Writer banna hai?

How many of us here want to become writers? Many of us, right? Writing is not as difficult as the people make it look. It is actually a simple process of putting words together and making a sensible story which can be provided to the fellow humans for reading.

Now, what I want to talk about in this piece is about the stereotyping that goes around the writer’s domain.

Quite specifically, I want to focus on the passion part behind writing.

Here’s the real problem: I belong in a country where, if there is a pattern noticed, that thing or person or concept will be stereotyped left, right and center. One such concept is becoming a writer.   

It feels as if this thing is the dot com of the day, because every other person is trying it. There is nothing wrong in doing that because such attempts have yielded great performers and platforms to showcase our abilities and get the world to know about us.

What my problem is how we have started stereotyping every art related person and every sad or oppressed person to be a writer; quite specifically: The ENGINEERS.

Just like writing, engineering has been the dot com for quite a long time now, and we have been mass producing engineers in an already over populated country, which has lack of proper job opportunities.

Over the time, what has happened is that people have started stereotyping engineers as well. Given how seriously the parents want their child to become an engineer, it is reflected in the student suicide rate in a year. Death is not the option chosen by many of the engineering aspirants because they know that they can come out of the problem if they just make an attempt to make their point come across.

This has given way to another popular stereotype: ENGINEER turned WRITER.

Why?

I know that writing is the best non-violent way of making your feelings and thoughts come across many people, but that doesn’t mean that we clog that stream as well. What I’ve seen over the years is a trend of engineers becoming writers. No issue with that because writing gives you a freedom that science can’t. What the main issue here is how we’ve started stereotyping and behaving that way. As soon as someone says that they’re doing engineering, we just automatically assume that it has been forced on them but their parents and they’re soon going to choose to do stand-up comedy, write or anything in the creative field.

Why?

Both of my cousin brothers are engineers and never once they make it seem that they wanted to do something else. They were genuinely happy with doing engineering.

When I tell this to people, they counter it by quoting examples of famous engineer turned artists, especially the Indian authors like Chetan Bhagat, Durjoy Dutta etc.

If you also belong to the category who’d oppose my views using these names, let me tell you: Chetan Bhagat didn’t directly become a popular writer, he did engineering, he did MBA, he worked in a bank for a long time and gathered enough money in his bank account and then he decided to explore the field of writing. He hasn’t succeeded in his first attempt itself. I’m not demotivating anyone from following their passion, I’m just showing you the mirror, that if you want to be successful, you should be willing to put in the time and effort because success takes time.

I’m not saying that you can’t become a successful writer like them, but you first need to do the stuff that these guys did.

Now, coming to the crux of the whole write-up: Not all engineers are sad, depressed and want to kill themselves. Some genuinely want to do something good for the world with their quality and level of education and YES, not all engineers have to strive out to become writers, and nor do you need to follow such silly stereotypes.  

Writer banna hai, toh bano. Kisi ne mana nahi kiya, lekin yahan pe bahot mehnat lagegi upar aane mein, toh agar iss ke liye taiyaar ho, toh badhaao aage apna kadam.

(If you want to be a writer, then become one. No one has stopped you, but here you need a lot of hard work to rise up, so if you’re ready to do that, then put your best foot forward).