Which question freaks you out? "Single?" No!

What question freaks you out? "Single?" Nope the most irritating question for most of us today, why today even yesterday and day before was

“What do you want to become?”

Every time when a kid boards a bus and there is no seat vacant, there will be an uncle who calls the kid and makes him sit as the third person in a two-seater. The first question he’d probably ask the child after knowing the name is “What do you want to become?” I am a software engineer now, most of us are, but how many of us always wanted to become one? This article is all about how the single question “What do you want to become?” had different answers at different times in life.

I was a 2 year old baby then, a pampered child indeed. Everyone admired all that I did and I enjoyed the spotlight, always. When all those, whom i can handle without flooding my eyes with tears, sat around I would carry a suitcase that was as big as it could possibly hold me in it.
Handling it was a big challenge in itself but I somehow used to manage carrying it with a few times of falling on the floor. The moment I cross the doorsteps, “Where are you going?” would echo all around. “Oppice”  was the answer every time. As a kid, I admired the way dad dominated the entire family. He was the one who decided on buying ice-creams and chocolates. He scolded me and mom but there were none to scold him for anything he did. All these gave me a thought. The one who goes to ‘oppice’ (office)  is the ruler of the world. So the only word that fascinated me was “Oppice”.

“What do you want to become?” “Oppice, Oppice”

I was so weak that cold and cough were my regular visitors. We started visiting a doctor too often. One day it went to an extent that I found it really hard to breathe.  Dad took me to the clinic without an appointment for the first time. We were waiting in the room full of people. The receptionist there gave us a token with the number 7. We waited there for almost 1 hour. Dad was the ruler of the entire world but he had to wait to meet the doctor. We were finally called inside. The doctor wanted to give me an injection and since I was so very cooperative he asked my dad to wait outside. My dad obeyed the doctor. That is when I decided that doctors were bigger than officers like dad. So I concluded that, to control the entire family I had to go to office but to control the entire world I had to become a doctor. 

“What do you want to become?” “Doctor”

Though this earned me a doctor set to play with, the ambition did not last long. I was enrolled in a school where my mom worked as a teacher. The teacher scolded us when we happily slapped each other and appreciated us when we killed happiness and wrote A, B, C, D well.  So to avoid getting scolded, I thought I had to become a teacher myself.  As my everyday schedule changed from playing with doctor set to learning rhymes, my ambition shifted from doctor to a teacher. I used to wrap myself in a 6 yard saree of my mother, when at home. I would spread the saree on the floor, lie in one corner and roll around to the other corner. Finally it would look something close to the way my mom wrapped up herself. I would take the handbag that touched the ground when I hung it in my shoulders. I stole my grandma’s specs that had a nose grip big enough to hold my entire face and a scale always completed my ideal teacher costume.  I marked attendance with names I knew written in a notebook and always said “Maintain silence” to the empty room.

“What do you want to become?” “Teacher”, then “IAS”, then “fashion designer”, then “animator”,...

Finally there came an era of software engineers, easy to become one, I thought. Here I am a software engineer.  But if you ask me if I wanted to become one, I would say a big “NO”. 

Now what do I really want to become? This still remains the biggest question for most of us.How many of us are really doing what we actually want to do? Software engineering is not the only profession. Wake up; follow your dream, your passion. I found the answer; I want to become a ‘WRITER’.

Now “What do you want to become?”