'I Want To Be A Doctor': Was A Generation Of Kashmiris Misled Into Careers?

“I want to be a doctor because I want to serve poor people.”

These words have followed me through every year of my life, living in school notebooks and examination halls, written in the careful handwriting of children who have yet to face hardship and discover what it truly means to serve.

Teachers smile at them, examiners reward them, and society nods, as if these words carry meaning on their own.

Each time I hear them, expectation presses down, because these words come from repetition rather than thought.

When I was in class six, I was asked what I wanted to become. I was reading about Kalpana Chawla, and for a while I wanted to be an astronaut.

I loved the idea that a human mind could leave the earth and look back at the world from above, free and unbound.

But when the exam paper lay in front of me, I did not write that. I wrote what would be accepted.

I wrote that I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to serve poor people. The words were neat, and they earned me good marks.

But no one asked whether this was the life I truly wished for, and nobody bothered to ask what I felt inside.

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