Photo by Khaled Ghareeb on Unsplash
Yes, I dropped out of NIFT(National Institute of Fashion Technology), Kolkata
Hi! I am Aishi Dutta, a B.tech undergrad. A Little bit of a back story: I've been drawing since 3. My mother put me into a lot of things like painting, recitation, and singing but painting is the only thing I stuck to and I have been passionate about it. You can check it out here https://www.instagram.com/impressions.of_art/
After choosing science as my stream in class 11 and getting some compliments from my relatives I was not sure what to do next. But as every good girl of a brown household does, I started preparing for JEE(Joint Entrance Examination). Endless physics, chemistry and maths tuitions. Tbh I never explored options and did what everyone else was doing. I was looking at JEE as Arjuna was looking at the bird's eye(bad joke ik :/ ). Well, I'm not Arjuna so I got distracted a few months before the first attempt (we had 4 attempts).
The idea of becoming a fashion designer always fascinated me as my mother used to work with Sabyasachi Mukherjee's father. So basically, I'm just a call away from a Sabyasachi lehenga, jk (T_T). I used to illustrate designs but never thought about pursuing it as a career. In November 2020 I casually filled up the form for the NIFT entrance exam as my Mom asked me to give it a shot along with 11 other exams including JEE. I didn't touch any of my JEE books for a month and studied/practiced only for NIFT.
Fast forward to February 14, 2021. The day of the NIFT entrance exam. It's a 5-hour long exam. The first 3 hours are for creative/abstract drawing and stuff and the next 2 hours is for aptitude. The exam went well and I was pretty confident about it.
The next round was a situation test where we were asked to make miniature models of real-life objects out of limited materials. The results came out about 2.5 months later if I am not wrong. I secured a CMR of 817( which is AIR). The first thought that came into my mind was that I won't have to study for JEE anymore. I was on cloud nine!
Things started to go down after the results. The course B.Des had various streams and I was mostly interested in Fashion Designing and Fashion Communication. Most of the people "advised" me not to pursue this because "ismein future nehi hai", "naam bana ne mein zindegi nikal jayegi", "she won't be able to do it", etc. Tbh it all got into my head. Also, the course fee is 12 lakhs excluding additional projects and I couldn't afford the financial risk where I wasn't "guaranteed" any success. I was stubborn and my parents agreed to get me admitted only if I get NIFT, Kolkata as NIFT hostels are pretty expensive too. We had to deposit 1 lakh 42 thousand to even sit for counseling.
Finally, it was the day of counseling, the first ever college counseling I sat for before that I only knew counseling sirf doctor ke pass hoti hai. We had to choose our preferred branch and state when they called our names. One by one the seats were filling up in my preferred streams and I was getting anxious. My heartbeat was increasing as my rank was approaching it skipped a beat when they called my name. At that moment, time stopped like I was in the Interstellar movie. The only things that flashed before my eyes were the 1 lakh 42 thousand that we had deposited, 12 lakh fees, and the "unguaranteed success" and I did what every middle-class brown girl would do. I left the seat. Tears rolled down my eyes and I was blank for a few minutes.
The next few months were tough. I stopped painting and I even tore off a few of them. I used to cry every day. I lost hope. But zindegi kisi ke liye nehi rukti. I eventually got back on my feet, got a decent score in WBJEE and took admission to an engineering college. Well maybe whatever happens, happens for a reason. I may not be a fashion student with blue highlights and a kickass fashion sense but I won't be writing this blog if I wouldn't have been here. I've made peace with being a cool CS undergrad who cannot hack into your computer and has a below-average fashion sense. I've realized that passion never leaves you and at the end of the day, it's night.