SWATIMODO ON INDIATIMES!!

Gen Y's new writing on the wall

Deepti Malhotra
Having long said goodbye to babudom , Generation Y are living their dreams like never before. They are soaring higher and far away from anything that is run-of-the-mill. A career is no longer about just security. It’s about excitement, adventure, passion, satisfaction, moolah and a lot more!

Yes, who doesn’t want the buck rolling their way, but it need not be from a mundane 9-to-5 job that does absolutely nothing for your salvation. Till some time back the pendulum was swaying the other way. Youngsters still had the yearning for conventional careers like civil services, engineering, medicine, law and the likes. They would burn the midnight oil preparing for exams and spend their youthful years just appearing, re-appearing and clearing them. Parents too loved to show off their ‘well placed’ sons and daughters, whose degrees made them even more eligible for a good marriage proposal. After a while, MBA and IT also became the first and final stop for most career seekers. And the “MBA from an IIM” tag even had many aunts and uncles raising their eyebrows in appreciation. But the writing on the wall is now being rewritten with a new ink, which says it out loud - ‘dare to be different’. Follow the herd? No way! God made everyone unique and Generation Y strongly believes and follows this dictate. Never follow the crowd but set your own path is what most of these rebels with a cause feel, not just about the way they dress or behave but now increasingly about the professions they choose. “Every third person is an MBA, I wanted to be unique”, says Vipul Arora, all of 18 years old and a radio jockey who hosts the morning show ‘Tea Stall’ on Radio Mantra. Being a commerce graduate and having a mother who is a teacher did not deter this young gun from following his dreams. For Arora, high pay packets that his MBA degree would have gotten him didn’t sound half as exciting as talking on the radio.

But if you think it’s only the guys who want to cut an edge, think again. Girls are fast joining and in some cases even leading this ‘I’m unique’ brigade. So believes Swati Mehrotra, a budding shoe designer. A student of commerce like Arora, and the daughter of a chartered accountant, Swati’s career path seemed to be almost cut out. But Swati went on to do something that was labeled as ‘not meant for girls’. She chose a path traditionally considered the dominion of men. Ask her why and pat comes the reply, “I wanted to do something more adventurous. I didn’t want to do fashion designing as a lot of people are already doing that.” Her priorities were clear, “fame first to be followed by money.”

All work and all play Swati and Arora are just two among the increasing number of youth turning their hobbies into professions. Some years ago if you were a doctor who loved cooking, you had to limit your cooking skills to the kitchen after work. Well, not anymore. Meet Abhijeet, medicine-student-turned-Italian chef with Westview at the Maurya Sheraton. “I really enjoyed cooking, it was my passion and so I gave up medicine which was my father’s initial choice for me and became a chef”, he says. For him, his best reward is when people finish everything on their plate. When your hobby becomes your profession, fun at work is not too far. Simbal Bhatia, DJ at ‘The Shack’ in Defence Colony, Delhi feels the same. “Music is my passion. Eighty per cent people are doing MBA or CA, I thought I’d rather do what I truly love”, he says. His family was initially, as he puts it, ‘dead against it’ and gave him only a six month timeframe to prove his mettle. But today they have accepted his dream as theirs and have no regrets whatsoever. Satisfaction guaranteed Everybody has Monday morning blues, but what if the entire week begins to seem like a Monday morning? What if you are never told if the work you do was good, bad or ugly? Worse, what if the work you do brings no change in anybody’s life, and least of all in your own? Generation Y is increasingly plagued by these thoughts as they browse the multitude of job sites and scan the yellow pages. “I didn’t want to sell credit cards all week long”, says Hassan, a copywriter with advertising agency, Mudra. A student of science, he loved to dabble with words and so chose to be a copywriter. Now handling accounts like Timesjobs.com and HBO, he feels he couldn’t have pursued a career that didn’t offer ‘creative satisfaction’. Not very different from him is Deepmala, an assistant manager, at the front office at Maurya Sheraton. “I was always more of a communications person. You’ve got to have it within you to make your guest feel at home and smile”, she says. She goes on to add that even though the money is gradual in this industry the satisfaction that you get is something else. Satisfaction + fame + money = Success Satisfaction plus fame plus a little bit of money – these are the ingredients that Generation Y is using to make the perfect recipe for success! Chef Abhijeet agrees that it is gratifying to know that his dishes make celebrities lick their fingers. Even Deepmala gushes at the thought of the who’s who of Page 3 passing by her lobby and stopping for exchanging peasantries every now and then. “It’s a lot to do with the wow factor”, she admits. DJ Simbal too agrees that it is quite flattering when women come up to him with song requests. He explains, “money means a lot to me, but so do fame and glamour”. Well it looks like Generation Y has its success mantra clearly spelt out. So be it job satisfaction, fame or fortune, when it comes to careers the youth are increasingly listening to their true calling, which is urging them to be, as they call it - different!