22- year-old Rudrali Patil, a law student from Amity, Noida, received a call from British High Commission to serve as its commissioner to India for a day.
The law student, assumed the charge on October 9. She was chosen for once in a lifetime opportunity after she won a video making competition on girls’ rights. The competition was conducted by the British High Commission.
During her tenure as a British High Commissioner she also had the opportunity to chair the meeting with department directors of High Commission where she became acquainted with the operations of the High Commission. The whole time she was mentored by High Commissioner Dominic Asquith.
“The High Commissioner was a paternal figure to me. When I was following him throughout the day, every time he met anybody in the elevator or on the stair case he would follow up with the instruction he had given them. It is a really difficult task,” she said.
Rudrali admitted that a night before joining the office she was stressed and had spent hours in preparing her opening speech. She also worked on her facial expression.
“I kept thinking that everyone would be very serious here,” she said but as the day nears its end she enjoyed every bit of the job.
“The deputy commissioner kept telling me how to take short notes before giving any speech. It was a warm and a very insightful experience,” she said. Rudrali is a student at the Amity Law School in Noida.
“We try to create awareness about menstruation that is still a taboo in rural India, through workshops that we organize in different villages,” she said.
“I always used to think that diplomats meet their counterparts and do some deals between two nations and are restricted to their cubicles but that is not the case. After I went to college with the commissioner, I realized how important it is for a diplomat to interact directly with the people. I missed this part of their life in books that I read,” she said.
