Change your lens Change your story

so before people start something new

they must end what it used to be because

transformation is often

more about unlearning than learning you

know i’m 36 years old now

yeah i know uh midlife crisis that i

didn’t speak

however 18 years back when i was just

out of school

i had gained so much of knowledge maybe

close to 20 000 hours of formal

education

over 500 advertisements 500 000

advertisements actually

maybe 40 000 hours of media i had spent

hours and hours

thousands and thousands of hours with my

friends and family discussing various

opinions

ideas and beliefs that’s a lot of

knowledge

and today as i’m here amongst all of you

i can actually say

that i’ve spent half my life trying to

earn unlearn

all that piled up storage and maybe i’m

still

at it so today i’m going to be speaking

with you guys

about how i applied the theory of

unlearning in my life

you know i was always told that the

sooner you decide your career path

the easier the path gets well at the age

of 28

i decided to be a photographer and all i

can say

is that i’m content

it was you know a different kind of a

feeling altogether

because i realized there’s no point in

going by the book

writing your own book setting your own

rules and undertaking your own journey

is the most beautiful accomplishment

ever

so step one unlearning career paths

i was born and brought up in mumbai i

did my hotel management i graduated in

hotel management from ihm bangalore

and i got good grades i got a good

placement but my parents insisted that i

study further

so i did an mba in human resources and

sales and marketing

and i got myself a job rings a bell

right

well that’s what i had learned study

hard

get good grades find yourself a job get

a placement

start working make a lot of money invest

and read a regular life well there’s

nothing wrong in it

but i was somewhere not very happy

during the regular 9 to 7

well uh sometimes 9 to 11 desk job

i was always inclined towards writing

direction because drama was a major

co-curriculum

but i was always in denial i was always

thinking that

i don’t have anybody in my family from

the film industry so maybe i can never

make it

and i had heard all kinds of rumors

about the industry

well uh that’s a different debate for

now so i’m not going to get into that

but yeah so in 2008 in spite of having a

well settled well-paying corporate job

i decided to quit 2008 it was time when

our country was facing one of its worst

recessions

well not as bad as what it is at this

moment

but it was pretty bad even then so

obviously my decision got a lot of

friction

uh and i was telling my parents that i

want to enter into the film industry as

a writer director so

it was anyways a very scary scenario for

all of them

one would think that i had put in a lot

of thought uh you know to make this

decision

but honestly it was an impulsive one

because if i didn’t give it a chance

then

i could have never pursued it so i sat

down with my parents

i explained them that you know this is

what i want to do

well my dad gave me a year to explore he

said if within a year you don’t crack it

then maybe you can get back to your

corporate life

so the real struggle for me began pretty

much back then

i was always a pampered child from south

mumbai

coming to the suburbs by train by bus

was a whole new experience for me

i had to try to reach out to people who

i didn’t even know

try to tell them to believe in me to

believe in my work well it took me

a long time it took me maybe close to 18

19 months

and i cracked my first job for a youth

fiction channel where i wrote

a show for them it was a fiction show

and it did pretty well

well two years passed i was lucky enough

i got offered a film to direct and write

in 2010

so i decided to leave my parents house

which was pretty much my comfort zone

and shift to the suburbs i worked hard

on my movie

and in 2012 it released well what i

would say that photography for me even

then was never an option

it was just a hobby unfortunately when

my film released

it did not fare well it was a flop and

the production house for which i was

working shut down

i probably had money left only for uh

you know money left only that would last

me one month’s rent

so it was time for me to pack my bags

and go back home

a dear friend of mine she advised me

that why don’t i take up photography as

a career option

but i was too scared because i had

always learned that if i need to do

something

as a career i need to have formal

education in it i should know the

technical know-how

you know back then i didn’t have an

option so i said

let’s give it a shot so that brought me

to step two

of unlearning which is it’s not always

necessary to have a plan in life or we

do not need to

formally be trained in anything to

pursue that as a career option

so i took to online tutorials i worked

really hard

i studied as much as i could online

which is photography

and i did a lot of free shoots which

would sometime last 18 hours 20 years

but i had to make it happen fortunately

for me back

then things started moving in the right

direction people started appreciating my

work and i started earning as well

i faced a lot of rejections i faced a

lot of obstacles

however i realized that this was the

career path that i wanted and

it gave me immense happiness and

pleasure three years passed

in 2015 i directed another film this

time again the film didn’t do as it was

expected

for me to do and it was again something

which was termed as a flaw

well i had always learned that the film

industry gives a new comer or an

outsider only one chance

two chances were up for me and i still

could not manage to

you know get the box office going for

myself however

i didn’t give up this time i wrote

something

which was a short film i wrote on a

topic which i believed in

and uh well the very same year that film

represented

india the cans film festival at the 69th

transfer festival

and also one awards there i was

assured that yeah maybe now i can direct

as well

and i forgot about whatever i had

learned about the industry about the

various one chances etc etc

what i realized that if you do something

from your heart

it is something that is going to work

out and let me tell you what i did when

i learned

this and i unlearned everything else in

2015

i decided to write a web series on

section 377

i was always passionate about the lgbtq

community

and i always felt that it was

misrepresented in indian cinema

the lgbtq characters were always

comedians they were laughing stock

and that was the main reason why society

always mocked and ridiculed them

i wanted people to know what lgbtq is

all about

it was important for me to highlight and

to educate the masses on the real

struggles faced by the lgbtq

it was important for people to

understand that being gay being lesbian

is as normal as being straight

and they also go through the same

emotions and feelings like the straight

people do

so i wrote a web series which dealt with

homophobia

you know in 2015 um

being gay being lesbian was still a

taboo believe it or not it was still a

very big taboo

so i found myself in a six where no

actor wanted to play

or over the top gay character so what

would i do then

well i had no option but i had to cast

my own self in that very particular

character

so at the age of 31 i was introduced to

a new profession

which is acting and what i had learned

about acting

was an actor needs to be trained he

needs to be good looking he needs to be

thin

and probably thousand other qualities

and honestly i had none

but i just knew that i had to do this so

i again had to

unlearn just in order to learn and well

the web series did well it got a second

season as well it traveled all across

the globe

and it fairly reached out the correct

kind of message which we wanted to

convey

you know like i said in the beginning

that it’s very important for us to learn

but we as a society also need to unlearn

a lot for our very own good

we need to unlearn that it’s always

important for us to be happy

we need to know that it’s okay to be sad

as well

we need to unlearn that money is the

solution to all our problems

we need to unlearn that success is the

finishing line

it’s actually pretty much the journey

you know talking about success

each of us have our own interpretation

well i have been fortunate that i have

got the dada sahib falcao excellence

award in 2016

for my contribution to fashion

photography

however on the other end i have a

digital film which hasn’t released yet

yet

i have two web series which are lying in

the cans so then that’s that

you know i don’t know if you guys have

traveled by the mumbai locals

i have and i found it always very

difficult to get into a crowded

apartment

you know what i would do then and i

would actually end up missing the train

so you know what i would do then when i

would miss the train

guess what i would wait

i would wait for another train to come

to the platform and i would try my best

to get into the compartment and not

repeat my mistake again

i had no choice i had to catch that

train

i had to make my own place in that

crowded compartment

because i had to get home we all must

get to

wherever we desire and in that process

we must never stop trying we must never

stop learning

and we must never forget that it is very

important for us

to learn how to unlearn thank you

you