In what seems like a real life story inspired by the reel, Dhairya Pujara is a version of Swades’s Mohan Bhargava. In the movie, Mohan very comfortably settled in USA working in NASA, gives it all up to come back to his country to ‘light a bulb’. 29-year-old Dhairya Pujara’s story seems to have been inspired by the character played by Shah Rukh Khan, in the way that he quit his cushy American job on his first day after pursuing an MS in Biomedical Engineering. He didn’t fit into the 9-5 routine and he set out in search of a larger purpose.
Starting a company called YCenter in 2013 with partner Aditya Brahmabhatt, Pujara set out with a program called We Serve for African countries like Kenya and Mozambique. The program not only focused on problem-solving and business development but also basic life skills like communication and personality development. It was only during his second visit he found his purpose of educating them about things like getting checked for Malaria by the push of a button on their mobile phones.
And it was just then, when his mother asked him what he was doing for his own mother land? Stirred at once, Pujara bought a one-way ticket to India and started his communication and personality development program in the needy areas of aamchi Mumbai. “We taught them curriculum from the best US universities on a blackboard. The locations and conditions may have been different but students everywhere have been equally eager to learn,” Pujara was quoted by Indiatimes.
Sitting in his BKC office today, Pujara envisions YCenter to help children in need with basic life-skills, which arms them to make important life decisions by themselves. Something that conventional education doesn’t necessarily do, a developed personality helps them make an all round decisions for themselves. The story of a Gujarati boy from Mumbai, going to the US and coming back to uplift those in his own mother land, this story deserves a movie of its own. Another Swades maybe.