Daily Times

Determining the ideal profession for yourself is almost as hard as finding a perfect spouse. Many times, the search for a life partner is underestimated in our culture. Just because height, weight, shape, complexion, teaching, accomplishments, pay grade and family tree of the tentative spousal applicants are readily available, in reality, the pursuit for both of them — occupation and spouse — is equally challenging. That is exactly why we leave these difficult tasks up to God’s will or our parents’ (His emissaries in the world) wishes to decide about our future prospects both at home and at work. This process works perfectly well because in this way we invariably find someone else to blame for our shortcomings.

Our parents, in their quest for the best option for us, on the other hand, adopt a standard yet prudent approach. They review the available data on the career decision-making theories (of their relatives) and get professional help (from friends and neighbours). Once they have narrowed down their choices from a broad range of professions to the last few, they ask their children, giving them the liberty to pick one without pressure, “My child, do you want to become a doctor or an engineer?” And their choices are always the same.

In my case, my father was seven when he approached my grandfather and declared, “When I have a son of my own I want him to become a doctor.” My grandfather smiled at his son and asked about the reason for his decision. “I don’t like to get sick and I don’t like to get a shot every time I go to the doctor’s clinic,” my father responded. Some 40 years later, it turned out that my dad was a very stubborn man.

Nevertheless, neither of these areas, engineering or medicine, which our parents typically pick for us, have good prospects in our country. They are research-based scientific fields, which do not match the requirements of our culture. Customarily, we prefer our young generation to make more ‘reasonable’ choices in their careers, which blend into the social structure instead of causing friction in it. They should, therefore, develop an intellect based on modern Sufism in which abstract ideas are favoured over hard evidence, or join the uniformed services — military or civilian — where obedience is a sacred virtue and supported over rationality. A scientific mind, which is neither obedient nor a supporter of abstract ideas, is therefore an oddball in our society. This hard reality dawns upon us after years of commitment to a profession when we step into the real world to find a job. After months of search, we look at our meagre salaries, offering much less than the tuition fees our parents had paid in universities. Underpaid and overworked, being in the scientific community, over time we find it difficult to survive respectably in our society.

This phenomenon is true regardless of our profession, from a mathematician to a physicist or from a physician to a pharmacist, where our expertise is deemed to be nonproductive in everyday life. A large number of quacks practising freely in every corner of the country is one example, but the pharmacies running without a licensed pharmacist has deeper repercussions in society, a practice that has essentially forced a whole profession to be ineffective. Avenues for professional growth have been closed; there is no serious research; no scientific studies; no publications, and therefore no reason to improve. We just age every day, grow gray hair, insist on seniority and lose half of the knowledge with time to be promoted to the next grade per schedule.

In these circumstances, the career choices of General Ayub Khan become ideal: a brave soldier dedicated to protect the country; an honourable commander who safeguarded the nation under attack, and a great president whose tenure brought an economic revolution in Pakistan (along with being the Chief Martial Law Administrator, which is not important to mention). As these attributes are admired by the nation and encouraged by society at large, qualities like scepticism and inquisitiveness are considered hindrances for personal and professional growth. They are later declared as demons misguiding people to rebel from the ‘established facts’.

Years ago, as a high school student, I also thought I had a choice to either become an ‘honourable man’ or choose a modern scientific career for myself. My preference was obviously for nobility, an easy straight-line approach. But my father had a dark agenda for his son that pulled me away from being respectable in the community. He wanted me to study day in and day out, take extra classes, top the boards, get the scholarships and as a reward be beaten up by the police. He used to dream about that day when after graduation, I would be roughened up in front of the whole world outside the college campus. My father’s vision, like the dream of Martin Luther King Jr, which has come true after the victory of Barack Obama, was fulfilled in Lahore just a few days ago when the Punjab police beat doctors indiscriminately. After looking at the brutality, my old man is happy, so proud that he wanted to join the hunger strike himself.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com