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2016: Turning point in my life

A year filled with so many twists and turns that only after it  ended did the realisation strike just how big a turning point the year had been in my life.

As January descended so did the decision to not take a job & instead to let my passion for food & travel take over. It was during this period that my family began to take me seriously and began to wonder(or rather worry) about my goals in life.

February came and I was given the privilege to conduct my College’s first ever ‘International Food Carnival’ under our college’s cultural fest which happened like a cosmic coincidence and was such a grand success that I could proudly boast that we had served the best food to the entire town in those three days. From  Arab Chicken Kebab and Sri Lankan roti to Vada Pav and Hyderabadi Biryani, with very limited resources we had pull off something quite extraordinary. I will always remember sitting with this well reputed, popular YouTube band who had been invited for our cultural night and talking with them about my dreams in life and the dawning realization that no matter their status , people always respect passion. I remember sleeping for just 2-3 hours for three nights straight and thinking that I have never enjoyed working so hard in my life. Only if I had known that it was just the beginning of what was going to be a crazy year.

March came & with it came the National Innovation Summit in our college which was conducted by our team. The event brought with it loads  of people working as pioneers in the Startup/Entrepreneurship industry including startup media houses, accelerators, investors, Social entrepreneurs & so on. Being the Convenor and Hospitality head of the event, gave me a chance to directly interact and be with them for 24hrs for four days this allowed for me  a deeper understanding of the industry & I also realised that we make god figures out of people who in reality are just normal human beings too. Interacting with them was a surprise in itself as I had never seen so many people encouraging me to follow my passion no matter how crazy it sounded at that time and even more bewildering were the offers to help and it was this that pushed me to take the leap of faith & start making concrete plans for future which were in alignment with my passions.

April marked the beginning of me finally rising above the worries of trivial things in life,  like the exams & marks, whose true colours of uselessness were now obvious to me.

May brought closer the time for my college to end & I got the privilege of being invited to dinner by a reputed professor along with three other friends of mine, for the things we had done for the college. Those bottles of beer offered to me by the professor were my first real trophy in life. It was the best honor I’d ever gotten and was certainly a proud moment in my life.

I left my college along with a pledge to keep working over my dreams. I was just happy to have fulfilled the promise I had made to myself on the first day of college about convert my decision to going to Silchar to pursue engineering from worst to best decision of my life.

Late May to early June had been a difficult time as I couldn’t get a positive start & my perseveration to do something or the other, only led to disappointment in it all. But later half of June brought with it the lucky opportunity to work in Goa as a cook in a backpackers hostel. Although I hadn’t personally been prepared for such an opportunity and thus, unfortunately things didn’t work out and we decided to part ways in just a month of my joining it was still a great learning experience as it had been my first real job, and additionally I got to experience  my dream of Living in Goa.

The day I came back to Jaipur after a month in July, I got the news that someone I had met in college(during National Innovation Summit in March) and who had been inspiration to me, was visiting Jaipur the same day and I got to spent an entire evening with him. That time spent with him, gave rise to the idea of a FoodWalk, & I ended up conducting my first foodwalk in August, which although was a disaster (not a single registration), I believe it marked the beginning of my journey of exploring the food of my own city.

As if everything I did was preplanned this year, I got the chance to meet people from AhimsaGram in an event for which I volunteered in August. AhimsaGram is a community space in Jaipur which besides many other things also holds food as a very important element in life and thus August inaugurated my journey in Ahimsagram & my explorations with healthy food. As I’ve professed in one of previous my posts, Ahimsagram is a secret world in my own backyard.

September was encompassed with exploring this secret world and October came with the realisation about the existence of many such secret worlds, I got the opportunity to visit one such secret world in the tribal area of Vanvadi in Maharastra learn about cooking on chula, using water from a well & meet several other travellers too.

November will be remembered as the month of my first private FoodWalk, & me beginning to take it as a serious venture idea. Also it was in this month that I on behalf of Ahimsagram got the privilege of setting a food stall in two festivals around Jaipur including the prestigious Rajasthan Startup Fest 2016 where I served healthy chat. I will always remember serving pani puri in which pani(Water) was basically vegetable juice having such an amazing combination of different vegetables  that it brought a taste resembling exactly that of water of pani puri.

December peeked & showed itself & I visited another secret world of Swaraj university and also visited the deserts of Rajasthan to attend a crazy event by the name of Learning Societies UnConference. To end the month with a proper bang, I helped an event experience company in conducting a music gig in a cafe on  Christmas eve.

Today, I feel emotionally, mentally and physically much more fulfilled than how I was a year ago. At some places, people gave me chance, others,  I took the chance myself. Sometimes I experienced failure even after working diligently & then at some places Lady luck gave me the feeling that the entire world is guiding me towards a success. Today I no longer worry about surviving in this world. Because I know it can always be done. By God this year was a cornucopia of opportunities I feel the year 2016 conspired to bring me & my dreams together, It almost seems I’m saying it to a person: Thank you year 2016 for everything you have given me, I promise you that I will keep working with the same passion in the year 2017 as well and make this one  beautiful & successful as well.

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