study!! study!! study!!

A poor Soul (to GOD): oh dear God! please let me be born in India this time. I would love to be a connecting chain in the great traditions and the spiritual heritage that this country inherits from its ancestors.
GOD : though i was thinking of putting you somewhere else for I thought you had taken enough beating in your last birth and this might have been the time for relaxation (read being born in US or western Europe), but if this is what you want then so be it, be born in India....AMEN...
GOD (Thinking): all these buggers ...why do they want to be born in India...the population is also increasing like crazy rabbits..maybe thou shall learn the hard way...hehe......

So guys here we see another person being born in our great great country...but for his stupid bad luck...the poor fellow ended up in a typical indian middle class family.
Need we say more...life was pretty decent good and emotionaly very fulfilling but it wasn't supposed to be so for long...destiny had it for him...to STUDY and STUDY.....and this is where starts the journey from, the never ending struggle, the zeal to be better than the lacs of other competing poor souls and then to get better than your own self...........

Studies are like the single most important things in a middle class indian family, that drives the whole family. The day a child is born people in the house starts discussing of who he shall become later in his life ...what should he 'study'.????

I had a recent visit to a place called BASAR in Andhra Pradesh. It is a small holy town that has the oldest, biggest and supposedly the only temple of goddess Saraswati in India, the goddess of knowledge and 'studies'. There is a very special pooja/prayer done on the day of 'basant panchami' called 'aksharabhyasam' for the infants. This is to seek the blessings of the lord for the bright academic career of the newly born. The prayer costs you about 500 Rs and most of the people that I saw there were from very modest backgrounds, many of whom might have taken this expenditure as a big time investment too!! but they did spent and that goes on to show how crazy things become in this big country when it come to studies.

Why I am telling all this and writting this blog is because as a victim of this mindset, now I am completely fed up of studies....not that it is me alone who is having so much problem with this fact, but i know there are many people in my age group , infact all maybe, who would believe in the fact that we have been undone by our families and our society at large, which had made so difficult for people like us to live in peace.

I still believe that education in all its sense is very essential and makes a human being, a very complex and socially inclined animal, but how good it is to stretch your kids in pursuit of this and make their life hell.......

I thought after doing engineering I might not be required to study again ever and i can live happily ever after, but no , that is not what destiny had in mind ....i have to study for MBA. I have not cleared the great entrance exams so far..and this again means that i have to study again and again give the exams and then again and then again until i find success. That is not all , if you don't do it, u are treated as second rate citizens, nobody among ur relatives thinks good about you, nobody would want to talk to you, meet you. That is also ok , who needs them, i have my job, my house....I shall live or as long as i can. But no even that is not possible dear, even in your job you have to keep studying further to make sure you are eligible for promotion or you can change your job for that elusive 1.5lac salary raise....no respites here either....

yesterday i almost fainted when one of my friends told me about his meeting with an experienced MBA guy who suggested to do PhD after 4-5 years from MBA, otherwise your career would again come to a halt!!!!

better would have been not being born in this country at this point in time...or is there a better solution??????