Marching to their own drummer

Aradhika Sharma 

Many of us, at some point in our lives, would have wanted to quit our jobs and instead do something we loved and excelled at, something that could be monetised for a decent livelihood. However, most lack the courage to give up a steady job and take a leap of faith into unchartered territories. For some, the idea is too unrealistic; they question if it's worth the risk. However, there are a few brave, enterprising souls who have wagered on their passion and quit the work they had studied and trained for. Unfazed by the prospect of losing a big paycheck and the security of a steady job, they chose to travel the path littered with uncertainty and financial shakiness.

Footloose 

Gunjan Virk is many things rolled into one — a solo traveller, blogger, photographer, social media influencer and TEDx speaker. She is the creator-cum-content generator of ‘Things To Dot’, a travel, lifestyle and motivation blog, with over a lakh subscribers, while her Instagram page has 85,000 followers. Gunjan started off as a fashion designer. “Even as a teenager I wanted to do something different. While my friends went to engineering college, I went to NIFT to study fashion design, and then to Milan for Masters,” says Gunjan. Ever the wanderer at heart, Gunjan transitioned from creating beautiful ensembles for global celebrities under her own fashion label to working as the creative head of a design firm, a job that enabled her to travel the world. Still not satisfied, she consciously wrested herself out of the corporate rat race to learn German at the Goethe Institute in Munich, Germany.

Finding her creativity yet unused, in May 2015, she started a fashion and lifestyle blog, www.sourcingstyle.com. This endeavour led her to London where she did a course in makeup to get perfect pictures for her blog posts. By this time, however, she had started realising that though she loved fashion, her wandering soul yearned to explore new places. So, in January, 2017, www.thingstodot.com was born. And thus, the transition from a fashion designer to a travel blogger was complete. “I enjoy every aspect of blogging, from taking pictures, or posing for photos, writing articles, designing my website, creating posts for Instagram, editing in photoshop and lightroom and sharing my content with others.” Gunjan is paid to do what she loves the most — travel — and receives sponsorships from numerous brands around the world. “I never thought I could turn my passion for travel into a profession.” In the last two years since she launched her website, she has travelled to more than 20 countries. 

“The best decision I ever made was to start my blog. I love what I do and do what I love! I think when the motive is right, everything else falls into place.”

Screen to kitchen 

If you happen to visit Bir, a small Tibetan village in the lap of the Dhauladhar, you must walk through its charming, winding bazaar. Close to the end of the undulating street, you will come across a trendy café, called June 16, offering a variety of exciting coffees and some European fare. A charming young girl (Ritu Barmecha) takes your order and passes it on to an equally pleasant young chef (Sumit Soni) behind the sparkling glass counter. Curious, you ask about the name of the café. Ritu laughs: “Oh! June 16 is the date when Sumit professed his love for me.” You're charmed at the commemoration of the day of love.

Ritu and Sumit are actors by profession who followed their belief and passion to start a new life in the hills by running their own restaurant. Ritu, a Mumbai girl, is a hit actress in South Indian films ever since her film Aha Naa Pellanta burned up the box-office in the Telugu circuit. In addition, she's starred in Vasool Raja and Action 3D to name a few. Sumit, from Haryana, predominantly stars in Hindi tele-serials, Love Ne Mila Di Jodi and Miley Jab Hum Tum.

“How did a lad from, Rohtak, Haryana end up cooking in a café?” Sumit laughs. “I was always fascinated by cooking. When I was little, I'd hang around the kitchen and my mom would shoo me out. One time when I was particularly persistent, she allowed me to make tea. Determined to make the best tea she had ever tasted, I put 36 cardamom pods in her chai. I wasn't allowed near the kitchen for a long time thereafter,” says Sumit. 

“But he’s a terrific chef now, and he's in sole charge of the café kitchen. I manage the administration, the accounts and I am the barista at the café,” says Ritu. The young entrepreneurs have hired the restaurant space on a ‘long lease’. “We’d come to Bir for a holiday in 2016 and fell so much in love with it that we decided to move here. Our friends had been urging Sumit to start selling his gorgeous food, and we thought that this was an appropriate time and opportunity. It was a spontaneous decision but it was also a serious and considered one.”

“It meant making a complete change from our lives in Mumbai, but we have full faith in our entrepreneurship,” Sumit agrees, as he rustles up a frothy Oreo-banana shake.

Spreading her wings 

This slightly built, curly-haired girl with a huge grin is one of India's top paragliding pilots, the one to look out for in major competitions around the world. But before she reached for the skies, Foram Pandya was firmly rooted to mother earth, running a successful design studio for 20 years. Although Foram had wanted to be a pilot ever since she was three years old, expensive pilot training meant a private pilot license remained a dream. Realising that being a pilot was not to be, she started a design company at 18. The company did well but her wandering soul wasn't satisfied. Ten years ago, she heard about a paragliding school in Kamshet (near Mumbai). Although sceptical, she decided to give it a shot. “The moment my feet left the ground, I was hooked,” recalls Foram.

Initially, Foram started flying on weekends but all that changed when, in June 2011, she met Jockey Sanderson, one of the world's top pilots and leading SIV instructors, while attending an SIV course in Annecy, France. She invited him to India to teach a small group of pilots in Bir, in Himachal, and run a three-day workshop for a larger group in Kamshet. “I never imagined that he would actually come. But in October, in the same year, he did!”

The rest, as they say, is history. Foram's design firm took over Anderson's digital platforms, smartening up their web face, introducing e-commerce and doing the post production work on Anderson's film Security in Flight-2, the defining safety film on paraglider flight control. Three years ago, she shut down her company to work full time with Anderson. Today, she's a force to reckon with in the world of paragliders. “My chosen lifestyle and my work are synergetic. My entire life is a holiday!” she says.