To find one's place in this beautiful world

When I was in high school, the old country was a long, long way from becoming the world's digital back office.  Even landline telephones were a luxury back then.  In that old India, professional opportunities were scarce and, thus, most kids who were academically smart were encouraged, pushed, and even shoved into engineering or medical colleges.

I didn't need teachers or parents to tell me that I had enough and more in me; every subject came easily to me, especially math and physics.

Though, there was one--and only occasion--when my father commented, indirectly, by drawing on the story of Hanuman.

In the Hindu mythology, as a child, Hanuman gets enamoured of the orange ball that the sun was in the sky and he takes off--as in flies--to grab the ball. And as a young one with way too much energy and immense superpowers, Hanuman plays too many pranks on the sages.  All these result in a curse that Hanuman would remember his powers only if and when he were reminded about them.

My father, perhaps respectful of my off-the-beaten-track ways towards education and life, suggested that I was capable of achieving a lot and that he was reminding me of that as much as Hanuman had to be reminded.

Without any real enthusiasm, I agreed to my classmate and neighbor, Kiran's suggestion that we could prepare together for the IIT entrance exams.  He was very keen on it.  I faked it as much as I could.  We split the cost of the test-prep tutorials that came in the mail.

He became one of the very few who knew well that I didn't care for IIT and that I didn't care for engineering either. 

One day he expressed his concern that we were splitting the cost but that I was not making use of the tutorials.  He suggested that he pick up the entire cost of the remaining tutorials.  Kiran was such a nice guy, even at that young age.  Of course, I did not let him repay me.

Decades later, an email or two after informing me about Kiran's tragic and fatal accident, his sister recalled, among other things, my anti-engineering sentiments that she had gathered from her brother and how I had stopped preparing altogether.  I can imagine that Kiran shared this with his family.

A friend who did rush to IIT with awesome achievements withdrew from that institution halfway through.  And he has withdrawn from the world too :(

I wonder why the elders, who should know better, don't advise their kids that there is a lot more to life than credentials from some elite institution. 

The world has gotten only more competitive and maniacal about "credentials" since my high school years.  In India and here in the US, and in the rest of the world too, students are finding it more and more difficult to understand who they are and what they might want to do with their lives, even as they rush towards the prestigious colleges.  The competition has become so intense that the elite of the elite colleges in the US have eye-popping rejection ratios.

Which is why the admission process at Harvard has come under such intense scrutiny.  Qualified students not getting admitted there complain against the affirmative action practices there.  Of course, any systematic discrimination is a bad practice; but, it does not seem like Harvard discriminated in that sense.  I can understand a 17- or an 18-year old thinking that "Harvard or bust" is the bottom-line.  But, seriously?

It is like with love and marriage.  My grandmothers always claimed, believed, that there is always a match for everyone--this was in the old traditions of "arranged marriage."  When it comes to colleges, too, "there is very likely a place in the best schools for you."  The key is not to worry about the "best school" but the idea of "for you."

Life is one long struggle to find our respective niche in this cosmos.  A struggle that begins at high school.  It is a never ending struggle, which is all the more why life is beautiful and exciting.

May you find a comfortable corner to enjoy it all!