Castles In The Air

I've always had a dream job as far as I remember. Ever since I began to speak and understand only the tiniest things of what people do, I wanted to be doing them too.

When I was three I wanted to be a dog! That's because I had one and she was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. I used to literally emulate Snoopy, my big Labrador retriever in everything she did. And I loved her. I wanted to be just like her, adored and loved ( i was) and powerful (i wasn't). I could never transform into a dog no matter how much I tried walking on all fours and eating off the floor with my mother shrieking in the background. Pity.

When I was four, I wanted to be Rambo. I'd seen the movie “First Blood” on television somehow and ever since then, I wanted to be that bad-ass cold-blooded warrior. I even had a toy automatic rifle which I used to greet people with when they visited my house, much to their surprise and sometimes, displeasure.

When I was five and I'd decided to move on from guns, I wanted to be Conan the Destroyer. Or was it He-Man. I'm not sure I remember, they're both similar characters. Maybe it was both. So now I used to jump around wearing a cape and brandishing a plastic sword which lit up when I pressed a button (a futuristic Conan; I was also a little into science fiction by then). The sound of the gadget drove people up the walls. Drove me up cupboards to leap back down for the fun of it.

My dad's in the army. However, my father wasn't posted in a field zone at that time, so I used to think he just went to office. I used to find it boring, though I knew that was what I had to do when I'd be grown up. But then, when I was seven, I saw the movie “Border” (every Indian has) and needless to say, the movie and knowing that my dad was in the army together inspired me. I started hating Pakistanis just because it seemed every Indian was supposed to. I wanted to join the NDA because the campus was great (where I lived then) and have a great life in the army. Just joining in and being there seemed good enough for me. I wasn't keen on actually fighting anyone!

By the time I was ten, I used to hate math. I knew what I didn't want to be. Rather, I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to study math. There was, however, one interest that I did have. That was in space and in the future. I had an interest in astronomy and I also used to watch the anime series “Transformers Armada”. I used to watch it so keenly I almost believed it. I wanted to discover the planet Cybertron and fight decepticons with my autobot, Optimus Prime. But at the same time, I wanted to be an astronaut as a backup, in case Cybertron was too far away (I understood the concept of light years). If all this wasn't enough, in a couple of months, the Harry Potter craze hit me. So, by the time I was twelve, I used to wear a pair of fake round glasses, dreaming of space and driving an autobot. Talk about insanely mixed up dreams!

I started playing football when I was thirteen. I still do, but then, because I'd just started, I used to pay much more attention to it than I ever did in my life again. I idolized David Beckham. I tried to emulate his style of playing. I always played midfielder in the little space in front of the garages behind the apartment building where I lived. I used to take the spot kicks (I'd become pretty good at those) and smash up the windows on the first floor whenever I smashed the ball with a little too much vigour.
Soon, however, I turned fifteen and the 10th grade board exams caught up with me. After 8th grade, I had started liking math and I always liked science, so it was now time for important decisions. The dream of doing well in those exams never came to me. But it sure was my aim then, and to study science and math and computer science (I played a lot of computer games) was what I wanted the most during the the last three months preceding the exams.

I cleared 10th grade with good grades. I was one of the high achievers of my school that year. Soon, after I'd had enough time to talk to people and know anything about the future, I learned about the existence of the IITs. My dream then was to be rich and famous and making it to one of the IITs seemed like my ticket to fame. So I started preparing. Two years passed in the blink of an eye. Football, girls and novels (I've always loved to read ever since I learned how) took a lot of my time, what with discovering new ways to hit a free kick, a girlfriend, and reading novels. Having to juggle my time, two years passed by in a jiffy. It was time to actually take the competitive examinations. I'd prepared well, or so I thought, and I was ready. Looks like I did make something out of it.

It's been three years in an NIT and now it's my last year. I'm preparing for entrance tests into the top B-schools in India and also for placement tests in my college. Every year has made me dream different dreams.
In the first year, I just dreamed of escaping ragging. It was harsh albeit fun sometimes but I wanted to be out of it and become a senior and just have mad fun with the new friends I'd made (which wasn't possible then because we were always confined to the hostel premises).
In the second year, like at least once in the life of every engineering student, I was frustrated of being single. I hadn't had a girlfriend in almost a year and I wanted one.
In the third year, when I did have a girlfriend, I turned back to something I wanted to do ever since I started reading Enid Blyton as a child. I'd always been fond of books, so now, I started to write. I wrote poetry and discovered I wasn't too bad at it! I wanted to meet new people who might share my thoughts and ideas and thus, on March 3rd, 2010, was born 'Writering!', my blog, with my very first poem, 'The Never Ending Road'. I've written a lot, discovered passions and ideologies I did not know I had and made new friends.
Now, in my last year of under-graduate education, I'm a wannabe writer, a CAT aspirant, and stuck with the earnest hope of landing a good job. I am a dreamer. I still dream of being rich and famous (who doesn't!), I dream of starting my own firm, though I don't know what it would do and I dream of writing a book someday, if I come up with such a good enough story to write about!

My 20 years of life have been all about dreams. Building castles in the air, I've learned to face reality in life and cope with situations as well as a 20 year old possibly can. I don't know what my dream job is yet. Maybe it's because there are so many of them, and that they keep evolving and mutating as my life progresses through its various stages. But I'll have one someday. My dream job – whatever will keep me happy enough and give me time to dream of some more dream jobs.

PS. This has been a mix of fact and fiction. My life, coupled with my imagination, continues to defy my perception of reality and so, I hope you like it!

This post is my entry for the Blogadda contest on the topic, 'My Dream Job'.
In association with Pringoo
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