One of the earliest memories I have of conversations is from one I had with my sister in our Maruti 800. My mom was telling us the inspiration behind each of the three siblings’ names. ‘Chitra’ was, I vaguely remember, just unique and ‘Tanvi’ came from veteran film actress Tanvi Azmi. ‘Mayank’ though, just happened. That’s when I became a part of the conversation. As a six-year-old whose curiosity with the world was increasing with each day, relative, drive, eat-out, wedding, birthday, film and night, I was bundled with questions and, mostly so, approached the next youngest person in the family. And so, I asked Tanvi, just in case, if there was a famous Mayank I didn’t know of yet. My hope laid on the five-year difference which had taught her so much more about life, subtraction with carries, balanced diet, and environmental studies. She took a name, Mayank Shekhar. I asked who he was. She used the words ‘film critic’. And then in a brief sequence as the car turned into the street I still live in, the curious me who had been long locating professions to dream his life and success in thought, “writing? no”. 

Now, as I start my blog named after a movie reference, I think I have given that thought process a second chance. For what I know now, the wall next to where I sleep is filled with film posters – most of them my early favourites as I began a dialogue with this universe of perspectives, evolutions, and descents. Imagine me saying this with the bleakest of whispers “It is beautiful”. For in its absolute massiveness as well as individuality, each film – ‘good’, ‘bad’, arthouse, black and white, ‘Bollywood’, Haneke, anime, documentary, thriller, fantasy or the most horrifying of the lot – a rom-com – exists righteously and so. You Google it to find each of them occupies the same sized window on your phone. Each of them has a poster, a trailer, a director who spent sleepless nights on this, an editor who will never be discussed and a crew which won’t even have their name read. A sense of equality surrounds their existence, as if they all sat together in a doctor’s waiting room. The critic is the doctor. 

Of course, the doctorate is non-medical. The check-up is unimportant. The films in the waiting room don’t even know there is a doctor. The doctor is writing on his laptop and he wishes to never leave his room. 

That’s what, that’s that. I don’t like proclaiming myself as a film critic, despite being in a theatre and writing about Hindi cinema atrocities on most weekends. In a richly satisfying scene from A Star is Born, Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) – a talented musician and celebrity – argues with his elder brother and manager – Bobby (Sam Elliot). Somewhere right in the thinnest middle of it, Jackson says ”It’s a good excuse, raising a little brother, so you don’t have to deal with the fact that you were no fucking good”. Angered, Bobby re-questions “If I was no good, why did you steal my fucking voice?”. Jackson replies “Because you had nothing to say”. I think it is time we all agree it is an unfair world. To demand and expect a common law of righteousness is stupid ninety pecent of the time. It is subconscious the other ten. The best painters and singers we ever had weren’t the best. While Hemingway wrote for the future, forming history, there can be a thirty-year-old guy sitting in his garage with superior intellect and better words to define it has just not made it. I used to think about that guy. Not anymore. 

You see, the voice. The desire to put yourself out there. My words define me, for I could never. I watch a movie and I know I have something to say. The day I can’t form an opinion, a perspective, a vision, that isn’t derivative yet complementing the movie, I will stop writing. Till then, I will bleed ideas. 

Finding Dan was in my head since I started writing two-and-a-half years back. My writings and reviews found different websites or social media captions but I knew I wanted a place specifically for my own stories. I never thought I would ever say (or write) this, but I travelled (a lot?) last year. Enough to give me hangovers and restarts. This is none, for I can’t possibly narrow down what this in its entirety should yield. I have always believed that everyone is a writer. From a Whatsapp message to a novel, every phrase requires a construction of words strung together. Our brain is constantly creating, for it is being constantly fed. Ever since being that curious kid that said no to film criticism, I have very observingly so tried to remember everything that happens to me or is fed to my nervous system subconsciously. It matters to me to know what makes me the way I am. And through that, everyone else. The whys and hows have become as important as the whats since that day. Thirteen years later, film critic Baradwaj Rangan advised a class of young critics – I was a part of – the same thing – to go for the whys. In denying a profession, maybe Mayank had already accepted a dream. 

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.