In early 2023, I made a quiet decision that did not feel significant at the time—I chose to stop reading casually, and to start reading with intent, turning towards artists I had long admired, not just to understand what they created, but to sit closer to the question of how and why they created at all.
They were not confined to a single world. They came from everywhere—writers, yes, but also singers, lyricists, filmmakers, actors—voices that had shaped something within me long before I knew how to articulate it. And what I sought in them was not inspiration in the shallow, fleeting sense, but something far more demanding: a deeper encounter with creativity itself, with the discipline it requires, the solitude it enforces, the identity it constantly unsettles, and the quiet, often invisible love that sustains it despite everything.
The process, I realised very quickly, could not be rushed. It refused to remain “reading” in the conventional sense. It became slower, heavier, and more immersive. Pages demanded to be revisited. Ideas resisted easy understanding. I found myself pausing, questioning, arguing, writing in the margins of my own mind long after the book was closed. It became analysis, then reflection, then something closer to absorption, as if each work was asking not to be finished, but to be lived with.
Somewhere in that slowness, almost without announcement, a journal began to take shape—Learnings from the Masters. Not as a structured project, but as a necessity. A place to hold thoughts that refused to stay contained, to trace the evolution of questions that had no immediate answers, to make sense of why certain lines, certain scenes, certain silences lingered longer than they should.
And over time, something shifted.
Indian cinema, in particular, stopped being something I simply consumed. It became a terrain I walked through with attention, where I began to see not just stories, but the weight of choices behind them; not just performances, but the tension between self and role; not just beauty, but the discipline and doubt that make it possible. It revealed the artist not as a distant figure to admire, but as someone constantly negotiating with society, with expectation, with their own limitations, and still choosing, stubbornly, to create.
This way of engaging with patience, seriousness, and a willingness to be unsettled changed the way I look at art entirely. It demanded more from me. And in response, I found myself writing long-form essays that tried, and often failed, to arrive at neat conclusions, some finding their way into the world, others still in progress, still evolving as my own understanding continues to shift.
After two years of returning to this practice, I can say without hesitation that it has changed my creative process in ways I am still discovering. Not by giving me answers, but by sharpening the questions I live with.
And so, this is where I begin again.
Part II.
Five more reads.
Five more encounters with minds that have shaped Indian cinema, and through it, shaped something within me.
I don’t approach this as a continuation of a project, but as a continuation of a conversation that refuses to end. One that asks, with increasing intensity, what it truly means to devote yourself to creation, and whether you are willing to be changed by that devotion.
Because if these two years have taught me anything, it is this:
Art, when taken seriously, does not leave you intact. It rearranges you quietly, persistently, until even your way of seeing begins to feel unfamiliar, and you realise that what you once called admiration was only the beginning of a much deeper, far more demanding relationship.