THE PASSION PROJECT : PART III | Ranjana
As far as I can retreat to retrieve into depths of my mature mind, there has always been this one obsessive idea that has propelled me through my professional life – “Why work doesn’t feel like work for some people?”. Some people seem to breeze through the weekdays, hardly waiting for the weekend to come and when it does, they simply carry on working, oblivious of the calendar constraints. Monday morning blues is not a relevant thing for them. They get up every day rejuvenated with a sense of excitement for the day ahead and what they are about to achieve. These are of course people who have found their passion in life that is now leading them purposefully in whatever they do. And yet, as we have these real-life examples strutting around, it seems like an almost-alien concept that doing something you love, professionally, is even a remote possibility. It’s just a myth they say, something out of a fantasy film they feel. “Nobody is that happy with their job”. But that is exactly the point. For these people, what the do isn’t a mere job, it is the joy of their existence. I have stumbled through life, trying to find that joy for myself. And while I still may be an amateur, I thought to seek out the experts who may help shed some light to find what we all are looking for. This series encapsulates those people who have not only found their passion but are living it. And I hope their stories will inspire you to live your purpose too.
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“Be helpful, rather than successful.”
– Anonymous
This one is slightly different from the rest of the stories that I have had the fortune to accumulate. In the sense that this one came to me like a revelation after the fact. At the time, I was just mesmerized by this working-class woman who would usually be compartmentalized into the category of the ones who are ‘not supposed to have any individual intellect or wisdom of the world’. But she had that and much more to share. It just goes to show that you can find inspiration in the rarest of places and within the most pedestrian of lives. Perhaps more so in such settings because the determination of the person then stands out so starkly.
“No, no! Turn right and come straight please. It’s right opposite the railway station bridge”, I exclaimed exasperatedly on the phone. I was met with null responses of mumbles and background noises. After hanging around for an audible reply, I hung up, making a mental note to never opt for this beautician again. I had booked for a grooming service and it was already half hour into the session but she was still yet to deign me with her presence. Finally, after couple more calls and few more frustrated sighs, I saw her peep into my room and come in sheepishly. I had already given up on her before she arrived. But it would soon be revealed to me that what mattered was not how she arrived but how she affected others around her.
She started taking out the tools to tame my unruly growing manes all over the body. It’s like my body had decided to absorb hair strengthening solutions all over my form, baring where it was required the most – on my head. And ironically, I suppose it thought that it needed to balance out the growth on the rest of the body with serious shedding at the top. I shed a few more waiting in her anticipation, restless that I won’t be able to make my evening appointment if it got any late. So, I was obviously jittery but there was something about her that just soothed the situation and when she spoke, I could hear the sincerity behind it. Maybe because she started with a genuine apology, adequate explanation for her delay and then followed it up with the warmest of smiles.
I am anyway no good with confrontations, so I just let the grumpiness slip away as she got to work and got to talk. Now usually, I am the kind who will avoid one-on-one human conversation as much as possible. I am the ‘text me, don’t call me’ type of person. So, when such circumstances come up, I immediately go into a shell and respond in single syllables or non-descript nods. But there was something in the way that she talked that it didn’t feel pressured, it didn’t feel heavy. Seldom have I ever seen someone live up to their name like she did. She was pleasing, charming and entertaining. Just like her name. Her stories of life and laughter, her son and daughter, her battles and thereafter in her immediately piqued my interest and I found myself listening in rapture.
“And that is how I married the man I loved even though everyone in my community was against it”, she said and paused to wipe my face clean, before she started on the next set of services. Turns out she had grown up in a household where having a mind of your own was the biggest blasphemy and wanting to do something independently was seen as incriminating. If you were born a girl, your only purpose was to look pretty, not have a voice. Girls were supposed to be seen and not heard. But she flipped that narrative and found her voice, even if it meant to cut ties that had become toxic. She married and moved to the city, took care of the family when even ends were difficult to meet and raised two kids whom she was proud of. “One girl and one boy!”, her face glowed more as she talked about them, even though she had just given me a facial. “And I love them both to the ends of world. They are my gems. But I have made sure that I don’t make the same mistakes my parents did while raising them. I gave them principles, but I also gave them freedom. I gave them curfews, but I also gave them confidence. I have never put them down, even when they have made mistakes. We just talk about them, find a solution, and move on. And I am so happy that they see me as a friend too, they feel comfortable enough to fully confide in me.” She gave me a peek into the truth of her chronicles. She told me about how one day, her son came up to her, with a serious stance and spoke about wanting to try drugs. She was shocked beyond belief, the audacity to admit that to your own mother! But she pulled herself together and asked him the reason for it. “He said to me ma’am, ‘Ma, you know that I drink occasionally and I never smoke. But I have recently seen some of my colleagues get into drugs and I know that sooner or later they will try to pull me into it. I want to stay ahead, try it once and get it out of my system. And when I do, I want you to be there so that I don’t go off tracks. I don’t want to fall prey to the circumstances but take control of them.’”
You may think that this seems quite far-fetched of a story and very Bollywood-esque. But the truth is that when you haven’t been brought up in the finest of societies but in the backwaters of the burgh your circles do tend to overlap with the ones on the darker side, no matter how hard you try to pull yourself away. It is like living in a swamp, the more you try to resist, the more you get sucked in. But if you have a helping hand on the outside, you have a chance to get free. It was this helping hand that her son was ensuring be there for him. “He was just making sure that he still come back to his mother at the end of the day, and that is what makes it worth it to live it that house, to have such children”, she with a choke in her voice. I looked up and saw a gloom pass over her face. I enquired, only for her to expose the other side of her life. Turns out that the marriage for which she had moved mountains, was now marring her. But she understood what family meant. Her love for her kids exceeded her love for freedom – from her husband whom she once loved but is now a distant dream. And yet she said that she doesn’t give up but tries to make it work between them every day. In that moment, she taught me what it is not just to love but also to make it last.
“Anyway, that is why I started working here, you know. Because no matter what my circumstances are, I want to be in control of how I choose to respond to them, just like my son. I have only one motto – to live life to the fullest. I don’t want to have regrets, but more importantly, I don’t want to let go of anything that defines me. Being independent and strong has always defined me. So, if that has ended in one phase, I will pick up something new and make it mine again. Just like this job. I will find ways that will help me be independent, strong, and useful to someone. This job allows me to do that. To connect with people and help them forget their problems in that one hour when I am serving them. And if someone has smiled that day because of me, that is worth much more than any ratings.”
She was right. My jitters had stopped unknowingly, I could notice that I was feeling relaxed and most of all, I could feel that sense of inspiration creeping up in me as we conversed in the past hour. She had finally made me look decent on the outside, and a bit on the inside as well. I helped her pack away her things and bade her goodbye. She responded with her charming smile once again before closing the door on me and my thoughts. While I came to ponder about her many more times post that, it wasn’t until I started writing these stories and looking for people who embody passion that I thought to pen down more about our interaction. Now you may ask what is so special about her story, touching though it may be, that lends to being a chapter in the pursuit of finding your passion. The point about her story, at least for me, is that not everyone is born with one incredible talent, or one burning passion. Her passion was definitely not salon service. But she made sure that she brought a bit of herself to it every time she stepped out to do that. Your passion could be as broad as making people happy or finding those little things that keep you going. Passion doesn’t have to be one goal for which you have sacrificed your life on the altar for but a constant discovery of things that interest you. Things that help make you better. Things that help you make others feel better. Things that make you, you. The point is that you should care. Care about what you do, whatever it may be.
I still remember when she told me about the advice that she had given her children and inadvertently to me in the process. “Jo karna hai karo, par apne pairon pe khade hone ke baad (Do what you want but first make yourself independent)”. Her children had quite varied dreams. One wanted to become a singer and one wanted to become a chef. And while she didn’t stop them, but she insisted they get a degree education for two reasons – one, so that they have something to fall back on and never have to be dependent on someone for money and two, so that they understood the effort it took to achieve something. “You can do a lot of things that you like ma’am, but what’s the point if you don’t do them with a passion?”, she said as she was packing away her bag in which she seemed to carry the whole hopes of humanity from one service to another. She didn’t have much, but she did have a heart. And she lived up to her name like no other. She was pleasing, charming and entertaining. She was Ranjana.
This is first in the series of The Passion Project. To know more about the author and the origination of this series, read here.
