It doesn’t come with flowers, dinner reservations, or curated captions. It doesn’t promise comfort or certainty. In fact, it thrives on unpredictability.
It’s my relationship with Public Relations aka PR.
With deadlines that don’t move, crises that arrive unannounced, and stories that need to be told right – every single time.
Like most relationships, this one didn’t begin with clarity, but curiosity.
I was in my first year of college when third-year students presented their on-the-job training experiences. Some had worked with newspapers, magazines, and television channels; others with the PR departments of PSUs, and a few with PR agencies. That was the first time I heard terms like media round, press release, media briefing, and media gifts.
One presentation stayed with me. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was assured. I remember walking up to that senior afterwards and asking how this entire profession worked.
By my second year, I thought I understood PR, I had read books, attended lectures, learned the frameworks. However, that illusion soon faded during my one-month internship. What the classroom taught me was structured and linear, but what the real world demanded was instinctive, fluid, and deeply human.
By the end of my third year and after nearly four months of on-the-job training, I knew this wasn’t something I wanted to pursue as a mere job. I wanted a career in it. PR had already revealed its complexity, its pace, and its quiet influence—and I felt drawn to it in a way that was hard to rationalise.
Perhaps that’s the Piscean in me, I have always trusted intuition as much as intellect. PR rewards that balance, it asks you to read rooms, sense undercurrents, and anticipate reactions before they are voiced. Often, the right call isn’t obvious on paper, it’s something you feel before you can fully explain it.
Over time, the relationship matured.
PR teaches patience in ways few professions do. You learn that timing can change everything. Speak too early and you risk misinformation. Speak too late and you lose trust. The art lies in the in-between.
It also teaches empathy—the real kind. For journalists racing against deadlines. For founders navigating pressure they never anticipated. For CXOs managing reputational risk while appearing unshakeable. You can’t do this job well unless you learn to listen not just to what’s being said, but to what isn’t.
And then there is crisis.
Crises don’t announce themselves politely. They arrive uninvited and demand calm when emotions are high and answers incomplete. You learn quickly that words carry weight—that one line can reassure or escalate, that every pause matters.
Over the years, this profession has shaped me as much as I have shaped my career. It has taught me resilience, emotional regulation, and humility.
Is PR always glamorous? No. But it is always meaningful.
The popular imagination often reduces PR to parties, red carpets, Bollywood/ VIP access, and endless perks—an image shaped as much by pop culture as by reality. From Kim Cattrall’s iconic portrayal in Sex and the City to Lily Collins in Emily in Paris, PR has been packaged as effortless glamour. The truth, however, lives far from that montage.
So, this Valentine’s Day, while the world celebrates romantic love, I am acknowledging a relationship that began in a college classroom, grew through curiosity and instinct, and endured through pressure and purpose.
Not always easy. Not always visible.
But enduring—and worth choosing every single day.
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