Look at you clicking that headline. Either you admire aggressive confidence, or you want to see who allowed this person near a keyboard.

Don't worry, I can explain. Here is my résumé, in the exact chronological order that disappointed my family.

I started out in Biotechnology because I come from the kind of small town where "clever" only comes in two flavours: engineer or doctor. I picked the lab. It was great until I spent four hours memorizing the reproductive cycle of yeast and realized: I cannot care about this for forty years. I walked out of that department so fast I left my favourite jacket behind.

My dad said he wouldn’t pay for me to "find myself," which was deeply rude and 100% good parenting. So I took a finance job in the city. Air conditioning, health insurance, zero drama. It was the safest place in the world, and by month four, I could feel my personality actively dying behind my desktop monitor.

Naturally, I made the adult decision to move to Mumbai and go completely broke writing films.

Two travel shows and an indie movie later, I had plenty of artistic dignity and no money for groceries. Do you know what Bombay humidity does to an unairconditioned 1BHK when you can't pay the electricity bill? It builds character. I was living on Maggi, borrowing money for auto rickshaws, and entirely too proud to tell my parents they were right.

Advertising was supposed to be a temporary rescue operation: get the cheque, pay the rent, leave. But I accidentally loved the hustle. With no ad school pedigree, I walked straight into Ogilvy and learned the craft under open fire. My daily routine was canteen chai, impossible turnarounds, and praying nobody checked my credentials. I listened, cracked briefs under pressure, and started making work that actually sold.

When COVID pushed the whole world onto 6-inch screens, I jumped to a digital shop to get my hands dirty. I got to lead client business, babysit a brilliant, sleep-deprived team of junior creatives, and learn how to make someone stop their thumb mid-scroll. It was chaotic, but it gave me commercial instincts I still cash in on every day.

Every few years, this business asks you a question: do you want to debate the future or build with it? I started testing ChatGPT back in 2023 just to see what the fuss was about. Then the industry lost its collective mind on LinkedIn. While everyone else was busy holding webinars about whether copywriters were doomed, I spent a year inside a Martech shop running a team of 25 to understand the machinery from the inside out.

Turns out, the tech is fast, but it still takes a creative mind to give it a soul. These days, AI is just the dream intern: doesn’t sulk when I trash its work, and never brings up an appraisal. It gives me a starting point, I bring the human pulse, and between us, we coded and built this entire website. Take that, design school!

So 13 years and 60+ brands later, I’m still here, still curious, and still having fun.

The only catch is my face. Apparently, I look like someone who could get a security guard fired just by raising an eyebrow. I let people believe it. Saves me from small talk. The irony is that behind this rather unforgiving expression lives a pathetic, hopeless romantic.

I just save all that romance for world cinema.

Ray, Roy, Kubrick, Bergman, Dutt, Majidi, Farhadi, Cuarón, Waititi, Kar-wai. I have spent far more time in the dark with these men than with anyone I've ever dated. The plot twists are better, anyway. Make of that what you will.

When I am not sitting in the dark, I am a freestyle dancer. And when I finally sit back down, I do voiceovers. So yes, the romantic with the resting bitch face has probably cheerfully interrupted your Spotify playlist to tell you about a sale.

Which brings us right back to the headline. If you're thinking this is a terrible career strategy, my dad agrees with you. But the adrenaline of walking into an unfamiliar problem and cracking it is the only thing that keeps my writing alive.

The moment I stay anywhere too long, I get comfortable.

And comfortable writers write incredibly boring stories.