Aswin Sundharam

“Imagine a small child who loves painting. He or she spends hours drawing things that make no sense to anyone else but touches them. He wants to become an artist. People smile and say, "Very nice, follow your passion." and things like that. The child grows older. Suddenly, the same society asks, "But what will you do for a living?" You know, there's a funny thing. When I was a musician before performing musical stuff and things like that, when relatives used to ask me, "What are you doing?" I used to say, "I'm a musician." And they used to be like, "Oh, I see. So what do you do for a living?" I was like, "What?" Are you seeing what I'm seeing? We are told that we must have art and passion in our life. But the moment we have art and passion as life, society looks at us and is like, dude, some nut has fallen. You have to tighten it. That's what society says right now. The passion needs a salary. The dream needs a business plan. So, the child who was encouraged to be himself discovers that being himself has become economically inconvenient. What a society we are all living in.”

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