Inspirations

Sometimes one just need a person to inspire you when you are just too confused and unsure about your life and about your own self and your own capabilities.
Few months back, as a part of the Career Guidance and Placement Cell at TISS, got to interact with Vishal Talreja, the co-founder and executive director of Dream a Dream. The entire interaction with him was about how he started up the work and how he believed in himself and working for the cause he felt for the most! The entire interaction came at a point when I was just figuring out about my decision to take up a particular concentration at TISS and also each day I used to ask about why am I doing my masters in social work and is it necessary to have a degree to get into the social work sector and also will I be able to do a justice to the field. The interaction left most of my classmates questioning a lot more but this time we had a role model and a person who proved that though its not so easy to take a stand and follow your passion as there would be people not supporting you but then doing this is not impossible. If you follow your passion, you would do justice to yourself and your passion too! If you believe in something, you can make it happen!

Over time, due to the academic pressure the passion kind of faded away or maybe hid in some corner and once or twice when I had time away from assignments, presentations, reports, classes, exams, the thoughts regarding my passion did strike me but not for long.

And after months of Vishal's visit, I met someone. An ex-tissian, named Tarique, working in the field, working for his passion and the issue he really feels for- homelessness and the abolition of beggary act. A person who started up Koshish, which is a field action project of TISS. I met him while I was a part of the homeless survey in the M-Ward. Each night we used to go out, first for community mapping and later for the survey of the homeless. During the survey I was teamed up with him. I am glad that I had the opportunity to meet him and talk to him. The feedback and the discussions with him really brought back the self confidence within me and made me re-think about my passion, and the work I want to do. During the night survey, while walking, used to talk about how he started koshish and he answered a lot of doubts I had about starting up your own work. I have been afraid of taking up an initiative due to the fear of failure, but the discussions with Tarique made me realize that one needs to overcome these fears and work for own passion. And our fears and our emotions would only take us back into our shell and into our comfort zone which might be helpful for our own self but would not benefit the people we would want to work for. He has been working since last 5 years and within these 5 years he has made a huge difference in a lot of peoples lives and he always believed in himself despite there being moments which emotionally hit you.
The 5 days while working with him had been a great learning for my own self with a lot of moments of self-discovery. Over time, due to certain incidents I had lost the confidence in myself but, after my each interaction with a homeless person, the feedback I received from Tarique really brought back the self confidence. There wasn't even a single day when he failed to inspire me.
Hope I keep up this inspiration and passion alive within me throughout and live my life with passion in whatever I do!