Born in the beautiful town of Sri Ganga Nagar in Rajasthan at the boundary of India and Pakistan to a middle-class family, Nayab Midha is a compassionate and dedicated youngster who now embraces slam poetry, performing before a huge audience in different locations across India. From missing a train to finding her passion, Nayab Midha has a unique story to tell. The renowned slam poet who embraced words to influence people across the globe- Nayab Midha opens up to The Talented Indian.
The past that dreamt of this present.
Nayab’s grandparents had settled at the Sri Ganga Nagar during the partition of India. She was born while her parents were struggling to set up their careers and stabilize themselves. Her parents are postgraduates. She was moulded to believe in education and its abominable scope of progress as a human being. Thus she started reading extensively at 10 years of age. She feels that is where she belongs and wants to move forward with it.
Nayab loved Mathematics but her father wanted her to be a doctor. Then she landed on being a Software engineer by profession. Back in her college life, she had thought becoming a poet can only be done by being an author. She is used to writing poems from the early days. But only when she went to Delhi for graduation, that she participated in slam poetry competitions in the College. But when she came across people performing slam poetry on stages in malls, she found this new door to execute her ever dreamt desire.
Later, she chose to leave her 2 years of Infoscion life to pursue what her passion demanded- to be an influencing poet. College life gave her opportunities to contest in various competitions to perform her poem. She took the 2 years at Infosys to stabilize her independent life and used weekends to embrace slam poetry at stages in various places like Delhi.
Nayab started taking reading and writing seriously when she was reading the fresh arrival of Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat while she missed a train and was waiting at the railway station. Nayab says she is so grateful that she missed her train which literally made her take another in her career. She continued exploring books written by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens. But she is more fascinated by Indian authors, especially Hindi writers like Amrita Pritam.
Passion overrides pressures
Nayab believes that whenever she shifted from a particular position it took much courage for her to do so. The first and most risky thing was to leave her job at Infosys. But she strongly believes in and loves storytelling and wants to pursue it as much as she can. To the question regarding societal pressures and pre-established parameters that hinder such unconventional careers, Nayab says she did not randomly take the bag and left the place. She worked for 2 years at the MNC and ensured that she paid her bills and simultaneously chased her slam poetry interests. She made her parents believe in her. Nayab affirms that it is only to the parents and the loved ones that we need to justify our actions and not anyone else. Because one can’t always convince the cent percent people. Nayab proudly says her parents are now absolutely happy with her decision to take the current path. For her, the constant motivation has always been her mother. Also, the catchy themes of any project can make her curious to work ecstatically on it. She playfully adds that paying her bills and feeding her stomach is yet another motivation.
A poem to cherish
Nayab feels that every part of the journey has been special for her. But something to be so genuinely touching was an incident, she recollected. This happened while she was at Chandigarh and was struggling to establish her name. She worked at Infosys in Chandigarh on weekdays and organized events in the city related to poetry and music during weekends. This helped her grab the train from Chandigarh to Delhi to perform once a weekend every month. Then she would go to her favorite place and eat her favourite food as she was so in love with Delhi food. Then she goes to Chandigarh late at night on the same days. During one of the dull days where she couldn’t write well due to lack of time and had to give a mediocre kind of performance. Later a program was around the corner, she asked for a slot and they reminded her not to be like the last time. Relying on the promise. Nayab was given a slot and thus the poem Khubsoorat was born. The organizers decided to release it and informed her. While she went out to have some Dosa at Sharavana Bhavan, she dreamt of getting 100 K views since her previous ones got less than that. Her phone got switched off in the midst of the travel. By the evening when she switched on the phone, the views were 300k and by 9 pm, it got 1 million views. Later it went to like 15 million.
Social media is for all people
Social media has given an egalitarian platform for people from all walks of life to showcase their talents in any art form. The economic, social, or geographic inequalities are overridden by merit and creativity. Equal opportunities are established and auditions don’t matter now if one has the ability to take up chances and uses it effectively. Every person is talented in a unique manner. But there are often cases where works are plagiarised and copied, which degrades the quality of the art.
Risks, Failures, and Success
She reminds us that if you stay there in the pit of not taking risks and following what you want, you will remain there all your life. So it’s better to jump from the pit and get the best out there. Nayab exhorts to climb up the pit even if you fall off. Have the courage to jump, that’s it! Believe that you can grow and mould yourself. Nayab acknowledges failures but never wanted to pursue success without deserving it. She wants to achieve victories when she is prepared and fully ready to receive them. Learning and accepting others’ work is also significant for her. Nayab admires poets like by Rohit Sharma whose amazing poem Mein Ravan Hoon is trending on YouTube. She is so much enchanted with the poems of Pallavi Mahajan, Nithi Narwal especially Andhera.
Nayab Midha is an inspiration to many. She sets the flame to the cult of upcoming artists or any dreamer to dream big, start small, and finally get their careers built.
