Yesterday, I received a call from London...

The willingness to take a leap of faith...

Yesterday I got a call from a long lost friend and we ended up speaking for almost three hours. The only person in my uni in England with whom I could have some serious in depth conversations about art and philosophy.

Uni ended on an absurd note. None of us knew what we were supposed to do as graduated artists. The only way forward seemed sending dozens of applications to corporate jobs, galleries, newspapers, photographers and hoping and praying that someone would give us one. Of course this would always be a temporary job as no institution ever hires a fresh graduate. They expect you to be marinated - in short having gone through troublesome jobs that makes up your endless LinkedIn CV - to actually give you a job.

The only option left was to find a contract work in some bigger city and hope that someone notices you. Although, the problem with that was that it was impossible to make that happen especially with the cost of living soaring to the skies.

One more that I shared with her was our background. She came from a working class background in Wales and I from a similar one in India. To pay £1000 in rent while working two jobs to pay that rent and eating shit food with leftover money was not an option for me. I had a 20 hr a week working limit on my visa. I knew that even if I make it, I would be so exhausted that working on my art would just be a dream. I did spend some time in London - sharing a flat in Hendon. It didn’t take me more than a few weeks to opt out of it. Let’s just say, I wasn’t made for that life. There was smoke, booze and drugs - that’s it - that’s how I remember my days in London.

I remember we would sit in a Starbucks at the High Street in Cheltenham that overlooked a recently restored fountain. Our friend who studied with us at the uni worked there. She’d give us free coffee’s secretly around the left corner. (I am sure she doesn’t work there anymore and Starbucks won’t send a warrant against her in Ireland for merely handing out free coffees to poor students in search of work.) Please don’t file a complain about us.

I guess this is the perfect cue to share a link to buy me a coffee via paypal, www.paypal.me/ashutoshjoshistudio. I will buy a coffee this time, I promise.

We would ponder all day while sending cold emails and job applications in between. I knew then that I’d be chained to this place and the cycle would be endless. I work to pay rent. The flat has a lease of 12 months so I am stuck for 12 months. That means I hoard a lot of stuff and to be able to keep that stuff, I again extend my lease and find a work to be able to sleep in a tiny cramped up space in London.

I did work in a gallery in Bristol for a few months but I soon realised that the said photographer who worked alongside me, who was 39 at the time, worked as a delivery driver at Deliveroo and he too was finding it hard to make ends meet. If he - a native Englishman found it hard to work out his finances as a working artist - who was I? I was the smallest fish in the pond. I didn’t get a cent from my family by that point because they had exhausted their wealth in my first year itself. I remember staying in Cheltenham just so that I can go to my friends to eat at theirs and spend my afternoons drinking free tea, biscuits and leftovers at the university chapel. I didn’t have any energy left in me because I was on a diet of PG Tips, cheap tobacco from Eastern Europe, Tower Gate milk digestive biscuits and processed soups and other leftovers. How could I possibly think clearly on such a diet?

Obviously, I chose the most radical option after my uni, but she was scared. Maybe she was bombarded with the ideal of an English life from her childhood that she never looked outside of the confines of her society. The world outside is foreign and people are weird and they speak weirdly and eat weird stuff - that’s what she grew up with. It would take efforts to break those chains. She joined Marks and Spencer’s shortly after I moved away from Cheltenham to Edinburgh. We kept in touch and kept sharing our skillsets. In a couple months I was already selling my artworks to private buyers and getting some commissions on the side while living with a 60 year old friend who I met on Couchsurfing. I took all the risks necessary and the universe landed me in the best spots - after the initial turbulence ofcourse.

I decided to move back to India and that was probably the last time I heard from her. My life went on a roller coaster ride. I walked across India, moved to a village- started farming, travelled and hiked Nepal and Vietnam. My work took me to places as sometimes a videographer, at others a photographer and sometimes an investigative journalist. I was eating farm grown food - away from all the smokes, drinks and drugs that were a common thing in England. I was glad that I never had to go to Aldi, Lidl ever again to buy that cheap factory grown food and wait in a line forever to only meet a robot like person who mechanically said hello and thankyou as if it was a boring necessity of his job.

Through all this, I always thought of this friend of mine. I knew she was depressed. Working in M&S to pay the bills is certainly not what you idealise in your life. I knew she was on Ketamine on most days - because university and her friends taught her to be in an intoxicated state at all times - because that was fun. I knew she needed a morale boost. Someone to tell her that she was worth and she would make it in her life, only if she fought her inner demons and inhibitions that were holding her back. She had to be told that she would make it to the other end - you just gotta take a leap of faith and walk on that invisible bridge. That outside of the confines of those really pretty beige walls of her English apartment lied a whole universe that was waiting for you and it had its arms open for you to jump right through. For nearly two years I only wished her well and sent her wishes whenever I thought of her. May the universe guide her, I would say, like I said prayers for some other friends too.

And then a month back I receive a message from her - let’s have a call, it read.

That’s life - it comes full circle. It did for her too. She went to therapy soon after she left her work at M&S. She realised her addictions and started working on them. It’s like they say—life gets better when you realize the universe isn’t just out there; it’s in here, inside your mind, waiting for you to take charge. She took a bold decision and moved away from her house in Wales and got a job in London. I guess what she found out was that she could be happy with a calm mind - those demons weren’t troubling her any longer. She could focus better and then she dropped the most exciting news, “I am planning on moving out.”

“I want to travel the world, find out who I am, and let my art support me. I won’t extend my lease when it ends early next year” she said. She didn’t need the security of a lease or the constraints of a fixed address anymore. She wanted to work with her hands in fields across Europe or Southeast Asia, to immerse herself in life’s raw experiences. She was finally listening to her heart, letting it guide her to a life of purpose and freedom.

It takes courage to step off the expected path and trust that there’s more waiting for us when we follow what feels true. But that’s where the magic is, in the willingness to say, I don’t have it all figured out, but I’m willing to discover it, piece by piece. Because life isn’t just about finding security—it’s about finding meaning, joy, and those moments that make you feel deeply alive.

“Nothing has changed,” she said to sum it up, “I am still in my tiny shared apartment in London, working a job to make ends meet but the only thing I have is an unfettered belief and a change in perspective. Life seems much different already. Those same streets look different, they feel different. That’s all I was asking for.”

Life is wild folks, isn’t it? We’ve all had those moments where the world feels like it’s spinning faster than we can keep up, where we’re standing on the edge of a decision that could change everything. Maybe it’s a career path, a dream you’ve been holding onto, or a calling to live life on your own terms. And the choice is right there: let the daily grind of modern society chip away at your dreams—one hour, one paycheck at a time—or take a leap of faith. A leap that says, “I gave it my all. I followed what mattered to me.”

The truth is, we’re all heading to the same finish line someday. But when you reach it, will you look back and wish you had tried? Or will you look back knowing you made the bold choice, that you dared to live without regrets? That one decision, that one brave moment, makes all the difference.

So here’s the thing: yes, it’s risky. Yes, people might doubt you, and yes, you’ll face uncertainty. But every moment you choose to pursue your dreams, to put your passion ahead of fear, is a moment of freedom. Imagine looking back on your life and saying, “I went for it. I didn’t settle.” That’s the stuff a full life is made of. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it. You have one life—make sure it’s the life you want to be living, one brave choice at a time.

You can buy my first book “Journey to the East”, a memoir about an 1800 km walk through India, through my website and on Amazon Kindle globally.

www.ashutoshjoshi.in

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If you would like to help me out in other ways, you can buy me a coffee via paypal, www.paypal.me/ashutoshjoshistudio. You would think that a couple of dollars/pounds won’t mean much, but it does, especially in India where I have chosen a career of a full-time artist.