Going Independent on Instagram
[Music]
why did i quit a well-paying job to do
what i love
well i’m an artist a poet but in my job
i couldn’t show it
my alarm clock was an email and my
nightlight was gmail
you see us artists we need to perform to
stay alive give us a script and watch us
thrive
but back then my job was my only jive
us closeted artists we have
responsibilities we are bound
but honestly we are just waiting to be
found
every day i dive into the work grind and
by evening i’d lost my mind
every day i’d cater to every request as
if it was life’s biggest conquest
but finally there came a day where i
refused to sign another nda
until my own feelings saw the light of
day i had a lot to say and time was
slipping away
so i refused to waste another lunch
break and filling out in voices and
drowning my voices
because i’m an artist a poet and i had
to show it
and would my appraisal have been in
rhyme darling you know
i’m worth every dime
thank you i’ve always had a love for the
performance arts ever since i was a
child
but rewind seven years and i was
confronted with that dilemma in my life
where i had to choose which profession i
wanted to adopt to make a living
i loved biology and so i wanted to
pursue medicine and possibly be a
surgeon
but i wasn’t ready to invest seven years
of my life into studying medicine
and eventually i fell in love
with psychology so i got my bachelor’s
degree in psychology and then
specialized
as a clinical hypnotherapy and past life
regression therapist i started treating
clients using hypnotherapy
i loved understanding human behavior and
the human mind
but i had this need to create
i wanted to do more than just client
sessions
so i got my first full-time job as a
content writer
at a content and marketing agency but i
still felt like
i wanted to do more than writing
so i got my next full-time job at a
well-known content and culture company
here i managed some of india’s biggest
comedians and content creators
such as kanangil and kani surka and as
my exposure to the field of content
increased my wings as an artist started
to open
i soon realized that i can tap into my
childhood talents
such as my love for performing and
writing and i started creating spoken
word poetry
i soon published a series of spoken word
poems on
instagram called project speak which
stood for speak
productively engage and know my poems
were based on my life experiences
with issues such as gender roles and
body shaming
and soon thousands of people started
liking and sharing my poetry
my story seemed to resonate with a lot
of people i remember a female sent me a
message saying that
her fiance who she was about to marry
but wasn’t masculine enough
when she saw my poem she realized that
not his masculinity
but his heart is what was going to stay
with them and such responses on the
internet made me realize that
my work was forming an impact and
resonating with people
now let the record show that at this
point i was still in a full-time job
managing multiple artists producing
shows managing brand work
and creating pictures so after my day in
office i’d come home
set up my camera and tripod and film my
poetry
after getting my satisfactory take i sat
color correcting editing
adding subtitles and music to my videos
till three o’clock in the morning
and then in a few hours i went back to
work
six months into my job i realized that i
would thrive much better
as an artist than a someone managing
artists and so i sent a letter
an email to my ceo titled furthering
talent
explaining to them how i thought i would
do much better as an artist than as an
employee
but they rather wanted me as an employee
so i continued working
and got a lavish peris i quit my job
six months later to pursue being an
actor and a content creator full time
during this phase a friend of mine
malika dua who happens to be an actor
suggested that if my life and my heart
thrived when i was performing
then there was no option besides going
to acting school and that’s exactly what
i did
and my training as an actor was life
changing which is not something i say
easily
the acting course was brutal but
incredible
every day i had to unlearn and confront
aspects of my own self that i didn’t
even know existed
and then i had to channelize my emotions
into scenes scripts
and characters it was incredible
but initially i kept getting feedback
that the audience couldn’t see the real
me in a scene that i was playing my idea
of a character learn from society such
as
ideas of masculinity and of dominance
so my acting coach told me to just be
myself to bring myself in the scene
and to bring my version of the character
into a scene rather than a superimposed
idea of the character
and one day i was tired of trying to ace
it so i just brought myself into the
scene
and that’s the day my scene got applause
because it was believable
organic and natural and i was just
myself
now with these new found versions of
myself i started creating characters for
mail as well as female characters i have
a female character
her name is tanya and she
tanya is an exotic french diva
that is tanya in the middle
tanya is an exotic french diva who is
a very extravagant lady and lives in
mumbai but she doesn’t understand
indian culture soon i was invited to
interview bollywood celebrities rajkumar
bowman iranian and couple of others as
tanya for a movie promotion
so i created a talk show called tea with
tanya where i could interview
celebrities
and i wore my wig in front of three men
who stared awkwardly at me in the studio
bathroom
went on the floor and interviewed the
actors
i have an other male character called
chacha chaturvedi
is an old school man who grew up on a
farm in a village he only speaks hindi
he doesn’t understand social media and
he doesn’t understand millennials but he
lives in mumbai
and his journey is about how he
understands what is happening in this
world of
instagram another female character that
i created
is tia kapoor now tia kapoor is the
secret daughter of a well-known
bollywood family
soon these characters developed an
audience of admirers
not to mention some awkward requests
such as wanting to tattoo tanya’s
autograph on their body
but can you imagine that the same guy
who had been bullied for not being
masculine enough
was now being celebrated for his female
characters
that tells us something really
interesting about stereotypes
they limit us from accessing sides of
our own self that we suppress
and push away because we don’t think
they’ll find acceptance
and then we create characters to live
the lives that we never allow ourselves
to live
but it’s really exciting to see which
side of you manifests when you perform a
surrender to a character
all it takes is the courage to try
something new
and the vulnerability to go to that
space within
yes i have a thin body and a small face
not enough masculine grace you’re not
manly enough
they say but today my feelings will see
the light of day
no no we’re not fools but still here it
goes
i have some questions some apprehensions
such as
why should he see a shrink because he
likes the color pink
and why should she too if she likes the
color blue
who decided these molds who made these
gender roles what gives them their hold
no there’s nothing bored about calling
someone tiny about calling someone fat
your ego isn’t shiny and your morality
is a dead rat
you’re body shaming which is just
blaming your own inadequacies on another
person’s build
no there’s nothing skilled you’re just
wrong
yes there’s no rhyme there but i don’t
really care i know i’m a poet and i
don’t need to show it
but here’s something you need to know
the size of your brain
it needs to grow
the wonderful thing about being a poet
or an actor and content creator is that
there’s a lot of freedom of expression
but this profession is at a very nascent
stage of development
the key responsibility areas are
undefined and
the job mandates vary from creator to
creator
and company to company which is why i
believe that it’s important to have
a plan if you want to survive
sustainably
and work for the long run
here’s an example of what my content
plan looks like for the year
but a word of caution that freelance
does come with an initial instability in
income compared to a full-time job
and i still would say that i get great
satisfaction
in terms of doing what i love but i
would also say that being a content
creator isn’t readily looked at as a
most
viable career option in fact on a recent
trip someone once came up to me
handing over a product they had launched
requesting me to make a poem
and publish it on my instagram page and
i look forward to promoting brands
through my craft
but people presume that a one minute
video takes only one minute away
to make because that’s all they see on
screen
but if you’ve ever worked in production
you know that there are so many behind
the scenes factors
that predict that consumers and
audiences don’t see
when they are watching a piece of
content which is why the field of
content creation is probably
looked at as a hobby more than it is a
profession
but it very much is a profession in fact
i would like to share a personal
anecdote from some years ago
when i remember i asked spiritual leader
puja gurudev shri rakeshbai
on guidance on which field to to choose
between
science and commerce because these were
the two main fields at the time
and what he said to me that day has
really been a reason for me to grow as a
person
he didn’t tell me which field to choose
between but told me to use my own head
to think and figure it out and not
having a ready-made answer
is what actually cultivated my own
abilities to find my
own answers and my own path and now
seven years later when i look back i’m
so grateful for that guidance because
my career ended up being neither of the
two options that i presented
in fact i regularly attend puja gurudeva
shri rakesh by his discourses
and the spiritual nourishment wisdom and
inspiration that i get from him
sometimes even spills over into my work
making me more aware about how i can
heal and help others through my content
the good thing about social media is
that it’s made everything
a meritocracy all you need to be
recognized
is you need an internet connection a
camera and a message worth sharing
and chances are if your message comes
from a space of honesty
then it will resonate with people and
they will amplify the message
for example the last poem i released
spoke about human rights issues in my
country
it’s called enough and within a few
hours of releasing the poem
from mumbai the poem reached cities
across the world to cities
such as london ladakh delhi and kashmir
soon a well-known news channel wanted to
carry it
can you imagine that a poem i produced
in my own house
ended up reaching thousands of people
and having international
impact this made me realize my own worth
as a creator i realized that not only
can i use my platform
to share my art but also to make the
world a better place by standing for the
causes that i believe in
i want to use my voice to abolish animal
cruelty
such as the testing of cosmetics on
animals or the meat industry
the way animals are being treated and
tortured today
is miserable and the good thing about
social media
is you no longer need to be a politician
or a celebrity for your message to be
worth sharing
that’s the power of the internet
deciding to quit a well-paying job to do
what i love
has taken me from someone who used to
sit in web series narrations
to someone who recently narrated my own
web series to a production company
i would say that being employed gave me
wings
but going independent is what taught me
how to use my wings to fly
it’s 2020 it’s the beginning of a new
decade
and i think it’s time that we start
telling real stories
that are a departure from stereotypical
content
because the more reality finds
representation online and in cinema
the more everyone’s collective anxiety
as society will be reduced
because we know of because we no longer
have to pursue these unrealistic ideals
of beauty and romance that we see in
cinema
and the more we allow people to be
original and don’t condemn them for
being different
the more freshness we will start seeing
in society
we’re all different not weird but
different
so we need to stop forcing people into
boxes
we need to learn to celebrate art
without trying to alter it to fit into
our narrow concepts
my family is an open-minded and
progressive family i have the privilege
of having
parents who understand my kind of work
and
this makes it much easier for a
millennial like me to create the kind of
content that i create
and i would say that that’s how
non-judgmental and accepting an
environment must be
if we want originality and individuality
to flourish in society
and even content i would like to
conclude with something i realized
recently and something i request that we
all start saying more to each other
you’re not weird you’re original
celebrate yourself
thank you
you