MOTIVATION: Mumbai-based Benaisha Kharas is in Doha on a short visit to give a talk to some staff of Qatar Airways. Photo by Anand Holla
Corporate image consultant Benaisha Kharas says that true makeoveris not about your dress or mannerisms, but enhancing your inner self
By Anand Holla
The story of Benaisha Kharas is a lot like a cheery coming-of-age, teenybopper movie. Luckily for her, she not only plays the lead in it but also writes its script. And she is far from done.
Back in the day, Kharas had a terrible time in school. She would be ridiculed only because she had a little trouble spelling words. “Being dyslexic in the ’90s was extremely tough. Fellow students would ask me to sit away from them. I was 10 and had no idea how to deal with such reactions,” says the Mumbai-born and bred girl.
After Grade 8, her parents changed her school which helped her in overcoming those early days of confidence-shaking confusion. Kharas’ outlook of life changed when she decided to focus on her strengths. By embracing positivity, all her problems seemed to disappear.
Then, one day, Kharas found her moment of clarity tucked in a newspaper. “My mother made me read a story on image consulting that appeared in The Times of India. Just then, I knew I wanted to do this,” she says.
The double major in Sociology and Entrepreneurship from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, who has just turned 23, is the youngest practicing image consultant in India. Down in Doha to give a talk to some staff of Qatar Airways, Kharas says image consulting “just happened”.
“I knew I was good at people skills, and I wanted to do something different. I tried my hand at image consulting and it made me find myself as well,” she says.
After completing her certification from the Image Consulting Business Institute of India, Kharas backed it up with an advanced International Certification Programme in the US. “Everybody was doing fashion and grooming. So I decided to take another road,” she says.
The road she took to flag off her image consulting career was indeed an unconventional one. “In school, I used to visit mentally challenged children and help them. I always had a soft corner for them. So I decided to start my career by grooming them as well as the differently abled,” she says.
At Advitya, a non-profit creative centre for mentally challenged adults, Kharas started training them to become independent. “We teach them body language, how to commute and to speak. We groom them such that they can do something as essential as choosing their clothes,” she says.
With an eye on her long-term goal of empowering women from all walks of life through image consulting, Kharas currently juggles a range of work; from handling individual clients to training various companies’ staff.
“Image consulting predominantly means enhancing your outer image, the way you talk, move or dress. But the truth is that the façade won’t last for long,” she says.
“That’s why I believe in focusing a lot more on elements like motivation and anger management, and in igniting in people a desire to be better than what they used to be,” she points out.
When asked about “image make-overs” that are often devised to conceal the bad in one’s personality and instead project one as an exemplary person, Kharas admits that many image consultants do that.
“But I don’t approve of it. I have a couple of well-placed clients who aren’t really clean. But I always make an effort to get them to think differently. Also, I believe that with time, to keep up with the morphed image, the person might change for the good. He may start understanding himself better,” she explains.
At the heart of successful image building is our love for self, Kharas feels. “We are always trying to prove things to everybody else but we don’t really love ourselves. That’s what lies at the root of our unhappiness,” she says.
While the whole notion of image building is centred on the image we want to project, we are too caught up imbibing ideas from the movies and the media about how we should be, points out Kharas.
“There is no such thing as what or how you should be. What’s right for you might not be right for somebody else. Even the bad of someone might be good for you,” she says, “We should learn to love ourselves, and only then will people appreciate us.”
Kharas admits that image consulting has been mistakenly associated with just clothing and styling. “We are also to be blamed for it since a lot of image consultants stick to that,” she says, “But image is actually inside out. It’s not a make-over, but more of a transition and an enhancement of who you are.”
Ironically for Kharas, her weighty responsibility to overhaul a personality finds a huge obstacle in her own “image”. She smiles and admits, “People don’t take me seriously, or aren’t convinced in my abilities since I look like a school-going girl.”
The problem turns particularly grave when she has to talk to senior corporates or businessmen, double or triple her age. “They look at me and probably think: What will this little girl teach us? Even when I am dressed in a proper suit, it doesn’t help,” she says and laughs.
However, the sweet-spoken Kharas whose eyes seem perpetually lit up has an easy charm about her that sees her through. “It takes me around 15 minutes to break the ice,” she says, “After that, it’s back to business.”