Saturday, December 25, 2004

The xx-year Itch

It's Christmas here in Munich (actually everywhere). Well it is my first Christmas in a foreign nation and I have mixed feelings. This is the time when all the people try to meet up their family members and I guess it is a very personal time for them. But the whole city is decked up in the spirit of Christmas.
When I am sitting at home doing my 'musings', I cant help thinking about India and how the family tradition of India is so much stronger. In some ways, I do miss India

I was going through some of my old forwards and came upon 2 articles of similar themes. It's about the 'itch' MBAs typically (actually not just MBAs) feel after sometime in their corporate jobs. You know, the inevitable question 'What are you doing with your life?'. Is your life limited to ensuring that your company delivers on its promise to customers (taking the marketing lingo). Is that all you are capable of?

One of the articles was written by an IIMA alumnus who supposedly sat out of the placement process and started a teen magazine. Everytime I hear about somebody trying to make out on their own, I feel a lot of admiration for them. I guess this is all part of the itch that I have already started to have. I am sure most of us are in the same boat but just dont know what to do about this 'inner voice'.

I dont know whether I will have the guts to listen to my inner voice and do something so drastically different. I find that people typically tend to get bogged down in the act of 'existing' that they forget to 'live'.

I would like to read the book 'What should I do with my Life?' by Po Bronson. This is supposed to be dealing with this subject of ordinary people who have dealt with this 'itch' in their own ways. They are not the 'inspirational' CEOs who dropped out of college but ordinary folks like you and me who were very much a part of the 'Corporate Matrix'.

The Matrix

Isnt the corporate world exactly like the 'Matrix'? I am not sure maybe the directors may have just picked up the idea from this cycle in the world. Think of it.

You are this kid brought into the world. From Day1, your parents are telling you that you need to be this great extraordinary student so that you can get to college and eventually find a job that is worth mentioning to the neighbour. Isnt that quite similar to the way the Matrix mass-produces human beings suitable to inhabit the world?

At least in India, there is this notion that education is this one full season of 16 years and at the end of it, you are 'world ready', ready to join the corporate brigade. You have been this protected child, protected by the safety net of family and community. In a lot of ways, this makes the transition to the independent person painless. It's a different debate as to whether it is the best model.

But due to this standard approach to the kid's education, there is almost no individuality to the person. He is part of the standard package that churns out millions of these kids who will don their corporate garb and be limited to the box defined by the school-college-job-family cycle with hardly anything differentiating me and the kid born the next minute.

In some ways, this may be an exaggerated view of the education system in India. But I am sure this system in some sense contributes to making us risk-averse citizens of the world.