Happy shiny person.

I think I was 4 when I first thought of doing something when I grew up. I told my parents I wanted to be a mermaid. Only to be told that mermaids didn't exist.

Then, like all good Indian kids, although I never did grow up on Swat Kats or Jonny Quest, I thought medicine. And I thought medicine was it. First it was cardiology (yes, I honestly knew all those big words), for a very embarrassing reason. Then it was Psychiatry, because I passed by NIMHANS once and it seemed like a pretty cool place to walk down the corridors of. Next was Neurology, followed by Dermatology (Dr Atulaa MD, Dermatologist; sounds mighty cool, non?) and Oncology.

Soon after, I heard of the term 'genetic engineering'. Genetic. Engineering. Something no one my age knew of. And latter half of which everybody seemed to want to do, and were impressed by. I'd dream of creating 'designer babies' (Oh, the horror.) and worse, tell people about it. And winning the Nobel Prize for setting new precedents in Bio-informatics was part of the agenda too, yes.

Before you try to imagine the kind of brat that was 11 yr old me, I'll stop. Long story short, I thought Bio was my thing. Plus, thanks to my very vocal dreaming, so did my parents. A minor application of Sod's law and a few years later, I found that I wouldn't spend any more time with the sciences even if I was paid. No sir. Not me. Good riddance. Khattam shud.

I knew it. And if Science had a voice, I'm sure it would tell you as much. The challenge was getting my parents to agree. I remember that it was hard, but I honestly don't know how I did it. All I will tell you is that an e-mail was involved. An e-mail with lists and tabulations. An e-mail with data. The objective of that e-mail was to tell my parents, and on some level to show myself, that if I was doing anything in college, it would have to be law.

I won't go into too much detail over what happened in the last two years, mostly because not much did; you are free to picture me studying hard for the law entrances throughout, chugging away like a little steam engine, preferably to 'It's my Life' in the background (HA!). But you should know that there was confusion, there was annoyance, there were periods of self-doubt, LONG periods of lethargy. Hmm.

After ALL of which, I'm now in college. I'm in law school. The dream has become a reality and all that jazz.

I'm Atulaa Krishnamurthy,
I BA LLB (Hons.)
National Law School of India University.

And I'm a happy shiny person.

PS- Yes, this whole post was an excuse for me to say that.