Faces behind fashion
Masaba Gupta, 28
Fashion designer, Creative head, House of Masaba, Mumbai
Masaba Gupta's moment of truth came when she was playing a tennis match in Sangli, Maharashtra, and someone from the crowd shouted: ''You're Viv Richards' daughter. Get your game going. Don't just wear fancy clothes.'' She had been playing the game since she was eight and for her state for three years. She stopped, gave up completely. She was in Class 10. Now looking back at that time, one of India's most fiercely individualistic designers says, "Tennis left me very bitter. I was so unhappy. I got so many chances, had so many great coaches. I was a great sportsman's daughter. There was intense pressure. My dad was always with me, he was an active part of my life then. Everyone wanted a piece of me."
She developed a sun allergy and even the joy of wearing fashionable tennis clothes wore off. She then drifted from Jamnabai Narsee School to Mithibai College, trying her hand at music at a school in Acton Town, London. "I was 16, living with nice friends of my mother (actor Neena Gupta, who went from one of the leading lights of seventies independent cinema to a popular TV actor/director). But I was miserable. I missed my help, my dogs, my mom."
She lasted six months there learning jazz, and another week at home in Mumbai before her mother asked her to do something with her life. A friend was taking the entrance exam at SNDT Women's University for an undergraduate course in fashion and apparel design. Masaba did too, being good at sketching. So there she was learning knitting and crochet at SNDT. "I hated it," she says. She was so bad at stitching that she failed, and her teachers gave up on her. Until there was a fashion show in the second year, Wendell Rodricks was one of the judges and her showstopper was deemed the most commercially viable. Big stores like Aza and Atosa called and she started working out of her
