Whoever has ever had the “opportunity” to dance with me, would know that I know nothing about it. Now that I have all the time in the world, I decided to enroll for classes to learn dance. After lots of enquiry calls I went down to the studio to register myself and the lady at the desk handed out to me an unassuming form. I, in fact everybody has filled too many of such forms where they ask you to give out details which you know at the drop of a hat. A form of this kind would usually look like this:
Personal Particulars Form
1. NAME:
2. AGE:
3. OCCUPATION:
4. ADDRESS:
5. PHONE NO.:
You're obviously thinking 'what’s the big fuss?' The fuss is about point number 3. I did not know what to write. The mind in me, trained to answer as many questions as you can, as soon as you can, could easily answer the remaining questions, but back I was to point number three.
What could I have written there?
Two options constantly ran in my head, student or service. Actually if I come to think of it, I am none. I am no longer a student, because to be a student I need to be enrolled with an institute, pursuing some form of study, which I am certainly not. I very well graduated from school last month. The second option came to my head because that is the occupation I am waiting, and rather frantically, to take up. But the world seems to be conspiring against me to let this happen. To be eligible to write my occupation as ‘service’ I need to be employed on the rolls of some organisation, which I am currently not.
To explain my plight I'd like to draw a parallel. At that point I felt like Viktor Navorski, the Tom Hanks of the Steven Spielberg movie, The Terminal. For those who haven’t seen the movie, Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a citizen of Krakozhia. He is on a visit to New York and during his flight from Krakozhia to JFK Airport war breaks out in his home country and then it fails to figure in the list of countries recognized by the US. So essentially, Navorski is a man without a country. And here I am, a girl without an occupation!!
As Navorski did not have a valid passport, he could not be allowed to leave the airport. Needless to say he hated to be in that situation initially. It was all about frustration, irritation, a feeling of helplessness but soon he managed to find things to do, people to talk to, streams of income. He had come over it!
Now I see myself traversing the same path. I was cribbing way too much about how I was going to be “jobless” for almost four months. I completely hated not having something to do, and especially when it’s for such long periods. But surprisingly enough I see myself always managing to find something to interest me. Be it a movie, a book, pictures of old times, errands around the house, meeting friends, if nothing else people to chat with. I have more, much more, I ain’t all that sad. And I am pretty happy about this extremely comfortable, all expenses paid stay at the airport, but certainly waiting to take off!!
