A conversation with Bipasha Biswas, Brand Manager at Classmate, ITC Limited, who let go of a design dream, climbed mountains, just became a mother, and still wants to dance in the rain 

Bipasha Biswas has worked in storytelling at Pratilipi and now builds brands at Classmate, ITC Limited. She is a mountaineer. She wanted to study design at Harvard. Her father died and that plan changed. She recently became a mother. She still thinks about dancing in the rain. 

What makes this conversation worth reading is not the resume. It is the honesty about what ambition costs, what grief changes, and what it means to keep wanting things from life even when life has already asked a lot of you. 

The Dreams Have Morphed. The Urgency Has Not. 

Who is Bipasha right now, across the different lives you are living? 

She just became a mother. But in her head, she still sees herself as the person who dances every time it rains. She has not done that in the past year, afraid of catching a fever while carrying her daughter. There are so many restraints now. And yet, she says, there is still an urgency to live it all. 

Travel. Climbing a seven-thousand-metre mountain. Figure skating. So many dreams. They fuel her excitement every day, in every role she plays. But the dreams have morphed. Now she wants to go back to dancing in the rain with her tiny daughter beside her. 

She still has to figure out who she has become after becoming a mother. How she has changed, or if she has changed at all. 

“The dreams have morphed. I want to be the person who goes back to dancing in the rain, but now with my tiny little daughter.” 

She did not answer this question with a list of roles or a career summary. She answered it with rain and restraint and a daughter she is still getting to know. That is the most accurate answer anyone has given this question in this series. 

Any Visual or Text That Provokes a Thought Is Interaction 

What is one thing about human attention or emotion that stays true regardless of platform, format, or industry? 

Humans love interacting. And any visual or text that can provoke a thought in the reader’s mind is interaction, whether it is a novel or a two-liner billboard. 

The thought does not have to be positive. It does not have to be comfortable. It can be: I do not want to see this depressing film. It can be: what did I just read on that billboard? The point is that something happened in the reader’s mind. That is the interaction. That is the thing that holds. 

“Any visual or text that can provoke a thought in the reader’s mind is interaction. The thought could be anything.” 

She has worked across literary content and FMCG branding, two formats that could not seem more different. The fact that her answer is this simple and this consistent across both tells you something about how she actually thinks about her work. 

Letting Go of the Design Dream 

Was there a phase where you felt pressure to become a more acceptable or practical version of yourself? And did you listen, or resist? 

Letting go of her aspirations to be a designer to become more financially practical was one of the most difficult decisions of her life. It was needed at that phase. She persevered. 

She says it plainly, without framing it as a victory or a loss. It was a necessary choice and she made it.

“Letting go of my aspirations to be a designer was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. It was needed. I persevered.” 

She does not romanticise this. She does not say it made her stronger or that it all worked out. She says it was needed and she did it. That kind of clean honesty about a painful choice is rarer than it looks. 

The Lines Blur. You Stop Trusting. 

What is something you are still figuring out privately, even though externally things may look sorted? 

Ambitious people get very good at shutting their emotions down and focusing on getting the work done. It is easier to shut down than to switch back on. You numb yourself and work like a machine, assessing uncertainties and measuring threats. And in that entire process, you forget to trust. 

Sometimes the lines blur and you stop trusting the people close to you, or even yourself. She sometimes has to remind herself: things are better now. You can trust someone. You can keep your emotions and enjoy the sunset while driving home from the office. You can feel it all and focus on living instead of surviving. 

“Sometimes I have to remind myself: things are better now. You can feel it all and focus on living instead of surviving.” 

The shift from surviving to living is easy to say and very hard to practise. She is not saying she has made it. She is saying she has to remind herself it is possible. That is the honest version of the answer. 

Planning, and Then Life 

What is a belief you held very strongly at 21 or 22 that life has complicated since then? 

At 22, her dreams were very different. She wanted to pursue a postgrad in design from Harvard. Everything changed after her father died. She had believed in planning. But life has its own agenda and you cannot force your way in. 

Now she tries to savour every moment she can. To live more in the present than to worry about the future. She is not there yet, she says. But she is trying her best. 

“Life has its own agenda and you can never force your way in. Now I try to savour every moment I can.” 

She mentions her father’s death in one sentence, without elaboration. That restraint is not avoidance. It is the way people carry grief that has become part of the architecture of who they are. The Harvard plan did not just change. It ended. And something else began. 

Creativity Is Not an Opinion. It Is a Solution. 

Does creativity become easier or harder once it turns into a career and not just self-expression? 

On paper, none of the creative professions are easy or well-paid early on. It takes years, or sometimes expensive degrees, to make a comfortable living from them. And when creativity becomes a career, the focus shifts from self-expression to client satisfaction. When a client asks you to edit the same poster for the twenty-sixth time, you want to just do what they say and move on. 

It is even harder now with AI. Because creativity, she says, is not an opinion. It is a solution. A solution to a tricky problem. And most solutions are now one click away. To stand out in a creative profession, it will take a lot of dedication and genuine talent. The bar has moved. 

“Creativity is not an opinion. It is a solution. And most solutions are now one click away.” 

That reframe, creativity as solution, not expression, is one of the more useful things said in this series for anyone working in a creative field. It does not diminish the work. It clarifies what the work is actually for. And it explains why AI is a threat: it can generate solutions. What it cannot yet do is understand the problem the way a person who cares does. 

Grateful for the Earth They Live In 

What kind of work or impact would make you feel genuinely proud of yourself five years from now, beyond titles or promotions? 

As a new mother, one of her biggest fears is her daughter growing up thinking vegetables come from smartphones, because she orders so much through quick-commerce platforms. Adults too often take essential things for granted. 

Mountaineering reminded her not to. Climbing in the most remote corners of the world taught her to value things she had stopped noticing: salt, a spoon, a bath at the end of the day. She became genuinely grateful for every small thing that makes life comfortable. 

Someday, maybe not in five years, but someday, she hopes to do something that makes people feel grateful for what they have. For the earth they live in. That, she says, will truly make her proud. 

“Someday I hope to do something that makes people feel grateful for what they have, for the earth they live in. That will truly make me proud.” 

The mountaineering detail earns the gratitude point. She is not offering a platitude about appreciating small things. She is describing what happened to her at altitude, in remote places, when the basic things were genuinely scarce. That is a different kind of learning. And it shows in how she holds the question. 

Everything in Life Is Unconventional 

If someone younger was reading this and feeling scared because their career path looks too messy or unconventional, what would you want to tell them? 

Everything in life is unconventional. The world is changing very fast. Bluetooth once felt like magic. Today, even AI does not seem that impressive anymore. 

Just do what makes you happy. Focus on the one thing that makes you happy and choose whatever path you want to take to get there. 

“Everything in life is unconventional. Just do what makes you happy and choose whatever path you want to take to get there.” 

The Bluetooth line is the one to hold. She is not minimising how fast things change. She is pointing out that the timeline of extraordinary becoming ordinary is shorter than ever. Which means the path that looks unconventional now might be completely standard in five years. The anxiety is real but the premise, that there is a safe conventional path to follow, is increasingly false. 

A Note From Decoding Draupadi 

What stayed with us is the rain. She opened this conversation with it and it stayed: the person she was before motherhood, dancing every time it rained. She has not done it in a year. The fear of fever, the body that is now responsible for something else, the restraint that comes with that. 

But she did not say she had stopped wanting to. She said the dream had morphed. She wants to do it again, but with her daughter. That is not loss. That is a new version of the same desire, shaped by everything that has happened in between. 

That is actually what this whole series is about. Not who you were before. Not who you have had to become. But who you are still becoming, and whether you have made any peace with the gap. 

If this felt like someone you know, share it with her. 

 Creativity is not an opinion. It is a solution. And most solutions are now one click away. She has been building brands long enough to know what that means. Full interview at @decodingdraupadi. 

Bipasha Biswas is Brand Manager at Classmate, ITC Limited. This interview was conducted as part of the Decoding Draupadi Brand Manager Series.