Kreeda Might Have Never Been!

When I sit down and think about 20 years of Kreeda or when I am at an event watching people play and laugh and enjoy the games, when I hear people talk about the games, I always smile to myself because I know that somewhere it is fascinating to me that Kreeda has gone so far because Kreeda might have never been.

There was no doubt that I had decided to make the games. I had decided to put them in the market. But in the beginning, it was a one-time exercise. It was never about becoming an entrepreneur. It was never about building a business. It was about having some fun when I was at the crossroads of my life. It was about creating a small sample of games and sharing it with a few people. A chance to experiment with something fun when I was at a professional crossroads.

That’s the way I planned it, that’s the way I designed it and that’s the way I thought about it. I never dreamed about Kreeda in the future. I never made plans for the future. I never thought of what I would do when the 50 games ran out. I knew nothing about being an entrepreneur, I knew nothing about pricing strategies and margins. I had a few games in the shop. I had a few more at home. I never thought I would go for a second round of production.

There was an article in the paper and of course I was thrilled about it, though most people had no interest in traditional games at the time. In fact, every time I said I was doing something with traditional games, people would look puzzled.  My family was indulgent and thought, like me, that this was an interim pastime till I figured out what I wanted to do in life.  

I remember a Sunday afternoon when we were just sitting down for lunch when the doorbell rang. This lady had read about Kreeda and had dropped by. Kreeda was then operating out of my home. She did not know and thought it was a shop. She had a special child and she truly believed that the child would enjoy some of these games. She was almost breathless with excitement when she asked to pick up a few games.

It was Sunday. I was hungry. There was a hot meal waiting on the table. But I knew that none of my team were there in the office upstairs. It meant going up, opening the office, and pulling out the games. With a halfhearted smile, I asked her in, went up to the office.

What I then realized was we had no more ready packed games. Only the raw materials to create them. Explaining the situation, I sat down to this young mother, I sat down to count out the game pieces to create the games. The Pallanguzhi has 156 game pieces and as we’ve always used natural elements, it was not as simple as merely counting. We had to weed out the damaged pieces, and pieces that were too small or too large. At the time we used cowrie shells.

As I was going through the painstaking process of counting out 156, she looked at me and said, actually, can you give me 5 Pallanguzhis? I looked up in surprise.

She said, “I think I will give them as gifts.”

I was torn between the excitement of someone buying five games, and the fact that I was definitely not going to get to lunch anytime soon. I started packing the games and by the time I was done, the family had finished, cleared up and gone for their afternoon siesta. I sat down over my lonely lunch trying to read and distract my mind, but I kept thinking.

I had taken a break from my professional commitments because I was tired, bored, and not excited enough, not inspired by it. I was looking for a change and I was confused. While I enjoyed what I was doing with Kreeda on the creative side, on the administrative side, it might become equally monotonous. I knew deep down that it was a decision I had to make. I knew deep down that I had to decide what to do with Kreeda.

The decision was taken out of my hands by another order from Odyssey, Ashwin at Odyssey, one of our strong supporters and leading Kreeda retailers he called asking for more games. I was tentative.

“No, no, he said, “You must make them quickly and send them to me.”

He put down the phone, not giving me a chance to reply. I made the games and sent them to him and the rest is history… or Kreeda’s story! 

Kreeda has been exciting, inspiring, interesting, but it’s been a lot of hard work. While I had my grandmother influence me on one side, I had my grandfather influence me on the other. A man who was over 90 years old, he would often ask me to give him some work to do as he was bored.  We often used to joke with him and tell him that we would retire, and he could keep working, but it was that ethos of hard work that he inculcated in us all that kept me going.

Little did I know what had happened when I started Kreeda. It was the beginning of an idea, a concept, a revolution – a subject which many people talk about today. But back then, long before people started talking about traditional games, long before they started espousing the many advantages and cultural underpinnings, Kreeda was already doing it.  

But even today, sometimes I smile and think to myself, Kreeda might have never been.