PART A:
Cut back to 2012, I was a 17-year-old boy bracing up for my school farewell. As a teenage boy of that age, you want to look the best on what is supposed to be your last day of school life. I was no different. Everyone in my group of friends was excited about the opportunity to dress up like men for the first time in our lives but there was one huge problem, what should we wear?
The process was very long and unfruitful. I went to a lot of shops, branded and the local stores but couldn’t find any thing that would fit the occasion. You know you like a piece of clothing as soon as you see it and I couldn’t just find that. That all changed once I walked into a Peter England store. The moment I saw a light blue shirt with a black blazer out for display, I decided that that’s the piece of clothing I was looking for. It fit me perfectly, looked great and was everything I was looking for.
Cut to the farewell day, I was awarded the best dressed guy on that day. My love affair with Aditya Birla Group and Peter England just started and would never end. Since then, every piece of clothing I have needed for any grand occasion, has been bought from Peter England. This includes buying shirts and suits for weddings, interviews and what not. As the tagline of Peter England says, “Beginning of Good Things”. It was only the beginning and the love affair is still on.
Another incident which bought me close the ABG happened when I visited Nathula Pass in Sikkim in January 2016. We were a bunch of 4 guys who just reached that magnanimous location and were grasping for breath. Although photography was not allowed there, since it was the Indo-China border there and high security personnel were deployed, we still managed to click one picture with persistent requests. It’s the kind of moment you live for. We wanted to send it to our parents as soon as possible and neither of my friends got a network from their telecom provider there. It was me who had an Idea Cellular sim card that had a visible 2g network and that bought me so much happiness. I quickly sent the picture to my parents and that moment still gives me immense happiness.
PART B:
I was fresh out of an Engineering College and like most people in the country, I just crawled through my 4 years there. It was my fault; I underestimated the power of knowledge and was very negligent.
Anyway, I landed a job in a big MNC- Accenture where I was expected to develop the User Interface for our client. Such high expectations, I wondered. I was assigned to train under a senior colleague who would teach me the nuances of software development and coding and would apparently ease me into the job.
The colleague was very nice and polite and he understood that I messed up college and needed to start fresh. I was determined to do so. Everything was going well, I was getting to learn how it is to work in a corporate, taking small steps every day and I thought that “Damn, I could do this”. Just as I thought this, my senior colleague was diagnosed with Typhoid. He had to go on leave indefinitely. The only other UI (User Interface) developers in our team were me and a guy who joined a week later than me. That made me the senior-most UI developer in the team and accountable for everything.
Soon enough, the new client demands came and they expected our team to develop a complex functionality within a week. I had never felt pressure like this before. This was my first job. My manager is on my head. He wants work to be done. I am accountable. I don’t want to be fired. But I don’t know how to do my job as well. All these things were going in my mind. At times like these, you either adapt or perish.
I put all the time in, all the effort it that I could to make sure that I delivered what was expected of me. I did not give in to the situation, rather I made the situation give in to me.
And a few days later I got this,
I still cherish this.This was the moment from which I started believing in myself. I have faith now that I could take on any challenge head on and succeed.
