RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Five years af­ter sur­viv­ing a mys­tery ill­ness, Dr Mark Ra­goo­nanan sees life from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and is us­ing so­cial me­dia as a tool to bring joy, laugh­ter and hap­pi­ness to peo­ple around the world.Ra­goo­nanan, 41, born and bred in Point Fortin, is mar­ried and a fa­ther of two. He is a den­tist/den­tal sur­geon by pro­fes­sion. How­ev­er, the so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty start­ed off lip-sync­ing Bol­ly­wood hits and has been trend­ing on In­sta­gram in re­cent months for eat­ing quan­ti­ties of whole raw pep­pers and pep­per sauce in meals. His fol­low­ers have rapid­ly in­creased from 10,000 to al­most 30,000.

Al­though it may be per­ceived by Ra­goo­nanan’s view­ers that he eats a con­sid­er­able quan­ti­ty of pep­pers very reg­u­lar­ly, it’s quite the con­trary for him.

“Of course, I am a trained pro­fes­sion­al in the health field so I will not do any­thing detri­men­tal to my health. I ac­tu­al­ly will eat maybe three hot pep­pers with seeds if I’m eat­ing a cur­ry dish or maybe a siz­able amount of pep­per sauce if I’m eat­ing wings, but that is nev­er fre­quent,” he ex­plained.

“Maybe once or twice a week if so. I am a per­son that is al­ways evolv­ing. It may be pep­per to­day but def­i­nite­ly, I have big­ger, bet­ter and more ex­hil­a­rat­ing ideas us­ing dif­fer­ent meth­ods for the fu­ture.

“My con­tent will be con­stant­ly chang­ing to main­tain the ex­cite­ment and laugh­ter of my view­ers. I have up­loaded videos since these pep­per videos with dif­fer­ent types of food with no pep­per in­volved. It was wel­comed by many. It’s about mak­ing peo­ple hap­py and spread­ing an un­usu­al joy. So pep­per videos might be com­ing to an end.”

He added, “Re­gard­ing my Bol­ly­wood videos, which I still en­joy the most up to this day, I have since got­ten lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties. I’ve been in­vit­ed abroad to wed­ding func­tions and oth­er events by fol­low­ers and or­gan­i­sa­tions. For my food videos, I have been in­un­dat­ed with nu­mer­ous calls every day at my pri­vate prac­tice from small busi­ness­es to high­light their prod­uct with pay­ment. I have not ac­cept­ed any thus far.” Ra­goo­nanan said he doesn’t want to be seen as en­dors­ing mul­ti­ple busi­ness­es, as that will com­pro­mise his in­tegri­ty and the trust peo­ple have in him.

He in­sist­ed, “Even if I’m be­ing paid, I must love and have 100 per cent be­lief in the prod­uct.”Be­fore join­ing so­cial me­dia in No­vem­ber 2022, Ra­goo­nanan was a very pri­vate per­son.

“I was not ac­tive on any so­cial me­dia plat­form. Most peo­ple who know me as a young boy to the present would com­ment that I am a very fun, out­go­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous per­son. I would some­times say the most out-of-tim­ing things as we say in Trinidad and many would laugh in shock. Be­sides that, I al­ways would try de­spite the sit­u­a­tion to project a pos­i­tive out­look in life,” he said.

Ra­goo­nanan grew up with his grand­moth­er tak­ing him to the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist church in Hol­ly­wood, Point Fortin. At the age of 17, he start­ed to at­tend Mir­a­cle Min­istries Christ Cas­tle in Chase Vil­lage full-time.

He re­called, “I suf­fered se­vere­ly from asth­ma as a young child up to my late teens, prac­ti­cal­ly liv­ing on a neb­u­liz­er, and af­ter my first vis­it there and pas­tor pray­ing for me, my asth­ma dis­ap­peared. From then I had many mir­a­cles, ac­tu­al­ly, my wife and I were on the front page of the Guardian news­pa­per high­light­ing one of those.

“My per­spec­tive on life changed at the be­gin­ning of 2018 when a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness sud­den­ly ap­peared. Some­thing I thought would have been a one-off thing con­tin­ued for two years. My life was turned up­side down with my health is­sues get­ting worse with time.” He said he was of­ten in a med­ical spe­cial­ist’s of­fice every two weeks in those two years.

“I re­mem­ber times when I could hard­ly walk and breath­ing was dif­fi­cult. I re­lied on my pas­tor, my fam­i­ly and church mem­bers for sup­port. I hon­est­ly thought I wouldn’t make it. Just be­fore the pan­dem­ic lock­down be­gan, I start­ed to re­al­ly ex­er­cise my faith in God. One day al­most two years af­ter the symp­toms be­gan, I got the worst flare-up and then mirac­u­lous­ly every­thing, every symp­tom dis­ap­peared. I stopped tak­ing all med­ica­tion.”

He added, “This gave me a dif­fer­ent out­look on life. I be­came a dif­fer­ent per­son. I start­ed to ap­pre­ci­ate the lit­tle things in life.

Af­ter the pan­dem­ic, in Oc­to­ber 2022 I was on my way to the UK with a stop in JFK. While at im­mi­gra­tion, my glass­es fell apart and I called a per­son who I got to know a few weeks be­fore to take me to get a new one as I couldn’t see very well. “She is Shamin Di, who is a so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty with 109,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book and is a very pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia fig­ure. Be­fore this fate­ful day, I would send her lit­tle Bol­ly­wood lip-syncs of my­self. I love 90s Bol­ly­wood mu­sic. Ku­mar Sanu, Al­ka Yag­nik and Udit Narayan are my favourite singers with Sanu be­ing my all-time favourite.

“That day spent with Shamin was a life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. She en­cour­aged me to fol­low my dreams and to do what makes me hap­py. She helped al­le­vi­ate my fears of be­ing on so­cial me­dia. Un­know­ing to me, she up­loaded my videos to her page and I was shocked at the re­sponse. That is when I start­ed Tik­Tok, which is the plat­form that I loved the most, No­vem­ber 1, 2022.” Ra­goo­nanan got en­cour­age­ment to high­light his many trav­els to Eu­rope lip-sync­ing to Bol­ly­wood songs.

“I was shocked at the re­sponse. I start­ed from scratch and was con­stant­ly en­cour­aged by my fol­low­ers, al­beit less than 1,000 in the first two months. In a few months, by Sep­tem­ber 2023, I got 10,000 fol­low­ers most­ly due to my trav­el and Bol­ly­wood videos. In this pe­ri­od, most of my fol­low­ers were from Mau­ri­tius, with South Africa fol­low­ing up sec­ond.”

Ever since he was a child, Ra­goo­nanan loved spicy food. “Every­one that knows me would tell you, ‘Mark eats lots of pep­per!’ I guess with time my tol­er­ance would in­crease. I can safe­ly eat three scotch bon­net pep­pers with­out any dis­com­fort. Scor­pi­on Pep­per is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry! My stom­ach hon­est­ly can­not han­dle it. My mom is a chef and in mid-Au­gust, I de­cid­ed to high­light a dish she pre­pared for me, my wife and kids. This dish had no pep­per in­clud­ed and I got a con­sid­er­able num­ber of views in a very short time, sim­i­lar to some of the Bol­ly­wood ones that went vi­ral.

Con­tin­ues on page 19

“This en­cour­aged me to con­tin­ue high­light­ing my mom’s food but I start­ed to in­clude the quan­ti­ty of pep­pers that I’m ac­cus­tomed to, main­ly cur­ry dish­es which I eat very oc­ca­sion­al­ly. I was in­trigued by the re­ac­tion of the view­ers. My views per video start­ed to cross 100,000 and peo­ple were amazed at my tol­er­ance of hot pep­pers. I couldn’t un­der­stand this as it was very nor­mal for me,” Ra­goo­nanan said.

He ex­plained that it was not his con­tent views that moved him but feed­back from view­ers on what his videos made them feel.

“Peo­ple were mes­sag­ing me by the hun­dreds telling me how I made their days and how I made them smile. Many peo­ple told me they suf­fered from de­pres­sion and my videos helped them. Many even told me they loved me as their broth­er and friend. Many in­sist­ed it was the com­e­dy of the video rather than the ac­tu­al con­sump­tion of hot pep­pers. Many ex­pressed that they loved videos with ab­solute­ly no pep­per in­volved.

“This was my ma­jor mo­ti­va­tion. I felt ex­cit­ed about shar­ing hap­pi­ness and love, af­ter all, it was ex­act­ly a match to my per­son­al­i­ty. As I be­gan to put out more videos the sup­port and views in­creased ex­po­nen­tial­ly. In times when I didn’t put out a new video prompt­ly my fol­low­ers would in­sist and I had to make it my pri­or­i­ty. Al­though I am say­ing fol­low­ers I con­sid­er the peo­ple that sup­port me fam­i­ly.”

He added: “As of now one thing that has changed in my life is the fact that peo­ple ap­proach me every­where I go. My wife al­so loves to meet our new friends who many times show so much love and ex­press much ex­cite­ment on meet­ing us. I feel so blessed and hum­bled each time some­one ap­proach­es me, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren. I love to hear the pos­i­tive im­pact I have on some­one’s life, it makes me feel very con­tent.”