GTA aka Life ???

It’s funny how you can relate your life to a game of Grand Theft Auto. Like your alias-Tommy Vercetti, you’re mangled in a mafia-war like tossup between graduation, career prospects and the final phase of raging hormones. You steal a smooth ride which in my case is ‘engineering’ and hope like crazy she muscles past drug lords in Little Haiti or the University. At your disposal is GRE or GATE with which you can machete your way past pesky cops and nerdy Americans or improvise a GMAT loaded rocket launcher and blow-up a B-School abroad.

The new face of cussing movies today, is apparently giving the youth a sense of belonging. The irony is with new educational reforms revolutionizing the appalling education system, the legal age to have a drink has reached an all time high. My first day at college as a third year engineering student got me thinking. The next 10 years are like the little map at the bottom of a GTA screen, your pink blip needs to drive to the right destination and your graduation degree will only get you so far.

The rebellious generation is now making way for under grads who analyze and reason. The urge to learn and apply has outdone the traditional need for survival education. Dual degrees and entrepreneurship is the new game plan with the occasional need to ‘smoke a sandwich’. ‘Defy the obvious and redefine the way you look at things’; seems to be the driving force behind most collegiates. But the question still remains, what after you toss your black hat into the sky?

How does a college punk band lead guitarist, majoring in Mechanical Engineering, fathom a mundane white collar job? He certainly ain’t assured of a 30 second shot to the top which his usual guitar solo would have earned him. The epic battle between Creativity and Logic rages on and you get caught right in the middle of it. GTA rules just take away your weapons and cash but your boss may just as well run away with your girlfriend. Getting dumped and fired on the same day...Sigh!

Yea, we all have our off days, but when the chips are down; ask yourself- ‘What would BORAT do?’…or don’t, but you get the point right?! As an engineering under grad I’m always so consumed and over whelmed by the sheer awesomeness of technology, I tend to over analyse. In Vice City, it sometimes feels good to get outa your car and stab a random guy or stop by for a pizza or get your freak on at the strip club. Most techno-grads are accused of being ‘slow’ and not to mention ‘nerdy’, and they pretty much have themselves to blame. After keeping up with all the stressful study routines, techies tend to keep it up longer…get what I mean. But the irony is the potential just isn’t tapped, just like our job placements.

Defence- the word most commonly used by every Basketball coach on the sidelines of an ongoing game. How does one nip an over head spinning ball from ever dunking into the basket when the guy shooting is a 3 time MVP? He’ll miss if you’re lucky, but just like GTA, you take out the bad guy but the cops will get to you eventually. Doing your best sometimes just isn’t good enough. With all the emphasis on equating success with money, the youth today are being governed by the ideas of yesterday. We have the skills and the will to go beyond the imaginable, do things the way we see them. Now I’m not recruiting for a rebellious revolution, I’m talking about all those ideas we doodle about, all the innovations we dream about, all those secret plans we chalk out but never see through. Don’t be content with the ordinary because you really don’t have to ‘keep it simple’ silly. You think it, you do it.