I write because I can express my feelings only by writing. Yes, you read that right. For me, writing has been a medium through which I have introduced my real self to the world.
I grew up in a small village of Rajasthan, where there has been no trend of discussing career or profession. I hail from an educated family, but in terms of career or profession, we had only two choices, either business or a job in the hospitality sector. My family had no idea that I am born to set new trends in the family.
I was just 12 years old when I got inspiration from Mahadevi Varma’s stories and poems. I too started writing my own experiences, especially the experiences of my life in the village and childhood memories with my beloved pets in a journal.
Slowly, writing became my passion and ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ further motivated me to keep on writing. In 2005, I watched the Konkona Sen Sharma starrer “Page3” and I realized what I want to be. I went to my parents and I told them – I want to be a journalist. They laughed and ignored me, but the same year, my Hindi teacher Vandana Vyas ma’am appreciated my writing skills in front of the whole school. This made my decision stronger.
I faced many challenges out of which the most memorable and interesting was choosing Hindi as an optional subject in class 11. I was the only student who was interested in studying Hindi and the rest of the students opted for Computer Science, Mathematics or PHE. The School Management was not convinced to give a class just for one student. How I and Vandana Ma’am managed to win this battle against the school management is a long story which I would like to narrate in a separate post, maybe on Hindi Divas.
I was living in a village and studying in an English Medium school in a nearby small town. Whenever it came to discussion about career, people use to talk only about MBBS, Engineering, CA, CS or preparation for government jobs. MBA was new and trending at that time and being a commerce student it troubled me a lot. I wanted to pursue Mass-Communication from Delhi, but my family was influenced by my two MBA holding cousins who got placed with handsome packages. As a result, I was forced to do BBA.
I was not interested in doing BBA, so instead of investing money in any big institute, I chose a regional government college. Meanwhile, I started convincing my family to let me pursue journalism. I searched for people among my relatives who were successful in the field of Mass-Communication. Fortunately, I found two rare people in my distant relations, who finally helped me in convincing my father.
Today, when I look back, I am quite satisfied that all my struggle, hard-work and efforts have been paid-off. After witnessing my success, my family allowed my little brother to study Animation and Graphic Designing. So when people ask me why I write, I often reply that this is the only medium through which I have been expressing myself since childhood.
However, in the era of cut-throat competition, it’s hard to find the work which you desire, especially in Media and Entertainment industry. Thus, Youth Ki Awaaz emerged as a platform where journalists like me can showcase work we otherwise couldn’t because of our company’s policies. I like to share inspiring stories of unsung heroes, but unfortunately, I didn’t find any media-house interested in such stories as they are more into political drama or entertainment masala stories. I would like to thank Anshul for creating a platform like this and many congratulations to Team Youth Ki Awaaz for 10 successful years.
More power to Youth Ki Awaaz!