Junoon

A month ago, I did an author interaction session in a library in Mysore. When Crossword, who is my publisher tweeted about my book, Chitra, the manager of a library chain invited me for an interaction.

My initial thought was, you spend money on a flight ticket and a taxi and hotel stay and what do you get? I started analysing the invitation through an excel sheet. Fortunately for me, there was a work assignment in Bangalore, which ensured that the flight would be taken care of. Suddenly the colour on the excel sheet turned a lighter sheet of red.

Closer to the date, I started interacting with Chitra. I thought she was just a library manager or a franchise owner for whom the author meet is just a tick in the box. I asked her to read the book, and then decide about the audience. What she told me had me thinking. Apparently, she had read the book, even before she extended the invite. It was not just getting an author, but she had liked my thought process and hence wanted me to speak to members of the library. I was flattered, honoured and humbled to say the least. I felt sorry in my thought process in evaluating an invite like this on an Excel sheet.

As the event drew closer, Chitra invested her time in meeting corporates, inviting their HR managers, talking to business schools, sending books to the media and promoting the event in social media. When she learnt that my editor was from Mysore, she personally visited her house and invited her for the function. She even felicitated her, which I thought was a great gesture

 I am sure even a professional event manager wouldn’t have done as good a job. My friends mentioned that she would be the franchise owner. Turns out she was just an employee... with a lot of passion towards her job.

Today, a month down the line, I received the news that she had resigned from her job. I was sad to see her go and hence decided to speak to her and learnt her story.

Chitra was a practising therapist in Chennai who helped autistic kids. She had a roaring practise for nearly twenty five years. Once when she was visiting her in-laws to Mysore, she visited the library, which at that time was a franchise. The franchise owner was closing it down, as it wasn’t doing great business. On the spot she convinced the franchise owner to continue, closed down her practice in Chennai and moved lock stock and barrel to Mysore to work for the library.

Over the next few years she developed the centre, created a reading culture in Mysore. She recruited staff from various backgrounds, trained them, introduced them to reading, developed them in such a fashion, that the centre now functions independently. She would read every new book and promote it among the readers. A city where once library was closing down now has two libraries which Chitra manages.

Both the centres are doing well and hence now Corporate wants to take over the centre. They realise that the staff is well trained and centres can function independently. I am sure the Operations guys must have pressure from finance to cut costs, and hence what do they do? The ask Chitra to resign. Her fault? She created a reading culture, created two centres, staffed them well and made them independent. Her losing the job is not about money or losing income. It’s about Chitra losing a child. The work which she does passionately and likes doing, is being taken away from her.

It is like telling Gopichand, now that Sindhu has won a silver medal at the Olympics, she can train on her own and your services are no longer needed. Trust me, without leadership, Corporate will run the libraries into losses.

In this era of ecommerce, every third young person is opening an ecommerce company and looking at valuations. The key to evaluate is, whether the person is passionate about the product or about money. 95% of them are in this to earn money. Trust me they will never succeed. Only those who have conviction in their product / service and are passionate about their solution will succeed. Rest will fall by the wayside.

As I am writing this, I realise that the correct word is not passion. It is ‘Junoon’. A lot of times I mention about my inadequacy to use the English language to bring out the correct description of the underlying emotion. In this case the word passion is inadequate to describe the motivation behind Chitra’s actions. It has to be Junoon... to make a difference. I would think the English meaning of ‘Junoon’ will be Passion X Madness.

Business can be evaluated on Excel Sheets, but cannot be run using the same. You need one mad person with Junoon for every business to succeed.  As for Chitra, I am sure she will get back on her feet and find another Junoon. Thank you madam for teaching me the value of Junoon.

(Names have been changed on request)