About Me
My Story
I truly appreciate the fact that you have hopped in to know more about me
This is my home online and I would like to establish a deep virtual relationship with you
I value your time, because I value you
Hi, I’m Gaurav and I’d like to share a bit of my story with you.
I come from a small rural village of less than 1k population in Maharashtra from a humble farming background.
I studied in a typical military boarding school where I learnt the real art of discipline
Everyone has some dreams of what they want to become once they grow up, but honestly speaking I never had any🙈
The only aim I had was chilling, watching movies and enjoying life, meanwhile climbing the typical education ladder which everyone follows, just until this day…
The Wake Up Call
Fast forwarding years down the line,
It was the year 2009 when the movie 3 idiots released….
As I was a huge Rajkumar Hirani fan I went on to watch first day first show of the movie.
What happened next was interesting…
It was like the hat blowing of your head completely…
As I had no particular ideologies earlier and was going through the same experience, this sounded just like the perfect hit.
The whole ideology of the education system just went like a tracer bullet in my mind.
The message just felt so right and connected that I decided I couldn’t take it anymore in this memorization game.
The emotion was like someone just said the right thing which was going through the life of every youth, Didn’t it ??
It was a ‘wake up call’ for each one of us and also for our education system.
The movie bug had bit me so hard that it gave rise to the real rebel in me.
So after my 12th frankly I didn’t want to do engineering because of the whole memorisation game of our education system
And finally I chose architecture simply because there were not too many books involved in it, but more of implementation.
The feeling after finishing the relay race 😣
My Architectural Journey
Absolutely I had no clue about what architecture was, just for the sake of eliminating the memorization game I opted for it,
And guess what,
I failed my architecture entrance grade, as I didn’t even know how to sketch.
It felt like crap but somehow I managed to clear it in the second attempt….
Now comes the first day of college,
After entering the college corridors, I could see all sort of creative artwork around.
It was like adding salts to the wounds, to the person who has already failed his entrance grade
On the very first day we were given an assignment of designing our identity on our diary cover
The Dark Days Approaching
The dark days were just started to bloom
On the second day when the faculty asked us to keep our diaries on the tables to pick the best
When all the designs were on the table, I realized how shitty I had designed amongst all
Many such creative assignments were given but each time I was just failing and failing
Each day I just felt like quitting architecture
I was in a turmoil whether this creativity bug is even for me or not ??
Every day the little voice inside kept pulling me down, Constantly reminding me of the past failures
But I had no option of leaving the ring but to face those nasty blows.
Soon I realized, I have no superpowers or talents and if I want to survive in the field all I needed to do was be in the ring and face the punches, because there was no option of even backing out.
Time passed by…The first two years were pretty dark days…
So very often I started to visit the library, reading a lot of books-magazines, started interacting with a lot of seniors right from helping them in their assignments, thesis to making models for them just to understand it from a holistic point and survive in the game.
I also started taking up professional work outside college.
I went on to study a lot of architects, their buildings, ideologies and somewhere it started to sink in deep
So I started taking part in a lot of competitions to test out various ideas apart from the typical design briefs of colleague
And you know what…..!!!!!!
I started winning competitions and slowly the dark clouds started to settle
I started mining more deep, like a hungry animal
As time passed by, I enjoyed the life outside classroom more than inside.
Soon, I fell in love with the outstanding life.
So I was an ‘outstanding student‘ 
always outside the class.
A Blessing In Disguise
In course of time, when interacting with one of my senior friend, he suggested me to take up architectural quizzes as he believed that I could remember a lot of architecture stuff according to the year I was in.
And guess what,
His suggestion turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me.
I started winning the quiz competitions too….
These small success charged me up more, just like building a muscle in the gym-Day by day it got better
Slowly I started to find passion in what I was doing and the passion turned out into a obsession.
A great lesson I learnt from this was that it doesn’t matter where you come from, all that matters is where you are going.
The Priceless Discovery
As I was busy enjoying life outside the class, I attended a lot of live architectural talks, seminars, workshops etc.
In the process of learning about many architects, I came across Ar. Sanjay Mohe’s works through magazines, books etc.
I was truly fascinated by his works and dreamt of working with him one day (just weird thoughts though)
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.
It was nothing less than a priceless discovery for me…..
The Pivot
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, literally I was selected at Mindspace Architects
They say “sometimes dreams do come true”,
This time it was like a fan boy moment for me…..
Each day I worked as if it was the last day
I got to learn a lot of new skills
I learnt more smarter ways of doing things,
Just to name a few, the shear beauty of using software’s was one of its kind, because knowing is one thing and using it efficiently is a completely different ball game
After termination of work there, I was never the same person again….
It was a complete paradigm shift that happened.
To summarize the entire experience one saying that comes to mind is,
“"Winners don't do different things. They do things differently”
And this was my biggest takeaway.
Window Of Opportunities
Having my batteries recharged completely.
The rebel bug in me ended up taking a very controversial thesis and also successfully pulled it off thru all odds
Seeing my thesis and entire 5 year work, I ended up having 3 job offers and one of which was my juror itself.
Many of the architects 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….
Journey of Real Unlearning
The journey has been 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.
And 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
As you have stayed till this point which implies that you are a deep learner.
Did you feel the connect 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 to get some triggers which can add value to your life and career.
To your success,
Gaurav's Guiding Principles
In a life full of chaos one can easily loose path. The only rescue in that case would be the guiding principles which keep me grounded and laser focused.
1
Perspective is everything
It has become mandatory to add “YOUR” before the word perspective which can be reframed as “Your Perspective is everything”
In this information age, we can get carried away with someone else’s perspective very easily resulting in the loss of yours, resulting in living someone else’s dreams
There can be endless discussions on this topic as it is one of the most important one today
It has become mandatory to develop our voice which unintentionally gets registered in the subconscious mind to get reflected in our actions
And it is “YOUR’ perspective that is ultimately going to shape ‘YOUR’ voice
So the YOUR before the perspective is very important or there will be a need to borrow one
2
Life Long Learner
If your not learning your dying
As designers we need to sell our time to buy new ideas from everywhere.
Our brain(think tank) often gets empty to fast, because in the whole process ideas tend to vent out too easily.
Just like we need to charge our smartphones to keep them functioning on a continuous basis, we need to recharge our brains too.
For me creation is nothing but sum of our past experiences, because it is the experiences which help you to take your first decision.
So I always attempt to create more stories and constantly keep filling my content bank with experiences which can create ideas and those ideas can be turned into reality.
3
Simple Common Sense
We are constantly in a rat race of chasing success.
What if it is altered to chase simplicity?
Well, it is very difficult to do simple things right than doing the complex things.
We never strive for simplicity and very often it gets ignored
Most of the times the solution to a complex problem is pretty simple and we never realize that until the problem gets solved and after which we scratch our head to question, I knew this before but I felt it wouldn’t be so simple though!
It may sound strange but I practice simplicity daily, just like we bathe.
Simplicity acts as a cleansing agent to your brain.