ANGEL OF LOVE

It was evening time in the summers of 2013. The clock had struck 5.40 pm. The social entrepreneurship class for the sophomore MBA students at IIMA has just ended. The atmosphere seemed a bit unusual because the students instead of rushing to their respective dorms were busy talking about the story they had heard just now. They were so awestruck by the story of Manan who was just like them 15 years back. Fresh out of the best Fashion Technology institute in the country, she had obtained scholarship for International Fashion Academy, Paris and was planning to join the MBA Fashion Business course there. She was in the purple patch of her life. She wanted to design the most stylish and expensive clothes ever and walk up the ramps in style leading the fashion parades. She wanted to be famous and earn fabulously like others. But, was life planning the same for her as she herself. What happened on the chilly night of December 21, 1998 which changed the course of her life? Why Manan decided to pursue a completely different path? What struck her so much that she decided to throw away her childhood dreams? These were some of the questions that were being discussed.

Some went on to the extent of even questioning the truthfulness of the story. People were left so dumbfounded that they also started arguing that can someone even do that. Was it a true story, or just a sham? They were overlooking the fact that reality is not only vastly stranger than fiction but vastly more interesting.

Manan was born in a typical Rajasthani bourgeois family in 1977 at Jaipur. Her father was a magistrate and mother, a homemaker. She was a pampered child since she had no siblings and was born after lot of invocations. From her childhood days itself, she was good at arts and design and while she was in high school she had decided that she will become a fashion designer. In 1994, she got selected for the Bachelor’s course in Fashion Technology at NIFT. This opportunity provided wings to her dreams. She had a wonderful stint at NIFT, Delhi. This provided her with a launching pad to pursue her dreams further. She had two job offers from multinationals and an international scholarship awaiting her choice.

It will not be wrong to say that some plans are made in heaven. She came back to Jaipur to consult her parents regarding her future career plans. But at the Sindhi bus stop in Jaipur, for the first time, the stark reality of Indian poverty struck directly in Manan’s face. She saw a girl of around 12 years of age, completely naked, near the scrapheap along with dogs, searching and eating some pieces of the food remnants in the debris. She was flabbergasted. Some incidents leave impressions which are life-changing and this was the moment for Manan which would change her dreams and priorities and she would lead a completely different life hereafter from what she aspired for. Manan contemplated that cloth designing is not a profession worth pursuing in a country wherein people do not have clothes to wear. She left her illustrious career options and went on to open a shelter for homeless children namely ‘Surman Sansthan’, with the first child being that 12 year old girl. The fight within her was transient but not so the uphill battle that followed. But she did not lose hope. Presently, there are more than 100 children whom she provides food, shelter, clothes, education i.e. all the basic necessities of life and her aim is to make them capable and provide them with the equality of opportunity they deserve. The aim is to make them realize the importance of empathy and she wants to create more Manan’s out of her family, who can make the dream of “poor less country” a reality. She finances her household and earns living for her big family by selling paintings made at non-stop painting exhibitions, acting in short films etc. She was also bestowed with various accolades for her awe-inspiring contribution to the society and she has dreams to take her initiative as far reaching as possible.

On one side, was an illustrious fashion designing career with all the glamour, modern city life, lights, colours, media attention, money and so on. On the other side, there was a life of destitution, struggle, melancholy, lacklustre and obscurity. But, she chose the latter and became mother for several destitute and homeless children, legally adopting them, picking them from railway platforms, pavements and even dustbins. She is providing them equality of opportunity and teaching them to lead a life full of self-respect and they call her “Maa”. Is she not the “Angel of Love”? Is this not a life worth living?

[800 words]