About Me
My BackStory...
Hey There!!
I truly appreciate the fact that you have hopped in to know more about me !
Everyone has a backstory that keeps the needle moving for them, and so is mine…
So, Welcome to my home online – great to have you here and I would like to establish a deep virtual relationship with you.
As I value your time because I value you.
Even though my digital version might be speaking to you, but imagine as if I am narrating my story sitting just beside you…
Laying Foundations
Hi, I’m Gaurav (aka digitalgaurav) and I’d like to share a bit of my story with you.
So I come from a typical middle class – Maharashtrian – humble farming family – from a small rural village of less than 3k population in Maharashtra State.
and as my village didn’t have any schools i was put in a boarding hostel right from age 5 – so i studied in a military boarding school- and it was one of the reputed schools in the state started in the british era and the only one to have the 3 troops – army, navy and air force (and I was in the army troop holding the gun in the image)
It was the time of real mental hard-wiring of myself and the 6 major important principles that I learnt were,
- Working Really Hard
- Maintaing A Self Discipline
- Dedication Towards Work
- Monk Like Focus
- Vigiliance – as soldiers have to be vigilant all the time and the
- Fighitng Spirit – to never give up because we were trained slightly differently than normal schools.
And all of these qualities have helped me a lot in architecture too…
The Trigger Moment
Meanwhile, as I was living the typical template of our education system, with no dreams-no ambitions, only chilling and enjoying movies,
Just until this day when the movie 3 idiots released and I being a movie buff and that too a hardcore Rajkumar Hirani Fan I went on to watch first day first show of the movie.
What happened next was interesting…
The message from the movie triggered something in me and the movie bug bit me so hard that it gave rise to the real rebel in me and that day I decided to drop this “old education template” and get rid of this memorization game
The message connected deep inside me as I was out on my own and didn’t follow any ideologies previously, so this just seemed a perfect advice to me.
After which I had some aim – some direction instead of just marching like a headless chicken with no aim – no direction
After all, it was a ‘wake up call ’ for each one of us and also for our education system.
The emotion was like someone just said the right thing which was going through the life of every youth, Didn’t it??
P.S. – At this point of time, it may sound a bit filmy but yes this is true, films have had a profound impact on me and you’ll realize that thru all my content over the internet.
My feeling after finishing the relay race 😣
The Golden Words
Fast fwd. 2yrs…
I completed college and the one defining moment from this phase of life was the message that has stayed with me even till now and will continue to for the rest of my life was by my chemistry professor where he was explaining about the 2 human personality types
- one who are born talented and they don’t have to put in a lot of effort to get good grades or results – life is an ease for them and
- the second are the ones who have to work persistently, strive hard to get results and develop talents.
And these were like the golden words which went like a tracer bullet in me b,coz I was constantly relating to the 2nd personality type, and i realized the real importance of it when i flunked my architecture entrance.
The Black Day
So to get rid of those big fat engineering books – I chose “Architecture”
And guess what,
I flunked….yes I flunked my architecture entrance as I didn’t even know how to sketch
i just missed it by 2 marks. but those were enough to shatter me for the rest of my architecture life.
It felt like crap from inside but later somehow I managed to clear it in the second attempt….
Now comes the first day of college,
I enter the college corridors, and all I could see over the double ht. walls and atriums is Drawings – Paintings – Artwork – Installations all over the place and whatever little bit of confidence that I gathered was buried completely
It was like adding salts to my wounds for a guy who has already failed his entrance grade. And I concluded that this is surely not my cup of tea.
So on the very first day we were given an assignment of designing our identity on the diary cover
The Dark Days Approaching
And here comes the second day,
The faculty asks us to keep all our diaries on the table in order to select the best ones !
When all the 80 designs were kept on the table, I realized how shitty I had designed amongst all
Many such creative assignments were given but each time I just kept failing and failing
Each day I just felt like quitting architecture
I was in a deep turmoil whether this creativity bug is even for me or not ??
Every day the little voice inside kept haunting me, constantly reminding me of the past failures and I was going thru an excruciating pain, fear of quitting, anxiety
But…. I had no option of quitting the ring, but to face those nasty blows.
And that time I realized the importance of the message given by my chemistry professor about the 2nd personality type (i.e. to fight with persistence)
Time passed by…the first two years were pretty dark days…
The Self Education Journey
And day by day my confidence was going low, all my inner emotions started to pile up pushing me to act on these failures
That time, I made a decision that never – ever again i will bring myself into this situation and i started on this journey of re-learning, re-education complete self-education…
Very often, I started visiting the college library and started to read a lot of books, magazines, attend talks, seminars just to get control over my career and also visiting my college senior studios to help them with their design works.
So I was an all time “outstanding student” – always outside the class 
As time passed by, I enjoyed the life outside classroom more than inside.
Soon, I fell in love with this outstanding life.
In the process, to your surprise I ended up studying 60+ architects and designers all around the world (you can see in the image) just to know their backstory, how it reflected in the design process. How they approached things?
And the #1 common starkly visible pattern which all of them had all were great at thinking & applying ideas-concepts successfully right from the conceptual to completion stage without the core idea getting lost in the process and ultimately the impact those ideas made on the world was phenomenal.
With this, I not only got a wholesome perspective of the architecture around me but also on a global scale.
How trends change, what could be the future of architecture – based on which I can position myself and master the skills required.
A Blessing In Disguise
As i was learning’s from various books and magazines and talks – i began to apply it to my design projects, and also to my seniors design projects and in one such interaction – one of my senior friend suggested me to take part in quizzes & competitions as he felt that i could remember a lot of architects and their concepts – ideas according to the year I was in.
Initially, I hesitated it felt like a joke, but then I said let’s give it a try…
And guess what happened next…?
His suggestion turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me.
Surprisingly i won that first zonal quiz competition, then i went on the national level archumen quiz.
With all this my skills were getting more polished and sharpened– so I took part in competitions too..
And the first ever competition we got the IGBC special mention award, then in the next competition organized by APIED college we won 75k prize money (b,coz in college even 75k is like 7 lakh to us right?) then again thru competitions we had an honour and privilege to receive an award from my & the entire nation’s idol Ar. Ratan Tata, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and Akshay Kumar.
Slowly and gradually I started to gain more confidence, that whatever I learnt was able to apply quite successfully, and slowly the dark clouds started to settle down.
These small successes charged me up, just like building a muscle in the gym day by day it got better.
The Pivot Moments
So in college i used to opt for these competitions and in vacations i started travelling to cities like Ahmedabad and Delhi, Chandigarh, Bangalore which were rich in architectural monuments by the famous international and Indian architects to physically study about ideas and buildings.
The way they manifested in real life, and in one such visit I happened to meet our great pritzker-winning architect B.V Doshi at Sangath– and he too was quite impressed by the work that I had done.
On the side, i also started taking up some freelance work (portfolios-renders, travel brochure designs, visiting cards, then the Nepal Earthquake Research paper writing) just to make mistakes and learn from them.
Slowly I started to find my passion in what I was doing and the passion soon turned into an obsession.
And you may think why am I telling you all this – is because,
See “It Doesn’t Matter Where You Come From, All That Matters Is Where You Are Going”
I started mining more deep, like a hungry beast
Architecture happened to be like the Pandora’s box like discovery for me
The Pricelsss Discovery
As I was busy enjoying life outside the class, I attended a lot of live architectural talks, seminars, workshops etc.
And In the process of learning about many architects, I had come across Ar. Sanjay Mohe’s works through magazines, books etc.
And one fine day, he happened to visit my city to deliver a talk…
I still remember that day we had our final term submission, but the rebel in me didn’t care but opted for the key note address (and obviously flunked that subject)
And by the end of the talk, I just felt the connection and made up my mind to work with him one day (just weird thoughts though 
)
I was truly fascinated by his works and apart from that his humility is what attracted me the most
This picture was taken after the lecture during our interaction
It was nothing less than a priceless discovery for me…..
The Paradigm shift
Over the 5 years, having opted for so many competitions, extra curricular activities, never ever I faced the scarcity of data in my portfolio and it was rich in all ingredients 
And guess what I manifested this dream too thru my internship
They say “sometimes dreams do come true”
This time it was like a fan boy moment for me…..
There, I worked on the prestigious VIT School Of Architecture
I learnt smarter ways of doing things, operating softwares, and How to do things in quick succession.
Each day I worked as if it was my first and last day here – I served double the time there than what university required.
Even there i didn’t stop to take part in competitions and in one such organized by drawing board i got selected in the top 8 finalists from the country and won a fully paid one day event at Khandala.
This again expanded my horizon – where I got the opportunity to experience some of the top architects
After working there, my life completely transformed
I was never the same person again, my orbits had completely shifted
To summarize the entire experience one saying that comes to mind is,
“Winners Don’t Do Different Things But They Do Things Differently! ”
And this was my biggest takeaway.
Abundance of Opportunities
Going thru the grind my batteries were fully charged by then and the REBEL in me again ended up taking the most controversial thesis…
A thesis on a bridge – (basically the idea was to stop its traffic and make it into a functional spaces of – a Library, Museum, and much more for the community)
And of course I faced a lot of rejections but ultimately I pulled it off successfully thru all odds
Many of the architects also ended up with an opinion that this is surely not an graduate level work but a post grad thesis
And it was the time of real goose bumps… (within seconds, I could summarize the picture right from the first day of college to this day)
Nothing was more satisfying than that day…
All the hard work just paid off….and I could see the entire journey in a flashback (from flunking to tasting some bit of success)
Seeing my thesis and entire 5 year work, I ended up having 3 job offers in an exit exhibition (where all architects were invited to select students for office, basically like placements) organised by our college
One was my thesis guide – second was my thesis jury he was really impressed by the thesis – and third was by one of the top commercials firms in Pune.
My New Found Passion
As a hustler, all throughout my career, deep down inside I always felt a void, a disconnect with my true potential abilities – the skills, knowledge, and experiences that were not fully churned out
It was a feeling of incompleteness…
So the bug really kept itching me right from my 3rd-4th years of college, but then life took over, got busy with other stuff just until Covid hit
As during my job, I was helping students with a lot of their design queries, doubts, thesis, and portfolios – there kept coming to a lot of questions from their side, and answering all of them got me burnt out and pretty tiresome after a point…
Experiencing breakthrough they also wanted me to come to their college to deliver sessions…..faculties approached….but then it was impossible due to Covid….
Then suddenly one fine day It triggered me, what if I create a YouTube channel where I could answer all of these queries-doubts and also due to co-vid as we couldn’t get out for the sessions plus I also felt it could satisfy my constant itching deep void of telling stories in the form of building case studies
And finally, I start on my YouTube journey……
Truly One of My greatest ‘Aha!’ moments… – it felt as if suddenly I got a medium to express and vent out my ideas to the world which had been decaying for years of whatever information I had gathered all these years…
A true fulfillment from within…
Just one discovery solved so many problems
So COVID really acted as a catalyst in my journey, forcing me to move more towards my passion
Journey of Real Unlearning
The journey has been quite a rollercoaster ride with a lot of ups and downs
In course of this journey there are a lot of untold stories which might add value to others lives
So basically, its just unlearning whatever is learnt thru words, audio, video, daily affirmations etc…
As the best way to unlearn is to share, because I largely believe in the ideology of learning, applying and sharing whatever learnt,
This in turn would be a great form of learning for me too.
As I am truly inspired by…
“Try not to become a person of success but a person of value.” — Albert Einstein
And remember,
Your Past Does Not Equal To Your Future, It’s Your Hunger that Matters – how hungry you are to learn things and put that into action mode
So now that you have stayed up until this point which implies that you are a deep learner.
Did you feel the connection in my writing, just like I am sitting beside you and narrating this story?
If YES, then I would like to invite you to visit my blogs & videos to get some triggers that can add value to your life and career.
To your success,
Digital Gaurav
Gaurav's Guiding Principles
In a life full of chaos especially on the internet one can easily loose path. So I have some guiding principles that keep me grounded and laser focused towards my mission and overall goals