Maybe it was the constant nudging from the friends and family.
Maybe it was the immense sense of satisfaction I’d get every time I finished a project.
Maybe it was the exclusivity of the field itself.
From early 2018 to mid 2019, I was dead set in my ‘choice’ that I was going to do a course in design, most likely in India, for college. That twelve month period was an aberration, in which the vague term ‘design’ took the esteemed title of what fascinated me the most, in place of my usual Maths and Physics. But every time I would think ‘I love design’, or ‘I can’t wait to do my UG in design’, there was always a degree of doubt. I was never fully convinced, and I hoped saying it more would affix it in my mind. All that changed in Ahmedabad, where I was attending a crash course aimed at helping me prepare for the NID’s(one of India’s premier design institute) Design Aptitude Test.
The first thing that struck me about the city was the heat. Auto rides in the sweltering 45°C afternoons felt like driving through a heater, but the air was so dry that I didn’t break a sweat. All over the city, I spotted pigeon feeders, or ‘Chabutro’ (ચબુતરો) in Gujarati, which were stocked with water and seeds regularly by the city-dwellers themselves; after enquiring about this, I learnt that for centuries, these ‘Chabutros’ have been a quintessential part of Ahmedabad’s cityscape, as some locals consider pigeons sacred, while most do it out of goodwill. The city is also a vegetarian’s paradise, as more than 60% of the populace does not eat meat, one of the highest concentrations of vegetarians in the world. I could keep writing about the city, but that isn’t the purpose of this post.
Once the program started I’d spend 3-6 hours there everyday, covering a range of exercises to hone skills that I would need for the entrance exam. I read books, practiced drawing and went through question banks, but I did all this mechanically, under the impression that it would get better soon. I had the chance to speak with a former Dean of NID and the first question I asked him was if the courses for design in India were ‘technical’. To my dismay, I found out that most courses were simply extensions of what I was already preparing for.
I had taken with me to Ahmedabad a science fiction trilogy, The Three Body Problem written by Cixin Liu, to read in my free time. The series revolves around humanity in the present and the future and how it deals with an extraterrestrial threat from the nearest star system. As I read the Hugo Award winning novel which also takes up many concepts and problems from Astrophysics and Cosmology, I slowly realised that I wasn’t cut out for design, that it was the Sciences that had always been my calling.
This made sense, for as long as I could remember, I would watch documentaries on National Geographic and Discovery, read encyclopaedias about space and try to figure out for myself the causes of phenomena around me that I hadn’t yet learnt about in school or read in a book.
Now, I feel generally optimistic about the new college admission process that I have embarked on, which is the focus of my life for the next year and a half, and I am more excited about the future than ever before, as I know I will be doing something in the field I love. It’s ironic that the month I spent to get clarity about design sent me the other way, but I couldn’t be more grateful for it.
-Ishaan Mishra
Khaki Jungle 