“I always had a passion for dance. Besides dance, I’m also a fitness enthusiast. I do sketching, tattoo art, sometimes write as well.
I used to do solo performances at first. In the first three years of my college life at the Graphic Era University, I always went into solo performances and competitions. Later, I was shifted to the Graphic Era Hill University. During an Inter-University Dance Competition (Hill vs deemed vs Bhimtal), I decided to form a team. The majority of members consisted of my friends and most of them were non-dancers. We started practicing and surprisingly we ended up winning the competition. Here is when our journey started.
Most of us in the group were from BCA and Bsc(IT) as the competition was Inter-Departmental too and the faculty of both the department helped us a lot in forming the team. I am really thankful to them for their help.
After the formation of the group, we won a lot of competitions in and around Dehradun. Between 2014 to 2017, we won all the cultural competitions including the Grafest; the annual fest of our college. We have also won various competitions in the fests of IIT Thomso, IIT Tarang, DIT, IMS, DBIT, Tulas, UPES, and some other places, as well. In most of these places we have bagged the first prize. As far as I remember, I have never lost a solo competition.
In 2016, I received a call from Mtv in which they explained to us the process of getting in their upcoming show ‘MTV Colours of Youth‘. It was like a talent hunt wherein dancers, singers, rappers, beatboxers or any other form of artist were participating from different parts of the country. Everyone represented their region and were competing against each other.
Nikhil Chinappa and Perizaad Zorabian were the judges of the show. Our performance was really appreciated by them and we were selected for the next round i.e, the Zonals. In the Zonals, we along with 3 more cities from the North had to compete against the teams from the East, West and South zones.
We competed strongly and after winning the semi-finals we were now in the finals of the MTV Colors of youth 2016. We performed our best in the finals and ended up in the fourth spot which was a huge achievement for us.
But the story doesn’t end here. In 2017, we again received a call from MTV and this time we had prepared better. This time the judges were Benny Dayal and Lauren Gottlieb. I gave auditions for solo as well as in the group and the judges liked both of my performances. Lauren suggested to go ahead in the competition as a team and we did the same. This time our performance in the Zonals was brilliant. We got a thumbs up from the judges. This meant that we were directly into the finals without even performing in the semi-finals. That was a proud moment for all of us. After competing in the finale “Shashank and Group” was declared the runner ups of the competition. We were quite happy about it, after all, it was our hard work paying us off.
As soon as I landed back in Dehradun, one of my friends called me up informing me that it is our Alumni meet today in the college. I directly went to college with all my luggage. As soon as I entered, I was introduced to everyone. I was asked to perform in front of everyone. After my performance, the Vice-Chancellor sir came over and offered me a job in the university itself. I was flattered and didn’t know how to respond. I somehow collected myself and agreed to the offer.
Currently, I am working at the University as a Cultural Head. There could not have been any better job for me. I believe I amlucky enough to get a job in a field that I love. In this journey, the amount of support I got from the President sir, the Vice-Chancellor sir, the HODs of our departments (BCA and Bsc.IT) and our other teachers is commendable. I would be forever thankful to each one of them to help me live my dream today.”
Instagram – @shashank_pathak_
*The views expressed in the above article are of the writer and not Winged Club.