessons which the movie teaches us. On one side are lesser mortals like us who keep whinning about our present and pondering what will happen in the future and then you have people like Rancho who more believes in living for the moment and living each day as it comes. We need more Ranchos around us so that the world finally becomes worth living.

Soon after passing 12th most of the youth in India are geared up with passion to join some great engineering college and grab that dream job to rake in the moolah. Some are succesful in doing so while others slowly keep climbing the ladder. In between lies the boredom of slogging through 4 years of sheer drudggery. You end up doing assignments after assginments, earnestly doing them in the 1st year and then slowly copying from some geek in the classs and this slowly becomes your habbit. The most unsought place in the entire college is your lecture theatre where you only pay visit because you may fall short of the mandatory attendance. From 3rd year onwards everyone starts praying for the prison sentence to get over and getting that coveted job. Somehow you complete the final year project and clearing the final viva with the most audacious answer the faculties can ever accept. At the end of the day the teachers are also human beings and they pity you and clear your course viva. After numerous attempts of clearing the backlogs and numerous visits to the nearest temple you finally clear your B.Tech course with that coveted job awaiting you. Your world comes crashing down when you realize that the kind of work you are doing is no where related to what you where taught in your course. Hardly 10% of your studies is actually applicable to your job and rest are simply subjects which decorate your grade sheet. The guy sitting next to you in the workplace may not be as brilliant as you or coming through the same college but you are at par with him only because he performs the task exactly as the company demands by rote. Your mind soon starts wondering was my B.Tech worth this. Did i make a mistake. Knowingly or unknowingly you are lured by the greed of doing an MBA and drawing astronomical salaries which every national daily prints as its cover story. The quest for the MBA begins and lady luck lands you up in a decent B-School. Life in a B-school simply breezes past you in 2 years because of the cramped schedule and somehow you again get your coveted job and that coveted salary. What next now, again that same drudggery....some are lucky enough to live their dreams and rest keep on juggling between jobs and getting the next best salary.

Consider an entirely diffirent scenario where an average guy listens to his heart and does what he loves to do. After graduation he joins some creative field and slowly works his way up the career. Effectively he is saving 3 years of boredom by staying away from a professional degree or the MBA. Now you may argue that he wont be able to reach greater heights in his career of work and go up in the company because he lacks a professional degree. But my freind the world is replete with examples of people leading many firms and society with a very modest academic career. In todays fast pace world smartwork and not hardwork pays. If your basic necessities of life is being fullfilled by your profession then sooner or later you will reach a position where you can also enjoy the luxuries. For some the wait is long while others get it sooner but nothing is beyond reach in todays world. The most important thing for us to consider is to be alert about the opportunities and grab them when they come calling.

The movie is a must watch for parents who dont care what their kids want to do, for Professors who insist on getting that correct answer in the test and replicating those same derivations as shown in the text books, to students who more concerned about what grade they got in their last evaluation instead of thinking was the assigment worth doing and to all those people who think marks and grades are still a reflection of a persons merit. The HRD should as go for a major revamp in the education sector and i must congratulate the current HRD minister for taking some positive steps. India now is a land of opportunities and everyone can find his coveted job. Restructuring our education system should be the order of the day or else we will still keep on hearing about students commiting suicides and losing one more life which would have blossomed only if it was left to itself.