REVIEWS “Winter of 2011, Mumbai, India: I sat on my laptop frantically searching the internet for summer internship opportunities. It was the night before I was to submit a list of potential companies to the HOD of the media studies department in my college. St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai has always been among the top 3 colleges in all of India and I am not exaggerating when I say that it is not game to live up to its expectations. Marketing, being my forte, was the area I looked into. As anyone else in my place would do, Ogilvy went up as the first name on my list. As the night matured I came across more companies that I mechanically threw in the list. A friend asked me to take a look at this fairly young company that was into music marketing. He claimed to know someone there. Hmmm.. seems like fun but good luck with becoming the next Apple if using fruits is all it takes! And in the list it went! To all those who questioned my intent to apply to intern abroad, I proudly quoted Virginia Woolfe – “Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, and no bolt that can be set upon my imagination” and felt super-smart. Summer for 2012, Mumbai, India: My friend seems to have pulled some strings as Jaclyn Ranere, VP, The Orchard (the company with the orange logo as we now call it) emailed me wondering if I was still interested. New York?! Hell Yeah! Is that even a question!!? A few interviews over Skype, with me dressed formally waist above hoping to death I wouldn’t have to stand up, and a lot of emails and that’s that, I was selected the first Indian intern to work at The Orchard! They called the Skype sessions chats, but trust me, there were interviews and as interview-like as can be! Wuhooooooo! Here’s when AIESEC stepped in. I got in touch with a dear friend Osborne Saldanha from AIESEC India who got me in touch with Eugene/ Yevgeniy Master (who I now fondly call Mafia) from AIESEC NY. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to help me. There was a lot of information to be sent and paper work to be done and Eugene was ever so prompt and optimistic. Boy! It’s a long procedure to get a J1 visa! As the date edged closer, I was losing patience and sanity! Well, so were my parents! There were daily panic phone calls to Osborne and panic emails to Eugene. I remember my mother once calling Eugene from India at 12.50 in the afternoon as the visa office was going to shut in 10 minutes and they required some details to be filled up immediately. So there we had Eugene, jumping out of bed at around 4.00 am in NY calling out details over the phone. Time difference has never been kind! Finally all paper work, having been approved by Shivan Shukla, was shipped to me. I got my visa and jumped on an airplane ready for a 17.5 hours nerve racking flight to EWR. I called my folks back home who informed me that I was selected to do an internship with Ogilvy, India. Even though I did not know what was to follow, I had no regrets. Alright, maybe a little! But that was before I knew what was in store! Spring of 2012, NY: The first week was all about jetlag and getting to know people at work. I would leave my uncle’s home in NJ (which is where I was living) at 6.30 am and come to NY and roam about getting to know the place. After a day or 2 I met Eugene over lunch where he told me about Skyline. Skyline marks the end of my early morning discovery treks as almost every day after that I was too tired to walk! My weekdays were about fighting deadlines and attending meetings and dealing with people on the other side of the globe and my weekends were packed with shopping and then heading to Bryan Adler’s apartment, getting out and going dancing or dining and come back to Bryan’s and crashing wherever I found place. There was so much I did in and around NY that I would not have done back home. Ali Raza randomly made a plan for skydiving and before I knew it, I was sitting on a glider, my legs hanging out, 11,000 feet above the ground. I still feel the rush when I think of those 7.03 minutes! Every single day of my stay I met someone new, tried something, visited a new place, learnt something about another culture or tried a new kind of cuisine. I experienced a stark difference in the work atmosphere in my country and in NY but am still unable to decide which one I liked better. To cut a long story short, I was only home away from home. After spending all of May and June with crazy AIESECers in NY and NJ I had to head back home with 3 extra suitcases and a lifetime’s supply of fond memories and stories to share.”
- Barkha S., India AIESEC Baruch Annual Report 2012
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