About 24 years back, after motorcycling across India for 6 months as a voluntary mechanic with an international group (I will skip over the part covering loud rampant sex or riding dead stoned); I was unable to sit in an office cubicle again.
So I took up on my ambition of becoming a journalist except that sans an MA degree in English or a Mass Communication diploma, I wasn't going to land a gig in any local publication even if I had the writing skills of Harold Robbins.
So I started freelancing to build up a portfolio, which was writing 2000 words for 250 rupees and trying to cram it with at least 3 photographs as I was paid 100 per image. In a few months, my articles became a regular front-page feature on the supplements of the largest local English daily of the region.
One of my ardent fans was a professor of Linguistics or was it Folklore, from Gauhati University who always complimented my pieces whenever he met me. One day he asked me from where I got my Mass Comm degree.
"Nah, I don't have one" I replied smugly, expecting awe and praise.
"Not even a Diploma" he exclaimed!! "Then how come they print you?"
From that moment, I became a blasphemy to his world-view and whenever we bumped into each other he looked the other way and never spoke to me again.
Complementing the learned professor in his ignorance was a distant uncle whose daughter was as fair-skinned, pretty and glamorous as he was ugly and condescending.
"So what are you up to?" He once asked me in a manner which belied that he already knew that it was nothing good. So I told him that I was freelancing and listed the names of newspapers and magazines where I was regularly printed.
"Oh, so you still haven't got a job" he snorted. My daughter passed out of Delhi School of Economics (a blatant lie) and she earns about a lakh a month (no clue if it was true and wouldn't care less).
I still face similar situations, especially in technical meetings and hear, "how come you are so immersed in the subject, you are not even an engineer."
I really want to tell them about young engineers who I shooed out of my room for being ignorant about the basic tenants of engineering or mechanics, or those Yi-Yi-Yi-Ts and Yi-Yi-Yi-YMs graduates I came across peddling fast-food for MNC corporations or even better, as vice-President Logistics of a Pizza franchise.
Only now, a bit more restrained and mature, I just reply…"yeah strange isn't it !"
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