Journey of a Filmmaker

Spirit is the most important ingredient for success. If you have the spirit, nothing else really matter. One who has a fountain within him which produces this spirit infinitely can have anything he desires in this world. But that fountain certainly is very rare. What is more common is the fast fading spirit that is prevalent among every one of us! Ever felt lightning streak of patriotism emanate from within you when you hear A R Rahman strike the chord with his Vande Mataram? Ever felt an urge to do something impactful immediately after a highly motivational lecture? Ever thought of quitting all your bad habits in a fit after a heartbreak? Ever made up your mind to step forward against all odds after watching an inspiring movie? Ever read a quote which felt like a direct injection of energy into your heart making it pump extra blood through your veins pushing you out of procrastination? This instant “maggi” kinda stuff is what I call the fast fading spirit. It will give yo...

I used to type (lol, write) stories from a very young age. Storytelling had been my habit since childhood and most of the times my sister used to be my only audience. She has a taste for really good stories and she seriously improved my stories. I took typewriting classes at a very early age (I was the youngest in the class and my next senior was at least 7 years older than me) and my father bought me a typewriter to practice at home. That was a time when computers were a luxury. I didn’t know what to do with the typewriter. I mean, I knew I’ve to type with it but I didn’t want to do the same “asdf ;lkj” practice at home. So I just used to type anything that came to my mind. They were mostly adventure stories involving super heroes (aka the heroes of masala films). I would then have that one type written manuscript of the story with my colour pencil drawn cover circulated among my cousins and friends in turns. Although everyone seemed to enjoy them, I now know that they were all out...

While I was in IV grade of school, I was fortunate enough to be one of the good rankers in the class. But that didn’t stop with the school day privileges of the monitoring the class and all. Our class teacher had a weird rule. All the top rankers of the class must participate in the elocution competition. Well, I had a date arranged with the biggest demon of myself. I didn’t have the courage to tell no to my class teacher either. That was it. The competition was a week away and the given topic was “Indira Gandhi”. My sister was so excited and my dad was too. He even went one step higher. When he found that I was trying to chicken out by all means, he came up with the best of deals. That really sounded great. I had a great liking for toy guns in that age. Of all the toys I ever had in my childhood, gun would form at least 70% of them. I never asked for any other crackers during Diwali, I just used to get a revolver typed toy and spend the whole Diwali season blasting the roll cracker...

I was brainstorming for almost an hour to come up with a topic to tick today off my 21 days of blogging challenge. Finally, I reached almost a decade back in my memory lane to reminiscence about the game that I used to play with my friends while at school. I doubt, whether it could be called a game technically, because it was more of a gamble. The rules of the game are simple and there were only three of us. Ganesh Karthikeyan, Madhan and I. We each chose a group of vehicle individually. For example, Ganesh chose Jeep modelled vehicles and Madhan chose Tata made vehicles and I chose vehicles of the automobile maker Maruti. Every day after having lunch, we three used to stand in the corridor and start counting the vehicles going on the road. I mean, if a Zen or an Alto passes then I take a point and similarly if a Bolero or a Qualis passes, then it’s Ganesh. And this count was cumulative, we used to remember the counts for days together till once for all we lost interest in the game....

Being single minded and fully dedicated to achieve one sole objective is often overrated. I will just tell you why it didn’t work out in my life. This post is about the importance of having a plan B however confident you are about the Plan A. Let me begin by unusually citing the example of Titanic. We all know that it sank because of the imperfection in Plan B (I mean the insufficient life boats). Till the middle of January this year I was too hopeful of getting into the premier institutions of India – the IITs. Only after looking at my result that I realized that I was ‘too’ hopeful. Without the ‘too’ it would have been a lot better because I wasn’t let ‘too’ behind. I was just 1 mark short of qualifying. Even that one mark would have landed me only in the fierce competition of the next level. So I was not heartbroken by the result. But the bad news was I had no other plans and I was virtually in a dead end. For about 2 months I just had IITs in my mind working without a thought abo...

You might have guessed right! I selected Chetan Bhagat’s “Five point someone”. And I truly believe that it was this book that got me here! I luckily got the side seat in the train. I completed reading the book in one full stretch. It was not a great piece of literature but it struck a chord with me. I was just enticed into doing engineering. It’s been more than a year I was out of college and I was more than craving to get back. Note: If anyone of you were wondering what happened to my passports and certificates that were with the agent in Dehradun, don’t worry I got them all back. Without going much into details, Dad had some political influence and he leveraged it and of course he took most of the efforts himself. It may sound weird but even now if I am given a chance I would happily go to college forever! I may not love listening to long boring lectures and doing the routine assignments. But there is something else that attracts me to the world of learning. May be I am too scared...

Yeah of course, the return journey made all the difference. It just didn’t take me across different cities of India I’ve never been before but also made me contemplate a lot on my abilities and more importantly on my true calling. The journey started from Dehradun, the furthest I’ve ever been from my home. I boarded a bus from Dehradun to Delhi. It appeared just like the bus we would naturally visualize in North India. But the places it passed through were historic. May be not every place but I remember taking a halt at Panipat. Ah! The number of wars fought on the land came as a flash in to my mind. But there was a highly emotional contemplation that was going on my mind. Usually after a heartbreak, I tend to take decision in a fit. I know that’s very unhealthy behaviour but the adrenaline or whatever pumping in just makes me feel like I suddenly am filled with an invincible spirit that energizes me (Well, that’s just for a while). I was planning to get rid of my marine life comple...