THE FAKE DEGREE

We are, forever searching for something in our lives. And tragedy begins when we actually find it. Yet search is integral to life and it can culminate both in joy as well as intrigue. Risk has to be taken and life has to be accepted as it unfolds, whether it is to our liking or not.Dev realized as a School boy that mainstream medicine was a farce. He studied medicine and became a Veterinary Doctor. Torn between precept and practice, he realized that farce is far more ubiquitous phenomenon in society than he had ever imagined. It is like all running in a direction simply because others were running in that direction, without knowing where to. There is an Urdu couplet which says: I had taken just one step in the direction my heart indicated, and for the rest of my life, my destiny searched hard for me. Do we reach our desired destination in our lifetime? Or we end up calling whatever we get, or reach to, as our destination, or destiny?Is education limited to getting diplomas and degrees irrespective of their relevance to evolving society? And that too by all means, fair or foul? Perhaps yes. This explains why cheating in examination is so rampant. That's why we have a market for fake degrees.When most things around us are fake, an occasional genuine is seen as threat. There was a community of the born-blind, so goes a story. A man with good eyesight walks into this community. He empathizes with community and wants to do something for it. But the community gangs up against him, declares his activities suspicious, calls him `blind'! The man gets a wind of it and runs away to save his life. Same is the case with Dev, the protagonist of this story, except that he doesn't run away. He stays put.