Passion

            Shantanu Pai

I was eight when, in a science class, my teacher mentioned that firecrackers contribute to 70% of the country’s pollution problems and children younger than us, in small-scale industries in India, manufacture these. That year, I took a stand to never burst firecrackers. With a strong conviction, I was even able to motivate children in the neighborhood to stop bursting crackers and make our tiny contribution to save our environment. This seems, in retrospect, my first campaign. With time the campaigns have become bigger but the motive still stays the same and the aftertaste of making a difference just gets better.  

As I have mentally matured, my appetite for things to campaign for and elicit strong composition towards has increased. It has taken me a while to completely rationalize my true desires. I have planned, and participated in a battery of campaigns. I have believed in every one of them. I have rarely abandoned my support from these campaigns.  I have read and understood their complications; brewed those learning in the back of my head and articulated suggestions for these campaigned problems; some radical and most fairly rational. These strong urges to represent, I believed were initially emotionally motivated, but over time it has been clear that I my passion lies more in solving the problem than being passionate to the ones that suffer.   I was, and by no means am I justifying it, a rebel. I might even be a recovering activist. But I believed there was not an articulable term for my passion, or purpose.     

I remember a school councilor telling me that “I was a rebel without a cause”. This statement on my character has stayed; I detested it to begin with, for I am not a ‘cliché-able’ entity. And more specifically I thought that I had a cause, as does every living thing. On most days this cause articulated in the realm of the environment and concepts regarding its preservation and advocacy. Some other days this cause or purpose dwelled in human rights, poverty remediation and other social causes.

My councilor would have said this scratchy amateur soul searching is a cited teenage phase. I can say today, it wasn’t. My true passions lie in the sphere of injustice and common sense. It does not lie in one field of academia or profession. It thrives in chaos. It belongs on the scenes, not behind a desk. Passions that are created are tangible, passions that appear are mystic (in a very non pop culture way).

After switching three majors and a variety of wonder idea moments, I have come to terms with my passion. Not just my passion but its dynamic nature and intangible appeal. What I can do with this passion or how society can benefit from this passion is a territory still left unexplored.