Dazzling Stage ... moved my florist

The days of my work in railways, basketball and theatre I discovered myself designing things. I was exposed to artificial flowers and pot designs. I started designing these huge pots with various shapes and sizes and colours and artificial landscapes with white brown pebbles, artificial plants & flowers. I held my first exhibition of my designs at cymroza art gallery for 3 days and received overwhelming response. And I discovered that anything creative excited me and makes me feel very happy. So after 11 years of railway service and theatre, I decided to step out from railway service and take up creative work on full time basis. This gave me immense pleasure and thus my creative journey began with full throttle. I started designing lot of plays and events, thus my travelling to different parts of the country began. 

I remember and incident when I was doing Ila Arun musical show in Bangalore. I was executing my set and light design, I met a lady who was providing us flowers to incorporate on the stage. She was a florist handling hotels for flower displays in the lobbies and tables. She was with me and questioned me about my work and she heard that our work was very unstable and how does it excite me doing what I do. 

I tried explaining it to her about my work and the excitement of creating something new every time. But she refused to except that we can risk our lives with no definite Job and just be a freelancer. While these discussions were going on the work kept progressing. On the day of the show I asked her to sit with me at the light console during the show. As the show began and my lights, lighted the stage it changed its look and with every song something new happened and a different magic unfold. She was so surprised at watching the whole transformation take place on stage the flowers she provided looked so different with lights. She was mesmerised and watched in awe. After the show ended she came and held my hand and said I now understand why you do what you do and what excites you and how can you miss this excitement for anything in the world.

I was so happy to see this transformation in a person who believed in a secured life she lived. Till today after 35 years of designing I am as excited and nervous as my first show.