Let me begin by saying that our education system is just slightly better than the one in South Sudan. If the guidance we get was analogous to the guidance an intercontinental missile gets, the missile is fired from Dadar would detonate in, well, Dadar East.  It is appalling to know that in India, 60% employees are dissatisfied with their jobs and 80% of them want to switch careers. This insinuates that our guidance systems are very weak, and the youth is entering professions they don’t know a thing about.

I want to give an example of the same by presenting exactly how I went through indecision and quit my job after working for 3 months.

I remember, before I did Hotel Management, ordering in restaurants would be a very intriguing task because I would be absolutely amazed at how a pizza, which would take me 2 hours, 3 limbs and the fire brigade to make at home, came onto my table in under 20 minutes, crisp and much better than the Domino’s vegetables on naan that I was used to.

I imagined the Chefs, smoking cigars, with abs showing through Chef coats as white as flour, cooking with their bare hands and working with sparkling ingredients picked by women in lingerie (yes, you read it right). Having pictured myself as the Dan Bilzerian of kitchens, I firmly went up to my family and informed them that I would be pursuing Hotel Management from the best college in the world, to which they promptly replied, “O Bhai paani ubaal ley pehley dhang sey. Gas on karney mein naani marti hai.” 

So, I quickly decided to pursue architecture and started dreaming about me smoking a cigar, with a yellow construction cap on my head (apparently architects and dehaadi are the same thing), with my abs showing through my whatever-architects-wear, and strippers helping me put cement on walls (Again you read it right). It was only when I spoke with a leading architect in Singapore that I realized that it takes a lot of mathematics dedication to become an architect, the kind I knew I wouldn’t be able to conjure. This made me revert to the original idea of becoming a Chef. I had already seen a lot of episodes of Masterchef, so I thought, “ah well let me decide my career BASED JUST ON HOW A TV SHOW APPEALED TO ME”.

And so I went for it. I gave my JEE, made a fool out of everyone by telling them I got AIR 269 in JEE, casually forgetting to mention that I was referring to the Hotel Management exam. Anyway, so they thought I was totally getting into IIT. I did get the best college for hotel management in India and the dream was coming true. I expected to be given a Chef coat by the guard at the gate, a red-carpet ceremony with the air smelling of cinnamon and caramel, and an array of knives sharp enough to cut through diamond. What happened was that I was late to my first ever college lecture and was asked to “Fuck off saaley” by the Chef. I was left astounded because I expected the professor to reprimand me in a cultured fashion and profanity was the least expected thing in my head. I took some time to process this and waited for my next lecture.

Link to Part 2: https://konversations.com/stories/index/my-story-in-hotel-management-part-2-please-dont-do-1

Link to Part 3: https://konversations.com/stories/index/my-story-in-hotel-management-part-3-making-a-wise-decision-1