joie de l'écriture

There is a reason for each of us to exist. I am not sure if I have found my reason and even if I have, if it is a good enough reason to be. But I am sure, whatever be my raison d'être, I have lived for someone and that someone is none other than me. I am not trying to paint a self obsessed disposition, but in my opinion every person has the reins of his life in his hands unless by will or otherwise he decides to ‘outsource’ it to someone else. How many of us can define what our hobbies are? How many can distinguish our hobbies from our interests? Moreover, how many can separate it from our profession, from our education and from our routine. I strongly disagree with people who try and mould their profession around their hobbies for the belief that you can be good at something only when you like it. You think my mom loves cooking? Yet she makes the best cottage cheese vegetable in town that could send all the eateries on a run for their money. Hobbies, interests and professions are three completely different things although there does exist a grey area between them. They form what the economists call the impossible trinity. Before I mess economics with philosophy and create unintended humour on paper, let me KISS. That’s the shortest way to glory. It adds that much needed geeky touch to your persona when you want to cast yourself as a high-flier, jet-setter, sophisticated high profile guy who has everything in the world from a swimming pool in his bedroom to a limousine in his backyard but falls short of time to talk. And for those who are still a little alien to this make believe world of ‘un’professional banter here’s a little secret; KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid! As you can see I am not so good at it myself.

Sometimes I wonder if profession is a conscious decision or some just make it appear to be such. Wouldn’t that mean they could be better actors and therefore are themselves in the wrong profession? One of the most powerful ads that hit me in the face read ‘Almost followed her friend to an MBA’ with a ravishing supermodel in a jade green gown walking on the ramp. That’s what good marketing can do. Make you think. Think about the larger issues in life although you are as much a part of the rat race as anyone around you. Do you realise that even if you come first in a rat race at the end of the day you would still be a rat? The way I see it, profession is something you would ‘not hate doing’ for a livelihood. So after the elimination of some of the infinite possibilities one is left with what he might pursue as a profession to earn his bread and butter. Something that is dignified enough for that person to put on his business card, something that is considered distinguished enough to introduce himself to a group of strangers, something that is the profession of the decade – it’s like the colour of the season. Soon the fairer sex might be subjected to the vulnerability of the disclosure of age through profession. Office politics, long work hours, demanding boss, work load, work pressures are all different ways of stating the one prevailing fact of life. At the end of the day work sucks! It does as much for a supermodel as much for an executive. That is where the boundary of ‘profession’ slowly dissolves and ‘interest’ comes under the spotlight. You very strongly believe that you were born to be nothing but a photographer. You think about this while in your clinic looking at the X-ray of one of the remotest organs of the anatomy. You are left with no choice but to thrive on the faint remains of the resemblances between the two professions. An interest however is like a mirage. You are pretty sure of its existence until you reach there. It’s also so much like a balloon. You blow too much into it and it flies off. It’s like a piece of gum. You chew too much into it and it saps the flavour out of it. Interest is something that comes to birth and dies by the whims and fancies of the verdant human mind. It is like the sunset, a different hue by every passing hour. The pleasure lies in toying with different ideas that seem impossible, things you couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t but always wanted to do.

But something that really reflects the kind of person that you are is the hobby that you pursue because hobbies cannot be forced, they cannot be compelled, and they cannot be thrust upon an individual against his freewill. It is like the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. It is like the first droplet of the rain in the summer sun. Refreshing and relieving. It’s the feeling that a claustrophobic gets when he is out of a dungeon. A few strokes on the canvass, a few twirls on the tip of the toe, a sonnet written on hand made paper, a charcoal sketch of the winter landscape, the city skyline captured on a Polaroid…the countless possibilities for a human mind when it seeks solace from a materialistic profession and from the maddening and flickering interests, to reach the fossiled remains of innocence in the deepest corners of the human heart!