My journey from a healthcare professional to a paper artist at RawAtCraft was like a roller-coaster ride in which COVID 19 first lockdown played a major role. Although COVID-19 was a horrifying and depressing time for many, there was, however, a silver line. The lockdown offered me an opportunity to indulge in my passion, which had taken a backseat due to time constraints.
Being a girl in the middle class was not easy to leave a so-called conventional job and do something unconventional but that decision to leave everything behind, and follow my passion was not taken in a day.
I was a health care professional and simultaneously prepared for UPSC entrance. Thinking maybe it’s a good idea to do, I enrolled for a coaching institute without really understanding what I was getting into. Imagine years of classes and tuitions, fat books to mug up, studies extending till the wee hours of the morning, recurring exams, and also continuing my job.
I always wanted to escape the rat race. Sitting in front of the office desktop, I used to ask myself, what am I doing? And if I were doing something I want, life would be so good.
Every day was turning into a struggle, to wake up and go to work, to follow the same routine and to do an ordinary job and at the same time there was a pressure of getting married. Ultimately, after much contemplation in May 2020, I took the call to quit my job and consider working in paper art full time.
It was the time when the first COVID-19 outbreak happened. So I got a mixed reaction from my family as they were also concerned but when I explained that I want to do something on my own and want to do something art related, initially they were not convinced.
Since childhood, I used to make paper flowers, wall hanging and baskets with newspaper. As Albert Einstein said, “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulate the creative mind”.
Similarly, now I had ample time as I left the job and there was a lockdown. Then I utilized my time doing web suffering and seeing the senior artist work and simultaneously through YouTube and certain workshops I sharpen my skill too.
I saw “Yulia Brodskaya’s” quilling work on Instagram which made me realise that we can do wonders through quilling then I used to do quilling extending till the wee hours of the morning thus, then I conceptualized “RAWatCraft” and created social media page in all social media handles and started posting my quilling artworks on social media and I got really warm appreciation from the viewers and the work started coming which motivated me to do more hard work thus, from 2020 onwards only I created some personal and corporate projects. With that, I started conducting online workshops and live sessions, which was a great success. During my sessions, many people referred to me as “Paper Girl”. Such appreciation motivated me to do more and more with new and creative ideas.
“I believe that if someone has a dream and zeal to achieve it, no one can stop you from attaining your goal despite all odds”.