Early days...

Here comes the story of a depleted mind who has grown big in size and shape and the depleted mind of his decided to tell you his story. I wonder why people will read this piece, but you can read it when you have nothing else to do and not feeling sleepy. It still works better than a sleeping pill. Here you go...

I am not here to talk about my childhood. It was like any other middle-class kid in the world. I was not bad at study, not so good either. Did enough to be called an 'above average' student. So it will be very ordinary and boring story if I start talking about those days. Lets talk about the phase which was more interesting, the phase when I transitioned from a boy to a man.

This was the time when I ultimately realised that I had to start earning on my own. Mom and Dad almost lost hope and started planning for their retirement which also included me as their one of the major burdens. I was anyway earning enough by delivering private tuition to some boys and girls, who, as students, were called 'below average'. This status of them made me qualified to be their teacher and guess what, they started doing well. The technique that I adopted while teaching was to motivate my students to study themselves and slowly I became a motivator, not a teacher. I had to do that 'cause, pretty soon I realised I did not have more knowledge than my students, so I made them understand that they were good enough to study on their own which they did. Results were good so was my compensation. I earned enough to pay for my cigarettes, tea/coffee and occasional outings with my friends. Dad was still taking care of my fooding and lodging. The only time I spent some money for my parents was when I gifted them something before Durga Puja every year. 

Years passed by and I realised I had to make it big. It was no more only cigarette and tea; pizzas and burgers were already in town, but my employers did not find it a good enough reason to increase my compensation. I started looking for serious (in other words, well-paid) jobs. In Calcutta (that was the name then) people were either doing a Government job (my parents were no different) or working as an Accountant in a small private company or running a distributorship for grocery items. As any other jobless youth I hated all of them, had enough reasons to show them whatever they were doing were of no use, and debated in favour of not doing anything than doing what they were doing. But in my mind, I envied them for earning way more than I did. I never believed in God (was somewhat politically influenced) but still prayed to God to get me a decent job. Hypocrisy all around.