Almost one year of “Kolkata Bloggers’” active existence. An idea that attracted people and how people motivated the initiative and impacted my life.
Keywords: College life, NEN, Leadership, APUPI.
I’ve always believed in remaining active. “Lyadh” or laziness that characterises the stereotype Bengali isn’t much into me. In my school, I was hardly active. Things started changing during second year of college life. It was an open horizon and I enjoyed the anonymity and freedom, Durgapur had to offer me. I was inspired by the people around. Supratik, Sreyasi, Punit, Aritra, Praveen and a lot many people.
Towards the start, I used to impose my thoughts upon other people. I used to listen to only Supratik and Sreyasi. At times, I felt Sreyasi was unnecessarily argumentative and often tried to override her thoughts. That did not much help though but all the discussions had put forward to me an entire range of thought points which I later made use of.
On parallel lines were the mentoring under Sandip Chatterjee and NEN representatives. I came to know about B-Plans, problem identification, idea generation and perhaps finding possible ways to solve them. In Kolkata, Aji inspired me. Aji had always focussed on learning and reading more books. In forums like NEN, NASSCOM, TiE, I came across Abhishek Rungta who is one of the master brain stormers, I’ve met. He explained more business to me. Aninda Das, who now works in the Infinity group explained to me possible ways of collaborations.
The theory takes time to sink in. Gathering knowledge is a phase. Understanding, implementing, failing, trying again and then tasting success – this entire process instils a lot of humility in one person’s heart, a sense of committed conviction, confidence and teaches you three things clearly: Learning is a continuous curve. There is no alternative to continuous learning. People’s love is the ultimate strength. Whatever work we do, as in the content is always the king.
I’d always been hungry for more work, newer work. Often misunderstood by close friends around, often spoken against and once labelled as “attention seeking”, I could never compromise on this. Sitting in my office today, the same hunger strikes me very often. More work makes me read more, learn more and meet more people. I like the entire experience. Each new thing I learn, each new person I meet offers me a newer perspective which are deeply rooted in their own upbringing and experiences.
After college and during my short work in ISI, I tried to create a platform for amateur photographers. The problem then was – seniors were not supportive enough to get the younger photographers in. I knew a bunch of people who were passionate and interested to learn. Made an online group of youngsters from across the nation. It was popular by its own measures, driven by people. Slowly with time all active members joined different multinational companies while I too had chosen TCS Kolkata by then. I failed as a leader because there was no second layer of active members who could take it forward. We could not create leaders out of the members. However, it got me connected to a lot of young like-minded people across the nation. A few of the active members were Pratik Shivagunde, Srivatsan Sankaran, Prashant Awasthi, Raghav Sethi.
