Of school time dreams and achievements

I just realised that its been 6 years now that I started living on my own, away from home. 2 years in college and then 4 years in big, bad Mumbai. Seemed like a good time to trace the journey till here. I also happened to read some college discussion forum on Pagalguy.com and it just reminded me of all the studying, choosing colleges and all the madness.

I remember Joe Pinto sir writing a similar nostalgic piece, partly this is inspired by that and also a need to remember all that has gone by. So there I was, a little girl in a small city in Gujarat called Rajkot. My favourite stories about my birth year are the fact that it was the year colour TV became popular in India and the year India first won the world cup in cricket. Perhaps, it is fitting then that I am now a TV professional. But how did I come till here?

I used to be a very methodical student, a geek according to all my friends. Back in my school days, I used to have a personal time table for things. If I had say 6 subjects and 12 days, I would give each subject 2 days, that kind of a rigid time table. Though I did allow myself Chitrahaar breaks. And then, even when I studied topics, I would give them a particular number of minutes before finishing them. It may sound funny now to think back on all that, yet, it helped me all through my studies. But that didn't mean I was only into school books. I read a lot of other stuff, I always knew all the latest Bollywood numbers, life was interesting.

Growing up in a small town has its own benefits. I have seen in a city like Mumbai, people are pretty much set about what they want to achieve, after all everything is here. But in a place like Rajkot, there was always something to aspire to. Little wonder that most of the reality shows today have more people from small towns. I remember the conversations we used to have in our college. Most of us wanted to do something big, out of the box, maybe become the next Ambani, the eternal Indian middle class dream.

During the time we were graduating, the MBA madness had just begun (umm did I reveal too much about my age here? :-P ) Most people in Rajkot did a B. Com. then did a CA or went to Pappa ni dukan. But some of us used to look at Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai, the popular celebrity show on NDTV, and tell each other stories of how one day we would be there and who all we would call as our friends then. Strangely, almost 12 years down the line, these people are still in touch and the dream continues though the show is long over.

So this aspirational crowd of ours, we wanted to get out of Rajkot, do either an MBA in Finance or in my case something to do with communication. So my options were either MICA or Symbiosis. I was what some would call a news addict back then, switching every 15 minutes to some Sabse Tez or Breaking news. Wasn't much of a newspaper person, but read a lot of magazines, so journalism was a huge interest area.

The whole preparation for CAT and the Symbi Admission test was another thing that took hard work and discipline. Again, I had a time table, for the year that I took a drop after graduation. I enrolled with a CAT training institute that was famous for its Mock Tests and for 8 weeks, just before CAT, I travelled all the way from Rajkot to Ahmedabad, 5 hours away, to give a test that would start at 9 : 30 in the morning. Looking back, I don't know how I did that. I also remember how my dad would travel with me each time, never complaining. It was just a hunger to do something other than the usual MA, M.Com, everyone I knew was doing. Finally I got through to Symbiosis.

The two years there taught me about people and also about how to handle some of them. The best times there were according to me the various trips we took. I also got to learn a lot about my second biggest passion - Cinema. I met some wonderful people who still are my sounding boards. Nimisha Srivastava, Megha Singh, this goes out to you :-) And yes, Nimisha, this post is in response to our recent chat.

As I went through those Pagalguy.com forums today, I remembered all that we had been through, the whole selection procedure for the college, the worry about placements, the rush of the first few weeks on campus, the one year of doing a quasi MBA while learning advertising and PR, the hours of watching movies, analysing them at NCC canteen, the vigorous debates on TOI and Indian Express news coverage, the first byline, the first college newsletter English and Hindi, all sorts of memories. And who could forget the Greenday song that was almost a class anthem.

Finally placement time and the first interaction with the real industry guys. Some of us bullshitted and were caught, some of us weren't caught, others just breezed through, some cried, some had to have more than one attempt and finally that coveted job. Sometimes when I look back it seems nothing short of a miracle to have come from a city where people barely manage a proper sentence in English to working in an English news channel, but at other times I know it took a lot of my parents' and my hard work and maybe a whole lot of God's blessings. Yes, all those hours our moms spend praying don't go waste.

The last 4 and half years now I have been working and living on my own. This was another lesson. I have made mistakes in assessing people, I have cried, I have sometimes ranted, I have lost faith in things, but I know that if I were to die tomorrow, I might not have many regrets. I have tried things, learnt things, pushed myself, but yes, there is still a lot more I want to learn. Still a lot more I want to do, both for myself and my parents.

Its good to dream and sometimes remind yourself of dreams you fulfilled. Its important at times to see where you were, where you are and where you can go.