I woke up early morning to go for a "story walk" and ended up interviewing a woman who gives stage to little kids to flex their entrepreneur skills

My first attempt at taking her interview during the MOH exhibition

Children at work

Children at work

My 2nd and a successful attempt at taking her interview at the same place

Ever since I moved to Bangalore for work, I've made it a point to go out almost every weekend.

I guess I'm overcompensating for spending five years cooped up at home preparing for UPSC only for it to go nowhere.

A few Saturdays ago, I signed up for a Story Walk through Malleshwaram. The ticket also included entry to something called Merchant of Happiness.

Now, I love free things as much as the next person 🤭

So naturally, I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what Merchant of Happiness actually was.

Turns out, it's a beautiful initiative where children get to experience entrepreneurship firsthand.

They create and sell food, art, crafts, and other products, sometimes alongside their parents.

Not child labour, lol.

Just young minds learning confidence, creativity, communication and business in a way school rarely teaches.

I also discovered that the person behind it was Farah Merchant

Merchant. 
Merchant of Happiness.

I appreciate a good pun.

The more I read, the more I knew I wanted to interview her for TwoXStories for TwoXTopia

That plan, however, was delayed by about three hours because it's surprisingly difficult to say no to enthusiastic children selling things they've proudly made themselves.

By the time I finally found Farah, she was everywhere.

Talking to parents.
Encouraging children.
Checking on stalls.
Helping organisers.
Making every person she spoke to feel like they had her complete attention.

I almost felt guilty interrupting her.

So I told her, "You do your thing. I'll ask a couple of questions, and you can answer whenever you get a free minute."

It ended up being one of the most chaotic interviews I've ever recorded and one of the most insightful.

Unfortunately, I also managed to shoot the entire 10-minute interview vertically🤦🏻‍♀️

Meaning it couldn't be uploaded to YouTube as a short.
And posting it as a video would have looked terrible.

Thankfully, Farah agreed to meet me again a couple of days later so we could record it properly.

And I'm so glad she did.

Speaking with her was genuinely inspiring.

She probably wouldn't describe herself as an entrepreneur. She'd simply say she's building the kind of community and ecosystem she wanted for her son and for herself.

Sometimes the people creating the biggest impact don't think of themselves as doing anything extraordinary.

They're just solving a problem they deeply care about.

That's exactly why I wanted to share her story.

The full interview is now on YouTube. If you'd like to hear how Merchant of Happiness came to be and the vision behind it, you can watch it through the link in the comments.