By Ahmed Jagirdar
This is the story of Ahmed Jagirdar, a young man from the hometown of Mumbai, the densely packed capital city of Maharashtra, in the second largest populated country in the world, India.
The first thing that strikes you about Ahmed is his height, a guy being 6 feet tall is quite noticeable when you live in South East Asia. His dark black hair and glasses are his most noticeable features.
An average student during his high school days, he started acing subjects when he moved to Malaysia for higher education when he joined IIUM to study Foundation in Human Sciences.
Ahmeds father is a mechanical engineer who switched field and is now a businessman in construction sector. His mother Sabiha is a housewife and he has two elder sisters and a younger brother who are still in high school.
If you were to know Ahmed now he would impress you as a very unique, extroverted personality with immense amount of knowledge, from talking about world politics to art and history, from discussing astrophysics to quoting Aristotle and Plato.
His leadership skills are well known among his peers, mainly for the presentation he gives. His passion in giving speeches debuted in 2017 when he spoke regarding one of the fundamentals of Hinduism.
Standing in front of a large crowd and speaking out his mind is second nature to him. He has very controversial ideals in terms of social issues regarding the LGBT community or condemning world leaders and governments with no remorse.
He says, œThese are hard to swallow pills and ugly truths but one must always have a moral compass pointing in the direction of justice.
The man is indeed a jack of all trades and also a master of some unlike the real saying goes where one is the master of none. He is an excellent orator, a skilled photographer, a poet of sorts and an expressive writer.
When it comes to health and fitness Ahmed definitely is not lacking, as he is a practitioner of calisthenics and has always taken part in athletics and was a renowned basketball player in his high school days which would in turn explain his athletic physique.
A man may have a tower of achievements and skillsets to prove himself to be well versed in various fields which may portray him with the personality of a man being strong and robust.
However, to each human there is also a soft side. One may always have weaknesses, one form or the other, and where these points shine the brightest is when we see Ahmeds emotions flowing on certain issues.
As much as a dedicated and focused individual he might appear, one could always say how he may be very enthusiastic about a certain issue and his sense of justice may hurt bystanders. But, he would not falter for his principles would guide him to stand up for what is right even if there is collateral damage.
He may be too empathetic as some might say for he would take on the burden of others and may provide a helping hand to every other soul in need of assistance but would not ask for anything in return and a few might notice the immense strain and toll it takes on him.
This is where some say he would fall short and sometimes hold him back from reaching his goals but some would beg to differ for having a humane side, a part of you which could not only sympathise, but also empathise with someone and make others’ problems as your own, cannot necessarily be considered a weakness.
One may ask how a man with a variety of skills and a large mix up of various beliefs may have an interest in the field of journalism. This can be answered by Ahmeds hobbies and the principles he advocates.
His constant feeling of pursuing a righteous path and a sense of justice leads him to the path of journalism, where he can have a platform in informing and disseminating information which needs to be known to the public.
It also acts as a front for him to freely indulge in his hobby of speaking to a large audience and sharing his views about numerous subjects. Asked about what ambition exists in this field, the response is one to be applauded at for Ahmed wants to strive towards creating a utopia where people are empathetic, loving and caring of each other, sympathising with people around him, and that a world shall exist where justice should always prevail in fairness.
We can see that Ahmed has a lot of potential and may do great things in the near future. He shall see himself in the upcoming years which he wants to focus on obtaining his bachelor’s degree in Communication and also to be a renowned debater, with a dream of one day having the platform of the Oxford Union to himself, where he shall debate for topics of interest and defend his views and ideals.
Knowledge is power, and when talking about Ahmed Jagirdar, he is indeed a force to be reckoned with in fields like philosophy, history, world politics, physics and much more.
He has no particular source where he obtains information from, but he does indeed remain active on websites such as Twitter and Reddit to be updated and to interact with people. We see that Ahmed is quite well versed in writing, interviewing and editing too, a great skillset required for any aspiring journalist.
One may just read a novel and say it was a nice story, but Ahmed tells us how his recent read of “The Thousand Splendid Suns” written by Khaled Hosseini, gave him an insight of how people have gone through a revolutionary period of time in their lives during the Afghan war.
This has been an inspiration for Ahmed for he would like to show the side of the story which the media would not cover, by searching for stories which would not only have an emotional impact on the audience, but also move them.***
(This article is written as part of individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)