Shama Patel has just authored a self-help book titled 21 Ways of Being Happy and in a candid chat shares, "I’ve always loved reading books that talk about the inner self and the happiness of being connected with oneself.” Greatly drawn to works of masters such as Rumi and more recent authors like Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love), Shama found that most self-help books were preachy and failed to engage the reader at a personal level.
Having completed a post-graduate degree in Marriage and Family Counselling from Bangalore University, Shama worked as a counsellor for six years. She moved to Mumbai in 2009 and joined an NGO working for youth development.
However, in 2012, she quit her work and moved to Chennai where she worked for six months as a celebrity coordinator.
“That year, my engagement to a man I loved had been called off. I reached a point in my life where I lost all my strength and just wanted to run away - run away to a place where I didn’t know anyone. I just wanted to disconnect from the world to understand how did I hit this rock bottom where I became unrecognizable to my own self,” recalls Shama.
During this time, she started her own blog called ‘Khwahisheinn’ (desires, in Urdu). She wrote about her thoughts and feelings - somehow finding a certain catharsis or release in the process. “Although this change gave me the time and space I needed to heal, I was not happy with my new job or my lifestyle,” she shares. Soon after this, she moved to Pune where she lives presently.
In July 2014, she met Sachin Garg, the founder of Grapevine Publishers and he asked Shama if she could write a book around the subject of happiness. “My answer was, yes! This was the silver lining I was waiting for,” Shama recounts. Focussing on the importance of holistic well-being which forms the crux of her book, Shama explains, “I believe that the ability to bring oneself alive to the present is the first step towards a healthy connection between the body, mind and soul - in other words, ‘happiness’.”
In three short, yet incredibly tedious months, Shama finished writing her debut work which has been released in Pune, Mumbai and Bengaluru earlier this year.
After years of talking to people and self-helping her way out of conflicts in her own life, Shama feels that she couldn’t have written at a better time.
“The book is like any other conversation I would have with a client or a friend who comes to me with a trouble,” she says. This conversational style of her writing is perhaps what has drawn most readers to the book and placed Shama in a unique position among self-help writers.
Shama is engaged in various pursuits: a dedicated practitioner of yoga and an artist by nature, she creates hand painted T-shirts and accessories for a Pune based yoga brand called Yoga Varta. Beginning work as a corporate trainer, Shama has been invited to speak in many companies like Mahindra, GNVS Institute of Management and others.
“Be it a corporate or a non-corporate firm, I believe that it is almost necessary to speak about the importance of healthy emotional, mental and personal growth which is perhaps the very foundation of any other kind of professional growth,” she says.
Currently occupied with promoting her book in various readings and sessions, Shama is aware of the skepticism and occasional exaggerations associated with self-help books.
“The fact that I am the author of 21 Ways of Being Happy doesn’t mean that I have my whole life sorted out. If I appear more capable in handling conflicts and talking about them, it only means that I have gone through it all . And if I haven’t, then I have lived it through another person and I want to share what I have experienced and learnt in the best possible way,” she says.
The book she says is not a discourse about happiness but just a practical guide and a collection of everyday truths. The book is as unambiguous as possible and it begins from the basic steps of getting to know oneself to a loving acceptance of mind, body and soul. Following the format of a quote, anecdote, explanation, and ending with certain pointers in a very ‘recap’ style, Shama has also included certain caricatures and comic relief.
The language employed is conversational and rather colloquial which eases the job of a reader greatly. However, the writing is a bit too unambitious - there is an absence of crafting which more years of practice and experience would lend to Shama’s work. But the most striking part of the interview as well as the book is that Shama exposes her own vulnerabilities as a person and gets you to connect with her immediately.