How we stepped out of our comfort zones -Nandita Das and Subodh Maskara
Subodh Maskara
Subodh Maskara:
I’ve been in the corporate sector for 30 years. I’ve been working since I was 18. Let me share two experiences that really helped me change as a person.Working in the corporate sector meant that I did have my share of successes and failures nd I’m sure we all experience that in our lives. When I look at you, I feel there’s such a great reservoir of experience that we can all learn from and I’m sure any one of you can tell us a story in your life and we’d be inspired. I want to share two things and these are dots that I joined backwards.
When I was doing these things, they made very little sense to me at that point in time. When I look back, I realise how deeply it impacted me as an individual.
I divide my life into two halves. The first half consists of the 25 years that I worked in the corporate sector, where I was reasonably successful, had my share of growth, pain, pleasure,enjoyment, money and bankruptcy and I grew as an individual. But two experiences I had led to a quantum growth in my life and gave me the confidence and an understanding of my individuality as I now recognise it.
Five or six years ago when I went on a holiday, I was quite overweight. I weighed 20 kilos more than what I am right now. I went to a spa and had my health check-up done, and they said, “Mr. Maskara, your biological age is 42, but your physical age is 52.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You are 10 years older than your biological age.” I said, “That’s not acceptable to me, I didn’t bargain for that.” I couldn’t run 100 metres on the treadmill! I took a decision at that point in time that I will run a marathon and, of course, it was a wild idea — I had never done something like that. I had a friend who supported me and we ran for two years and I could run 20 kilometres at my peak.
That gave me an understanding of conquering something as well as a sense of achievement to have taken my health into my own hands.
I overcame some very ingrained thoughts such as I am a Marwari, we need to have a paunch;it’s okay, we are Indians; I’m a businessman; it shows that you’re prosperous, etc. It’s not easy really to break this conditioning and to go outside your comfort zone of being where you are, and to change that. It requires discipline — getting up in the morning, which means sleeping early, controlling your diet and compromising. That was my first brush with understanding the importance of taking control of my life and I’d started the journey with my health.
Our environment and the people we are with influence us.Nandita has had the most important influence in my life because she gave me an opportunity to explore a side of me that I probably wouldn’t have had I continued to interact only with my peer group.
With Nandita, we never have had a discussion on money or business. She said, “Why don’t we act in a play?” Of course, growing up I have seen Amitabh Bachchan and always wanted to be like him, so I said, “Why not, let’s go act, it’ll be a fun thing to do.” Easier said than done. When it actually came down to the day of our first rehearsal, she said, “Subodh, why don’t you get up from here, walk till there, pick up the glass, look at me, say this line, put your glass down, come back, sit for a moment and then look at me again.
It’s a very simple exercise.” I was unable to do it. It was too much work and my mind seemed muddled. I told Nandita, “I don’t think I can do it.” I’m sure she felt the same. However, I took it as a challenge. I was very persistent and it was with her support and encouragement that I finished the play. I went on stage not knowing if I would be able to do it, but people came up and appreciated both of us.
This had a much deeper impact on me. It was the first time it didn’t matter who my father was,who my friends were, that Nandita was my wife or that I was educated at Kellogg. I had to stand on my own for an hour and a half, in front of a thousand people and deliver a performance only relying on my own faculties. That was a very empowering experience.
We use people and our connections to move ahead. There is a comfort in knowledge and in having a tribe to support us in our experiences and our journey going forward. But I would suggest and recommend that we get out of our comfort zone. I would recommend to all of you, whenever you have an opportunity, whether you want to dance or whether you want to climb a mountain, do something that is individual, that you have to fulfil based on what you have and that will have a profound effect on you. That’s all I have to say. Thank you.
Nandita Das:
I’ve never done only one thing, so my comfort and not comfort zone are all intertwined. It’s like my head and heart go together, in the right and the wrong direction. I haven’t been able to segregate things so much. Every time I fill a form, I end up hesitating to fill the occupation field. Should I write actor? But I don’t really act that much. Should I write director? But I’ve only directed one film and now a play.
Mother? I think that’s the identity I’m enjoying the most these days, but still there is a moment of hesitation.
There are many different things I do but the one comfort zone that I try to push constantly is of being very privileged. I think we’re so privileged in so many ways and often we forget that. I may end up travelling business class and staying in five star hotels, but I also work with grassroots level workers, whose priorities are different.
I think one’s upbringing is hugely important and you realise this only as you keep growing older. My father is a painter and my mother is a writer. My mother used to do a 9 to 5 job and my father, I used to think, cooks, cleans, and for recreation, paints. I had a role reversal right from my childhood.
I didn’t think that mummas are supposed to be at home, and papas should be out working. When that role reversal happens, as you grow up you realise that this is not the norm, but your alternate life, or whatever appears to be an alternate life is normal to you, so in such cases it is difficult to demarcate the instances when you are in your comfort zone or out of it.
Therefore, through the life choices I’ve made, I have constantly been in and out of those zones. For instance, when I had to do my first film, I had never assisted anybody in terms of direction. I had not joined any film school or an acting school, for that matter. I had these 30 films to rely on in terms of my experience in those films. But even there, the shooting is a very small part of the entire film-making process.
There is so much that goes on in terms of pre-production and postproduction. So when I was going to direct, I was just driven by the passion to want to tell a story.
So for me, I would rephrase this comfort zone bit by saying that it is important not to fear failure because you really don’t know what the outcome is going to be and, therefore, you can only be wedded to the journey.
For me, the most important part of my life has been the journey and not fearing failure. It has always been a blank slate and I’ve tried to just take in from all my different experiences. If you allow yourself different exposure and experiences, you don’t even know what is impacting you or what will impact your responses or how it will alter your creativity.
I think I’m constantly being challenged even today. For me, to marry Subodh, and into a patriarchial Marwari family, diametrically opposite to the kind of household I’d grown up in, was a challenge. But I have learnt to accept that just because things,situations or set-ups aren’t what I am used to them being doesn’t make them wrong or incorrect in
any way.
I think getting out of your comfort zone, to be not so fearful,to let go of your fears and to say that if life is a journey, I want to explore it, I want to be myself, the only question I want to ask myself is “Am I doing it for the right reason?” and if the answer is yes’,go ahead and do it.
Excerpts from a Q&A Session:
Question: Do you think we don’t go into another sphere because of the way our education is structured? Because even if we want to do something as a profession which is not very well paying, you stay away from that, and once you’re sort of settled, you start exploring other areas which you wanted to.
Subodh:
I completely agree with you. School systems rob you of your individuality. Your individuality is your biggest strength, and the school system is built to make you robotic in your life. You work without questioning a system. There are theories that are put in your mind; that’s the way of the world.
Nandita: We are going through these conversations all the time because we have a small son, he’s 3 years old. Which school is it going to be? That’s always a big question. Kindergarten is fine, but now what next. I have been researching it and I really don’t think there are any schools that I would want to send my son to, to the extent that I’ve been telling Subodh that I’m quite happy with home-schooling.
The fact that they standardise everything, the fact that they regimentalise everything, how can a child blossom in that kind of a space? At the same time, we can’t only blame the school for the conformist attitudes because the many non-conformists who have come out have also come out of the same system; they’ve all gone to some standard school or college.
Question: Subodh, your father’s still in business. What was his reaction when you said you are quitting business? Subodh: I think that was the toughest battle for the first one or two years. My father retired maybe about 7 or 8 years ago, and when I was doing well and I left everything 3 or 4 years ago, he called me and said, “How can you do this? I had such hopes, you have such ambition, you have such talent. You could have been X, Y, Z; what is wrong with you? I think you’re getting too influenced by Nandita.”
I said, “Papa, I assure you if you will be happy to see me happy, I can tell you from deep down I have never been happier in my life. I have never been healthier in my life and no material acquisition that I have can actually give me even 1/10th of the happiness that I get from what I have achieved through my experiences.” I’m not saying that I have left everything; I still struggle. No parent will resist a son who is genuinely happy. In the beginning they are apprehensive about whether you’re really happy,they question your happiness, then they try and understand your happiness and then eventually,they are happy that you are happy.