Blog 2 of 30
Masterpage turned 30. It is hard to tell when it all began.
Did it begin when I wrote an essay in the 3rd or the 4th standard and the teacher praised me for my writing style?
Did it begin when I decided to study journalism in college?
Did it begin when I returned to India, and realised that working a full-time job meant sacrificing time with my children and family?
Did it begin when I quit my first job on the third day because I came back to find my sons and husband fast asleep?
Or did it begin when Mr Joe D’ Silva, a close family friend and the head of an advertising agency sent me a box of visiting cards with my name and a logo of Masterpage?
I am not sure when it began, but the story perhaps had roots in my school days when I made the strange career choice of medicine or journalism. I have no idea why I chose these two as options. I remember enjoying the study of human physiology in school. I also remember being told repeatedly that I write well.
But is that a good enough reason for a career choice? I am not sure. I guess most of us choose our careers based on our school experiences – a teacher we liked, a class that was boring, our best friend’s choice… The list goes on. So perhaps this was as good a reason as any. I worked hard for my 12th standard boards and got into dentistry. There was an option for medicine with a small capitation fee. But I refused.
I remember the conversation with my father when I told him that I simply could not spend my life looking down people’s mouths and that I felt that there was something unacceptable about a capitation fee. We argued for hours, but I would not budge. Today, looking back, I wonder at how different my life might have been if I had taken the medical seat. But I simply would not do it then. In my mind, the capitation fee was a mockery of my efforts, and I was clear that no matter what I did, it had to be on my terms, as a result of my hard work. Perhaps I was wrong. I will never know. That’s the thing about decisions. We sometimes never know if we made the right one – but we can make the best of the choice we do make!
So, I chose to switch to English Literature for my undergraduate course as no Journalism course was available at the time in Madras. This sounds simple enough, but no college would give a science student admission for English Literature. It took a great deal of cajoling by my headmistress at school to convince a college to give me a seat. And so, I joined a degree in English Literature. It seemed a very convoluted way of getting to my goal… but it was the only step I could take.
The next step was admission to a Journalism course in the US. And somewhere along the way to my professional goals, I met someone got married and had my first son. The road to my career goals just got more complex. I don’t know if every parent goes through this, but from the day, I had my child it was a constant balancing act between the personal and the professional.
I always imagined myself this strong goal-oriented career woman… but in nine months and a few hours of hard labour, it all changed. The tiny bundle in my arms would forever influence the path of my professional choices.
And so, I returned to india with a degree in journalism and the belief that I could change the world with my words. I dreamed of a job with exciting assignments and returning home to play with my child, but the choices were few and far between. Work from home and flexible hours were unheard of at the time. Freelancing was barely a thing. And the few jobs available were either not challenging or had very difficult hours or paid such a pittance it seemed a waste of time. I was getting professionally frustrated and was unsure what to do.
And then when I was eight months pregnant, I got an interview call – a PR head for a leading hotel in the city. It was challenging and paid well and when they made me an offer to start when my second child was three months old, I jumped at it. But the job involved late nights and long hours and on my very third day I had come back home to find my children fast asleep and my husband too exhausted from dealing with them. It broke my heart. That was not why I had wanted to be a mother. I resolved then that I would do something else. But I still had no idea what that was.
On a visit to Hyderabad, I met with Mr. Joe D’Silva and was sharing my frustrations with him. I told him how I just wanted to write content for clients and how no one took me seriously as a freelancer.
“Why don’t you set up an agency?” he asked
I laughed. “Sure. I will call it Masterpage”
The name came from the Adobe Pagemaker software and referred to the page that carried all the elements that would need to reflect on the inner pages of the document. Mr D’Silva laughed and said that it was a good name and that was the end of the conversation at that time.
What he did with that information, changed my life forever.
Ripples Of Life and Time 