That was the first day of My MBA College. Jaipur welcomed me with the warmth of 45-46 degree Celsius. When I landed I was struggling to make out whether to fight with the climate to adjust or with the taxi drivers who were fighting amongst themselves to take to the campus.
When I reached the campus I was impressed by the magnificent building and infrastructure. After going through the formalities, I was assigned a hostel room (that I chose double occupancy). There comes one of the most awaited curiosities of hostel life …… “Who is going to be my roommate”. It was on the second day that Warden Sir walked into my room with a boy of similar age as mine and introduced him to me as my roommate. He was a short and plump guy who had small goatee beard that elongated his chin, by name Pariksith Singh from Himachal Pradesh. There was a formal handshake between us with a formal greeting. After the initial conversation I came to know that he is a sort of easy-going person who does not take everything seriously and who did not express that level of interest in the topics that I was deeply in love with.
In simple he was, is, and seemingly would be absolutely opposite to me. But I still liked the whole conversation, because I was in love with the destiny that brought us together in spite of all our dissimilarities. Exactly at that point of time a thought crossed my mind. Actually diversity is the great concept that is contributing astoundingly to the beauty of the whole country, rather to the whole world at large. It was actually at that point, the interest to dwell on this topic was triggered. However this was just a trailer of the movie and I was expecting the whole movie once I visit the class room where I would get to see and interact with people who are different in language, color, and nativity and most importantly in the way they think. I was excited and nervous at the same time, excited because I was going to meet different people, nervous because of the fear that I may get the reality check regarding my abilities.
However my expectations weren’t let down, I could get to see the beauty at the first glance, the beauty of whole country in a single classroom, my classroom. In spite of all our differences we were all bound by an invisible thread of unity which came out of diversity. That is the reason they say, strength lies in diversity not in similarity. So basically, diversity is the art of thinking independently, yet together, by understanding one another’s uniqueness. It has become inherently important to value diversity, not to make all of us same but instead to help us embrace the differences that make each of us unique.
Right from the ancient times it has been clearly evident that various races of the world interacted and traded with each other which breeded unity among the human civilization. Exactly this is what Gandhi ji said “Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization” Truly speaking, when I see the beauty of diversity right in my class, it thrills me when I imagine the scale of beauty of diversity in the whole country. We may have different languages, cultures and different skin colour, but we all belong to same human race which binds all of us together, that amazing beauty of diversity that I have been talking about all through this article.
Finally I would like to conclude saying diversity is not a characteristic of life, it’s integral and imperative to life as much as nature and humanity is!