Short Story: A Choice of Profession by Mrinmoyee Goswami

In this powerful tale, Mrinmoyee Goswami highlights the external factors that can impact the success of a child, especially in South Asian countries where astrology, blind-faith, and belief go hand-in-hand.

Whenever the schools closed, a group of schoolboys from the neighbourhood gathered in the street to play cricket. Their cheerful cheers echoed along the road as if to warn the residents that their holidays had started. Struck inside the house without studies and homework, their idleness always innovating new ways of mischief, the mothers are only too happy to thrust them out of the house. To the neighbours, it means an end to the afternoons of rest and naps. 

The boys, rife with enthusiasm, engaged in miscellaneous pranks. Often, they stripped the fruit trees bare. When their cricket ball fell into someone’s compound, they jumped off the fence, not bothering to look if they were stepping into a flower bed, trampling it unapologetically.