Having skateboarded through life all these years, today I stand at this point where I have less than 400 days to go before I turn 30.
Year-ends make for great introspection. That time of the year when you get nostalgic. You get together with buddies, think about the New years you spent together, things you resolved about and the hyper-enthusiasm with which you fondly once used to welcome the New Year with.
This year, when we saw two drunk men on a motorcycle scream “Happy New Year” to each other, we couldn’t understand what the revelry and happiness was all about. That, clearly, was a sign. We were getting old. We were asking questions, questioning the very purpose of celebration.
Because, there are no answers to such questions. You just celebrate. It’s that simple.
These men were happy about something. Happy about nothing in particular, but life in general. For them, it was the beginning of a new chapter of their lives. They, like most of us, truly believed that life had something beautiful in store for them. It was that psychological device that helped them put their past behind and start afresh.
As a kid, you never questioned that. You never questioned your existence. Never questioned purpose. It was all as simple as: I want to be a pilot and fly planes. Or I want to be a doctor and save lives. Or I want to be an engineer and build homes. Or I want to join the army. Or be a journalist. Or, to speak for the current generation, be a CEO or a COO of a software/IT/BPO multi-national company.
But is succeeding in being what you choose to be the very purpose of existence?
I’m not sure.
Because, from where I stand today, I have done reasonably well for myself as a journalist and not bad for a struggling filmmaker, managing to shoot my first film, twice, irrespective of the limitations and challenges it faced. I also know have a rough roadmap of what I want to do, what I call a vision statement. But is that “vision statement” the purpose of my life?
I really do not know.
Though it may sound too early to talk about a “vision statement” when I’m still hardly famous and have a long way to go, I do like to dream aloud, just to give it some shape and clarity.
I want to finish That Four Letter Word this year and sell it for what it’s worth. I want to pay and repay every single person who has been a part of this project the first time and the second.
I want to market it good enough to produce my second film. I want to begin work on a Hindi film though I already have my second film script ready to shoot. That would help avoid being slotted as a low-budget/independent/English/ digital/ filmmaker. Also to break predictability.
But the biggest reason behind my Hindi film is to say something that I have always wanted to say: A statement of purpose for movies. My love-letter to movies. It has to be on film, it needs to have that larger than life feel and a story that will hopefully move and encourage people to dream. It is my tribute to movies, a call for fresh thought, an effort to bring honesty onto celluloid and an experiment that hopes to prove exactly what the movie will try to say. Bringing honesty into films. On and off the screen.
If that experiment works, as I hope it to, I want to build that non-profit organisation that will produce every original filmmaker’s first movie. Anyone who has a script with a story never ever told before can walk in and get his movie funded and also avail the pool of actors, scriptwriters and technicians enrolled with the foundation — people committed to doing good cinema, even if they are going to be paid peanuts.
I just want to make one film every year or two, just making films that really are screaming to be made. I’m sure I would be happier spending the rest of my life doing that part that inspires what movies are made of: Life, itself.
At this point, let me “cut back” from the vision statement to the original idea behind the post: the purpose. So is a vision statement good enough to be the statement of purpose for life?
Again, I do not think so. Because, it is rather difficult to determine the purpose. But I intend to find it.
And the only way to find it, I guess, is to live it. Though space, through time and with people who occupy that time and space with you.
Given that we explore time by default, I want to explore space. I want to travel around the world, learn a little more about it, understand people but more than all that, I just want someone to share it all with.
This year, I intend to find a companion for that exciting journey, however long or short, happy or sad, sober or adventurous, it may be. I want someone to fight with, someone to talk to, someone to sleep with, someone to wake up with every morning and be truly happy that THAT someone is just the same person. I want that someone who would stick through this little adventure and I figure the only way I would find her would be by willing to stick myself. I have always been commitment-phobic, I have always wanted to be free.
But this year, I do not want to be free anymore. I want to share. Because, now I figure, life becomes larger when you share it with someone you really love. I’m right here, right now, waiting for her.
Actually, I can’t wait to be with her anymore.
MADRAS INK. 