This article has been written by Pranjal Joshi based on his conversation with Priyanka Beriwal in June 2018 at ARCH.
Priyanka Beriwal has been an alumna of ARCH College of Design and Business of batch 2006-09. She did her graduation from ARCH in Jewelry Design. Priyanka recollects the good old memories of the time she spent as a student at ARCH. She recollects those fine moments which shaped her life and career.
Priyanka hails from Delhi, she wanted to go for a professional course in Arts. While she was looking for a career option, she was suggested a course in Jewelry Design from ARCH by a teacher of her sister, who was also from Jaipur.
Jaipur caught Priyanka’s attention as Jaipur is a hub of Jewelry and it was close to her home(Delhi). She came to Jaipur with her mother and found Jaipur to be a peaceful, simple and good city which was different from her perception of Jaipur. She also loved the heritage and historic account of Jaipur. Being charmed by Jaipur, she registered and appeared for ARCH entrance test in June 2006 and cleared it.
She vividly remembers her first day at ARCH, 7th July 2006.This was the day Priyanka had her first session at ARCH with her batchmates. This batch also happened to be the first batch in the campus of ARCH based at Malviya Nagar in Jaipur.
Hostel life with her friends was fun. None of the batchmates ever complained about anything or criticized anyone. They just fixed the problems as and when they rose up. Their seniors at ARCH were very supportive and cooperative. Priyanka still remembers her seniors Richa Pareek, Jatin Verma and Siddharth Pincha who were very caring.
GABA was the first fashion show their batch was a part of and it was the first time that GABA fashion show was organized by ARCH. Priyanka has fond memories of that fashion show, they were assigned duties at the backstage, this was the first time that they were exposed to a fashion show. Students of all departments and different grades worked together towards making GABA a success.
Students from her batch also participated in a Jewelry show in which Priyanka Beriwal, Charu Jain and Neha Srivastava got their entries selected in the top 10 designs.
Priyanka remembers how the entire batch had a great time when they went on for a picnic to Samod and Bhangarh. The things and material needed for cooking were also taken with; playing games and gossip made the days even more wonderful.
She also recollects meeting actress Amrita Prakash at mid-night, who was the brand ambassador of ARCH at that time.
It was the time when the present building of ARCH was under construction, the entire batch lovingly made textures on the walls on the institute and decorated it beautifully.
She now feels that as a student she had a great time at ARCH. The infrastructure of the institute has become much better, incubation cell gives wonderful guidance to the students to become entrepreneurs and classes are more spacious.
Priyanka Beriwal, Charu Jain and Priya Mehta were the toppers in Jewelry Design department and were awarded degrees by Shivraj Patil. All the students were assisted a lot by the college in getting good internships and placements.
Sandeep Palke of that batch, who was from Mumbai went onto to do his Masters from Milan. He then went onto work for Rocky S after coming to Mumbai. He is a now a stylist based at Mumbai and assisted the main stylist in making of film ‘Student of the year’.
Chandani Sharma, who was an Interior Design student of the 2006-09 batch feels, “ARCH was an extended family for us. It was a home away from home. We had new and different learning every day. We had many interactions with faculty members of all departments.” Chandani went onto work with Ms. Ashwini Tandon, MUSE Architects at Bangalore and then on with Sthapatya architects. She has also been associated with Nine Dot Squares and has worked on a heritage conservation project, Alila Fort Bishangarh. She now successfully runs her own firm named ‘Sriijan Interiors’ in Jaipur and is also a Traditional Craft Workshop Facilitator.
Priyanka remarks, “all of us feel that ARCH is our ‘soul’ since we have seen the present ARCH campus getting constructed and also because we were hostellers sharing a special bond with each other and the Institute.”