In the journey of life, you may never know what your next destination is but the journey must begin with a single step. A step which turns the invisible into visible. Such is my journey with Aditya Birla Group.
When I entered this world, unknowingly products became a part of my life journey. Your new beginnings are remembered by them. One quality common between a mother and a product is their care and loyalty. My mother used to prepare my lunch early in the morning and covered it in a freshwrapp to keep it hot whenever I had it as if she had just served it to me. Nobody in the house said that we need aluminium foil, it was substituted by the word ‘Freshwrapp’. Later in our life, my father wanted to fulfil his dream of building his own house for the family. Every decision from a brick to furniture was close to his heart. During such times one only remembers the people and products who stayed loyal to them. Without a second thought ‘Ultratech’ cement was his choice (though he wasn’t an engineer :P) and stayed committed to it. Without commitment you cannot have depth in anything and that’s precisely our relation with Vodafone. We are known as the ‘Vodafone’ family. It has connected us to the world and in later years of my life, helps me stay connected to my family. This was the year of pride and nervousness, when the hardwork paid off but the real journey was about to begin – MBA. A change in my life and my lifestyle was about to happen in no time. In this short time, I happened to enter into a Vanheusen store to start my shopping spree. To my surprise, I ended up buying everything that I needed for my formal attire. What a relief!
The mistake may lie in the beginning but as they say, ‘well begun is half done’. It is really important to start an ‘action’ and not just ‘words’. ABG has been that action factor for me and to me it has marked the beginning of all the turning points in my journey. For me that’s how big is ABG in my life.
Every struggle in your life has shaped you in to the person you are today. Be thankful to the hard times. They can only make you stronger.
Life consists of challenges and when you overcome them, they turn into experiences. One such situation that I found challenging in my life was during my time in Mumbai when I moved away from home for the first time for further studies. Independence, here I come, I told myself. Little did I know that brokers, house-owners and PG owners had different plans for me.
In a city of over 20 million people, space is understandably at a premium in Mumbai. It’s worse for ‘Bachelors’ as the filters for choosing a tenant are never ending for a house owner. “Late night shift? No. You can’t enter after 9pm”; “Is a male friend coming over? Can’t. Your morals will be questioned”; “Does the rent of the house concern you? Lol. Be ready to sell your kidneys” and many more. After staying in not-so-human friendly PG for a year, me and my friends decided that it was time to shift to a flat and set our own rules. ALERT! Do not believe in such myths! As we began our hunt for a flat, I realized that either my room mates were working or went outstation to their homes. Every day, I travelled kilometres from Goregaon to Santacruz, meeting all types of brokers (few even behaved like the owners), seeing all types of flat (which looked like a slum to a suite), we finally found a house worth living. After discussing all terms, we finally moved to our home sweet home. Spoke too soon, I eventually realised. Once we completed a year at this house, we decided to renew our agreement with the owners as the broker plays a role only at the start. One fine day, the broker knocked on a door and asked for the commission for the second year to which we refused and so did the owner staying outside Mumbai said. The broker and his partners didn’t agree to this and kept pestering us for coming days. After several complaints to owner from us and the broker, the owner at the end told us that it was going to be us who have to empty the apartment or pay the extra amount as he has long term connection with the broker. We complained about the broker through the necessary channels but decided to move out from a place where the owner couldn’t take decisions of his own house.
From there began our journey of finding a second house from scratch. This time it was tougher, as after seeing over 30 houses, we finally liked an unfurnished house and since I was in college, I was the only one with time to find an option to furnish house with some help from my friends. I visited to several online platforms and second hand furniture markets. Here I got an opportunity to learn how to bargain. We spent months on turning that place in to our home and soon we realised that our efforts went in drain as the people in the society had too much time to micro monitor us. Our every single activity was reported and we were frowned upon every time we left the house post 11pm. We got suffocated and tried every possible way to solve this problem but decided to leave the place eventually. Here the difficulty was to sell all the furniture we bought. In the age of using Instagram and Facebook, I was surfing OLX and Quikr day in and day out. After a month, I finally managed to sell all the furniture and simultaneously look for another house. By this time I had decided to become a part-time broker as I knew houses available for rent in every nook and corner of Andheri and Vile Parle. Just kidding! We finally moved in to a house but this time it was us who did the background checks on the owners and the society from our experience so far.
These process over the years was the most challenging for me as at any point of time our stay at a place was unstable. This has taught me how to handle struggle, pressure and orthodox thinking. More than this what it taught me was that the struggle is momentary and it shall pass one day.
All you need is patience and positivity.