Want to make a radical shift to another career? Sushama Divekar found those who have the guts and found the glory!
Once a doctor, always a doctor.’ You’re passé if you think that. Now, there are many who are willing to take the challenge and pursue a career that is radically different from the one they may have studied for or even worked at for a few years.
So, what prompts this shift? Is it smooth and easy? Would someone just give up a lucrative and established career to pursue a path that could be a complete volte-face? And, is happiness in the new profession really guaranteed?
We spoke with a cross section of professionals from diverse backgrounds. People who stood out of the crowd... to chase a belief and make a mark in a career that was far removed from what they practised earlier.
Rewind To The ‘Then’ In the first place, why did they pursue an education that was run-of-the-mill? Says Mohan, a qualified doctor, who is now a Creative Director with Saatchi & Saatchi, “In the 80s, being a doctor or engineer was the ‘in’ thing. And coming from a family of docs added to the pressure of specialising as one.”
Natasha Pratap, a lawyer who worked with Clifford Chance, New York, USA, and is now running her own creative writing boutique called ‘Words for any Occasion’, adds, “Though most of my family is in the legal profession and I qualified from Cambridge, I always thought about getting into creative writing or gender studies.”
Aditi Govitrikar, a doctor and now a famous model, states, “I always wanted to be a gynac. And, that’s what I did.”
Shilpa Mehta, formerly a lawyer with Gagrat & Co, is now a voice-over artist and a popular actress, with parts in soaps like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and movies like Asoka . For Shilpa, taking up law was but natural: “I wanted to take up something academic. I was always fond of sociology and psychology. So, it was an obvious career choice for me,” she says.
Fast Forward To The ‘Now’ However, things turned around. As Natasha Pratap admits, “Somewhere inside there’s a voice telling you what you’re meant to do. Over time, I developed courage to listen to that voice more keenly. Legal studies did not excite me. I was a maverick of sorts even at Cambridge. I wrote short stories and won prizes for creative writing instead of winning any for law.”
For Ramani, a former World Bank scholar, and now an Account Director with Saatchi & Saatchi, it was a quirk of fate - more of a ‘man proposes and God disposes’ kind of fate.
When Ramani returned to work in India according to his contract with World Bank, he found corporate heads advising him to go back to the US. However, his friends suggested that he use his international exposure to build strategies for multinational brands that were entering India. Ramani chose to stay.
As for Mohan, he confesses that though he had enough patients as a doctor, he did not have the required patience. As he prospered in his profession, he found himself being more of a businessman than a doctor. His friend, an engineer, who found success in the mad ad world, inspired Mohan to make the switch.
It’s another story with banker-turned-chef Nikhil Chib. Nikhil wanted to do something with his hands, so he left his job as an investment banker with Citibank, New York, to explore a creative profession — cooking. It started with party orders, then a small restaurant in Goa, and now the very trendy Busaba in Mumbai.
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