The cursed T-junction

Ever since I quit my last job with the Mumbai Mirror Jan-end this year, I have mainly been on a cross-country drive. Mumbai-Bangalore and other delightful parts of southern India. In my experience, there is nothing better than a drive by the country to help untangle the messed up mind, to see things a bit more clearly and to chart out a new direction in life. And as any long drive traveller would tell you, there’s nothing more upsetting than to run into an unmarked T-junction along the highway, with one of those restless trailers honking rabidly inches behind your frightened back.

Well, thankfully, I didn’t face many such horrid Ts on the yatra, but am at crossroads in my rather fledgling, directionless career. While there’s no furious lorry on my tail, the angry bills certainly are, and as I head back to base in Bombay later this week, I need to decide which way to turn the damn wheel.

As I see it, I have two roads ahead. One, I forget all that I have done in the last few years in mass journalism, and retrace my steps back to advertising journalism, with which I began my career as a journo. This should not be too difficult as there are many opportunities in this field today, yes, even for crank heads like yours truly. But choosing this road will obliterate all the passion I still possess for doing my bit for the nation, for using communication as a tool to making a difference, however small… the reason I drifted into mass journalism in the first place.

The other road, of course, is sticking to the mainline stuff. The problem here is that while there is a way, there are far too many steep hurdles and axel smashing potholes lining the path. There are very few takers (in fact, none at all) in the Indian media for my kind of brutal, knock-out, mind-effed style, and after a few large pegs, I rationalise that by claiming to be ahead of my time, hic! The truth, of course, could be that the Indian media is running way behind sced, hehe. However, I could still hang in there, freelance a bit, do entertainment assignments, sell my soul doing the odd commercial stuff, and probably I could make by for a while. And then it’s a matter of luck too; I could end up with a trusting, ballsy proprietor, as Vinod Mehta of Outlook managed to do, and have a periodical of my own someday when the nation is ready for the hard stuff. But I readily concede that might never happen, and this turn could lead me to a career dead-end.

So then why am I boring you with my confusions with road maps? I guess because I’m secretly hoping one of you readers will play road marker for me. And also because I am sure all of you at some point do face such T-junctions in life, so I guess on some level you will identify with my predicament.

So you think, while I go stock up on the beers. Cheers!