When I wrote and directed Stripped, I made myself a promise: I would never direct again unless every ingredient was right. Stripped got its share of attention. It travelled, got reviewed, went viral organically, and in many ways launched my career as a storyteller.
But I wasn’t satisfied. I would often say: as a screenwriter, I’ve sold my soul to the devil, but as a filmmaker, I refuse to compromise on the vision I have for a story. So unless I was ready to produce it myself, unless I had skin in the game, I would not direct again.
For years, I kept that vow. I wrote relentlessly, giving producers exactly what they wanted. And every time a directing offer came, it was a firm no. The reason was simple: I couldn’t make their version of a story when mine was pulling in another direction.
Sure, I directed a few brand films, documentaries, and lent my creative hand beyond writing on feature projects. But the rule stayed. For something that carried both my name and my vision, I would wait until the puzzle was complete.
It’s been ten years since Stripped. And now, almost a decade later, I find myself drawn back to the director’s chair.
What’s surprising: this time, there are no pieces in place. No perfect ingredients. Just an impulse.
To make matters worse, I decided to step into experimental cinema. Self-funded. Shoestring budget. And, to complete the trilogy of mistakes, no distribution plan in sight.
The idea, when it first possessed me, was simple: make a good story, then see where it goes. That’s how this ordeal began.
It’s been traumatic, if I can put it mildly. Having my name listed as the director means carrying the weight of every wrong turn, every bad call. This isn’t a creative sandbox; it’s quicksand. And somehow, I walked in willingly.
How did it all begin?
Because one afternoon, I watched a team member perform for a casual social media video. A spontaneous, throwaway moment. Yet before I could stop myself, I heard my own voice blurt out: Would you be interested in acting in a short film?
She laughed, said acting wasn’t her cup of tea.
And again, before I could reel it back, I switched gears. The director in me woke up after years of dormancy and started convincing her that I could make her cry without glycerine, just by speaking to her. That if she trusted me for one short film, she’d fall in love with acting forever.
Maybe she was intrigued. Maybe she just couldn’t say no. But she said yes.
And that’s how it started: a film without a script, a director without a plan, and an actor who’d never acted before.
At the time it was instinctive. Then the boundaries blurred. I was supposed to be watching her learn to act. But somewhere in the rehearsals, the camera became a mirror. She began confronting things about herself she didn’t know she could see. And I was holding both the initiation and the excavation simultaneously, neither of us quite sure which one the film was really about.
My arrogant instinct to explore how a non-actor’s stillness and authenticity could translate into performance gradually expanded into something I wasn’t prepared for: an intimate, character-driven narrative that kept asking her to go deeper.
A nagging thought: What happens when someone who doesn’t know how to perform becomes the most honest performer of all?
That thought sat with me. For days, it refused to leave. It grew tendrils. It began asking for space, for form, for a stage inside a frame. Eventually, the “what if” became a character sketch, the sketch turned into conflict, and the conflict into silence again, but this time a cinematic one.
So I decided to go find my story. Screenplay was craft and I never had issues tackling it. But story has always been art. It was about heading into a jungle to find a rare herb and hoping you get lucky.
This time was no different. I sat at my desk, wondering what story I could find.
And when I didn’t, I decided to change the approach. Instead of finding the story outside, I decided to reflect on the actor.
At work, she was my go-to fixer. Any problems that befell my department, I would assign to her and forget about it. Somehow, even if it was new to her, she would find a way. She was a hardcore realist.
So the first thought was to make her character creative.
The actor was also someone who was a “big picture” professional who couldn’t bear to be patient with the details.
So the next thought was to make her character work with the details.
And that’s how the seed of the character was born: an architectural model maker.
This was the birth of To Scale, a psychological drama set almost entirely within a single apartment and revolving around one character, Anamika, making it closer in spirit to a theatrical monoact than a conventional short. Every moment rests on the emotional range, rhythm, and vulnerability of one performer.
Stylistically, To Scale sits within the terrain of experimental cinema: minimal cast, restrained dialogue, visual storytelling, and a psychological lens that turns ordinary spaces into states of mind. It relies on mood, sound, and silence as much as performance.
This weekend, I sat down to write. By evening, the first draft was ready.
Between the evening and midnight, I bombarded my team with message after message: the screenplay, poster, director’s note, color theory, production brief, and edit vision. Everything that poured out of me like floodwater.
By the end of it, I told the team, “This is the last message of the day.”
Fifteen minutes later, I wanted to send another.
It’s as if that story just wants to be made into a film and I feel the world is just not spinning fast enough for the future to arrive soon.
If there’s any such thing as free will, I would want to see this film made.
“To Scale” is a psychological short film. Small in setting, contained in scale, but sprawling in emotion. It came from observing that rarest quality in any human: the unguarded moment.
Stories, after all, don’t always begin with a premise. A story just needs a spark. And for “To Scale,” that spark came from a face that could emote more than it knew or believed in.
Now the screenplay sits. Waiting for the next thing. Waiting for the lead actor to step in front of the camera. Waiting for me to stop second-guessing every choice I’ve already made.
I don’t know how this adventure pans out. But I know I can’t walk away now.