What is talent?

Welcome back, it’s been a month almost. Quite a long time, since I have taken a vow to put up at least two posts a month. It’s definitely an offshore month for me; it is the inception of its kind on the move towards deception, I should add. It’s really tough to assimilate the fact that a young mind like me is so deprived of ideas. After going through a wild google in my cranium I started to rationalize why I should not open up on something which is day-and-night story of a million people round the world, including the initiator of this very particular post.

What is a talent?

Scoring above 90 percent in higher secondary exams and joining a premier institution for pursuing medicine or engineering, getting placed in any “selfless amount of selfish” kind of MNC’s, marrying a similar pathetic-MNC-proficient professional, buying a flat, ‘produce’ a kid (know what? It has also gone to the extent of producing a child rather than childbearing these days), inviting diabetes and tumors (the most common guests aka chief guests) and falling on the death bed with lump in the bank account and moniker in the assets?

Yeah, people of past generation oxfordize the definition of talent for this generation from the above context. (“Excellency” in) Engineering and medicine will get as the dictionary meaning for talent with these trend setters around us in this era.

This post is about “MY” perception towards talent and endowment.

Things don’t pop up around the midline; we are made to travel in the rover even before our days of consciousness begin. The schools, which are supposed to be the birth place for innumerate talents don’t full fill their purpose downright.

Career counseling should begin from the middle school, every child has the right to know about every possible arena to battle with their wits and they do have equal right to choose where to begin and where to move into.

India is a place where society doesn’t support the freedom provided for kids to choose and envision their careers.

When we look above the sky like American people are sitting abode the clouds with their gold medals which usually doesn’t stop in one’s digit and over all medals in ten’s digit in any of international athletic/sports meet (Olympic included)  must have started analyzing where is the bug in our system. But did we? I don’t find that hardly any lesson is learnt.

A child in USA, when she/he wants to be a sports person she/he gets to be sports person. Society doesn’t blame their parents for making them to travel away from the academics, in fact they do feel proud for a citizen of their country had achieved a merit and made their country proud. The child is trained right from the kindergarten to achieve HIS/HER goal not the induced goal. This is not only in USA but almost every nation around the world despite of their political, geographical or cultural backgrounds.

Wherein in India what does the scenario tell you? If a kid tells his dad that he wants to be a cricketer the most obvious reply he could get is “sports should always be a pass time, we are middle class people we don’t enjoy the privilege to go spend the time at ground, focus on academics to get a good job”.

If the kid prepares to explain his situation and seriousness of his interest, parents will say that he is not Sachin and he can never be a sachin (addons like ‘in a country like India where politics play a key role in deciding the national players what so ever the sport may be’ will attach with their ‘enlightening speech’)

I have few questions for parents and soceity!

1.      When Sachin started to play cricket didn’t he face the same ugly face of politics in sports? Didn’t he succeed?

2.      Why parents always pull Sachin’s leg in this? Their kid should only be a Sachin? Murali Vijay, Sadagopan Ramesh,Ramesh Powar are they not playing cricket? Can’t their kid be a Ranji player for instance? How may knew Wasim Jaffar here, his brilliant contribution for domestic cricket who is less fortunate to play a trivial role in international cricket.

3.      When the parents come up with the reply like if their kid get to be a player like Sachin he has bright future in cricket I like to provide them with a fact that a player like Dinesh Karthick who never earned a permanent place for him in Indian team gets more than five crore per year for playing IPL, Common! Dare say that it is not enough to lead a sophisticated life.

I have personally seen many people who lost their dreams due to this society-dreaded system. A girl who loves basketball studies engineering for her parent’s sake, had she carried on playing basketball as a full time option she would have been in national team by now. A guy who is crafted with elegancy towards any sport he plays is detained twice in same year in college, reason? His parents want him to be an Engineer and not an athlete. Who is the sufferer here, parents or the boy? Whose future is at the stake? He would have been an international player had they allowed him to get trained and pursue the career in what he is best.

Sachin Tendulkar and Lionel Messi are the two inspirational figures for those who possess will but not the characteristic features for playing those sports. They both had negatives but they turned those negatives to a beam of protons (I mean positive energy, I am an engineer :P ) They had support from their families and their countries without those we wouldn’t have got such stalwarts. Every kid who has a dream of becoming a sports man is talented like those great men, all they need is thorough support from their family. That is more than enough to become a legend.

You will never know how badly the society treats a child who is not brilliant in the academics, there will be x,y,z aunties all over the India who will emerge in front of our mom at the time of parent-teacher meeting to irritate our mom by saying that their child has snached first rank in his/her class and while saying so they will advise us to learn from their kid to how to prepare for exams! This kind of advices will surely embarrass our mom and conclusive embarrassment will boomerang on us in the shape of ‘no-play’, ‘no TV’ etc!

I used to wonder that how many first ranks can be in a class since every one addressing to my mom will say that their kid has secured first rank in their class (I like to know what all those first rank holders are doing now for their bread and jam!)

Very special gratitude must be given to namakal-famous schools for converting the high-school system to poultry and turning all the children towards 500+ engineering and countable medical colleges in Tamil nadu. This can be an exact analogy to growing poultry hen in a cage and making it ready for chopping it once it is released to hard-challenging world.

I hardly witness any high school teachers who encourage poetry at that age. If a student comes up with distinctive idea for his career mostly he will be brain washed to take any of ‘professional’ courses. The reason they say for giving precedence to professional course is that is the source of constant income.

The comical part is the teachers are ignorant and pushing their ignorance into the minds of children. The very thought of doing a job just for making money itself a wrong philosophy. Careers must be selected out of love. They must be ready to do a job even when they are asked to do it for free. Such careers will give sheer satisfaction. Even if I consider the point of money motivated middle class system I couldn’t understand the logic behind ‘only Engineering/Medicine will bring money’. I don’t know how many will know Mr.Alagesan who sung in supersinger senior level in vijay Tv. He was not crowned with winner tag but he got a band now, goes to foreign tour and earns a lot. What fetched him this? Immaculate dedication toward what he loves.

Thanks to reality shows, that pushes the importance of pursuing singing as a career in the minds of people.

Recently I got a chance to read Varun Agarwal’s “How I braved Anu aunty and co-owned a million dollar company” Which emphasizes the importance of entrepreneur ship in a growing county like India. He explains that no parent will encourage you to be an entrepreneur but you must have a will to go behind your dreams. The interesting part is every hard-pushing-effort towards attaining you dream will end up in having sweety-frooty ending.

If people are so concerned about Engineering and Medicine, by this time those two gods should brought peace among nations and harmony among the people of the world. Had they? The current trend is increase in technological advancement is directly proportional to the insecure life. We people forgot many things in this fast forwarding life. At least we must possess some knowledge about arts and culture to pass it on to next generation so that they are free to decide what they need and not what we need for them.

PS: I like to pass sincere gratitude to G.Subbu Lakshmi (Doctor in make) for being my editor and grammar police for all those posts in my blog and backing up me whenever I needed a hard slap to wipe up my laziness :P