BENGALURU: With changing times, come sweeping choices that are changing the course of our professional lives. A lawyer and DJ; a banker-turned-bartender; a hotelier and motivational speaker; and a Covid-19 warrior and mountaineering trainer.
Carrisa D’Almedia (27) is a corporate lawyer by day and DJ by night. She grew up with strong ties with music and currently plays disco house and deep house DJ genres. From playing music in front of an empty dance floor to making nearly 500 music-lovers grooves to her beats, the lawyer has come a long way.
“After getting a job as a corporate lawyer handling regulatory compliance, I felt I wanted to do a lot more for myself. Since I grew up listening to music, I decided to take up DJing in 2019. I used to work from 9am-5pm and train as a DJ from 6pm-8pm. I would do this four times a week. My first show in Koramanagala saw only friends dancing, but got my biggest breakthrough at Farout Left Music Festival that saw over 500 people grooving to my music,” says Almedia.
Meanwhile, weekends for some can mean real business. Hotelier Ruthuparna Sharma is on his toes. He is managing his family’s hotel business. While he is dishing out hot idlis and vadaes for customers, he dishes out some food for thought on other days. The motivational speaker conducts leadership talks at colleges and business organisations. “The pandemic has validated the need to dabble in two work cycles, even though they may be contrasting. I love storytelling and have met interesting personalities at the hotel. This is what inspired me to share real-life stories with people. It later moulded into motivational sessions,” says the 28-year-old.
For Naveen Mallesh, a frontline worker with BBMP, dabbling with trekking and tracking was an arduous task. Founder of Trek Nomads, Mallesh is also a mountaineer trainer and was a frontline worker during the Covid peaks. Although he was associated with the Bengaluru south zone war room since early March 2020, the second wave of the pandemic in April 2021 is when both his contrasting jobs met each other. “I was away on a trek in mid-April with fellow members at the Mount Everest base in Nepal.
Out of the 12 who signed up, only three turned up... the rest were Covid positive. As the situation got worse every day, I was asked to intervene to track the Covid-19 situation in the south zone. I was at the base and had to use satellite WiFi to connect with the war room in Bengaluru. So I was a trekker by morning and a tracker by evening,” says Mallesh, who recently trained over 800 kids in trekking and adventure sports at Ramanagara while he continues to be engaged in voluntary Covid-19 work.
Bankers are good with numbers. And so was Kasturi Banerjee who worked as a banker for 16 years. But what fascinated her is the world of spirits. She calls herself a ‘banker-turned-bartender’, who is also a mixologist, distiller and taster. Now, the founder of Stilldistilling Spirits and the blender for Makazai.rum, a rum brand, she says, “I loved my job as a banker however, I felt that India being one of the largest exporters of sugarcane, we did not have a premium rum brand other than Old Monk. A lot of banking traits, especially managing finances and working long hours, helped me in setting up my business,” says Banerjee, who was at Social Indiranagar for a panel discussion recently.