Ever since Chandana Madala was six years-old, she knew she wanted to be fighting the good fight in a courtroom. Growing up in Hyderabad and then moving to a hostel for her formative college years at the reputed National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), she fought against the continual ragging and other injustices, further solidifying her ambition to complete her degree.
So how did the passionate lawyer end up running one of the city’s better known textile stores?
Seven years into her practise as a corporate and tax lawyer, Chandana began to feel she wasn’t on her ideal path. She comments, “I was working with a senior for three years, I had my daughter, who’s now 11 years-old, in between so I got a year’s break, then I went on to run my own practice for four years. That’s not the only way to fight against injustice. I found law was not for me because I was representing companies and dealing with taxations — I wasn’t serving that particular purpose I started out with.”
Having faced regular battles in the courtroom and dealing with the internal politics that are saddled with such a career, she could no longer turn a blind eye.
Reactions galore
“To this day, my family and friends are telling me I didn’t make the right choice,” she recalls, “especially because a lot of my classmates from college are now big partners at top firms. My mother still tells me to return to law, but I insist ‘no!’”
Chandana admits there was a time of utter confusion, grappling with various other potential paths. So she took the initiative and worked with NGOs for a while.
“I worked with Sunitha Krishnan’s Prajwala, which works against trafficking, and National Commission for Women, where I was counselling women about self-empowerment in financial aspects so speaking to women about their monetary rights. I was working with women who worked a full-time job but felt they had no right to keep their earnings, so they gave the entirety of it to their husbands. Law, in that sense, helped me a lot — so I have no regrets.”
This was all followed by a six-month course in psychology which she found it extremely enjoyable, adding, “I think I followed through with law because that was a childhood wish but when I did psychology, I really understood genuine interest. But I didn’t really pursue it.”
Topping textiles
In 2014, Chandana was approached by her friend Keerthi, a designer, who wanted to start a fabric store. And so within the summer of that year, Fabric Nation was brought together. “This is what I’m made for,” she states, “it’s not fashion or fabrics, but the business side of things. I started this small scale, so my strengths are finance and marketing. I may do an MBA in Finance down the line too. I found that I want to work for myself and spearhead my own thing.”
Chandana admits she’s not huge on dealign with people but she has a huge knack for the equally integral back-end work of understanding the jargon and paperwork that gruellingly comes with such an industry.
She concludes that she has plenty of plans in the works, be it the F&B industry or otherwise, proving she never wants to box herself into one particular stream.
This column features people who dared to give up lucrative career to pursue their dream
