Haegwan Kim: The first question is your personal definition of success.
Somika Basu: Well, I think I don’t really have one definition, and I think the concept of success is so fluid and so dynamic that it keeps changing. Like what I view success now is very different from what I thought of success maybe five years ago.
So right now, given my past life experiences, I would say that success is a combination of happiness and freedom, and maybe given my line of work, I think success is also largely defined by something that’s beyond just yourself that involves other people around you. It could be your family and your family’s happiness, your community and you’re community’s happiness. And for me right now, I think our country’s happiness or children’s happiness, given the work that I’m doing now. It’s just redefining itself constantly.
HK: That’s very interesting. I’m pretty impressed by your working at Teach for India, and because, as you said, your success is not only for yourself but for others. I am wondering what was the beginning for you to start your engagements?
SB: What happened was I did my journalism. When I graduated from my Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, I was writing for the newspaper, and I was doing lifestyle reporting, so I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And I went on to do a degree in journalism where we were taught very practical aspects of the craft, but I knew that I wanted to do some sort of development reporting, like about society, so I didn’t know that I was going to write about underprivileged communities, I just knew I wanted to do like a social commentary, because I’m fascinated by people, I’m fascinated by notions of identity. And India is a country so complex. I knew that I wanted to write about Indian people and different kinds of Indian people.
After I graduated, I went back to my newspaper. I was writing for The Hindu, and I said I want to do development reporting. My editor laughed at me and said, you’re so young, no one’s going to take you seriously. Like what have you seen of the world?You need to travel and experience rural India if you want to write about development issues.
So I did. I went to one of the poorest states in the country, Orissa, and I was living and working with people there, and I realised that no one was publishing my stories, in spite of my editor telling me to go there and work there and live there and understand the issues. No one was publishing the stories; no one was watching the documentary films I was making. It’s a tiny little clique of people in NGOs who just pat themselves and each other on the back, just encouraging one another, but you need to influence and affect a much larger group of people in order to actually make a difference.
I was 22, 23. I thought I could change the world. I thought I could change India. But then I think every day I got broken down into realising that I’m not going to change the system and I moved away from just writing about what was going on and actually starting to get my hands dirty by setting up night schools and women’s self-help groups, micro finance, literacy campaigns, aids awareness campaigns, whatever it was.
And I knew that the task ahead of me was so huge that I just wanted to chip away at stereotypes and notions, and I wanted to just open up people’s worlds, and especially young people, because they’re so much more open than older citizens that you know there are choices that lay ahead of you, and unless you’re made aware of those choices, you’re not going to exercise them. You’re going to think that you’re happy in your little fish bowl, and I think my whole purpose was to like just shock people into realising that this doesn’t have to be your life, you can choose other things. As naïve as it sounds, I still believe that.
So I hope I did that to some level. And then I went to study. I did a Masters in development studies in London, and now I’m with Teach for India because I think that I’m using my skills as a journalist and as a communicator to really spread the message of how powerful education is, and this is the only that’s going to really give Indian kids that choice, especially coming from low income communities. Nothing other than education is going to give you the confidence, is going to give you that world view of what are the options that lay ahead of you.
HK: There’s one billion people in India and thus it’s full of problems. What is the most difficult or challenging thing at the moment for you?
SB: I think, like you said, just the scale of the problem, the magnitude of the problem is daunting, which is why a lot of people just opt out, and it’s so easy to shut yourself out and say, you know what? I’m really not going to make a difference by myself so what’s the point? It’s not going to happen in this lifetime. But just, like starting with children, which is why I think to focus on education and young people and just the optimism and hope that they have is huge.
And if you can convince ten kids who can convince another ten kids through their confidence and through their articulation and just choices that they ahead of them that you’ve maybe created for them or shown them, I think all you need is hope. Like every time you look at the numbers in India, you look at the statistics and the facts and the realities, it’s so easy to get beaten down and discouraged. You need to be stupidly naïve to do anything like for the better. Or like you have to have your blinkers on and see rainbows everywhere you go. And people will call you crazy but you just have to do it.
I think starting with kids is really important because they’re so open to change. They’re not sceptics. They’re so trusting, and it’s more easy to see the change in children than to see the change in young adults or older people. I think it’s having the hope and the optimism is half the battle. You know, the sense of possibility that things are going to change and that we can all be part of it I think is really important.
HK: What was the key element for being successful for Teach for series?
SB: Right now, since Teach for India is such a young organisation, we don’t really have the statistics to back it up, but we’ve got kids who are confident, who are articulate; who are no longer afraid of going to school because their teachers don’t hit them; whose parents have been convinced about the power of education; whose communities see that, you know, girls who go to school can really turn the whole society around.
And I think it’s a question of changing mindset, and once the mindset around the importance of education changes, you will have so many more subscribers to quality education and creativity in education and just expressing oneself. Education doesn’t have to be sitting down with your books. It could be expressing oneself through art or theatre or like every child is talented in their own way, just finding that particular talent or that strength in one child, it’s really making that blossom. And it doesn’t have to be like 95% in your maths exam, it could be the confidence to get up on stage and sing in front of 500 people.
And now everything is a viable career option. There is nothing that you can’t make a living out of doing. And I think especially in the context of India, giving kids these skills that later they can capitalise upon, like whether it’s, you know, painting or theatre, or designing solar panels or photography, or maths, English, writing, whatever it is, I think there’s something for everyone, and just giving those options to kids. And also changing the mindsets of parents that this is a good career choice or this is not a good career choice is really important.
I think organisations like Teach for India that encourage creativity around education, that encourage people to keep an open mind around concepts of learning and expression is the way forward, because regardless of whatever social standing you come from, just knowing that you have options ahead of you is really important.
HK: I’m not sure you had one, but as a final question, I want to ask you to give me your advice to be successful; to achieve success.
SB: Well, I don’t even consider myself successful because I don’t have one definition of success. It’s constantly…
HK: Changing, right?
SB: Yes. I’m like redefining my profession, my attitudes; refining the way I speak, the words I choose so as not to offend people. Like just being really careful and more sensitive to people around me, I would just say that I’ve been fortunate enough to consider all my life experiences as like happy accidents. I’m not going to complain about anything that’s happened to me, and I think that’s because on some level I’m so happy with my work and I really believe in what I do. And because my work takes up most of my waking life, like I’m working like 12/14/16 hours a day sometimes, if you’re not passionate and if you’re not driven every morning when you wake up knowing that, oh my God, I have like these things to do and I’m really excited about it, I don’t think you’re going to be successful in whatever it is.
How do I describe it? I think just having that passion when you wake up in the morning in whatever it is, whether you’re a writer or a singer or a teacher or a dancer or a doctor, if you’re not excited by what you’re doing every day, then I don’t think you’re going to be successful because I think success is so closely tied to happiness and what you’re doing at every given point in time.
So for me, success is not serving; that sounds really… well, it sounds I’m full of myself by serving my country, you know? By making my life and my work, not just about me, like I said, for me right now, success is influencing and touching other people’s lives. And it could just be like being respectful and loving the people closest to you, but I as a person get happiness from extending that to people that I don’t even know and people that I meet every day. And I think my work allows me to meet new people, especially to interact with kids, and I just say seek happiness, even if it means doing something different every single day of your life. If that makes you happy, then success is not even going to figure in the equation.
Because I don’t know, it has like monetary and economic overtones, don’t you think? Like successful, like a businessman, entrepreneur or whatever. I think people should just aim to be happy, success or not. I think a happy world and a happy society is so much more… that’s what we should aim for instead of…
HK: …being successful or being millionaire?
SB: Yes. I mean, that won’t even figure in the equation if everyone’s happy.
Somika Basu is a Community and Communications Specialist.
Haegwan Kim is a writer who was born in Osaka, Japan in 1989 and grew up near Tokyo where went to a Korean school for 12 years.
