Journey of a Filmmaker

While going through my daily quora digest, I came across an answer citing a Varun Agarwal quote. That actually triggered me into a routine, which I usually follow when I get interested in a   personality. Read their Wikipedia bio Find their personal website and check their contacts (I’ve never reached out to any of them, still I do check for ways to get in touch) Watch their interviews/speeches in Youtube Look for similarities between our lives/thoughts/speech pattern (and many other silly things) Get impressed and inspired all over again But in the case of Varun Agarwal, my routine took a different course. I did go through his profile and personal website :p. In addition, it triggered memories of my college days - when and how he became my source of inspiration, eventually resulting in this blog post. Balaji and me had this habit of taking part in as many paper presentations as possible, mostly to escape our boring college lectures. We easily got...

Hello everyone. It’s been a very long time since I wrote anything on this blog. So I thought, I’ll write a series on my latest short film “Thiruttu Naaye” . This series of blog posts is targeted primarily at aspiring short filmmakers who wouldn’t have much budget and access to the best of resources but are filled with a lot of passion to make it big. Casual readers won’t have much to take from it except a load of mindless trivia behind the making of my biggest project yet.  I was playing with the core idea of the film for quite a while during the days of last November and finally completed writing down the first draft by December. I remember narrating it to my friends during my trip to Hyderabad over the New Year eve.  The core concept: I wanted to make a rom-com with the clichés of an unequal relationship. Initially, I had a plan to shoot an live-action film and “cartoonize” it (Inspired from “Waking Life” by Richard Linklater). I even had a title in mind – “...

I am not a believer of “days”. I hate each of these so called special days from “Fathers day” to “Mothers day”, from “Valentines day” to “Friends day”. Few of these even eat up a whole week. I’ve never consciously wished anyone on these day. Of course there were many awkward situations where people wish you happy friends day out of the blue and my voice instinctively replies. Let alone those involuntary ones, I never cared about these. But being a shameless marketer myself, I thought I could write something on women on their official day and at least garner a few extra views. But this is not going to be any insincere than a losing captain wishing the winner. This one truly is from the heart as my every other post is. I’ll start with something I read recently. It goes like this, “Adam was not made for Eve, Eve was made for Adam”. When I read this first time, I could only infer one meaning out of it. But then I realized that there can be two interpretations. Based on the one that yo...

The following poem by Raghav may be light on language but is heavy in the heart. Feel the pain of majority of men in their middle years. My son will be an engineer said my dad As he took me in his hand for the first time Having not even decided on my name But robbing me of my choice of career. My son is not like yours he won’t talk to girls Boosted my mom to the next door aunty I grew up keeping her words so true And confused at the same time whether She wants me to be gay. I do not have a say in the courses I take I just went with the flow and when I grabbed Myself a cubicle in a MNC, every other uncle friend Of my dad started speaking as if I have found a treasure. Yes it is an opportunity not everyone gets But so is every other job What makes being a PA to someone from USA Sound status worthy?  I never got it. Muted by parents at every moment I try to speak I lost my voice early in life. I have no idea how it will even sound at ...

     The hat trick ball is always the tough one. I had applied for taking part in the series of off-campus placement programme by Anna University even before the Exterro interview. I couldn’t take part in the Accenture interview which was the first in the series because it coincided with the Exterro one. So I participated in the second drive which was by Cognizant. It was held days before the Pongal festival. I remember calling my dad the day before the interview and telling him about my friends coming to my home. It was the first time and I felt a little uncomfortable about the bringing up the topic. Surprisingly, he agreed and was more enthusiastic than I really was. Then he asked about the interview next day. I confessed my fear of continuing to crack all interviews coming my way even though I had just done that two times. It was overwhelming to go on with an invincible track record. Because as Dr. Abdul Kalam puts it, many really are waiting to tell it’s all just luc...

It all started the day following the last exam of the last semester. The whole class was asked to take part in an intensive training in order to be equipped well enough to attend the exterro interview. The first day was 22-12-14. It was a Monday and we were asked to bring all our things to stay in the hostel till the end of the training. I had my baggage ready and went to college at the usual time. Our class was assigned a classroom at the top floor. I took the last seat and it was fun to be at the last. Then Parthiban took over. He segregated the students based on whether they want java or c++. I selected Java and we began our training in the communication lab. The training went on for 4 days and it was followed by the interview on Friday. We all were asked to come in blazers. The first round was an aptitude test. The java questions were really a little tough to answer but the aptitude was fun except the time constraint. I was shortlisted for the next round – the GD. There we...

This is the first of the series of posts on the interviews I have attended. Hope you enjoy reading it       I must first confess that I was not really very interested in attending the interview. It wouldn’t be all false if I said I just attended the interview so that I could skip classes. It was about a week or two past Diwali and I wore my Diwali dress, an ultra-formal solid blue shirt and my favourite pants to the off-campus held at Senguthar College, Erode. So uninterested was I that, I even took the photocopies of the required documents only on the day of the interview. The first round was an aptitude test. It was done in shifts because there were around 3000 candidates taking the exam. So the guys who came first ended up finishing the test earlier. I reached the venue a little later, due to which I had to take the test in the second shift only. That was not the big deal, I was particularly disappointed because only after reaching the venue, I came to know that the p...