When I grow up...

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a family here in the US whom I’ve been staying with these past couple of months… I have 2 cousins here, and yesterday I was having this “family bonding session” with the kids when we started talking about what they wanted to do when they grow up… Given that I am already “grown up” I wasn’t allowed to add my own dreams to the conversation, so I sat there and listened to them, all starry-eyed and full of ideas as they were, and sat back and thought about what it was like when you still had many options that you could choose from! And decided that if the kids won't listen to my dreams, you will! :))

I think my very first memories were of wanting to become a police officer! I think my parents were discussing Kiran Bedi one evening… I was so taken up by the whole idea of fighting for justice against the wrong-doers and the woman power thing that I was all in favour of becoming one hell of a dynamic police officer, fighting my way through corruption and crime and helping turn around the world, or atleast the country, or atleast my state… hehehehe, ofcourse then I grew up and realized what a distant dream this was.. and I know my parents breathed a sigh of relief…

Then later, I wanted to give my life to fighting for the environment such as the likes of Medha Patkar, working for the cause of saving this earth! My school was responsible for putting this idea into my head, no one else. They encouraged us to stop using plastic bags, taught us about recycling and biodegradable versus non-biodegradable waste, showed us how to make compost pits (many a Sunday afternoons were spent hauling wheelbarrows full of cow dung from the dairy farm near our campus and food waste from the dining hall!!) and made us aware of the possible repercussions of having MNCs take over all our indigenous industries. Oh yeah, that’s my school. And that’s way back in the 90s, when it wasn’t a “fad” to do this! And no it wasn’t brainwashing either, they didn’t force us to boycott Pepsi and Coke - we just did so, you know, being young and all adrenalin-charged like! (P.S: No we weren’t involved in the vandalizing of KFC in Bangalore, in case you were wondering)… Anyways, I still remember one time I ordered Thums Up at a restaurant while I gave my family a lecture about how Coke/Pepsi should be thrown out of the country, when my Dad politely pointed out to me that Thums Up was a Coke company product, smugly smiling as he turned the bottle so I could see that indeed it was! In time of course I realized there’s no money in fighting for the environment, so I left it at that. However, to do this dream justice, I still to this day avoid using plastic bags, don’t use the A/C so I don’t add to the ozone layer depletion directly, and always recycle whatever I can.

And the last and possibly the most passionate dream I had, and one I still think of pursuing sometime in my life, was of becoming a dancer… a full-fledged dancer in a troupe or individually, doing stages shows, going around the world performing, creating and then basking in the audience applause… dancing till it hurts, dancing till it becomes enough to live on, dancing till I reach nirvana (reference to the Sufi style of meditation)… And its this one that I can’t let go of, its this one that I truly regret not having pursued, its this one dream that nags at me every time I meet someone who has had the guts to follow their heart and be true to themselves…

So, what did you dream of becoming when you grew up?