They walk the fine line between campus, career ……Vijay Singh I TNN
Navi Mumbai: College life, for most students, is a time to expand their friends circle, have fun at intercollegiate festivals, lounge around in the canteen, explore career options, and of course study to clear the looming exams.
But for some Navi Mumbaibased students, college life is not just limited to the campus. Like the two 19-year-olds Snehal Bangad and Suchita Muley, who have started an NGO Brkk D Cyst Foundation (Break the Cyst), which is a youth-oriented forum to help individuals realise that they too can make a positive difference to their surroundings.
By starting Break the Cyst, we were actually trying to break out of our own comfort zones of home and college to do something more, said president of the NGO Snehal a second year bio-technology student at Dr D Y Patil College in Nerul. Her classmate Suchita said, A cyst is biologically a dormant condition that an organism creates around it to protect itself from the unfavourable conditions outside. But we decided to venture outside our shells.
Nearly 80 students have joined Brkk d Cyst and it is also operational in Pune, Delhi and Indore apart from Mumbai as well as Navi Mumbai. The students enjoy working outside the cyst which involves going to orphanages, arranging sessions for poor children and exchanging ideas. Meanwhile, 6 ft 7 inches tall second-year engineering student Chintan Bhatt is on a slightly different track. He is a regular at nightclubs after college hours, working as a disc jockey.
So how did his musical journey begin? I became a DJ quite by accident while still in school at my brothers computerised photo studio. Soon I was freelancing as a DJ at friends parties and also on internet radios, said the 21-year-old, adding he has managed to find the fine balance juggling between CDs and engineering textbooks on information technology. He presently works at the Indulge lounge bar in Belapur and Masala Chai bar at Palm Beach Road.
Genres he likes to dabble in include progressive, trance, hip-hop and soft rock. Future plans? I may have a collaboration with an international entertainment company. Many DJs come together to create club music that is played only at clubs, and then, the company sells
the album in the market. The music is fresh, original and people can get to listen to it without going to any club or pub, says DJ Chintan.
DJs become human jukeboxes at private parties. They only ask you to play and replay some hit numbers that are chartbusters, laughs Bhatt, pointing at some of the annoying aspects of his job. He is also planning a DJ workshop in July, because he says Navi Mumbai needs more like him.
But unlike his flamboyant DJ friend, 21-year-old Sparsh Sharma of Lokmanya Tilak Engineering College in Koparkhairane, is a serious media writer. Earlier I used to regularly write letters and also contribute articles on local issues to various newspapers, while still in school. Now I am a professional freelancer, writing mainly for New Bombay Plus, said Sparsh. He plans to first finish his engineering course and also get an MBA degree, while continuing to work as a professional writer.
With students entering different professions, MBA student Abhishek Majithia, is using his management studies to provide affordable lunches to residents at an unbelievable price of just Rs 5 per plate. With four other friends, we have successfully experimented with the Rs 5 lunch plate in Vashi recently. However, because of exams we took a break. But I am determined to bring back this affordable lunch scheme soon, said Majithia. He is dependent on good marketing and advertisement revenues to make this scheme a profitable business. I believe that if your idea is good, no hurdle is big enough, he says.
EXPANDING THEIR HORIZONS: Snehal Bangad (in pink) and Suchita Muley, started an NGO Brkk D Cyst Foundation. Sparsh (in yellow) is a freelance writer while Chintan is a DJ