Connected failures lead towards a new Success, A new Dream!!

Dreams come regularly in form of ideas, One in hundreds I attempted, One in 100 attempts got success and 99 times its failure. Many a times I was unanswerable to my failures; but later point of time it explains more logical and offer me a smile. I wanted to quote an excerpt from Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poem “Man ka ho toh acha… Man ka na ho toh, aur acha!” which translates like “God always gives us what we deserve, and not necessarily what we desire”. When I look back the incidents happen in my life, I realized someone trying to connecting my dreams to discover myself. I would like to mention few incidents; my dreams, my failures which lead to a new success and a new DREAM.

My encounters with Computer

Very few know about my personal geography and home town, it’s Sonepur, A district head quarter of Subarnapur district, Odisha. [In the book I will clarify more about my KBK backward status, I don’t need sympathy here ;)] When I was in school; I never get introduced to computer, only perception I had created it’s a device which makes someone’s life easier. And as I visualize I finally saw one so called computer in my village haat(market).

Those times, a new form of fortune tellers entered into rural India, they usually brought a Robot kinda stuff and installed at the middle of the Haat. There is a headphone attached to it, which tell about your future, obviously some recorded stuff. I don’t remember even they asked for the sun-sign or birthday, and just tell same fortune for everyone. Finally one day I went to the haat with my father and saw such stuff. I was in class 3/4, excited seeing a man alike box which self proclaimed as a computer. 

Maturity increased with education and age, and when I was in class 7/8 my perception towards computer changed from a man-alike-box to a TV-alike-Box which do the official work done.  One day my friend told me that there are few computers arrived in Collector office for office work; let’s go and see it. Without telling to my parents, I left for school bit early and reached the collector office. While peeping from the window to some TV like stuffs which was placed on the tables; office sweeper scolded us and we left the place immediately.

During 2000, after my intermediate I was in Bhubaneswar for preparing joint entrance exam. That time was the cybercafé era; lot of my friends used to go there for watching nude photos of actress or doing yahoo chat [Those are the time, Chat starts with Age Sex Location intro asl plz :P].  And I knew about only one word “Browsing” from my friend’s conversation, and my perception for that word is to watching nude photos of Bollywood actress.  

One day I thought let’s explore with an expenditure of 30/40 Rs per hour, see what exactly is computer. And that’s my first actual encounter with computer. I asked the cybercafé guy “I want to do browsing”, and he took me to a cabin and switched on the Computer and left.  I didn’t know anything, clicked on random icons, it opened few more boxes. Commonsense always works while lacking of knowledge. I clicked on the cross sign and closed few box. I called again the cyber café guy, asked him “I want to do browsing”. So he opened the internet explorer window and stood next to me. I again didn’t know what to do next. So finally being shameless for first time, I asked him “I want to do browsing, some website which shows actress photos” then a small pause “semi nude”. He understood my “browsing” terminology and opened a website called www.desi****Dotcom and teased me a sarcastic comment “Oh sorry for my mistakes, you wanted to do browsing”.  After the café guy left the cabin, I saw the screen. it listed all the reputed actress of those time, and I clicked on some 25/30 photos and the poor windows-95 with the IE got paralyzed.  Many reputed actress flaunting their morphed nude body in several overlapped windows, I ashamed off to call the café-guy again for assistance. Because I didn’t know how to shutdown the computer; so directly power off the computer and left the café.  That’s the way I touched a computer for the first time and it thrilled me more than seeing those nude bollywood divas.

Then Finally I got into engineering with a stream of “Information Technology”. In first year I was fascinated with the computer lab classes. For a person like me who never acquainted with windows operating systems, our engineering college boasts their open source status and Linux environment: P. One professor complimented me “I don’t think you understand anything in comp class”. I was disappointed with such comments and the exploration begins after wards. I usually used my roomate PC, for a web designing assignment that time. And confidence built up when my project got selected in top 10 web projects among 360 students. From second year engineering, normally 4/5 friends used to rent a house and stay together for the next three years, usually they have one sharing PC. Seeing my love towards the computer, my father gifted one Personal Computer. And I do remember I usually sit for 18 hours in front of PC for exploring the both hardware and software skeleton.  And the dream becomes bigger day by day.

One day I had a dream to develop my own anti-virus. In those 2 years we had a great technology enthu friend circle named “Back2BasicZ”. We share our ideas, knowledge and help each other to pursue our own dream. I didn’t have any knowledge of anti-virus, except one pirated anti-virus installed in my system. Gradually browsing a lot of stuffs, knowing what is a virus signature, how it functions, where it resides in a system permanently and temporary. With browsing the internet I got a repository of the entire virus signature till date, and downloaded all. Then Comes the developing the software parts. Worked hard to make it possible, but with limited knowledge and lesser teams; somehow it didn’t worked out. I failed in that dream. But it leads to a different path. My final year thesis based upon the CABIR-A, first cell phone virus of that time. And the same professor who complimented me “I didn’t understand anything in comp lab” had a great rapport with ‘Back2BasicZ’ in those four years; complimented in final year grand viva “Do I need to ask you anything”.  Cry of triumphant!! 

Struggling With My Vocabs

Being from a vernacular medium education, My English as well as vocabs was so poor till the engineering completion. I didn’t speak to most of the girls due to my fumbling English. Till today I do remember our vocab teacher words “Rome cannot be build in a single day”. While I got bored with the software engineer jobs, I started preparing for the GRE. As I was in Chennai, GRE is a very common exam over there, in every two adjacent house one must have gone to America to do his/her masters. While coming back in the office bus, many of our colleagues mugging words from Barrons GRE guide. I and my roommates usually had private joke of putting those people in the tribe called “ABASE”, that’s the first word of Barrons word list. One single day I thought to start building up Rome, I mean Vocabs J.

I purchased one Barrons GRE guide, and from the same bookshop I took one drawing sheet too. I draw a USA map with my targeted Universities over there, and every day morning I was running in-front of that map while mugging wordlist. Yeah its almost the scene from the movie Ghajani :P  I am sure my roommates will laugh once reading this blog, those are the timeJ.

3500 words in 35 days, that’s a highly optimistic target I set. Obviously it failed; again I set a extended target of 3 months. While mugging up these words, I had an idea to create a platform where there should be some mnemonics technique to remember the words easily. I created a small application which shows me image mnemonics for every searched word and a meaning in the regional language. That helped me memorize a lot of words and gave enough confidence to write the GRE exam.  I got a decent score, but somehow my master degree dream from abroad university was not fulfilled. Because there are very few universities in US, where my desired master degree was available. Those vocabs things helped me a lot to get into a B-school. Then I launched the www.ezeedictionary.com which contains 2,50,000 words definitions with image mnemonics, which widely used by GRE aspirants for memorizing words.

Learning from my Degree

During my engineering convocation, I was very much happy from the four years of learning and had a superior feeling before entering into the Industry. With contrast to it, on the day of my post grad convocation, I had few question to myself “Did I learn enough about marketing, brand communications or about management”, “Will it really works in rural India”, “Will the board room strategy understands the psychology of rural people”. So basically I wanted to start a career from the roots in a “Back to Basics” mode.  In between my introspection, one of friend came to me and asked “Is everything alright? You are looking very dull”, I   don’t want to spoil the convocation party mood; so replied him back “Yesterday hangover is still on: P”.

While working in a social media agency, I got an offer to work on a project, where they tried to activate FMCG brands in rural India through Jatra. Jatra is the popular folk theater happened in Bengal, Odisha, Assam. It is the major entertainment medium in rural Bengal, Odisha. Diverting my career from digital to rural was a crucial decision for me, but I took the call. That’s the best way I explore rural market, and that too even first time ever such biggest rural brand activation was happening. I handled end to end execution for such marketing initiative in Odisha. Apart from the usual brand elements like OOH, Event location branding, van announcement, jingles, Print AD, regional TVC; we have incorporated in-scene branding too. In-scene branding was similar as the in-film branding; we involve the script writer to include the brand message in between the six hour long play of Jatra. There are 300 shows per jatra banner all around Odisha, 3000 audiences per show. Around 10 lakhs audiences per Jatra banner though out the year. We have activated around 4 Banners for different FMCG brands throughout the year.  It was the best learning experience and realizes the response on marketing and brand communications on the spot itself. To handle such a diversity of people starting from poetic script writer, to drunken jatra manager, to Brand manager from our clients side; It taught me a lot of things. Few frequently used terminology in corporate didn’t work in rural people “It would be great, can you please do that, thanks in advance, PFA mails”.  But it’s easier to let the work done in rural India with a little love and affection. 

Are you living your dream

After started few own ventures, worked on diverse work culture from top IT companies to rural brand activation; I realized one thing in common “Job satisfaction is a serious issue worldwide”. In order to explore the cause and spreading the message “Discover your passion” I am going for an adventurous trip of 28 states of India, will be doing 28 jobs in 28 weeks. Basically in India most of the cases, parents decide their kid’s education as well as profession. Instead of going for a stereotypical education as well as profession of Engineering or Medical; one should go with their dream. There are very few people on earth, who became what they really wanted to be. Are you lucky enough to be part of that Tribe?? Join my journey of OneWeek Job India and explore on the same.

Please follow this link for OneWeek Job India blogs on my journey!!

http://www.oneweekjob.com/india/blog/

Hopefully throughout this journey, I will discover few justified failure dreams which lead to a new success and a new DREAM!!