Born in Bahrain, approximately 3000 kilometers from my homeland, I spent the majority of my childhood craving for the feels of being back in India. I was home and yet, my home wasn’t where I wanted it to be. While this gave me the opportunity to interact with people with varying backgrounds, I always wanted to get in touch with my roots. I found respite by surrounding myself with Indian friends and watching mainly Indian television.
During the time I spent watching television, I saw many movies, serials and ads. Even the ads that I saw on tv during that time gave me immense happiness and joy in the fact that my country was developing and one day I’d be here using these amazing products. During this time, there were some key names that I’d keep hearing from time to time – The Aditya Birla Group, Idea, Vodafone, Ultratech Cement, Allen Solly, Peter England and Van Heusen. I had heard these names so many times that I knew that almost every person in India must have used some of these products at some point in their lives. And sure enough, I was right in making that assumption. In 2010, we built a brand new house in India. A dream house that we would settle in after my parents retired from their jobs. During the construction of this house I would spend all day with my father at the site. During this time I saw many products and brands coming and going, the paint, the wiring, the tiles but there was one product that remained almost till the end. I would see them bring in new bags of Ultratech Cement every once in a while and it would always be kept beside the house where all the construction materials were kept. I was so used to seeing these bags everyday that once the construction was finally complete and the bags were no longer there, I felt like something had gone missing.
I gradually got introduced to more and more of these brands as I joined college and my clothing sense changed. I started using Peter England and Van Heusen products regularly. Over the course of those four years, these products and brands became an integral part of my life and my personality. They’ve become such a large part of my life now that they’ve become part of my identity.
How I am Where I am
My parents, having come from the farming background, wanted to give me a future they didn’t have the opportunity to achieve. Because of this, when I was growing up, I gave my complete attention to academics. In fact, my mother had been telling me to pick the science stream once I’d be done with my 10th standard boards since I was 7 years old. As a result, their dreams gradually became my dreams and I made it my mission to live the life that my parents weren’t able to live and to also let them live that life. I scored well in my 10th boards and picked the science stream.
Here, I saw my first major opportunity to do something big by joining a premier institute for engineering after completing my 12th standard. But to do this, I’d need to prepare well for the entrance exams. Where I grew up, there were no coaching centres nearby that I could use to guide me and it was a norm to score well in our school and board exams. So I had to study for the entrance exams on my own in the night from guides and online study material, all while making sure that my school grades don’t slip. It seemed like a herculean task at the time and I developed dark circles around my eyes. I even spent all of my summer vacations studying 16 hours a day while my friends posted their vacation pictures on Facebook. But I kept pushing on and went through it one day at a time. All this effort paid off in the end as I managed to score 91.2% in my board exams and secure admission in the prestigious National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal in Mechanical Engineering.
I then spent four years in this college gaining a wide variety of knowledge and persevering to gain conceptual clarity in all the subjects. Our placement season was marred by a lack of companies offering jobs in the core sector and a batch of approximately 300 students were vying for just a handful of these jobs. The work I put into developing my knowledge base and my concepts over the last four years came in handy. I got into a reputed Business to Business company where I worked as production in-charge. During my time there, I gained invaluable knowledge and insight into the industry environment and the market requirements. I also realised that the industry needed better managers and I could increase my contribution and my value if I pursued an MBA. I practiced hard for the CAT test, day after day everyday after the tiring day at work. My hard work eventually paid off and I got admission in the reputed Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar in Business Management.
Now I’m studying hard and gaining knowledge to become a good manager, the kind the industry needs. Looking back at my journey, I can say that whatever I’ve achieved and where I’ve managed to come is due to the hard work that I could put in thanks to the dreams instilled in me by my parents. I will continue to do so till I achieve my goal of showing them the life that they always wanted to see but couldn’t, due to the shackles of poverty that caught hold of them during their youth.