It is a dilemma of our youth that they have so little fields to explore. In Pakistan one can hardly imagine to pursue a career in fine arts or humanities because of the lack of future prospects in the above-mentioned fields. We have myopically restricted our youth to fields, which can be counted on fingertips.
It is certainly enervating for a guy to see the queer looks of his parents when he tells them that he intends to major in English Literature. You will also get the same looks if you talk about any of those strange subjects like Drawing, Photography, Interior Designing etc. It would not be a surprise if the next thing your parent does is to put his hand on your forehead in hope to detect a high-grade fever.
I believe people love all these strange subjects in abstract. They encourage their children to read and explore, they proudly show their child's sketches and paintings but when the point comes to choose a career; doctor, engineer, business administrator, full stop. It is a full/complete cessation of your aspirations, as you know you cannot pursue your dreams without your dad's wallet. You cannot even think of getting a decent part-time job to support yourself. Our business community has yet to develop those social responsibilities, which are commonplace in civilized countries. Just imagine Peter Parker wandering through the streets of Lahore with a camera, looking for a job to get him through the university.
I do not harbor any ill will towards the doctors and engineers but what if someone genuinely wants to carve sculptures instead of tearing cadavers or meddling with electrical circuits.
I could see the sparkle in my aunt's eyes when she told me about her son who has just passed MBA with a lucrative job offer. The same guy, who just a month ago, went into some kind of a trance when the topic of conversation shifted from Bunti and Bublee to aftermaths of 9/11. But who cares? He owns a Corolla and a Moto-slim. I wonder if someone ever thought what corolla means? For that matter we never bothered what Vega is when insisting to buy a television from Sony.
" How do you plan to support your family in the future?" the question is thrown at you with a smirk. Hello! I am 18 years old, even the slightest idea of having a wife and a kid is absurd. Well apparently yes but when I heard my parent's plan for the next 15 years, I could easily see myself bringing my kids back from school. Here I would like to quote my aunt. I am not going to translate in fear to lose the essence of the words, "Professory kar kai kee karain ga, dus hazaar rupayya maheena".
But you cannot blame parents. You can't blame them for abstaining their children (who till now, they have nurtured like delicate flowers) from ruining their lives. In this society where people have inhuman standards of what makes a person important, where Churchill, Wilde, Schopenhauer and Vinci are unknown and where reading books is considered to be uncool, certainly any parent would be scared to death and wonder about their child's mental health when they see horrifying book titles like elements of metaphysics, comparative religion, ideas in conflict at his bedside table.
It is high time that we amend ourselves and start understanding the demands and responsibilities of being a part of the global village. By over emphasizing only a handful of careers for our youth we are creating a huge vacuum in our understanding of the mechanisms of success. We have to realize the importance of all trades and crafts and stop labeling them as lowly.
16th June, 2006. Published in US magazine, The News.
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