Why I must build Point Blank
I am Ashutosh Pandey. My friends and I have been building Point Blank since 2019. Ever since I started, I have been asked why I chose to do this. People build communities for all sorts of reasons including padding up their resume and getting leadership points on their profile before applying to universities abroad. These are not my reasons. By the time I decided to build Point Blank, I was reasonably sure I would do well in my career, and I have never harbored dreams of moving anywhere else. Were my reasons selfless then? No! I’d argue that building Point Blank is the most selfish thing I have ever done.
To understand Point Blank’s story, you’ll have to know a bit about my story.
I don’t remember a lot of emotions from my teenage years other than a cold, seething rage. As I finished school embroiled in student politics overseen by administrators that could have done better, I had to take a drop year to chase my dream of studying Physics. After ranking 4th all over the country in Board exams, that dream was shattered by a clerical error. I don’t believe that everything happens for good, I think I’d have made a damn fine physicist. So as I began my college studies, I felt angry. Angry at how unfair all of this was.
In college I threw myself into all manner of activities. I built drones in an aero-design team for two years, I debated, wrote and built stuff from electronics scrap. There was very little sense of direction other than a desire to not be a failure again. There was a lot of uncertainty. Most of my peers seemed completely blank about what they wanted to do. There was very little hope for the future. In India, if you mess up your 12th grade, your future apparently becomes a write off. Dreaming big becomes an expensive commodity. The only respite were a few of my friends, like dim streaks of light on a dark night.
And so, I had to decide.
Quoting Michael Emerson as Harold Finch from Person of Interest :
Harold Finch : I have played by the rules for so long.
FBI SAIC Roberts : Not from where I'm sitting.
Harold Finch : No. Not your rules. You work at the behest of a system so broken that you didn't even notice when it became corrupted at its core….. Your rules have changed every time it was convenient for you. I was talking about my rules. I have lived by those rules for so long. Believed in them for so long. Believed that if you played by the right rules, eventually you would win. But I was wrong, wasn't I? And now all the people I cared about are dead. Or will be dead soon enough. And we will be gone without a trace. So now I have to decide. Decide whether to let my friends die, to let hope die, to let the world be ground under your heel all because I played by my rules. I'm trying to decide. I'm going to kill you. But I need to decide how far I'm willing to go... how many of my own rules I'm willing to break to get it done.
I was done playing by the rules. I did not want others to dictate what I could dream of accomplishing. I did not want entering this college to become a death sentence to ambition. I did not want any of my juniors to feel the dark cloud of uncertainty that I felt as I entered college. I wanted to create a space where people could build – undisturbed, knowing that they were bringing about their progress along with their peers.
And I wasn’t alone. I had friends who were willing to give up their own positions of power and authority, spend hours and hours pouring over code and books so that they could teach it to their juniors. I had friends who weren’t scared of dreaming. And so I began.
Point Blank is my middle-finger to the ones who kill the hope within young adults and make them scared to dream. My dear reader, this is why I must build Point Blank. This is why the process of building Point Blank is not complete and never will be. As long as generations of students pour in with dreams in their heart and stars in their eyes, we will have a lot to do.
My dear reader, this is not just an article or a manifesto. Since you are reading this, you must build Point Blank too. This is a call to arms!
#WeArePointBlank