YOLO YODO: Part 1

The weekly magazine, "The Week" most recently did  a cover story on Yolo Yodo.
Click here for the cover story.

I wondered why not a political or socially relevant cover story. But after reading the story, i found the relevance in this new empowered and chaos-tic times.

Yolo is You Only Live Once

Yodo is...yes you are right; You Only Die Once.

To arrive at the conclusion whether I believe in Yolo or Yodo was too engrossing for me.

If there is an interjection between too or a grey area between them, i may well be placed there for the time being.

Few more Yolo and Yodo posts will be followed on various subjects.

In this first post let me convey my temporary future plans regarding career and education in relation to Yolo and Yodo aspects.

Most of my friends and acquaintances know that my decision to discontinue research for the sake of reading books and watching films were beyond their assumptions and logic.

The decision was quick as always.

I have never said that i will be never doing research.

In fact I am going to dedicate my life for research.

Oh ho...was that filmy?

That doesn't mean i will be more like a albino rat.

Aren't we all on a search and a re-search in one way or the other?

Aren't we all students of life forever?

Its just a simple as that.

There is no chance for "discontinuation" here.

I am just going to pursue what please me and what love the most.

We have been schooled from three and a half years of age, i have always hated going to school and college. And how will go to teach. The rules at every nook and corner is not for me. To say students to come tomorrow with shoes clean or tidy hair is like me being a constant hypocrite. I would say, instead;  to go out, play and make their dresses dirty, you have only one life.

I can't scold any of them for not doing their homework, neither have i done my homework systematically ever.

Of course not all of our teachers were the most faithful and scholastic students.

I am 24 and still being with academics is making me sick. I realised I am not tailored to be a academician or a teacher.

I may try a hand at it for sometime just to increase the account balance in my bank account, to use it to make my dreams come true and possible.

I do believe in a life after death, just for the sake of aesthetics in this thought.
And when i do imagine life after death, precisely a second birth; what breaks my jaw is the fact that "Shouldn't i go again to school from LKG to 12 and unending college days" and learn again all of these. Most importantly the inevitable exam monsters. Then I would shatter my day dreaming and pray "Oh dear God there shouldn't be a second life".

My decision to not to do Phd now and to embark on learning new skills and promoting my writing skills would be the shadow of YOLO part in me.

If i hadn't thought so I would have flowed along with my peer groups and committed to do academic research. When i enquired the deepest persona or anima in me I felt the urge to abandon academic research. I love doing research always ad forever. So I became determined to clang on to it by giving it different attire to wear- Research for writing fiction.

Writing is breathing for me.
If I end writing, i no longer exist.

By saying hello to Yolo, I gave up precious 6 years coaching to become a teacher/professor in English Language and Literature  for embarking and pursuing what I love the most. That shouldn't let u think I am going sell off my academic books. Even this thought to try out another way is the result my encounters with English Literature and theories. The course made lots of positive personal preferences and did handful of behaviour modifications in me. All single days with the course has given priceless values, ideas, ideologies, policies and souvenirs.

I chose commerce for 11th nd 12th as i had already known where I want to be, taking science wouldn't help me. Chose Functional English for degree because father would sent me to do Bcom (then i would have killed myself). Also Functional English stood close to what i actually wanted to do- there was journalism, media, creative writing, and communication papers in it.
NO other choice, did MA and MPhil purely for my parents. No more such pleasantries. YOLO.
.

What i have understood is that English researches do zero beneficial changes to our society unlike scientific research. If it has to, it needs to published, hardly few do that. I felt it meaningless to do a research just for the sake of  prefix in our names. There is plenty one can and one should do.
I need the world to hear my voice and words. I am not someone who should live and die in dungeon. I can always hear an inner voice saying that to me. Its just that it took time for me to confirm it was good voices and not demonic.

I can occasionally give classes not regularly.

I don't have an academic language, my language is flowery and ornamental ( my MPhil thesis shows off that fact, it was more of assumptions than facts). I should have ended up in the print media if my parents where more liberal. Alas! and Cheers! Everything happens for a good reason. The shade I enjoy now is the fruit of their hard work. I am able to take a break do the stuff I like because financially they have made me and my sister safe. Muaah acha and amma.

I can not be a permanent staff anywhere, how big the salaries be, sorry can't chain me down to one single institution and needn't grow old with the trees around it.

I like to be my own boss.

I wish to set up an institute dedicated for a purpose I now do not wish to reveal. ( I may start an online shopping store, farming, translating, anything and everything, I am unpredicatable).
There are a plenty of arenas and avenues for us to do, you just need to see what is blurred and vague. Choosing a different path may leave you alone but you can die in a style- YODO.

I would love to earn myself and realise the wonders of spending the money earned by myself.
Hey, of course I will be earning.  I have not dreamt of living further with my parents finance nor my partner's.

I want to keep uniqueness in all my endeavours.

I wish to learn various Indian and foreign languages and learn to play at least a musical instrument.

I wish to do creative things and frequently resort to arts and crafts.

Travelling to lesser known places and discovering more of our own country is on the top of my wishlist.

My wish list like yours goes on. With just one life already in hand why not live life to the fullest.

Till now in parental chains and limitations i have not done much for myself, i have sacrificed for their happiness, even my ambition to land up on anywhere in media was abandoned.
24 years of invisible chains is more than enough for me to search for freedom. Even when I say freedom, it never appears so easily. In contrat, I have had and still have more freedom compared to many others who are in solid fetters. Thank God!

Just as the saying - "From pans to fire"- now i may be on pans (father), tomorrow in fire (husband) :D :D:D:D (applicable to men too- now mother, later wife).

Wherever I am, however I am I would like to do what soothes me, without loosing an inch of my dignity, after all, at the end of the day, YOLO.