All the things I’ve wanted to be

 [originally written on July 22, 2025]

My recent train journey, a part of which has been documented in my previous post, brought back a lot of memories.
Travelling with my parents and brother, eating homemade food, the anticipation of meeting my maternal grandparents and cousins on my mother’s side and not having to use so much sanitiser (COVID screwed my brain) etc. In fact, none at all. My grandparents' home was my happy place. It remained so until they moved closer to a city/town due to grandpa’s health issues. I only have happy memories of that place, and whenever I search for it on Google Maps and browse over its current state with the street view option, I can’t help but feel sad about its current state. Nobody lives there anymore, but anyone who’d visited that place when all of us used to be there would tell you about the happy times that place was a witness to. One day, if life permits, I would like to retire in such a place. 

Another funny memory about train travel was my fascination with the life of the attendant. That man was responsible for handing out clean linen, bedsheets and towels and then collecting them whenever someone new boarded the train. He was also the person who’d be asked by the 70-odd people travelling in one bogie/compartment to repeatedly fiddle with the AC temperature. Some would want the compartment completely chilled, while others would like it relatively warm. Poor fellow never had a moment of rest while responding to such requests.

However, the attendant’s life always surprised me, and I was fascinated by the nature of their work. Naturally, for a child, fascination with any profession leads to them choosing that as their future career. And I was no stranger to this emotion. So, during one such travel, while I sat between my parents, who were serving lunch to me and my brother on paper plates, and also sharing some with our co-passengers, I was asked a question by a middle-aged uncle sitting in front of me.
Now, one thing you must note is that in India, a middle-aged uncle who is particularly fond of loud burps and listening to scandalous bits of media with his phone’s volume turned to maximum is a ubiquitous scene in trains, buses, metros, etc. They make their presence felt in all modes of public transport and are curious by nature about the careers and political views of anyone travelling with them.

One, belonging to this species, asked me what I wanted to do with my life.
Without thinking much, as I was too focused on finishing the chips packet I had in my hands, I muttered the words ‘Train Coach Attendant’. This probably threw the Uncle off guard, as he didn’t ask any further questions and went back to heated political discussions with another passenger. How could he respond to that? He probably expected me to say doctor, engineer or a bureaucrat or something similar. And to that, he would've boasted about how his sister’s brother-in-law’s uncle’s daughter’s son is studying at an IIT and that I need to work hard. I probably stole his thunder by saying something so ‘low-class’. Anyways, good riddance, I thought. My brother was giggling through this entire thing.

But from the corner of my eye, I had noticed my parents staring at me. My mother had stopped counting the pooris in the casserole, with a smile that she failed to hide, and my father, too, had a slight smile. What followed was a 15-minute lesson on how difficult their lives were and how people never treated the attendants with any respect. To my point that I would get to travel all the time on trains, I was told that I could travel without becoming an attendant. This was my short tryst with being a train attendant.
Quite honestly, my parents were right. In a country like ours, where labour isn’t treated with adequate respect, jobs like that never have happy workers. Plus, I loved science a tad too much to leave it for anything else.

Another thing that I still maintain that I’ll become one day is a milkman and own a dairy farm.
Why? Well, because I like milk, curd, cheese, butter and everything associated with milk. I also plan to open a shop that sells Bengali sweets so that I can have them whenever I wish. This could a profession I take up in preparation for my retirement.

Finally, one that cracked up my entire family. Once, I was crying over something my mother said(okay, I was in my teens and boys do cry at times), and my father and brother decided that they would tease me over it while I was still wiping my tears. Over the course of the conversation, when I was told that scientists don’t cry because what if tears fall into their apparatus, I told the 3 of them- ‘I won’t become a scientist. I will become a thinker.’ They paused for a moment and asked me, ‘What do you mean?’. I told them, in all innocence, that I would sit and think! You should have seen the laughter that followed as my mother, unable to control her laugh, gave me a hug.

There were more things I wanted to be and still do. All from simple innocence, I guess. Some of them are a dairy farmer and shop owner, a sweet shop owner and a writer.  

Tell me, dear reader, what quirky profession did you choose as a kid?

Waiting for your comments.

Thanks for dropping by!

Best.

P.S. Don’t hesitate to point out grammatical or typographical errors.