Being a 'Professional'

The word professional annoys me. It seems to me to be a synonym for success rather than profession. I know that it means to set a category, separate bums from the industrious lot, but I know bums who are industrious without making their industriousness a profession. Converse is also true because I know a lot of well meaning specialists who are, unfortunately, failures. They are 'professionals' but somehow their profession has not taken off despite their effort and expertise in the field.

Reminds me of a conversation between my late cousin and his father, my uncle:

My cousin was a metallurgist (somewhere around the 83-84 batch). He was brilliant, I have heard. He had done well academically, yet he had acquired certain terrible habits on the campus which later pushed him into deep schizophrenia. Eventually he died of an OD.

His father, worried about his son's straying and the imminent waste of his remarkable potential, said to him,

"Son, please realize that utility is the ultimate purpose of everything in nature in its highest sense. Gold", he added, "does not acquire its full worth unless it is crafted into an ornament." My cousin, brilliant wit that he was replied, "Baba", he said, " please realise that I am a metallurgist, not a gold smith. If you are suggesting that I am the gold in question in your analogy then moulding me into an ornament shouldn't be my problem unless  we assume, of course, that gold wills it's own ultimate point-of-worth-form!"

Needless to say that my uncle was speechless.

This conversation above may seem a shade off the mark, but I hope it is not. It brings home my point that the word 'professional' is more synonymous with success. My cousin was a professional, but he failed despite his capacities as a metallurgist. The reason for his failure may be one odd reason, that he became a slave of his drug habit but there are many other reasons why phenomenal potentials sometimes are ruined.

The so called 'professional' courses in India do not offer any crash course in social skills. I think it is important that we start having that in India. Application, whatever may be its area, has transcended its restricted locus and become global. Today anybody can be called a professional.