FASHION JOURNALISM Not all of us come with the same dream, nor with the same aim to college. Irrespective of dreams, aims, and social-economic backgrounds we meet new people and turn into friends or foe. With respect to this, interviewed three very different people about their perspective about the world “language” and the background they hail from. My first interviewee, a student of textile design from a commerce background in +2, hails from Banaras. She is the only daughter in the family and so is pampered. Initially, she wanted to pursue Law while her parents wanted her to become a CA but she landed in NIFT with the help of her brothers. As her father had a business in the textile market, she was inclined towards this field more. While talking about her plan, she mentioned that she would want to join the family business but after pursuing masters and gaining a job experience. Having studied in a convent school where English was the mandatory medium of communication in, her control over the language is above average. According to her, after coming to college, her language skills have been influenced in both ways. When asked how important language is for her, she said, “it should be strong enough to impress the person whom you are talking to and as it says, first impression is the last impression.” If rated on a scale of one to ten, she will give a six and a half to her vocabulary. She knows the strengths and the weaknesses of her vocabulary and control over language and is willing to improve day by day. Talking about her family background, from a business family, the family is well settled and no loan or help was required from any type of funding or government. Her mother still feels that getting married at an early age is the right thing and to wanted her daughter to be, settled in domesticity as soon as possible. Talking about marriage, when Sagar was asked, he had a very different perspective. He has two sister and will never want them to get married at a very tender age, enable them to study and work wherever they want. Coming from Bihar, his parents initially did not like the idea of entering NIFT because they had the thinking that boys do not get into designing as a profession. When asked how did her convince his parents, he said, “ I am the only boy in our whole family who has stepped out of Bihar for any sort of studying, I feel good about it.” He has opted for textile design because he did not like stitching garments and thought that textile design “ho jaaega mujhse”. Having a science background, this guy thought of sitting for IIT-JEE, but when he failed in the maths pre-board opted out of science background and thought somewhere else good things are planned and so ended up here. He could not communicate entirely in English while this interview was going on, he said, “Please convert my Hindi words to English for your interview.’’ He accepts his language skills is not acceptable everywhere and he blames it on his school peer circle. Living in a state where 98% of the crowd speaks in Maithili, he had a less scope of learning English. Though his thinking about the importance of language is similar, it is mandatory to know basic English. So according to him, it has improved after coming to college. There is a proverb in Hindi ‘similar people go hand in hand’, which introduces my third interviewee who is a classmate also. Completely different from the above two people, he had opted for FC because the director of NIFT Patna had suggested to him saying ‘kuch nahi aata phirbhi FC ley lo’. He had no idea about NIFT, his forms were filled up by his brothers in his absence. He always wanted to stay in a place where he could meet new people daily and do new every day. According to him, language is not a barrier for him. What he answered was, “wherever people go, they are identified by their language and this one thing should not
change wherever they go.� His language has been influenced by his peer group which was really notorious. They had this completely different language from Hindi and even Maithili. Coming from a family where the main income comes from farming and even sometimes from a wholesale market in Bihar, all his fees are paid by the Bihar Government in the form of scholarships. He lives in a conservative society but with a liberal family. A simple conclusion which can be taken is, people have different views about certain things and there is no point in forcing for it. Whatever the person is comfortable in communicating, we should let them convey their message through that medium.