The Times they were A-Changing

Blog 20 of 30

My business was growing, and I was getting requests from outside Chennai to do work. A number of requests came from Hyderabad, and I was even contemplating tying up with an advertising agency there. My father’s old friend Mr Joe D’Silva, who had presented me with my first set of visiting cards, was happy to partner with us.

But other things were happening side by side. As the business grew and I found myself more and more involved in administration and management and less and less on the creative side. This left me very unfulfilled and chewing at the bit.

Secondly much of the work we were doing was for corporates houses and I was convinced that nothing we wrote was having impact on anyone’s life. There was something unfulfilling about doing jobs that seemed to impact no one, help no one and were merely about the pay check.

I was also facing huge problems with payments. One advertising agency actually paid me one year later for the work that I had done. I had a friend in the agency, and I called him up one day and offered to take him out for lunch. He was flattered and asked me for the reason. I told him that I wanted to celebrate the anniversary of handing over my invoice! It was not a large amount of money, but this was increasingly becoming the norm. The amount of energy I spent following up on payments was taking even the pleasure of the pay check away.

My original team of Vidya, Sumita, Lakshmi, Neeraja and Sonia had moved on. The children had grown up as had my children and the fun times in the office were fewer and fewer.  While it continued to be a space where children could come, with my children away at school, some of the charm had gone away.

To read the last few paragraphs paints a gloomy picture of Masterpage. But that was not really so. The office was buzzing, and a fresh team of Sangeetha, Preethi and Sivagami were keeping things going. I was doing a wonderful series on wedding customs of India that ran in The Hindu once a week for almost a year. I loved doing it and the creative energy I got from it was exhilarating. That only ended up highlighting what was bothering me.

What was happening though was that I was realising that I had to reinvent myself, reinvent Masterpage to feel fulfilled and do justice to my work.  I was frustrated because I was not making any impact on anything. I was not doing anything that mattered. I was frustrated that I was not utilizing my creativity. I needed to do something different. I was simply not sure what. Luckily for me, by this time my husband’s business had stabilized. He had a steady income, and I was in a position where I could take a call on what I wanted to do next. I could even take a break if required to take a step back and revaluate my professional life.

It was at this time, I decided to set up Kreeda. The name, suggested by my father, means “play” in Sanskrit. “I will make about 50 sets of half a dozen games, sell a few and gift the others,” I thought to myself. It would give me a creative outlet to do something that mattered and give me time to revaluate my professional options.

On that red letter day, virtually on the eve of signing an agreement with an agency in Hyderabad. I took a call to stop and take stock of my life. I spent an hour on the beach staring out at the sea. Something clicked in my mind. I came back home and took some drastic decisions. I took a call to scale back at work; to let go clients who are troublesome and did not pay. I took a call to introduce a range of traditional games and work towards reviving them. The idea was just to make it a part of Masterpage and explore where it went. I also decided to be picky about my work and take projects that will truly interesting, challenging and creatively fulfilling. And with that, 10 years into Masterpage, I began a new journey.