If you follow the crowd, you will likely get no further than the crowd. If you walk alone, you're likely to end up in places no one has ever been before.
Here’s the template of a typical Indian society:
You go to school, study, study, study and study. Are you good at sports, acting, oration, anything? Forget it. Don’t give those a damn, because even if you do indulge yourself in any such things, it’s a waste of time, for you will ultimately land up only studying. That’s the way it works. All you need to know here is swallow and vomit books – ranging from Tamil/ Hindi, English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, History and Geography.
You won a state-level athletics gold medal? Bravo!! So what? You failed in three subjects, just pass in the rest. Oh, you’re totally worthless and unfit for society.
The society calls you a success only when you score a 100% in everything, or at least the first rank in class.
In your 11th/12th, did you happen to choose Nutrition or Home Science, Commerce, or absolutely anything other than Maths with Biology or Maths with Computer Science?? There you are!! “Loser!! Loser!! Loser!!”. You would be branded forever. The moment you choose any of the non-engineering/ medicine subjects, the world knows you are going to be a loser. Of-course, of what good is an accountant or a chef?
If you are the best of the best students, you ought to become a doctor; else obviously you are an engineer. If you try to become anything else, oh, of course, you are a loser!!
According to the so-called-society, a doctor or an engineer can earn more money than any other profession – and may be its true. But ask the medical students why they have chosen this career, and their response will be only this: A doctor can save lives… (But no one wants to say that you can practice in 4 to 5 hospitals at a time, and earn equal amount from all hospitals, private practice excluded!!)
Well, if you were so interested in saving lives, you could also become a nurse, there are so many accidents around, you could provide first aid and save lives.. You could become an ambulance driver - saving lives is the true motive!! No!! No one will accept it. Money!! yes!! It’s all about money! But it’s just that they won’t name it so!!
Free Will does not exist. Oh yes, it exists on the dictionary, nowhere else. You have no right to choose your own religion. You belong to the religion you were born into. If you denounce religion, you are labeled “ignorant” and if you switch religions, you are a “disgrace” to the family and the religion’s sanctity.
Well, the concept of castes and communities exist, but to what good? Oh, to play politics, what else!! What is the purpose of castes? Why can’t we abolish them? There is a small group always asking this question, but there is a bigger group to emotionally play you down, to rouse everyone’s blood for a caste that means nothing. Do it, and then they call you “normal human”.
A woman does not have the right to choose when she wants to get married or have babies. If she tries to make her own decisions, they would simply call her an “ill brought up brute, unfit and useless for the society”
Well. Life long, everyone has the responsibility of meticulously following their predecessors and never to think out of the box. Thinking out of the box is a taboo. Mind it!!
And this being the state of affairs, I dream, every day, of being different. I want to be different. I want to think different. I want to live different. I do not want to do what every Dick and Tom and Harry does. I do not wish to do something any Dick or Tom or Harry can do. I want to be myself. I want to build my own world. Neither do I wish to compare myself to anyone, nor anyone to compare themselves with me, something this world is incapable of. Individualities have neither place nor respect. I desire to follow none, and demand none to follow me. I want to do something no one has ever done before, something that’s unique with its own signature!! I know I belong to utopia. I wish utopia existed. I belong there, better than anywhere else. When I do something different, the world wants to know “why” I do things differently. I say “Why not?”, and they call me a “fool”. What they don’t realize is all progress that had ever happened on earth was because of “visionary fools”, and the crowd that is busy following the crowd, is always meticulously following the crowd.