To be read after Chapter One: Lost In Wilderness
The New Playground
The game dev studio felt like a completely different world. And I mean that in the best possible way. Where I had come from, things were predictable. Here, nothing was. Every week brought a new problem, a new deadline, a new tool I had never touched before. Simulations, rigging, character animations, lighting. I did it all. Not because I had mastered any of it, but because someone needed it done and I was there.
My boss was unlike anyone I had worked with before. He had a way of throwing challenges at you without much warning, and somehow trusting that you would figure it out. He rarely explained why he believed in you. He just did, and that was enough. Looking back, I think that kind of silent confidence in someone can be more powerful than any pep talk. He pushed me constantly, not because he was hard on me, but because he could see something in me that I was still trying to find myself.
The Question I Was Afraid to Ask
A couple of years in, I finally said what I had been carrying around for a while. I asked him if I could take on directorial work at the studio. He looked at me, paused, and told me plainly that if I wanted to pursue filmmaking, I should leave. But as an employer, he needed me right where I was.
I sat with those words for a long time. There was no cruelty in them. They were honest, and somehow that made them heavier. I had two choices and I made the one that felt responsible. I chose to stay. I told myself I would push the dream a little further down the road, just until the company found its footing. But I did not stop dreaming. I just redirected it.
I began directing CG cameras. Every shot I set up, every angle I chose, every moment I decided to hold or cut, was practice. It was not a film set, but inside my head I treated it like one. I was living the dream at one fifth the speed, and I made peace with that.
Grooming in the Shadows
Those years taught me something I could not have learned in a classroom. When you cannot do the thing you love in full, you find ways to keep it alive in everything else you do. I studied shots while building scenes. I thought about story while animating characters. I was doing technical work on the surface, but underneath I was always thinking like a director.
The company grew and so did I. My skills sharpened. My patience did too. There is a particular kind of discipline that comes from wanting something deeply but choosing not to rush it. I do not know if I chose correctly, but I do not regret it either.
The Offer I Almost Turned Down
Then one day, out of nowhere, another studio reached out. They were working on a 2D animation series and they needed a director.
I told them no.
Not because the work did not interest me. It did. But I felt a loyalty to my boss and to the company I had grown with. They needed me, or at least that is what I believed at the time. The people from the new studio listened to my reasons and then said something I have never forgotten.
One day or another, you have to cut the umbilical cord.
I did not respond. I just nodded and went home. But that phrase followed me everywhere. It sat in the back of my mind like a song you cannot unhear.
A Blessing in Disguise
I went back to my boss and told him about the offer. I was not fishing for permission. I think I just wanted him to tell me what to do, the way he always had.
He did not say what I expected. He told me it was a blessing in disguise. The company was not doing well, he said. They could not afford me anymore.
I cried that day.
I am not ashamed of that. I genuinely cried. Not because I was losing a job, but because that place had become a part of me. Five years of my life, my growth, some of the most formative experiences I had ever had, and it was ending in a quiet conversation that I was not prepared for. And as I sat with it all, that phrase came back again, louder this time. Cut the umbilical cord. It felt less like wisdom and more like mockery in that moment.
But I made the move.
Two Years on the Other Side
Directing episodes for that 2D animation series was a different kind of education. Smaller in scale, but rich in detail. I learned things I did not know I was missing. Pacing, performance, the rhythm of a scene. And because the work was contained to weekdays, I had my weekends back. That was the real gift.
My friends and colleagues would come over, or we would find a location somewhere, and we would shoot short films together. Nobody was getting paid. Nobody cared. There was a joy in those weekends that I struggle to describe even now. We were just making things because we wanted to, and those films are still up on YouTube to this day. I am proud of them in a way I am not always proud of bigger things I have made since.
The Film That Changed Everything
One of those weekend projects was a horror short called Khel. It was a small film. Modest in every way. But something about it connected with people who saw it, including people in the industry. Khel eventually opened the door to my first feature length film, Siyaah.
But it wasn’t that simple, and is definitely a story for another day.
to be continued