I come from an Odia family which has festivals galore all-round the year like Jeshta Purnami, Kumar Purnami, Akshaya Tritiya, Rath Yatra etc apart from the existing Hindu ones. On one such Kumar Purnami in 1999, when my uncle was getting married, my grandparents bought my father and his siblings Peter England formal shirts. And thus began a new trend in our family: gifting each other shirts whenever there is a family occasion over a festival. As of today, my father himself has his favourite Peter England product, size 44 Nuvo fit, Full Shirt,White. This has been a family tradition for a long time now. As a kid I always used to think that there was no need for the members of the family to do this every year when we meet each other over festivals. Especially when people have different tastes and sometimes the people you gift may or may not like the clothes, we pick out for them. It was only recently, after 6 years of my grandfather’s demise, I realised that over a period of time, how one brand had kept us all together. We had developed a bond with the brand which was difficult to explain and yet so simple. In December of 2018, when we decided to part ways with his old clothes and all we could find were Peter England shirts to donate gifted to him by his sons. This small gesture and routine introduced by my grandparents is what kept the family together in rocky times. There have been marriages, thread ceremonies, chicken roll, matches, fights and so much more attached to these shirts and the road journeys that led upto to the purchase of the shirts. I am the oldest cousin and I used to tell my younger cousins that I am so well versed with the Kalamandir store in Bhubaneshwar, having the Peter England shirts, that I know the nook and corners of that shop by hear.t If we do not meet each other personally, for a long time, my grandmother, who turned 80 recently, goes out and gets my cousins and I, Peter England shirts. She believes in the brand’s authencity and the family looks forward to continuing this tradition for a long long time. It round the time of my grandfather’s passing away, that I decided to become an engineer. Being an undergraduate and then a post graduate student from BITS PILANI, Hyderabad Campus, More retail was a part and parcel of my life for all the 6 years I stayed there. Not once did I ever order any food items / groceries online. Their quality almonds and amazing range of products kept me full all the time. The store representatives knew by name by the time I graduated. The few times if they were out of stock for any product, they would be extremely polite and tell me that before such and such date, the product I was looking for would come up. Such is the customer service. The people at More are among the best customer service people I have ever come across. So much so that the day I moved into IIFT Delhi for my MBA, that is among the first things I searched for. There is this trust that I have developed with the chain and it is has been an amazing bond to share so far.
A sustainable society is one that can continue indefinitely. Its level of consumption should reflect environmental and resource balance. It should assure its citizens equality, freedom and a healthy standard of living. A sustainable society further focuses on the current and future well-being of its citizens and the environment. This is what I aspire towards. It all began when I was made the Head mentor of the student mentorship program during my undergraduate studies at BITS Pilani. This made me realise that I have strengths that can not only help me but also be of assistance to other people as well. I still indulge in helping out students who do not know what the first step is when it comes to shifting careers and pursuing what they really want. But about the time I began the second phase of my career, my master’s studies, my mother suffered from a horrible slip disc injury. This was right after my maternal grandfather had passed away. So for my parents and me, there was no time to even emotionally recuperate properly. My mother was put on compete bed rest for a long time. But the pain was excruciating, and my father and I felt helpless. All my plans and the routes I was supposed to take to start on my goal, came crashing down. It all came to a stage where the doctors, both in India and the ones we consulted abroad, said that we need to take a decision whether we allow them to operate on her but this came with a life threatening risk. This operation needed pre and post care and my academics was at stake since I was to be with her for a long time, It was decided we shall not take the risk and I took responsibility for coming up with a chart to carve out schedules so that we can take proper care for her. I was not able to attend any classes and gave my exams, by studying as much as I could while traveling, and still managed to ace them all. Today, my mom’s better and doing chores as much as she can. Though I am a person who has missed out on some good career opportunities because of really small margins of 0.0001, not once, not twice, but five times, that still has not deterred me from contributing towards the society and work towards my goal. I have a long-term goal of being part of a sustainable society and I look forward to using the knowledge I have gained from my background in chemical engineering and put it to good use. Going forward we need to be ensuring that each step that people take from now on, is not only a step for themselves, but a step for humanity. We need to be the best version of ourselves and take everyone forward together.