Protect your interests
Hobbies are meant to be fun. Why suck the fun out of them by turning them into a business? A plea in three parts
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While crocheting, all I’m thinking about is the number of knots I have to do; there is no space for overthinking and worries. It’s therapeutic.
BBeyonce’s fanbase is called the Beyhive. But few fans know beekeeping is actually her hobby too. Mike Tyson rescues and races pigeons. Ryan Gosling knits. Paris Hilton restores antique radios. Taylor Swift is an obsessive... snow-globe maker. The best part, none of these folks are commercialising their interests. We might be able to learn something from celebrities after all.
A hobby, any hobby, is a delicate undertaking. There’s always a more important task to complete instead, a hobby is the first sacrifice when life gets busy. Do it well enough and people start asking, “Do you take orders?” “You should turn this into a business!” Meet some hobbyists who are determined to not listen to them.
Skin deep
Siddharth Sankaranarayanan, 22, who works in advertising in Bengaluru, got interested in leatherworking in the pandemic. He turns leftover hides from the meat industry into wallets, pouches, even laptop sleeves.
The task transforms him as much as it transforms the hide. “When I sit down to work with my tools and the leather, I am in my zone. Everything is in control,” says Sankaranarayanan. “The fun is in the journey. There is scope for creative exploration. The best part is, the designs are completely mine.” There’s no client hovering, with precious unwanted inputs.
As with most people with craft hobbies, Sankaranarayanan’s creations soon started piling
MAITREYEE DATAR, communication designer
P X calibre
up. He now gives them to friends and family. “It’s personalised, and they always ask me where I bought it from!”
It’s not the same as putting your handiwork in a shop window. But creating in small batches lets him set the pace, and indulge his little experiments. For the ad man, the hobby is a reminder that everything is not business.
It’s hard to explain, but working with your hands to create something, even if it is cross-stitching, makes you feel spiritually satisfied. JANHAVI SAMANT, communications professional
Cross-stitching seems simple: X-shaped stitches of the same size on a wide-weave fabric. But avid fans will tell you that filling the slow, pixel-like grid is all about maths, method and meditation. In Mumbai, communications professional Janhavi Samant, 47, had to teach her son, Saad, cross-stitching for a school project back in 2017. She ended up picking up the craft herself, creating cross-stitch versions of her favourite masterpieces: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Starry Night and Munch’s The Scream.
A work may take as long as nine months – particularly at the advanced level, in which the fabric has no sketching to guide where each stitch goes. Samant doesn’t mind. It leaves her to work at her own pace, devising big strategies via small steps, making mistakes and rectifying them without anyone noticing. “It’s hard to explain, but working with your hands to create something makes you
feel spiritually satisfied,” she says. It offers her a
bit of an escape every day.
Samant’s own living room is filled with her framed projects. She knows she won’t be able to sell completed works. She wouldn’t anyway. “What price would I put on hours and hours of work?” So works are given as presents.
Creating art from art has helped Samant engage with the works more intimately, an invaluable bonus. “We are raised only to study and work,” Samant says. “But, how much Netflix can you watch. How much office work can you do?”
Common thread
In Pune, 21-year-old communication designer Maitreyee Datar, has been crocheting since she picked up the skill nearly a decade ago. She’s honed new skills from online tutorials and has created everything from tablecloths and blankets to berets, cup warmers and plushies. Some of the work looks so professional, she’s often asked where she bought it from. And yet, she’s clear that this is not a second job. “Crocheting is essential to my life,” she says. “It’s a sign that I have a purpose outside of work.”
There’s a different kind of satisfaction from doing a job right for no reward other than personal satisfaction, Datar says. “Even if I’ve followed a tutorial, the end product is mine.” And the activity delivers more than a product: “While I work, all I’m thinking about is the number of knots I have to do; there is no space for overthinking. It’s therapeutic.”
A crochet business, then, would kill both joys. Merchandise – say a Dune Sandworm or Savitribai Phule doll – can take up to 60 hours, pushing up prices. “Customers essentially want something good looking and durable. Trying to meet that demand will spoil the process for me,” Datar says. And then, she’ll have to look for another hobby to de-stress.
The fun is in the journey. The experimentation, creative exploration. The best part is the designs are completely mine. SIDDHARTH SANKARANARAYANAN, advertising executive