Dream and nightmare

Dream turns nightmare
What was my enduring dream for years in youth time has turned into a recurring nightmare. Failure haunts me persistently. Often in the middle of night, I wake up, perspiring. What is that dream-turned-nightmare?
In school, my ambition was to become an army officer. What fuelled this ambition was praise for my body constitution (I grew faster than most peers, and was 5’, 11” feet tall and lanky in Class 11th).
By the time I entered college, I had got hooked to literature- Hindi and English. So, the army plan was forgotten.
Instead, I yearned to become a writer. At 20, I joined Jabalpur theatre group ‘Vivechana’ and the association ignited in me fire to become an actor. As passion for literature and theatre grew, I leaned to Marxism.
And a new dream beckoned; to become a teacher. I dreamt myself of going in poor ‘bustees’, teaching slum children.
I was lucky to pursue all these avocations for years in Jabalpur (except of a writer) but not lucky enough to carry them on after I left the City.
Destiny intervened. I strayed into journalism accidentally. Well almost. Father died. The dreams shattered. The city of birth left behind. A new city (Bhopal), new people and new responsibilities (marriage and children) combined to transform me.
But the dream survived in deep recess of my consciousness. And still haunts me, not as a dream but a nightmare.
Why I am talking of this? Because I feel the dream is still realizable. Why can’t I become a writer, a theatre man and a teacher, besides being, of course, a journalist?
There is one major hurdle- financial insecurity.
In India, few like Khushwant Singh, Dilip Padgaonkar or Sanjay Baroo in English (In Hindi we have a long list that prominently includes Agneya, Raghuvir Sahay, Shrikant Verma etc) are fortunate to straddle the academics, literature and journalism with aplomb. They are all financially well-off and intellectual giants.
I am miles behind them in purse and caliber. Maybe, if I were born in the West, I could have hopped from one vocation to another of choice with whatever little intellect I possess.
Nevertheless, I still try to repel the nightmare. How? Reading habit continues to be my most dependable companion.
Occasionally, I dabble in theatre too. My last appearance on stage was barely two months ago in Jabalpur as Dr Oster Mark in Steinberg’s play ‘ The Father. Becoming writer remains an unfinished but not unrealizable mission.
As far teacher, I have sincerely attempted to perform the role while working as bureau chief in HT.
Here I owe a debt to interns of Makhan Lal Chaturvedi University of Journalism. I have had opportunities to share my knowledge with at least a dozen interns from the institute.
Of course, they were not exactly brilliant. But, many of them with positive attitude to learning did well in the small durations of one to three months they were in the HT.
I would always wistfully yearn I had more time for them. But the routine of the bureau chief job keeps me occupied. The teacher in me would be delighted to see the pupils learning new things.
I did not teach them any great things. It was just how to write correct English in news format. I strongly believe, once a new comer understood the essentials of formatting a report, he/she has learnt more than half of journalism. The rest will follow naturally.
In this season of internship, however, I felt deprived of the delight the ‘teacher’ used to derive in the past. Some interns came.
Barring one, all were put under others. The one with me was likeable, if quite fidgety, girl. She is diligent, punctual, reverential and, most importantly, inquisitive. But, I couldn’t train her as much as I desired.
The others wouldn’t interact with me. Nearly two months passed.
One day, I learnt all of them are abandoning internship half way. I had been sensing some discomfort in them for some time but had no inkling that they would just quit the training.
They did not divulge the reason for their regrettable action when I spoke to them. They said all was fine here. But their voice betrayed their disappointment.
Later, the girl who was working with me told me that the interns feel discriminated against. Her remark was as shocking as it was acerbic. ‘ My crime is that I could not choose an influential father to sire me”. I was aghast.
The remark left me wondering why every journalist doesn’t have a well-intentioned teacher in him/her. It is not about one particular organisation.
In every media organisation, trainees are either contemptuously ignored or condescendingly saddled with inconsequential tasks having no or little bearing to their training.
The specious argument advanced by the “ mentors’ for such rubbish assignments is that “ we too learnt journalism this way’. Many such mentors get insidiously nostalgic about “ those days” when their editors or immediate bosses would ask them to do the kind of work they are now asking the trainees to perform.
All this nostalgia talk is nothing but disingenuous self-aggrandizement.
The young boys and girls with stars in their eyes don’t want that nostalgia. They want to learn. The sooner media organisations realise this the better it is for their own image. After all, the interns can be transformed into assets for a media group if groomed properly.
It is a symbiotic relationship. They have human resources, energy and readiness for assignment. The paper has experience and technology to mould the energy into a useful product.
I feel sad about those interns.