Personal Histories

(Published in Tehalka in May 2007)

My parents have shifted to Bangalore recently. They have sold their house in a small industrial township called Asansol, 200 kms from Kolkata, where they spent about 35 years of their working life, and moved to an indifferent, impersonal Bangalore. They have retired from their respective medical careers and grown old and lonely. I didn’t want them to live so far away from where I live and work. It’s selfish. It’s protective. It’s perhaps role reversal. I moved out of home when I was 15. And 20 years later, we are back again, in the same city. These days I often drop into my parents’ apartment to have some hot chai. While talking to them about much mundane stuff like the antics of a neighbour’s dog or the last date for the LIC premium, I often see my mom staring at me over her cup. Asking her brought a rather strange response. “We have not done you justice. You should have had more supportive parents,” she said.

After having waged wars with everything conventional including parental guidance and approval towards leading a ‘secure, financially stable and comfortable life’, I was confused and amused at the same time at my mother’s remark.

It was rather difficult being the only daughter of well-to-do medico parents, especially since I was tagged in school for being the best all round student. Expectations built up. My parents wanted to see me as a famous doctor or a powerful IAS officer or at least a well groomed academic with a train of letters against my name. My teachers, friends, their parents, almost everyone in the smallish living-out-of-each-other’s-home kind of township expected me to make them proud. In the only ways they knew. Every eye followed me, every tongue eager to wag at my slightest stumble. It wasn’t just people, my entire world demanded me to be someone I was not too eager, earnest or convinced I should be. And mostly I waited, to cut my leash.

I took the first opportunity that came my way. Fleeing to Presidency College Calcutta to study Economics had more to do with running away from being a doctor than a love for the subject. My parents never forgot the betrayal but hoped (more because of their faith in the reputation of the college than on my intentions) that I would at the least turn out to be a scholar or a bureaucrat. I certainly doubted that. I wanted a taste of the real world. I was writing, watching films, doing theatre, painting, conversing with people with the intensity that only a Calcutta milieu could sustain. My involvement with the Students’ Union increased. I fell in love. This opened my eyes further. The war at home became bloodier. My family approved of nothing I did. The more angry they got, the fiercer got my resolve to do all that ‘shouldn’t be done’. Precisely why I picked up smoking. Girls weren’t supposed to. Much later did I realize it to be a rather silly reason to get stuck with a habit I don’t really like anymore. But at that age I knew only so many ways to protest. Everything was personal.

It’s not that I knew what I wanted. But I did want to spend some time finding it out. I could become a film maker. Or a writer. Upset with me for throwing away a career in medicine, my dad clearly told me that he would not fund any of my ‘radical artistic’ pursuits. While they were alright as hobbies, he was certain that they spelt doom if chosen as a ‘life’ option. He was concerned. He was being protective. He would not listen to me. And I saw that as unfair. The battle lines were drawn clearly. Funding would stop if I did not tow them.

There are some moments where life presents you with crossroads. The route you take probably creates your destiny. I could have taken the option to leave home; chase my dreams. Or listen to my parents; do exactly what they told me. I did neither. I decided to take the CAT, get into an MBA school, make loads of money and then quit and fund my dreams. Yes, I was naïve. Yes, I did not know what exactly these dreams were. I was unaware that on every road you take roots grow under your feet quite inevitably.

To my surprise and some disappointment, the MBA experience was quite all right. I was good at it; I even liked it. The dreams temporarily seemed to fade away. When placement put me in the top advertising agency in Bangalore, I was excited, ready to conquer this new world.

Management was a creative job, they said. I loved it initially and did my work like I did everything else in life: with intensity and passion. But in three years the business started stifling me. Developing yourself meant moving to the next position, learning meant knowing how to get around your clients and growth meant bigger pay packets. There was no intellectual stimulus, no creative inspiration. I suffered, with most of my colleagues, from an ailment nicknamed SSDD, ‘Same Shit Different Day’. I changed a few jobs, moving from advertising to marketing to starting a new company but the questions did not go away, nor did the vacuum that was slowly engulfing me. I made more money but I would come home every night wondering what I was doing with my life, to my life. Seeing myself ahead of the others in my batch did not please me (which I am told is a serious symptom of corporate illness!). End of the day, I was just making profits for pockets already heavy. I made no difference to anybody’s life. I had no voice, no shadows. Only a never ending ladder stared me in the face and here I was clinging on to rungs in the middle, fighting with a host of others to move ahead. I felt like a bonsai, stunted.

People around were full of advice. I needed a holiday. I could take yet another job. Sell clothes instead of tea; software instead of tiles. But none of these seemed to be what I wanted. Unhappy, struggling with a lack of identity and purpose in the corporate world, I was searching for a different space.

That’s about the time I heard of the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), a funding agency for arts and culture projects. They needed a person with marketing skills to start a fundraising unit. I started working with them, a bit gingerly at first, getting paid a quarter of what I used to earn. I knew nothing about the not-for-profit world or about the state of the arts in India. I only knew that I was passionate about the arts and I could sell.

The response of my family to this shift ranged from silence, sometimes stunned, sometimes surly, to a concerted effort to make me realize my folly. This was not a career option at all in India. Where was the sector that I was talking about? Where were the ‘other’ jobs I could shift to? Where was the possibility of higher pay, loftier designations? To be honest I asked these questions too. But this time instead of alienating me, the difficulty of the questions drove me deeper into trying to understand the nature of my work and the environment I was working in.

On one hand, I was interacting with artists who passionately believed in what they did and on the other I was negotiating with sharp, focused business professionals who knew exactly what they wanted. Creating the bridge was my job. I was learning and speaking different languages from different worlds often introducing ideas from one to the other. I was osmosis!

Fundraising started becoming an area of focus in IFA. I was helping to set up systems for running high profile art events to raise money, figuring out ways to create an endowment campaign and getting the Board of Trustees to engage with fundraising in new ways. And I was learning every day.

I was witnessing how the arts express, question, dialogue and interpret. This reflected in me. I was reconnecting to myself. I was developing a sense of value for things around me in a manner I had never known before. I was learning to be more patient, channelising my passion to feed in to a purpose larger than myself. A sense of self and identity I always searched for was beginning to grow inside me.

I did have my share of failures in a field that was nascent, underdeveloped and unrecognized. Raising money for the arts can be quite frustrating in India where myriad other more ‘deserving’ causes push the arts outside the periphery of most funding agenda. Corporates either keep their charity kitties reserved for the whims of the Chairperson’s wife or divert the funds to callously thought-out CSR policies. Foundations seldom fund culture. Individuals have their own notions of what needs support. But I was competing with myself now. There was in front of me no ladder or race; just a wide expanse of the world with challenges to be met, barriers to be broken and opportunities to be created.

So here I am five years later, continuing to work for IFA. Each day is a bright new challenge. Failures open new doors. I am richer today, in every way I define wealth. My family still worries about my future, my security; about what this choice of mine might hold for me ultimately. They are probably also coping with the fact that needs, aspirations, dreams and destinies mean different things for different people.

But for me, my journey today is more meaningful in itself and I don’t really care about the destination any more. To quote Constantine Cavafis, a Greek poet from his piece Ithaca, “You arrive not expecting more wealth, than the riches you have gained along the way”. And my mother smiles at me more often over her cup of tea.