"An IDEA can change your life." This line, this particular line can be a mere sentence in someone’s life but for me it is something that made me who I am now.
It all started with an incident that happened with me back in 2011. I got admission into a prestigious government engineering institute at Indore. My father decided to put me in boys hostel even though my mother and I were reluctant about it. The hostel had fewer seats than the overall strength of the college. So, when I entered the hostel, the infrastructure was on the blink, hygiene was still a farfetched dream lest the more surprising thing was the image of people residing in those hostels. We were thought of as anti-social, people without talent and low on morals. These prejudices were imposed on us because of the history attached to those hostels. We faced backlashes while trying to socialize, were pulled down during public speeches and moreover to interact with people except for those living in hostels was as easy as Everest's summit.
I was going through a depressing phase. After college hours I used to keep myself enclosed in my room, browse web, talk to my internet friends and watch videos over YouTube. Meanwhile, all I could think about was to quit the college and take a fresh start somewhere else. One day while I was searching for “successful dropouts” on YouTube my eyes got stuck on an advertisement.
An advertisement of the mobile network “IDEA” featuring actor Abhishek Bachchan where he portrays a teacher who was unable to reach out to kids residing in rural areas. The advertisement later showed how he used IDEA’s network coverage in rural areas to educate them and then came the punch line, a line that shook my entire world and it was “An IDEA can change your life.” Something pinched me from the inside. Am I being a coward, I asked myself? Is this the kind of value system my parents have brought me up with? No, said my inner voice. So, right then and there I decided that I am not going to run away and am going to find a solution.
As I was looking for a solution, I got to know about “AAYAM”, our college’s hyped annual fest where everyone was taking a part in something or the other. I decided to use this opportunity for hostel's advantage, did all the hard work, prepared a dance, somehow got in touch with the cultural committee, showed them what we had in store and ended up convincing them that if given a chance, we, the people from boys hostel can give them the best group dance performance of the upcoming cultural night. They agreed on the pretext that we have to prepare and show them the performance at least five days in advance. This part was the easiest, the toughest was to convince my fellow hostel mates for a DANCE PERFORMANCE. Well, why specifically a dance, do you ask? Because while obsessively searching on YouTube for the kind of performance we could do, I got hold of a dance form where you have to keep a straight face, take a fixed position and dance on the lyrics of some old classic Bollywood songs in a funny way. It was entirely a new concept back then and since we had a little time to prepare, it was our best shot. Somehow I knew a few more dejected hostel-mates who were looking for an opportunity and when I shared my idea, they bluntly rejected it with a NO. But then, I had to persuade them and even had to perform it in front of them. It somehow managed to crack them up and that’s how they gave in.
The performance relied heavily on synchronization and we did extremely well. After we were done with our performance we got called out by our college’s director and were made to sit with him for an interview with a news channel. Our performance is till date the college’s most viewed performance on YouTube and their official Facebook handle. We got approached for selfies by strangers and the best part was that there was a slot fixed for boys hostel every year that followed.
That’s how I changed my perception of running away from problems. We as a team changed the tarnished image of boys hostel and that’s how an IDEA helped us change lives of many hostelers that came after us.