Tailor-made!

I wanted to write this as a poem initially - but I guess, prose would help me present a better case.

First shot:
A couple of months before, I was talking to ~Y, someone I believe is very well-learned and for whom have a great regard for. After an hour or so, he told that the software industry has still not clipped me into a two dimensional prototype, and that I still have a zest for life which is found wanting in many software professionals (which is quite understandable because, INSEAD is as far as it can get from a software company in terms of culture and curiosity). He also gently warned me that sooner or later, the industry is going to get me.

Second shot:
On my way to the theater group yesterday, a fellow software engineer and I were doing small talk when he said, "I want a job which leaves me time to count the birds". I thought he was talking figuratively. But no! each morning he goes to the park and sits and counts birds. He misses the first shuttle and takes the next shuttle so that he could do this everyday. Asked why, he said - "it makes you realize how small and how inconsquential you are". I still believe he's talking figuratively because I have never seen a s/w professional before who's told me something like this before. He's resigning his job today, to do his MBA. He hopes he still gets the time to count the birds.

So ...
I am sure there are lots of interesting people in the software industry, LOADS of them who are very talented with a variety of interests - I personally can cite a long of list of friends as a case in point. But as you walk towards your campus everyday, you see a swarm of heads - bunched in pairs talking the same thing. It's not software - very rarely is a software professional passionate about his work. It's the headlines - it's dan brown, latest cricket match, new movies, good ones, bad ones, lunch menu, dinner menu, plans for weekend - a world in the size of the marble where all of them try to fit in. After sometime, you realize they talk the same way too - Soon, it's like a brilliant morph of the same tired soul into a million manifestations.
It's not just the software industry - there's such an uncanny resemblance between any two international MBA grads in terms of their demeanour and attitude. In my years of INSEAD, I noticed - Be it the way they talk, ask for favours, maintain the smug expression or sign off their email - it's like there's a code-book they fervently follow to get it right.

I can understand why and I am sure you do too. But isn't it scary - when you lose this deep desire to be different, to distinguish yourself from the maddening crowd, when you flutter around in a cage with your clipped wings and worse still, do it blissfully. The contrast strikes me hard even more when I sit with members of my play troupe talking of little things with such passion and zeal. Their problems in life are deeper than falling hair or buggy code, because they ventured to dare. They have layers and you see them - it's like they belong to a different universe. I can't imagine them sitting before the screen and f5-ing all their lives till it's time to ctrl+alt+del. They bake their bread and butter out of this zeal.

It's me who's caught with each foot in a different universe leading a twin life on either halves of the day and ruing over the difference.