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