Ambition

What do you want to be in your life? Did you ask this question to anyone. You certainly did, don’t you? Do you remember what kind of different answers you got till date? Okay forget it, rethink of your answers if somebody would have asked you this at the age of 5 or may be at the age of 10. Well well well I don’t know about what went through all your childhood thoughts but I certainly remember mine. Let me share those wild and weird ambitions.
Before that let me tell you something we used to do in Bengali culture (not sure about others). In bengal we have a ritual called “Annaprashon”. This is the ritual when the little fellows eat their first rice. It takes place when they are at the age between 5-7 months. During this ritual, elders keep certain stuffs in front of the kid like a book, a pen, a pair of small scissors, coins etc and wait for the kid to pick something up. If the kid picks up pen that means he/she will be interested in literature. Similarly coins indicate businessman, scissors indicate doctor and so on. This is really fun to watch. That’s the baby’s first bite on AMBITION.
As the days go on, the ambition keeps changing with lot of factors. These factors involve some serious bullet points. “Capability”, “Expense of the Course”, “Earning from that profession”, “Prestige” and some more.
Note that I didn’t include “Interest” in this list. Actually that is the prime factor of an ambitions. But with the circumstances, that always takes back seat. These factors always suppress the desire, the craziness, the will. Examples are very obvious, a person with less IQ level cannot manage to get through any ambitions which needs lot of brainwork, for example a scientist. A boy from a poor family has to think 1000 times before opting for an expensive course to fulfill his ambitions and 999 out of1000 times he would change his mind. Just compare yourself as a cricketer and as a kabaddi player, that would justify the affect of earning on ambition. And last but not the least is prestige. Have you ever seen a drama on stage? If yes then close your eyes and compare the stage actor’s acting skill with the silver/golden screen actors acting skill. One who loves acting would definitely go for stage theater but the question of Prestige would always keep them bugging.
Not only these, the pressure of society is also a big factor on the ambition. Successful doctors would always want their successors to be in medical profession coz they have seen how noble the profession is when they do justice to it. A govt officer always dreams about his kids to be an IAS officer because in his mind that’s the highest position he would have ever imagined. A lawyer knows his son is always prospect of good lawyer with all the contacts he made in his life. And in India film industry and politics are two fields where people believe talent is hereditary. But again I would say these are to some extend positive reservation. There are other negative effects as well. Like a conservative family never sees their kids going for a film or fashion industry. A businessman always turns down his son to go for any salaried job. All these are basic instinct I believe, very hard to change.
With all these in mind, the definition of ambition doesn’t stand its ground anymore. The main pillar “Interest” is losing its priority from the Ambition.
Anyway, it’s always a never ending debate. I started this with a lighter mood but eventually went to the serious world. Now I am going to my childhood days when an ambition was completely independent of anything in this world other than what I liked to do.
Have you seen hand cart ever? In Kolkata I have seen plenty of them carrying lot of stuffs. Not sure they are still there or not. So using the cart lots of people used to carry big ice blocks from ice factory to different preservative farms (like fish market etc). On those days, ice factory was beyond my imagination. In my thought the one and only source of that big amount of ice was Kashmir. So I was under impression that these guys go to Kashmir everyday and bring ice from there. I was very curious about Kashmir because on those days also Kashmir was always in headlines because of terrorism and natural beauty. So that became my first ambition.
My second ambition was a taxi driver. The one and only reason behind this was just roaming around in the city in a car without spending a single paisa.
However that ambition didn’t last long as Byomkesh Bokshi and Karamchand entered into the scene. Not only Byomkesh Bokshi, there are several other detective novels I started reading. You might have noticed the dramatic pictures in detective books with dark glasses, black gloves etc. No wonder that attracted me the most. As a result next 2-3 years I was completely equipped with woolen gloves, lots of different kind of toy guns, dad’s black sunglass and grandfather’s pipe (only pipe). Most of the time my face used to be covered with a handkerchief. The makeup accessories were also part of my detective kit. The Ponds powder (for white hair) and sister’s eye pencil (for drawing mustache) might not be the most expensive makeup kit one could have but sufficient for the great detective like me. Due to the lack of interesting cases around me, I couldn’t continue this ambition anymore. And by that time I realized it’s my time to be on the action ground, not to be in a dark room sitting on a easy chair sorting out a complicated murder case. Continuing on that thoughts, Police Officer and then Army Officer was two certain options I could see. So all the small toy guns went inside the packing box and with Grand Ma’s great support soon I created my own inventory with big toy guns. But I needed some bunkers to fight with enemies. With no wonder all the pillows came to my help. I used to pile up all the pillows to make the bunker. That gave me the complete environment.
When I grown up a little more, we started travelling different famous places in India. Most of the time with some travel groups. I saw every time one person used to brief about the place before we start. After a long time I found something to make my ambition. Honestly today also when I have visited many places in India and US, I still find that as ambition. That is one thing I can do at any age of my life. But again that will be a new story altogether.
With these there were some short and simple ambitions popped up throughout my early teenage like playing table, painting etc, but never appeared very interesting. Right now I am not able to recollect any more funny ambitions I had except one. And the final one is Cricket. Well this is one which was always in my mind. In every alternate I used to see myself as a cricket player. Believe me today also when India needs 50 runs from 19 balls, first things comes to my mind is re-considering my ambition of being a cricketer.
To conclude this, what I believe is ambition is what you want to be. It might not be having any relation with how much would you earn, what is your age, how will you achieve this. A 70 year old person can should also have an ambitions. An ambition gives you a meaning to your life if not anything else.