The value of ‘education’ is emphasized enough right from our childhood and rightly so; but it is only later in life that we begin to realize what its worth, and what it means to be ‘educated’. When I turned 23 two years ago, I decided to move out my city, Pune, for further studies. I realized then that my education had just begun.
I come from a family of engineers, and like many middle-class families, I was expected to tread the tried and tested path. I was a science student in high school and took up computer science for four years in college. But here was the conflict. My mind was somewhere else.
At a very young age, I fell in love with the world of films. As I grew up, I tried to stay connected with my interest in cinema in small ways. By the time I graduated, I knew I had to pursue my interest in films. Campus placements are attractive especially when you are clueless about the next move to make. I found myself exactly in that boat. I appeared for placements and got selected to work for a software company in 2014.
In 2015, I quit my job to enrol for my master’s degree in mass communication to learn filmmaking. This decision was the beginning of a wonderful journey that would expose me to a whole new world that I was unaware of. My experience staying in Delhi and studying mass communication in Jamia Millia Islamia has been instrumental in shaping the person I am today. Travelling to a new city, meeting new people and engaging in all kinds of conversations helped me understand the life better. I cannot emphasize enough the value of this kind of exposure. It has not only helped me understand filmmaking, but I’ve become more aware as a person about the environment I was living in.
Two years in Delhi passed by, and even today I feel that in the real sense my education has just begun; maybe not limited to textbooks, maybe not limited to manuals; maybe something beyond that. For every twenty-something, it is your journey, and each journey has its syntax. No two roads will ever be the same. I might try hard to emulate someone else’s life, but that will never guarantee success. My biggest learning is respecting and deriving as much as I can from every occasion in life. As I begin my next phase in a new city with a new spirit, I look back and realize that every event is an outcome of a mix of choice and a larger plan unknown to us.
Now at 25, I can vouch for the fact that the many opportunities to educate us, come in disguise. Through my years in college and after having worked for a year in a software company, I had gained knowledge; but of a different kind. These five years will always add up in the way it has equipped me with many essential life skills. Initially, an average of 40 subjects in four years gave me jitters. However when I look back, ironically I learned not by programming but by combating. Every situation taught me to fight and learn something new.
From enrolling in engineering in 2010 in Pune to being sourced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures in the year 2017 in Mumbai; the journey has been fulfilling. For me, geographically it was a matter of a few kilometres from Pune to Mumbai. But the detour to the city of dreams via Delhi had to happen for more reasons than one, which I shall count worthy in this journey in retrospect.