A Prisoner of the Ruins at the Crossroads

January 24, 2008

Life being a very puzzling phenomenon, sometimes you come across circumstantial snares, sometimes you come across circumstantial rosebeds.

In my case, I have found myself walking voluntarily, involuntarily, into the trapping cleft, to be caught by the leg and brought down crashing in the dust.

The falls have been so many that now I no longer blame destiny or fate for my crash-landings. I am myself responsible for my crash-landings. It is me who has spoiled the script.

Maybe I have forever overestimated my calibre and skills, my capabilities, thus making the blunders of aiming for higher goals which are naturally, fundamentally beyond my capacity to achieve. Such egotistically carried-out pursuits become futile, as has been proven in my case.

It is me who has written all the lines of my script in a wrong manner. My assessment of myself is grossly skewed, hallucinated.

So naturally, I find myself surrounded by the broken shards of my half-built, unripe palaces. There are big heaps of rubble and rubbish, masonry work scattered around me.

I am imprisoned by the rubble and ruins of my immature pursuits.

A prisoner, a stark prisoner who has lost his identity among the ruins—the ruins which he has built around him.

A prisoner of the ruins.

That is what I am.

I just cannot see beyond my rubbish, garbage mounds. With every endeavour, I add to the filth on the peaks already littered with stones and rubble.

When will I reach the height, the peak of foolishness, in order to start doing things like the other people are doing? Even the so-called very dimwit people whom teachers in our class found not worth anything, even they are playing so smartly in the game of life as to have set up very nice economic bases.

So I find myself staring at the crossroads, puzzled and unsure about which way to go.

If I happen to focus on one thing, then these other options appear and tease me that they are more suitable. But just when I shift my focus to the appealing one, the nearer I move to it, the more butterflies titter in my stomach, and by the time I reach the option, it changes its shape and size to the extent of being totally unrecognizable.

In my entire life, I have never faced such a puzzling situation.

The dilemma stares with a cold, disdainful glare in my face.

Can't make much of the situation.

I know that from my own calibre's point of view, I will usually benefit from a job in publishing. But I don't have any experience, even though I have the skills to be a very good professional in the publishing world.

So content writer is the only option that seems viable as far as making a job opening is concerned, and still hoping against hope that maybe there will be a job option which will pay me just like a government officer and will give me an opportunity to use my full potential.

But I seem to have lost out on time.

Most of the people who are into such jobs start straight away after graduation. So that is the main problem here.

ELI Research, Faridabad, has contacted me several times over phone and through mail. It seems they are genuinely impressed by my portfolio, even agreed to think positively about my demand of 40,000 per month.

Just a few minutes ago—it is around five in the evening—I got one more call from them, saying they are really impressed by my CV.

The HR gave me another call.

This time she was really disappointed after hearing my hesitant, fumbling words meant to inform her that I will be out of the country for a few months, because the plan with Babu Bhai for an Africa visit seems to be now taking proper shape.

Now this means no employment opportunity as far as this company is concerned, but it seemed to be a very good company doing research and all this.

One more good opportunity gone down the gutter this time.

The indecision has been created by being tethered to the business commitment. Since all the preparations are now in their final stages, I don't have the heart to even just, you know, go to ELI Research just for the sake of it.

These are the cruel times.

Morality, ethics, friendship—all become drags in your march to boons and benefits.

How I wish that I could either get a very nice job allowing me to give my best, the vast amount of knowledge that I have gathered in almost a decade of my civil services pursuits, or get into some business opportunity that enables me to earn quite well, so that within five years I can help my family as well as make an economic base that allows me to go into writing later on.