Planted People

Over the years, I have had a habit of trying to hold on to people. If someone was close to me and then slowly moved away, I found it difficult to accept. I would try to reconnect, understand what had changed, revive the old warmth and sometimes put in far more effort than I should have.

For a long time, I saw this simply as people leaving.

Only recently, I started looking at it differently.

I have begun to feel that God brings some people into our lives for a reason. They may stay for a few years, sometimes for a very short period, and during that time they may change something important in our life. Once that happens, the relationship may continue, it may change, or the person may slowly move away.

I have started thinking of such people as planted people.

The phrase itself probably stayed with me because of a dialogue from Thevar Magan that I have remembered for years. The idea in that scene was simple: we may sow something today and may never live to see what grows from it. Someone else may see the fruits much later. Over time, I have started seeing people in my own life in a similar way. Some of them planted something in me without ever knowing what it would eventually become.

When I look back at my own life, I can count many of them.

One of the earliest was someone in my family whom I was extremely close to. I lost her when I was still quite young. She was a working woman who carried a lot of responsibility, but what stayed with me was the way she handled all of it with a smile. Years later, I realised that watching her had shaped my belief that women should work, build their own identity and be financially independent. She never taught me any of this directly. I simply saw the way she lived, and something stayed with me.

There were others who influenced the direction of my life in very different ways. Someone played an important role in bringing our family to Chennai, another helped me get into engineering at a crucial stage, and someone else helped me get my first job. What surprises me now is that I do not properly remember many of them, but I clearly remember what those interventions did for me. Each one opened a door, moved me into a different stage of life, and gave me more confidence to keep moving forward. Looking back, I can see how these connected events shaped a large part of my personal and professional journey.

Most of them may never have known what happened after their intervention, or how important the door they opened eventually became for me.

There was also a manager I worked with in the US very early in my career who became a mentor to me. He took me under his wing, coached me on how I should work, how I should conduct myself professionally, and helped shape the way I approached my career. That phase eventually passed and he too drifted away from my life, but his mentoring did not. Even today, I can see parts of what he taught me in the way I work and in the way I guide others.

Some planted people open a door for us. Some help us walk through it. And some quietly shape the person who eventually comes out on the other side.

Another person, during a different phase of my career, helped create an opportunity for my wife and me to live and work in the same location. It may have been a simple professional decision for him, but for us it made a very big difference at that point in our life.

There was also someone who entered my life during a very difficult period. She noticed something unusual about my health and strongly encouraged me to get it checked, which eventually led to the discovery of a serious medical issue. She stayed connected with me for nearly a few years after that and supported me through that period in many ways.

I have always felt that she came into my life at exactly the right time, as designed by God.

Of course, planted people are not the only ones who shape us. The people who continue to live around us — our family, friends, colleagues and others who are part of our daily life — influence us constantly as well. In many ways, who we are today is a mix of all these influences, both from the people who stayed and from the people who came into our lives only for a period.

What feels different about planted people is that their presence often seems connected to a particular phase, need or turning point in life.

Some of them do more than change the direction of our journey. They leave a part of themselves in us.

I have had elders in my life who influenced me deeply. One taught me, mostly through his actions, that I should always try to be just. Another always called a spade a spade and did not change his position depending on who was involved. There were others who left behind different qualities, values and ways of looking at life.

Over time, these influences become part of us. We may not even consciously remember where a particular quality came from. It simply becomes part of who we are.

That thought brought me back to the person I lost when I was young. She never got to see how much her way of life influenced me. Today, my children have grown up watching their mother work and build her own career, and they have also grown up seeing me support that. Perhaps something I picked up from someone many years ago is now quietly being passed on to the next generation.

That is when this thought came to me very strongly:

The planted person never really sees the tree grow.

The people who helped me at different stages of my life probably never knew what grew from those interventions. The elders and mentors who shaped some of my values did not get to see all the situations in which those values later guided me.

And then I started wondering about the other side of this.

If so many people were planted in my life, is it possible that I too have been planted in someone else's life?

Maybe I said something to someone at the right time. Maybe I gave someone an opportunity, encouraged someone when they were doubtful, or helped someone take a decision. I may never know, just as many of the people who influenced me probably never knew what happened afterward.

That thought gives me a strange sense of happiness.

This way of looking at people has also changed something in me. Earlier, if someone mattered to me, I somehow felt that the relationship had to remain the same. I would keep trying to bring it back even when life had clearly moved on.

I still believe relationships need effort. Sometimes we have to reach out, repair misunderstandings, forgive and try again. But I am slowly learning that not every meaningful relationship has to remain unchanged forever.

Some people stay. Some move away. Some leave us completely. But that does not erase what they brought into our lives.

These days, when I think about someone who is no longer part of my everyday life, I ask myself a simpler question.

What did this person leave in me?

And sometimes I wonder whether someone, somewhere, is asking the same question about me.

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