In the thick of things

Atul doesn’t strike you as the adventurous sorts at first glance. But the mild mannered 20-year old has quite a colourful side to him.

He hails from the eastern state of Orissa, which is filled with forests. He tells us of how his love for all things adventurous comes from growing up hunting in the forests with his family, and later, his friends. The gang thrives on occasionally taking off into the forests with nothing but some knives and their wits, and stays in the wild, camping, foraging for food, living on the edge for a good week to 10 days. Atul loves the sense of adventure that this gives him. He sees life as a monotonous stretch of boredom, if devoid of heightened adventures.

He is also quite the sportsman. Till 2 years ago, he actively played cricket for a leading cricketing academy run by a well known cricketer who played several internationals for the India cricket team. He (Atul, that is) continues to be an active cricketer, and also loves playing rugby and football.

So where does his phone come in? I expect him to be another GPS maniac like Akash, navigating to newer adventures with his phone. Or maybe a shutterbug, capturing and sharing the adrenaline rushes. But he is quite the contrast.

He uses his phone as a relaxation point in his high adrenaline life. He has a SE phone, and can’t stop going on about its great music quality and music storage capabilities. It is not that he loves music greatly. Music is, for him, a relaxant. And he uses his phone actively to break the thrilling adrenaline moments with calming, refreshing ones. Listening to music in the breaks during his match allows him to go back to the game refreshed. When his coach is yelling at him for playing a bad shot, he likes to turn the stress out with great music from his phone. Even on a regular day when he is just another college kid, he uses the music from his phone to relax and refresh himself, between classes or on the hectic commute to college.

He uses his phone to keep going on, to keep living his exciting, adventurous life.

Opportunity: Be an enabler, a companion, not just in the “in-between” times of his life, but in the thick of things.

Post author: Sai Raghavan