Clad in casual Tees and faded jeans, when Samyak Chakrabarty swaggered in for his first press conference, the watchman almost didn't allow him in.
"He actually thought I was just another teenager trotting in without any purpose," says 19-year-old Samyak. Samyak is the coordinator of the Indian Federation of United Nations Youth Association.
Though Samyak has been in the limelight — with his contributions at the national and international level — for quite some time, he chooses to be like any other teenager.
Samyak is just one of the many teenagers venturing on to new paths, at an age when others would have been either buried in books or loitering around cafes. But, these ambitious teens are breaking the shackles of convention and creating an identity of their own; and all of it under the saddles of stress, criticism, and expectation.
When Prachi Desai, Farhan Akhtar's blue-eyed girl in
Rock On! arrived in Mumbai for an audition, she was all of 16. It was a tough decision for this Pune girl to make the leap into the uncertain realm of tellyworld.
"For the first few days [during Kasamh Se], I used to wonder where I was heading," says Prachi, now 20. But after her serial became a hit on primetime TV, and her star quotient rose, people started referring to her by her screen name, and fans thronged the sets and life became celebrity-like. "It's unbelievable the way my life has shaped up, and I have no regrets for the risks I took," she confides.
For others, like 15-year-old Zain Khan, who recently charmed his way into Bollywood in Hari Puttar, stardom came as a surprise. Zain's main concern is that he always remains confident of his abilities.
As he reveals: "There are a lot of people who want to get you down, even when you are so young. And that's the most difficult part, and that's not restricted to the acting field." But one adage has kept him going: Keep both ears open; listen from one and let it out from the other. In fact, it's that dictum that helps them stomach professional setbacks without much ado.
