Rolling Arty on Desks
I’m thankful I went hungry that evening. Sometime back in November 2016, you could have found me drinking cold coffee and eating fries at Mash, soon after my first Kalari class. My eyes fell upon this very pretty person sipping her coffee in silent conversations with the moon. I just had to tell Lavanya Arty that I found it beautiful to watch her face moving slowly with a coffee cup and the moon around. I did! And how often do pretty angels say ‘Oh come’ with their smiles hugging you, for they are rare and magical encounters. Bringing Arty to you.
The encounter was a headway to a serene connection. When I met Arty, she was doing her post-graduation in Psychology and she was also a costume stylist in a Famous News TV Channel. Today, Arty is an active primary educator in one of the nicest schools in Chennai.
Arty grew up in a small town and she set off her carousel to explore her dreams and what the world had to offer after her graduation. Moving from her role in the corporate desk, Arty began as a News reporter in one of the A1 channels in Chennai. She says, “To be able to interview or meet with the biggies was dreamlike for a small towner.”
The path diverged and had Arty venture into modelling. She says, “I haven’t always been this person who felt beautiful, having a history of constantly being bullied or ridiculed for how ‘skinny’ I was. This very step into modelling itself was in a way to challenge myself and work on my self-image.” Her will was unflinching throughout her participation in the Miss India Pageant and she found the process of her becoming, an exhilaration.
The twelve year old Arty was found, a day dreamer. She was a shy and an introverted child who loved to stay afloat in the Utopian world inside her head. The reticent quality of hers made her to perceive her surroundings by just seeing and experiencing as it is and resonate with them in ease. This sensitivity had helped Arty to become more empathising to the people around her and that is how her love for psychology had begun. She ardently rolled on cameras, took up voice acting and penned dialogues for a few ad commercials in parallel.
“I naturally have become someone who people would love to share their stories with and listening to these stories, I wanted to become someone who can help make a difference in someone’s life. Guess that’s how my love for psychology has begun and the soul’s calling has started to manifest itself by now.”
— Lavanya Arty
While cameras were of a fun experience, Arty says it dawned upon her that acting and modelling was a place for her to surpass what she had felt as insecure. Arty trusts destiny and the purpose of life. She says she could decipher what the universe was trying to tell her in guise of her loved ones, that teaching is the port of her calling. Teaching was already permeated in her family as her mother and grandmother served as teachers too. Arty states that her depressive episode was too a prelude for teaching, her path rolled forth from the lens to now ‘rolling on desks’.
Arty had taken a break from the city life by moving back to her hometown for a year. She had worked as a personality development trainer in a college which housed 1800 students.
Her first class was pivotal as it was going to tell her whether or not she has gotten the teaching job in the college. It was a propeller for moving herself back into the tranquil life she was already accustomed to in her formative years but this time offering her passions to her community. She describes the feeling after delivering her first class as ‘Surreal’!
Arty tells us that it was a challenge to create a healthy learning space with adolescents as they were clued about her previous profile of jobs. “As they were from suburban/rural backgrounds, they were fascinated about my previous jobs and most of our initial classes would be about their favourite stars that I interviewed. However, it did help me create the rapport with them and to achieve the teaching goals”, says Arty.
Arty toured on her passion to teach and realised that it was at absolute when working with younger children. She says that she is having the best time of her life right now working as a primary educator. She believes that Teaching has found her and it cannot be any perfect than how it is today.
Arty is someone who finds beauty in every little thing that life has gifted us. She says that this quality developed from certain experiences in her life, especially the unpleasant ones. The Philocalist in her says, “When you know there’s nothing much you could do that will change your life, I mean when you are a little child for example, this is one of those survival strategies you adapt to, to keep oneself going, to see the beauty in everything around you. If we learn how to see, we’ll start to celebrate the beauty in the trivial things.”
Arty is intensely connected with nature. You can find her hands and pants soiled in many moments each day. She helps me overcome my fears of handling tickly slimes and is the first soul I know of who calls a pink snake beautiful!
“There’s always something you can learn and be grateful about — from nature, from the animal world, from people around you. Just getting the right (rose tinted) lens worked for me.” — Lavanya Arty
Not only on desks does she, she rolls hearty everywhere.
