Meet the Whiteley man who quit his corporate job to teach mindfulness

Growing up in Lucknow, near Delhi in north India, Mitra spent a lot of his time in ashrams, which are the country’s spiritual hermitages.

But his life and career hasn’t always been guided by spirituality, until he quit his high-flying job to teach others the meaning of mindfulness and launched a platform , called Mindful.You, in 2019.

Mitra, 40, says: ‘Now all my life is dedicated to bringing awareness, calmness and helping people get rid of their stress.

‘Meditation has been made quite serious. It is not serious, it is the source of joy and freedom.’

Mitra was a bright child and originally trained as an engineer.

‘I went to a boarding school in Kushinagar, which was very close to where Buddha died and we used to keep going there on school trips,’ says Mitra, who now lives in Whiteley. ‘I think somehow the environment you live in and the places you go, they slowly become part of you.’

‘I did my bachelor of engineering and electronics at Priyadarshini College of Computer Sciences, with majors in radar communication, from 1999-2003.

‘Engineering was good, I think I was a good student. But it was a little bit too boring for me.’

During the entirety of Mitra’s education, he would regularly visit and stay at ashrams in the Himalayas.

‘In 1997, I met a friend who was visiting from Australia. We met and he was going to an ashram in Rishikesh, where the Beatles went in 1968,’ says Mitra.

‘He started talking about mindfulness and he gave a book to me. I had heard of meditation but thought it was prayer. I read it and thought it was different and I carried on with them to the ashram.

‘1997 was when I got this bug for mindfulness and then I never looked back. I kept going, kept studying and it was such a huge subject. It’s anything between life and death, and love and existence.’

But Mitra’s high-flying career began in 2006 when he joined HSBC in Delhi.