Bhubaneswar, May 25: As a four-year-old, he wanted to be Superman. Some years later, he learnt the guitar and wanted to be a rock star. When he entered his teens, he saw The Godfather and wanted to be a gangster, but when the time came to pick a profession, he simply went by his parents’ wish and became a software engineer.
This could be anybody’s story but not of Jubanashwa Mishra, who refused to tread the beaten path and has launched himself on a journey across states to inspire youngsters to follow their dreams.
The 28-year-old has been selected as part of the one-week job project, where he is supposed to undertake a 28-week odyssey touring 28 states of the country doing 28 different jobs.
The project was started by a Canadian college graduate called Sean Aiken in 2008. Aiken, who was unsure of what he wanted to do for a living, worked 52 jobs in 52 weeks to find his real calling. Today, he conducts talks across the globe urging youngsters to “discover their passion” instead of opting for a stereotypical job.
Mishra, the first Indian to be part of this project, was selected after rounds of interview over Skype. He mooted the idea of curtailing the project to 28 weeks.
He started his journey in the second week of May from Haryana where he worked as a photographer for a news channel. Later he was hired as a market researcher by an upcoming firm in Gujarat. At present, he is working as a hotel manager in Rajasthan. He has already received job offers from at least three other states — mountain cleaner in Himachal Pradesh, cremation assistant in Uttar Pradesh and tattoo artist in Goa. He hopes to get more offers as he moves on.
Hailing from Sonepur district, Mishra, who studied engineering at National Institute of Science and Technology, Berhampur, went on to work in an IT firm for three years in Chennai. Then he enrolled in a postgraduate diploma course in communication management and entrepreneurship at Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad.
Over the years he has switched jobs quite a few times. His last job was with an organisation that used the medium of jatra, a folk theatre popular in Bengal and Odisha, for brand promotions. Before that, he wandered across India promoting his revised version of Pecha Kucha — a Japanese methodology of presentation and helped develop a user-friendly online picture lexicon called Ezee Dictionary. He organised an international short film festival at KIIT University, here in 2011.
Mishra, who is undertaking the journey to inspire the youth, would have a cameraperson accompanying him to capture his adventures. Mishra himself would document his experiences and try to get it published in the form of a book. The expenses of his journey would be covered by crowd funding. He is aggressively promoting his journey on social networks and video-sharing sites for this.
“I need funds to be able to pay for my travel and lodging. The money received will also fund my book and film. This is not a personal project. This could be anybody’s journey and that is why I have not approached any corporate house and instead, asking for small donations,” said Mishra, who wants to donate the money he earns from his weekly wages from various jobs to a reputed Delhi-based social organisation called Goonj, which works for destitutes.
Mishra calls himself a “frequent job changer” and so, despite his interesting resume, recruiters would probably not be very interested to hire him. But that does not worry him.
“I want my journey to inspire teenagers to try and do what they really want to. My parents, who once pushed me into engineering, today stand by me in this bizarre journey. Personally, I will gain an experience of a lifetime,” said the 28-year-old who is likely to visit Odisha in September.
