THE PASSION PROJECT : PART IX | Soubhagya Sagar Behera
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 they 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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“Sometimes having a conversation with yourself is the best medicine.”
– Anonymous
“When I started my master’s in business administration, I had this constant nagging feeling – I am not a doctor anymore. I had so drastically drifted from the meticulously drawn path, that I didn’t even know if I was on the right track. I felt like I was turning my back to the oath that I had taken. I felt like I couldn’t help people anymore….”
I met Soubhagya for the first time at an orientation for incoming batch of MBA students. I was a part of a small group that was there to help them get acquainted with the new life they would be stepping into. My first memory of him is this weather-beaten, heavy-bearded, typical Delhi guy who seemed to be literally bursting with energy. It was like little bursts of hurricane whenever he spoke and a controlled chaos wherever he went. But what I remember the most was this. We had a game at the conference as an ice breaker, where everyone had to find someone for each of the quirky characteristics that were listed out. I had made the list myself and was pretty smug about a few of the options there, thinking nobody would really have such specific singularities in this group of perfect overachievers. So, I stood in the corner and saw the pandemonium unfold. I was just about to engage my friend in a casual chat, assuming it would be quite some time before the lot found everybody on the list, when I heard a bellow of “I am done!” I turned around to see a guy strutting towards me with the completed checklist. “You found everything? Even someone with multiple tattoos?” I enquired, astonished. “Oh yes, I have”, he smirked. “Well congratulations…”, I scanned the paper to see his name, “…Dr. Soubhagya?”. “That’s right, I am the doctor with multiple tattoos”, he laughed.
And that is what I have always perceived Soubhagya as. He makes he own rules but breaks the norms. Daring with a touch of discipline. Rebel with a clause. There is always an asterisk to what he does. Nothing is without some deeper meaning. He lived up to this quality throughout the time I knew him at the college. After graduating, we had been in touch on and off, exchanging casual updates in life. I never really thought that I would pick him for this series knowing how he was still trying to get where we wanted to be. But one fine night, when I received a message from him that said ‘I did it! I got a job that I love!’, I knew I wanted to listen to his story.
He humored my request and so we began. “My family has lot of doctors. At a point I wanted to become an automobile engineer, but I was ultimately charmed by medicine”. After Pre-Medical Test, Soubhagya went on to study at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the most prestigious medical school in India. “AIIMS was a total culture shock. It was a pool of geniuses, and I was trying to keep myself afloat with all the course load, the peer pressure, the bullying. But I also found lifelong friends there, I found my passion for photography, and I could see an ambition arousing in me to go abroad. But…life happened.”
As he was preparing to set sail, he got a setback. Soubhagya’s father had passed away. “It was a difficult time obviously, but I remembered what my father had always told me – to hold myself to a higher standard and to never doubt myself. That became the push I needed for the next phase. So, the subsequent years I went to USA, worked at different hospitals, travelled coast to coast and just absorbed all the knowledge I could. It was an amazing experience, so much so that I wanted to do a residency there. But there was something nagging still. I had left my mom back home and I knew the kind of difficulties she was facing. I knew that I couldn’t just shirk that responsibility no matter how smitten I was with this dream. So, I gave it up and went back. But I don’t think I truly arrived.”
As he continues, I can feel the weight in his voice. “I went into depression. I tried to keep myself busy and started working at friend’s hospital. It was hard to just settle right back in, but I still went there every day. Slowly I saw my capability develop, particularly in setting up the process and managing hospitals. As capability grew, so did intent. I remembered when I was at AIIMS what irked me the most was the sullen perspective of the people there. We constantly talked about how unhappy we were with the medical system in India. Its faults and flaws, its shortcomings and sufferings. But while others just lamented about it and moved on, I couldn’t. If I found something to complain about, I wanted to find something to fix it as well. And this was my chance to fix it!”
Soubhagya got to see up close the systemic problems with the healthcare sector and had also seen how the way you manage the infrastructure and policies of your hospitals could make a big impact. Consequently, MBA came on the cards. “I knew that the way I looked at medicinal delivery, so to say, changed that day. It was not just about fixing their internal ailing, but the external failings too. I still liked being a doctor, for sure, but I also knew it was not enough for me. It was not enough because I wasn’t able to affect enough people.” But such a shift was met with stifling criticism. “As soon as I took that decision, I was bombarded with conversations like ‘pagal hai kya (are you mad?)’, ‘doctors MBA nai karte (Doctors don’t do MBA)!’. I had my support system too though, friends who didn’t question my choice but just helped me. Most of all, I remembered what my father had told me, to never doubt myself. And so, I forged ahead. I went back to math, studied hard, got admission into a college, wasn’t satisfied, tried again, and finally secured a seat at IIM Bangalore”, he spoke spiritedly.
It was the first step for Soubhagya in making his dreams come true. But dreams often make you question your reality. “When I started out at IIMB, I didn’t realize it was going to be this different, this hard. I started questioning myself again. Was I doing the right thing? Could I even call myself a doctor anymore? Was I even living up to my oath? It was around the end of the year when the fog lifted, and I started to see. I may not be practicing, but people used to still come to me with their problems. These were the unseen traumas, and I was helping people in a different way. It was not medical advice, but perhaps a moral one. It was then that I realized. For me, passion is not a thing. It’s not something that you wear on certain days, and you don’t on others. I don’t choose to not like photography somedays. I will always have a lens of viewing the world in me even though I may hang up my camera. In that sense, photography is not just my passion; I am a photographer. Passion is who you are. It is a part of you. Passion becomes your identity.”
With a clarity and conviction to start the next phase in his career, Soubhagya approached the last term figuring out where his skills and ambition would fit best. “I knew I wanted to be in the healthcare or public policy domain. But even within that there are so many sectors. Then there was the added pressure of getting placed and the constraint of not having many choices of such jobs in the first place. So, what do you do when the present is clear, but the future is hazy? You take that next step anyway and you and trust yourself. Only two things can happen, you will either excel or you will eliminate. And both are good places to be.”
But his first corporate experience was more latter than the former. “Making the best use of my options, I ended up taking an offer at a pharmaceutical company as a consultant. It was definitely within the realm of healthcare, but after a point in time, I wasn’t sure if it was relevant for me. I still gave it my best shot, I still learnt as much as I could. But I knew that the longer I stayed there, the more I would become ‘that pharma guy’. So, I started searching for other options. One day, I went to dinner with friends and met a person who was working at Rodic Consultants, a cross-sector infrastructure firm. One thing led to another, and I ended up meeting their Executive Director. I remember we spoke for so long, being passionate about the same thing – healthcare infrastructure. We both didn’t just want to see change but bring it about. From there, it was just like a dream. Everything happened in a matter of weeks. I was suddenly carrying out my last-day duties at the previous company and then finally came onboard as their Assistant Vice President. Through all the ups and down of my life, it took time, but I got there. I felt like…I had finally arrived you know.”
I could hear that intense exhilaration in his voice as he ended his ponderings. “So, what’s next?”, I enquire him. His enthusiastic demeanor flares again, “Next is to put my heart and soul into what I have worked so hard to get. I am working on a project that will strengthen the healthcare infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh. I will be travelling to every corner, being on field, getting my hands dirty – everything that I love to do! Finally, I will be sitting in meetings not just for the sake of it, but to actually pick up things with a purpose.” I nodded along, although I would understand the full impact of his work only later, when I would see an article pop up in our chat. UP government, along with Rodic consultants, had launched a digital ‘Oxygen Monitoring System’ that will carry live information of demand, supply, and utilization of oxygen equipment in hospitals across the state. The system had been successful in increasing the supply five times than what was previously present. Soubhagya was doing after all what he had set out to do.
“How do you think you got to where you are, though? What’s the secret sauce?”, I question him. He pauses to ponder the answer, “One thing is that I have understood not to think of life as a race. You need to understand the difference between leading in life and leading a good life. Secondly, I think it is the ability to have a conversation with yourself. You question at every stage what is it that you want to do, why you want to do and are you even doing it. In simple terms, you have to diagnose yourself. Analyze what is it that you want. For me, it was helping people one way or the other. And when one way didn’t work, I took the other way. As a doctor, it is an oath less taken, but it is an oath nonetheless – and for me, that has made all the difference.”
This is second in the series of The Passion Project. To know more about the author and the origination of this series, read here.
