This post is for the British Airways Brand Ambassador Hunt for which I miraculously qualified. I really do not know why? Or how?
I have realised that I am fantastic accident of life. Things fall into place for me and I enjoy the successes and failures of life.
So about ME...
My Baba (my father), brought me up to have a mind of my own and to make my own choices. This has given me the courage to be different. I also believe that I thrive on this difference. While my peers at law school wanted to be the best corporate or litigation lawyers in India, I dreamt ceaselessly, of becoming India’s best author, surpass the legend of Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, VS Naipaul and Salman Rushdie. I have always wanted to see myself amongst the greats in the world.
Words, I feel, define my very being. My love for literature stems from juggling words with which writers arrest descriptions and traverse the boundaries of humans; of language, caste, creed, culture, gender, status, stature, but above all, of nationality. Literature allows us to challenge our definitions of life and of others, question our prejudices, mull over the unlikely and associate with characters as diverse as the mystical Draupadi, the central heroine in Mahabharata in a Chitra Bannerjee saga or the confused American-Indian Gogol/Nikhil in a Jhumpa Lahiri sketch.
I realised in college that I have a way with words. Although my writing has always been appreciated by family and friends, it is only now that I have started taking myself seriously. It is now that I have learnt to value the behaviour of words, and their ability to craft intricate emotions with ease. There is a comfort in confronting your own thoughts and inspections for the readership of unfamiliar persons. I aspire to put forth my assessment of a lessened feature of an event and seeing how it imitates upon the greater whole of everyday life.
Only while writing did I realise the trickery of words and their ability to choose their own comrades. They chose me and I trusted them; knowing I would eventually be rewarded. I played with them, using them for the greater good, but never disrespected them.
They taught and I learnt well.
During my love affair with words, I have also found that of all the subjects, literature in particular is not only a productive ground for interdisciplinary application but has practical relevance in other fields too. As a writer I hope to unite audiences with the beauty and power of the written word, focusing on helping them filter their own values, to establish their potential and find their niche in the world.
The Scindia School and ILS Law College taught me few important lessons in life. When I entered both the institutions I did not know my limitations neither did I know of the boundless opportunities of life. In Scindia School I realised my limitations as a tennis player; that I would not win every match I played but as an eleven year old I also realised that there were endless opportunities for me if I chose into work hard. Consequently I made it to the school team for four straight years. In ILS I realised early on that I was not destined to be a lawyer; that I was not natural as a mooter but I could juggle with parliamentary debates and writing with some skill. I was educated in the fact that though I could not seek justice as a lawyer but I could very well create a space for equality and justice as a writer.
What I lacked in skill, I more than made up in ambition and dreams. Since my teens I set myself to achieve unthinkable targets.
Some of them are adventurous.
Example: Visiting a far flung country annually for a month after I turn 28.
Some are unnatural.
Example: I wanted to be a professional Tennis player. Though this remains an unrealised dream, I did nevertheless try, and found myself playing at the national level for a few years….
And, some are uncommon fantasies….
Example: To win the Oscars, the Booker Prize and the Rhodes Scholarship.
I try to live my life with initiative and I am convinced that being a writer is a logical next step towards a career. Being a writer will provide me with an opportunity of using literature to inspect individual prejudices and determine unsuspected common grounds with them, thus bridging a span as wide as that between my Baba (my father) and myself.
Then there is the question of competition from the applications you will receive. While I respect competition, I am not in awe of it, for I believe that we live out our lives on a threshold. Six days a week, ten hours a day, we're together more than we are apart from our competitors.
Should one have an open mind, there is much one can learn from them.
A few lessons that I have picked along the way are:
Number one: Always keep score.
Number two: Do whatever you can to outsmart the other person.
Number three: Don't make friends with the enemy.
Number four: Everything is competition. Whoever said winning wasn't everything, never went to Law School.
Yet there is another way to survive this competition. Nobody however seems to be talking about the alternative approach. One that has to be learnt on our own; the most important lesson of all…….
Number Five: “It's not about the race at all”
There are no winners or losers. Victories are counted by the number of lives we touch. And if you are smart, the life you save and make a difference in, could well be your own. I am making a difference to my life here. I am giving myself a voice, an opportunity to foray into a field unknown to me.
Here, I stand victorious.
Yeats famously said “In dreams begin responsibilities”. I have lived my life with the same passion. I have dreamt of a lot of things, being the Brand Ambassador being one of them; possibly the biggest of them all. With every dream that I have dreamt I have taken care to take responsibility of making them come true. I dreamt of becoming a journalist, I did a slew of internships as a student reporter while my peers were running around the hallways of the many courts India hosts. I have dreamt of becoming a writer, I went ahead and filled two hundred pages with words which defined me. Consequently it became my first failed attempt at a novel. Undeterred I ventured ahead and began writing my second novel.
In my dreams began my responsibilities.
To get to the stars, one needs to believe in - Citius, Altius, Fortius; but without courage none of these qualities ever come to anything; without courage nothing can ever be conquered. Thus, what I lacked in intellectual prowess; I covered the distance with courage, hard work, my burning ambition and ability to dream big. Since my teens I set myself to achieve unimaginable targets. People are defined by the things they choose. I chose to define myself with my dreams. My dreams are the essence of my life.
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same………
Rudyard Kipling
