Rise Beyond the Limits

I wasn’t born into comfort or convenience. I was born into survival.

In a small, dusty town where the roads had more potholes than promises, dreams were not something people chased—they were things people surrendered. We lived in a two-room house with no ceiling fan in the summer and no heater in the winter. The kind of house where rain meant buckets on the floor, and every creaking noise at night sounded like a prayer for the roof to hold on a little longer.

My father was a laborer. He’d come home with tired bones and cracked hands, and yet he never complained. My mother was our light. She carried the weight of five lives—me, my two sisters, my little brother, and my father—with a strength that never made the news but deserved every headline. She would often tell me, “Beta, your future doesn’t come walking to you. You have to run toward it, even if you're barefoot.”

I was about ten when I saw it—a computer, glowing behind the glass of a shop window in the town market. I didn’t know what it did. I didn’t understand the buttons or the bright images moving on the screen. But I remember feeling like I had just seen the future. My future.

From that moment on, I walked past that shop every single day. Sometimes I'd just stop and stare. Other times, I’d press my nose to the glass, ignoring the shopkeeper's annoyed looks. That box of light held something magical—a world beyond the walls I was born within.

One day, I gathered the courage to ask the shopkeeper, “Bhaiya, what do you do on this?” He laughed, half amused, half mocking. “Designing, printing, typing... You won’t understand.”

But I wanted to. I needed to.

At school, I began asking questions—too many for some teachers’ patience. I read old books, borrowed notes, and watched others work from a distance. I found out about graphic design, websites, branding. I didn’t understand the terms, but I understood the feeling they gave me: hope.

We had no computer. No internet. Not even a proper study table. My "workspace" was a wooden crate and a borrowed pencil. But I sketched. I sketched logos on the backs of used notebooks. I designed fake posters, imagined company names, drew business cards for businesses that didn’t exist.

Most people around me laughed.

“You’ll never be a designer without a computer.”

“No one from here does things like that.”

“Why don’t you become a clerk or driver like others?”

But there was one voice that never doubted me—mine. And that’s what kept me going.

When I turned 16, I found a part-time job at a local photocopy shop. It paid almost nothing, but they had computers. I offered to clean the floors and organize papers for free—just to be allowed 30 minutes on that computer every night.

I’d open Photoshop, not knowing what the tools meant, and just experiment. I watched YouTube videos on mute—because the speakers didn’t work—and read subtitles like sacred scripture. Slowly, painfully, I learned. It took me weeks to figure out something that others learned in days. But each small success felt like climbing a mountain.

One day, the chaiwala next door asked me, “Can you make a banner for my shop?” I said yes before he finished the sentence. I designed it, printed it on cheap paper, and he paid me with two cups of chai and a samosa. That was my first “client.” That was my first “project.”

It wasn’t about money. It was about becoming real.

From there, word spread. Small shops, friends, even teachers started asking for posters and cards. I designed wedding invitations, school pamphlets, even a book cover for a local writer. I wasn’t earning much, but I was learning a lot.

I saved every rupee, and after one year, I bought a secondhand laptop. It was old, slow, had a cracked screen, but to me—it was a rocket ship. Now, I could work from home. I spent nights practicing, failing, retrying. Some nights I fell asleep with the laptop on my chest and dreams still open in Photoshop.

One of the toughest moments came when I applied for an online freelancing job. The client said, “Show me your portfolio.” I had none. I had only designs saved in folders, most without real names. I felt crushed.

But I didn’t stop. I spent two weeks building my portfolio, creating mock projects, branding imaginary businesses, designing social media posts. I uploaded everything online and applied again.

This time, someone responded.

A man from Canada messaged me: “I like your style. It's not perfect—but it has heart.”

That single project led to another. And another. One client became three. Three became ten.

That’s when Pestaso Designs was born. No big launch, no funding. Just a name, a mission, and a boy who wouldn’t quit.

Now, I work with people from all over the world. I’ve built logos for start-ups, branding for online stores, posters for NGOs. I’ve hired two interns from my own town—young dreamers like I once was. We don’t have a big office yet, but we have laptops, ideas, and each other.

But let me be honest: success didn’t erase struggle. It just gave me better tools to fight it.

There are still nights when fear knocks. There are still people who say, “This won’t last.” But now, I know better. I know that every step I take, no matter how small, is proof that dreams don’t belong only to the rich, the privileged, or the lucky.

They belong to the hungry. The ones who refuse to let go. The ones who rise even when they’re supposed to fall.

So if you're listening to this, thinking you're too poor, too late, too far behind—don’t believe it.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Learn what you can. Keep showing up.

Because if a boy from a cracked-roof home with no shoes can become a global designer—then so can you.

You are not your circumstances. You are your courage.

You are not your failures. You are your fight.

And remember, the limits you think are holding you back—they were never real. They were just fears. And fears? They can be broken.

Rise, dreamer. Rise beyond the limits.

Your story is waiting to be told.