'Let go and follow your dreams'
If you feel trapped in a career you don’t love, a leap of faith is all you need. What can substantiate it better than the story of Raghu Dixit, who left an unhappy career in Microbiology to become a musician. Today Dixit is one of the biggest names in the Indian music scene. With stories about 14 others like Dixit, who switched tracks to do what they loved the most journalist-writer Shalini Umachandran’s debut work You Can Make Your Dreams Work narrates inspiring tales of people and their undying passion.
City Express caught up with the Bengaluru-based author, at the launch of the book in the city recently. The writer, who has worked for 12-years as a journalist said, “I wanted to say that you’re not stuck to one path. There always are options galore and happiness isn’t always linked only to society’s markers of success. I met many people who hated what they were doing, yet hung on to it. To me, that seemed like half a life. I know and understand how hard it is to let go. Following a dream is a tempting whim, but most of us don’t act on it because circumstances don’t allow us to, because we don’t have the courage, because we’re waiting for the perfect time, or because we’re not really sure what else we want to do. They’re the same kind of doubts each person in You Can Make Your Dreams Work faced and decided to stop analyzing. Each of them has discovered that whatever the challenges, they’re so much happier doing what they love.”
Shalini researched extensively to put together a long list of people she wanted to feature in her book. She shortlisted names of those engaged in careers that were rare and that made the switch harder. At the same time, she wanted to pick those whose stories struck a chord and were inspiring.
“I ended up with a list of about 100 people who had taken a second shot at their professional lives. The final 15 stories have been chosen and written after numerous meetings over a span of two years. I chose people who had spent a fair amount of time in the previous career as well as quite a few years in the new one. I looked for people driven by a love for a particular career or idea, people who had endless faith in a seemingly impractical dream. For instance, there’s Piya Bose whose crazy love for travel inspired her to switch careers. A corporate lawyer who loved to travel, Piya now leads all-women tour groups around the world. In some cases, the switch is prompted by a desire to reach out to others who are less privileged. An apt example would be Vikram Bhat, a techie and a Wall Street analyst who went back to college at 35 to get a teaching degree and is now the vice-principal of a school for children from low-income families in Bengaluru,” she added.
And as Shalini sifted through the countless faces of inspiration, it was certainly hard for her to not get inspired by some of them.
“There is Kanishka Sharma, a marketing manager who studied at the Shaolin Temple in China and is now a close combat expert who trains the country’s armed forces; there’s Ullas Karanth, who started life as an engineer, tried his hand at farming and finally turned to his childhood love for wildlife at 37, is now one of the world’s leading tiger biologists. There is Rohit Singal, a doctor who builds mobile gaming apps; Snehal Bhal, a banker who became an aqua fitness instructor when she realized she loved being in the water all day; Rahul Devesher, who chased down a childhood dream of being a pilot after spending more than four years as a media buyer – so I’m sure you can see why it’s hard to choose. They’re all people who worked hard on re-fashioning their lives purely to feel joy and a sense of purpose,” she said.