[sunny_s]

I thought as much. But being the perfectionist that he is, Aamir Khan(Rancho), the lead actor has ensured that nothing seems fake or too unreal, for example the scene where he carries out the delivery of a new-born with help from a surgeon over webcam is quite well shot. When he's told that a vacuum pump will be required to get the baby out safely, he uses a vacuum cleaner, controls it's pressure by mounting a pressure gauge in between and uses his photographer friend's equipment cleaning nozzle as the tip of the pump. I thought it was a brilliant hack. The lead character is as close to a hacker as it can get, and best of all he's not called a hacker even once in the film, it is not a poor stereotype you see in hollywood films. My guess is that the director just made the character to suit his film but by mere accident he's managed to get a very good portrayal of a hacker.

After I watched the movie, I could relate so much to Rancho, except for he always complained about the education system, but still stuck on and also topped his class whereas I chose to drop out. Engineering colleges in India are very much like a rat race. My neighbour took an year off after high school just to prepare for cracking the IIT entrance exam. He didn't manage, and is now on the verge of completing his engineering degree from an above average college. I just met him yesterday almost after 2 yrs. and he told me that while he's managed to get this far, he has no clue of what he wants to do with his life, he said he always did what all his peers were doing, what his seniors said he should be doing, without having interest in any of it. And now he's stuck. He doesn't whether to get a job or do an MBA. Now I see him preparing for entrance exams for B-schools just the way he did for IIT's 5 years back. He's finished one rat race and about to get into another one!

OTOH, I enrolled in distance learning program after I dropped out of engineering and spend most of my time self learning and experimenting. I know what I wanna do with my life and am not confused.

But there is a social stigma at play here, my parents never know what to tell friends and family about what their son is doing, whereas my friend is a "well-educated, hard-working engineer" in the eyes of everybody who has done his parents proud.

[Arun2009]

> But there is a social stigma at play here, my parents never know what to tell friends and family about what their son is doing

LOL, I can totally relate to this! About 6 months ago I walked away from a fairly cushy job to try striking it out on my own. I don't intend to go back into the corporat culture ever again. My parents are too embarrassed to tell others that their scholarship winning, academic hotshot of a son is now "jobless" :-)

A very nice side effect was that the pressure to get married stopped. BTW, can you even imagine what this pressure must be like for the women.

[abhiyerra]

This attitude is not even only in India, but also seeps into the Indian culture in America. I dropped out of engineering and pursued History. I really love computers and programming, but I sort of lost interest in studying it at the university as it was just a rat race.

After a semester of exploring random classes I decided that I wanted to do History. It wasn't an easy choice by any means. Previous to this exploration I was really trying to focus on doing well in engineering, but I was constantly fighting myself. I would say that was one of the worst periods of my life. I was doing something which I felt I was obliged to not because I truly enjoyed it.

I talked to my parents and they were open with me changing my majors. I think that was my biggest fear, what my parents would think. When they accepted my change of major that was big relief for me. However, when I told my relatives (here in the states) they had quite a shock.

I must say changing to history was one of the best things I have done. I love studying it as opposed to drudging it. The wonderful thing is that I supplement history with classes from the linguistics, psychology, and economics departments. Further, since I am concentrating on Indian history whenever I talk with Indians (from India) more often than not I know much more about India than them.

This rote learning is why India has not produced an Apple or Google! That's not to say there aren't brilliant engineers in India, there definitely are! But family and friends in India see outside the box thinking as unusual. When I visited India over the summer and told people I studied History they did not comprehend what that meant. The choices were: business, doctor, or engineer.

[hardik]

So what are you doing now?