The Devil Does wear Prada

How many of us pass through life without ever realising our dreams, most of the time without even having a dream. In this context, I can’t but help telling you about the latest movie I saw – “The Devil Wears Prada”. It was a great movie. With Meryl Streep in it – it couldn’t be anything else. But this is not a movie review - I didn’t like the movie only for its actors or its comic sense or for the fact that I had to pay a lot lesser to see the movie that I thought I would have to. I liked it because it got me thinking about my life. This is not a movie about a person from a poor family or some one who is disabled fighting against all odds and becoming someone. This is about common people – people like me.

The story is about Andrea, a bright young girl who refused a seat at Stanford Law for a career in journalism about which she was passionate. She has absolutely no sense of fashion or style. She is desperately looking for a break in journalism and takes the first offer which comes her way. She becomes an assistant to the editor of the “Runway” which is a movie substitute for something like “Vogue”, the absolute wrong job for someone with a pathetic sense of fashion. Her job entails a good salary, meeting a lot of famous people, going to Paris – generally a façade of glamour. But her actual job is fetching the coffee, making the appointments, doing homework for the Boss’s twins…a far cry from the serious journalist she wanted to become. She whines her way through the first few days of her job because her Boss terrorises her, her heart is not in her job and most importantly, she does not respect the work, simply because she does not think that fashion is as important to the state of affairs of the world as maybe hunger, politics and terrorism. When she realises that she is actually capable of more, she plunges head on to meet the challenge – even though it was never her challenge to begin with. By the time she gets good at her job, which is in less than a year, she has stepped on people on the way to success, lost her friends and cheated on her boyfriend. Her life is good, in the eyes of the bystander but she hates it. Its just not her life and she decides to change it.

Most things in the story are true with most peoples lives. It’s the last sentence that most people don’t follow through with. Its such a simple sentence and still so tough a concept that to practically implement it is by far the toughest thing that most people have to do in their lives.

In the movie, Andrea has one standard line for all the problems in her life “I didn’t have a choice” – till her Boss reminds her that she indeed did have a choice and all her choices gave her the life she currently was leading.

Maybe that is the one thing that most people don’t realise… or, let us give more credit to human intelligence – they realise it but they do not want to accept it. You do have a choice (about everything except maybe death) and your life is a consequence of all the choices you have made.

I am like Andrea – albeit for a small detail – she had the guts in the end to follow her dream – more importantly she had a dream.

I took the 1st job that came my way without thinking too much because I wanted the money. And since then that’s all that its been about – the money. I spent 2 years of my life in a organization which did not respect the profession of audit the way it should be respected. But even in such situations I have seen people with passion, people who believe in what they do, people who put their hearts into what they do. Such people not only survive but they enjoy what they do. My Boss (like Meryl Streep in the movie) was one such person. I can draw exact parallels between Andrea’s life and mine. The only difference being that by the time I got good at what I was doing I left the job for a higher paying one (simple reason being that I didn't have a boyfriend to cheat on and I didn't reach any pinnacle of success, so there was no one I could have stepped on the way). I chose to do that. I had another choice – take a job that I was really interested in and which would allow me to be with my family – the only drawback being that it didn’t pay as well. Now I am in a foreign land – far away from home and family. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing here. I honestly don’t know what I do and more importantly why I do it. In my limited view “I do what I do the way I do only for money”.

I could have chosen to do something that I enjoy and something that would have made me proud of myself. But instead I chose something that pays me well, gives me a good life style but deprives me of life itself. In the end your life is all about the choices you make and more often than not you do have a choice.