You're a WHAT?

That's what people say when I tell them that I'm an architect.

Yeah, yeah. I AM a qualified architect. Honest to God, I am. But I’m now write children’s books. Go figure.

As the saying goes, the whole thing was an accident. Only in my case, it was a horrifying, mind-numbing, and soul-bending accident.

Okay I am only half-kidding. It wasn’t that terrible… but, yeah, it was a nightmare.

I wanted to be a journalist and join Discovery Channel. Ok, may be that sounds really childish, but when you’re 17 and love animals, you could see that it had a certain appeal. But ah, reality.

My parents were appalled at my “ambition”. Like any other sensible folks, they wanted me to be a computer engineer.

So I chose to study architecture - an utterly-immature, twisted choice that said “If you’re not approving my dream, I’m not going to approve yours either”.

Boy, did that prove to be the ugliest decision in my life…

As far as I can remember, college was a series of frustrated idleness, sudden bursts of rewarding creativity and long, mind-numbing periods of OBing. With no talent as an artist and minimal social skills, I was fated to be a failure. I bunked, flunked, slept through the lectures, the exams and the whole damn years – in short, I totally, totally wasted an expensive, good education, grrrr….

May be I could have survived if I didn’t have to compete with some of the best brains in the state… but that was not to be the case. I think some of the lecturers in my college are still heaving in relief that I finally left the college…

Welll… I guess I couldn’t say that it was not all a total waste… during my training period, I made the discovery that I liked to write, which paved the way to my current profession… and I had formed some surprise friendships that have lasted till this moment…

Probably the only regret I have about the whole thing - the waste of a perfectly good and rare college seat in one of the top universities in India. If some really deserving person had got admission instead of me, s/he would have been much, much happier…

As such, it’s always fun to watch people’s eyes pop out when I say that I don't practise architecture, even though I did graduate. I always get lectured during family get-togethers and functions that why, oh why, do I have to waste an architecture degree for - huh, gasp, eek! – writing stories… and why can I practice design during the day and write during the night?

Yeah, right, and I’m a friggin’ Super Woman, grrrr.