Protect your interests: Why a hobby shouldn’t turn into a business
Hobbies are meant to be fun. Why suck the fun out of them by throwing in a commercial angle? A plea in three parts
Beyonce’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 something of an obsessive... snow-globe maker. The best part, none of these folks have shown any interest in commercialising their interests. We might be able to learn something from celebrities after all.
A hobby, any hobby, is a delicate undertaking. A 2015 study, published in the Society of Behavioural Medicine, shows that when one indulges in activities that they love in their leisure time, it positively impacts their overall health and happiness. But committing to leisure is hard. 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 three hobbyists who are determined to not to listen to them.
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 going to turn into a second job. “Crocheting is absolutely 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 and worries. It’s therapeutic.”
A crochet business, then, would take away both these joys. Merchandise – say a Dune Sandworm or Savitribai Phule doll – can take up to 60 hours of careful work, 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.
Skin deep
Siddharth Sankaranarayanan, 22, who works in advertising in Bengaluru, got his hands dirty trying a variety of crafts during the pandemic. Leatherworking appealed to him over working with wood or clay. He sources leftover hides from the meat industry and turns them 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 experimentation, creative exploration. The best part is, the designs are completely mine.” There’s no client hovering over, with precious unwanted inputs.
As with most people with craft hobbies, Sankaranarayanan realised that his creations soon started piling up. He now gives them to friends and family as one-of-a-kind presents. “It’s personalised, and they always ask me where I bought it from!” he exclaims.
Gifting doesn’t deliver the same thrill as putting your handiwork in a shop window or retail website. But creating in small batches lets him set the pace and deadline, and indulge his little experiments without having to worry about demand. For someone whose day job is all about creating a market and driving up consumer interest, the hobby is an essential reminder that everything is not business.
X calibre
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. “It’s my time to unwind. It’s escapism, but in a constructive way. I think about my day, get clarity on conflicts and focus on what needs to be completed,” she says.
Samant’s own living room is filled with her framed projects. There’s no market demand for a large-scale, cross-stitched version of a famous painting, and 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 framed works are given as presents.
“We are raised only to study and work,” Samant says. Creating art from art has helped her engage with the works more intimately and appreciate them differently, an invaluable bonus. “After all, how much Netflix can you watch and how much office work can you do?”
