WrongChoice Man: Origins

This is a story from a parallel world. It is set in India, which, in the alternate reality is also a booming economy ( oh wow! ). However, things are a little different there. The country, in recent years, has had a huge spurt in private colleges that churn out millions of photographers, filmmakers, painters, writers, poets, musicians who somehow get a degree and end up working at call centers to start off their careers. From these millions, amongst similar other dreamers, our main character is a boy named Gadadhar aka Babloo.

Babloo grew up in a house with a lot of sisters and unmarried aunties; his dad was hardly ever around and there usually was a general lack of males around him. Inevitably, he was always being asked to fix something around the house, as a result of which he learnt a variety of useful work like repairing fuses, fixing pipes, tinkering with the water pump motors etc. and since then, he had always wanted to grow up and be in a career that made good use of these skills of his. Even in school, once he got the hang of computers, he grasped the concepts quickly and grew adept at programming and hardware technology. Thereon, Babloo was always tinkering with digital gadgets, computers, coding practices and the likes.

As he crossed into high school to take up science in the last two years, his parents hinted that he should study literature. Babloo was annoyed AF but he understood the situation at home, what with his dad’s early retirement and his mom being a housewife; and realized that studying literature would pave the way for a college which could get him a job early in life. He could keep up his coding and computers as a hobby.

* * *

Fast forward fifteen years later, Babloo is working as a literary genre analyst at a big movie production company abroad. Babloo is now known to his peers, colleagues and friends as Babs and he is the hotshot guy who knows how everything works and is asked by friends to solve small everyday issues about their gadgets and fixes in their houses. Even though his job did not entail it remotely, he kept up with his love for coding and computers in the hopes of finally doing something with those skills someday. It had been seven years since Babs had started working at this particular company and slowly, like a corkscrew being driven into a cork, he was starting to feel the mental strain of the corporate life. And much like the cork, it seemed like he was ready to pop anytime!

Some time after the famous wildlife photographer Stephen Hawking passed away while running a marathon for people in their seventies from a heart attack, Babs thought about how he had once watched one of his interviews. That day, Stephen had said that even though he immensely enjoyed being a wildlife photographer, he could also have lived the life of a scientist; that had always been his second career choice. Babs mulled over this statement of Stephen for many days till he finally could not take it anymore and called up his parents one day.

Babs: “Hey listen, I’m quitting my job.”
Babs’s Parents: “What? why? Are you getting fired Babloo?”
Babs: “No”
Babs’s Parents: “Then? What’s wrong? You have such a great job, a good salary, house and everything else.”
Babs: “I am quitting to work on and change my career”
Babs’s Parents: “What new career? Don’t you think it is too late? This is not the time to make new changes in life and career, you should be settling down and getting married and living life happily with your wife abroad.”
Babs: “ Mom, Dad, I know how much you wanted me to study English and get this huge corporate job but I think I have paid my dues, I am unhappy in my job and need a career change.
Babs’s Parents: “What is this new career then? Please don’t say it’s something to do with your computer things ! “
Babs: “Actually yes it is, I don’t like my job here and that’s all I have ever wanted to be and still want to be — an IT engineer.”

*Silence*

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Like Babs, there are millions of other young boys and girls that India is churning out to be in the art industry and it seems like that area is now saturated. I hope many more such Gadadhars don’t hold back and leave their jobs as musicians, poets, writers, photographers, filmmakers to realize their dreams of being an IT engineer. Babs now works 3 IT jobs and is happily married with 2 kids back in India. He was hailed as a superhero for his bold career move by his friends who even gave him a superhero-nickname — RightChoice Man.