When I told my parents about my new job, the first question they asked was obviously how much I get paid. If I weren’t a bozo I’d have told them the real number and gone fishing for some approval. But I was under the investigation called “arranged marriage,” where the “number” matters more than the human attached to it, and I knew whatever I said wouldn’t stay a number, it would go straight onto my “profile” and become the measure of my worth in this open market. So I gave them one, knowing exactly where it would land.
They heard it and asked why only x and not 4x, because Sharma ji ka beta is already pulling 5x at my age. Not to ridicule me, but to make me wonder whether I’m a lazy dog coasting under my potential, or whether I’ll end up poor. That fear runs through every parent’s head, I think. They just never dare to admit it, so it comes out as a comparison instead.
A part of me sank. The anxiety didn’t arrive as an argument, it arrived as telepathy, straight into the chest, asking whether I really am lazy and wasting whatever I was given. I’ve struggled with that one for a while. Then I started to defend the position.
The obvious villain was Sharma ji ka beta. Engineering from an elite school, then straight into a financial firm, minting, already married, apparently a happier life. But in my eyes Sharma ji ka beta is a threat to human evolution, the lowest form of mutation, someone so selfish that he learned how to build things and then chose to do nothing with it but make money. I was about to write a whole note in my journal about how I’m not selfish like him, how he is one stupid pig with brains.
Then I realised I can’t change Sharma ji ka beta, I can only change my opinion of him. Maybe he earns because he “needs” to, maybe he needs the Ferrari to get to work, maybe he’s a good husband and a soon to be good father trying to give his family every good thing. In which case the selfish one here is me, the one who picked a field that pays far less and is far more interesting than working for a fucking marketing agency. The rage was never about my parents. It was my own insecurity, projected onto them and thrown back at me. Why can’t they see something this obvious, that not every job pays the same, and the highest paying ones are rarely the most exciting?
The number I gave them was a lie anyway. Half of what I actually make. I shrank it on purpose so they wouldn’t think I’m capable, because I’m easy to mistake for capable, and I didn’t want the responsibility that comes attached to it. Besides, if a girl is going to measure me on my salary, I’d rather hand her the address and tell her to marry Sharma ji ka beta instead. Having switched fields more times than I can defend, bored at every desk within months, I’d quietly filed myself as subhuman next to Sharma ji ka beta, because he chose one thing, followed it to the end, and became a more finished person.
So I opened my laptop today, proud of what I’d built this week, excited to show the founder. And the telepathic anxiety leaned in with its oldest question, is this even worth it. Not the job. The existence. Because what I’m doing makes no sense even to me, take away the “excitement” and there’s no rational motive left standing. I regretted not being Sharma ji ka beta, and that is exactly when I found a bug in the code.
For the first five minutes the voice was merciless. Sharma ji ka beta would never have made this mistake, he would never have been grinding on this. And then the same sentence finished itself differently. Sharma ji ka beta would never have been grinding on this. He was never going to be here at all. There is no ladder with him standing above me, he is part of a market I don’t sell my clothes in. But also I’m not some morally rational to be not selfish about it.