To Be or Not To Be...

Working as a pilot is one of the most enjoyable professions out there. Or so I'm told. Admittedly my flying career is still waiting to take off. Its a work in progress that I’d like to think has a happy ending somewhere not too far into the future. But all this dilly dallying has got me thinking about what I’d do for a living if say one day i develop a fear of heights or i get banned from cockpits across the world for humming 'Final Countdown' very loudly every time we lined up for takeoff!

 My engineering degree seems like a relic from the past now. I'd like to think that i have a better than average understanding of how things work and I’m not allergic to large numbers. So I guess I’d enjoy designing aircraft or cars... or toasters. I could go back to college, finish my MBA and become a financial advisor. That would work. If people ever got around to trusting big banks with their hard earned money ever again! Or I could go into television. But then I'm told that my face is more suited for radio. But that doesn’t work because I’m pretty sure my voice isn’t top dollar material either.

This leaves me with just one thing to do. Write. I love writing. Maybe for a weekly magazine. I've read the best of what my country's top publications have to offer and apart from a few respected columnists the rest are just a bunch of narcissistic pre-schoolers droning on about their 'issues'. Their writing is just so wrong. I'd love a weekly column. I don’t really care if it’s in one of those flyers you see in the bus which people only ever use to wipe that nasty piece of gum from under their shoe. I'd write under a pseudonym. Something like 'The Marauder' or 'Private Eye'. Or 'Thor'. Then I can rant about anything under the sun without having to worry about a brick flying in through my window late at night with a threatening note attached to it.

Or maybe I could write news stories. Maybe even base them on actual facts though I hear that isn’t really a pre-requisite to write for a newspaper these days. Seriously. I don’t claim to be an expert on the universe but I was appalled at all the Grade A manure that filled front pages in the days following the Mangalore Air India crash. Its offensive, the amount of garbage the 'experts' and 'top level sources' can put out there.

But my dream writing job would be to work with one of the biggies in automobile journalism. My love for anything with four wheels is beyond expression really. If I was rich enough I wouldn’t even mind paying them to do their work. I would rate being a reputed automobile journalist right up there with fighter pilots and race car drivers as far as desirable jobs go.

Hmmm... Race car driver. Maybe if I lost a couple of dozen kilos and got in on Mr. Mallya's good side. There is some serious plotting to be done here....