As of half an hour ago, I made my final presentation at the
Young India Fellowship. After a year full of intensity — whether it was the
discussions and deliberations both in class and outside, the desperate
all-nighters with a term paper due the next morning, the late-night team
meetings or the late-night parties — it ‘s all over. Finito. “Done.” as my BBM
status says. “No more of that”, as Othello says at the end of a play we
studied, analyzed and dissected in one of my most memorable courses of the year
gone by.
I don’t know how I expected to feel at the end, but I wasn’t
prepared at all for how I’m feeling now.
I don’t feel the sense of joy and euphoria that I felt when
I gave my last school exam and ran out with my friends yelling
“Freeeedooooommm!”
I don’t feel the sense of quiet relief and reluctant
nostalgia I felt on my last day of college, where my sadness at leaving was
soon overtaken by excitement and anticipation of what lay ahead.
I just feel kind of weird. I wish there was a better, more
eloquent way to describe it, but there really isn’t. In fact, as I type this, I
find myself sifting through my emotions to find a match. You’ll know the result
by the end of this post.
Throughout the year, we dealt with the confusion,
exasperation and sheer desperation that come with studying a different set of
subjects every six weeks, and submitting a coherent piece of material to be
evaluated by the end of each course. Team meetings often descended into
arguments, individual assignments were a mad scramble to get shit done before
the deadline, and presentations were sometimes very painful to put together and
talk about in my sleep-deprived state.
Still, even through the toughest, most infuriating assignments
where I was literally tearing my hair out, not once did I even begin to wish I
was somewhere else, or doing something else. It was stimulating, it was
challenging, and it was exhilarating.
I can state with complete conviction that you would be hard-pressed
to find a more intellectually stimulating environment than the one that YIF
provides. I was always struck by how easily a discussion on where to go after
class, or what was for dinner in the mess that night, or even the usual
lighthearted banter would descend into an intense debate about Marx and
Gramsci, or the issues of rural migrants, or the ‘real’ definition of an
entrepreneur, or the lack of sporting infrastructure in India…you get the
picture. You name it, and I’ve probably discussed it with my fellow Fellows
over Maggi and chai.
Every moment at the Young India Fellowship was a chance to
learn, an opportunity to grow. In the past year, I have absorbed more
knowledge, formed stronger bonds and broadened my horizons more than I did in
the twenty years that preceded it. I have learned to question. I have learned
to push the boundaries. I have learned how to learn.
But most of all, I think what has made this experience so
hard to let go of, and what makes me wish more than anything I didn’t have to
let go of it at all, is the sheer force of 154 (and counting) hopes, dreams,
aspirations and inspirations that give me the confidence and courage to
follow my own. It is a force that propels each of the Young India Fellows
forward in their quest for making a difference, and the thought of not being in
the direct presence of this life-changing, paradigm-shifting force is rather
terrifying.
I think the biggest testament to the impact that the
Fellowship has had on me is the fact that I don’t want to leave even though my
next destination is the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
I got my letter of admission from Columbia a few weeks
before the offer from YIF, and much to my surprise, I found myself asking my
dream school for a one year-deferral. It took some persuasion, since they only
grant deferrals for medical emergencies or ‘exceptional academic
opportunities’, but they finally agreed.
And one year later, the only thing I find myself thinking is
that ‘exceptional’ is an understatement of exceptional proportions.
