My Story: 'Joining Entertainment Industry Was The Most Bizzare Decision, But Sometimes Such Choices Turn Out To Be Beautiful'

When I was a little kid, I decided to model my life on the quote from the original 2002 Spiderman film, 'With great power comes great responsibility'. I am a pure artist who wants to use his art to entertain and do something beyond that. I consider myself extremely lucky and utterly grateful for the multiple talents of acting, singing, writing, film making bestowed upon me, and I wish to do complete justice to them by the time I am done with the planet.

They say there are no accidents, but content creation happened to me by accident. After completing my engineering, I joined a film school where I trained to become an actor, and I had trained in basic Hindustani classical vocals even before my film-school days. After completing my Acting course, I 'struggled' like every actor, going to auditions and facing rejections etc.

At this point, I was given a chance as an Actor-Singer-Songwriter on a YouTube channel called 'Shudh Desi Gaane', and I took it as I had no other work at that point. I knew that being an outsider meant that breaking directly into the mainstream Film Industry would be tough. So why not take this workup, where I can write my own scripts and display my talent till the point where the right people begin to take notice? The videos went viral, and I used the momentum to start my own channel to continue showcasing my abilities as an actor and a musician with more liberty.

My inspiration behind this is Sylvester Stallone, who struggled and, in the end, took matters into his own hands by writing a script that would launch him an as actor called Rocky. We all know rest is history.

Left Engineering And Joined Entertainment Industry

As a child, I was a class topper, into music and arts, and the opening batsman for my school cricket team. So I never knew which one of these I would seriously follow one day. And when you do things without putting a conscious thought behind them, they tend to get messed up. Without thinking, I chose to go after cracking IIT just because I regularly stood first in my class. Being good at something and enjoying something are two different things. I learned this the hard way.

By the time I was in the 2nd year of engineering, I was utterly disinterested disillusioned and would bunk college lectures to go home and practice my singing. I worked in a software firm for six months, the tipping point. I knew I could not stand that life. Something happened, and I decided to join a Film School to study acting. It is one of the most bizarre decisions I have made, still don't have a logical explanation. But sometimes, such things are the most beautiful.

Most Popular Works

Being a filmmaker by heart, my videos were permanently attached with a specific production quality, which came at a cost. Unlike others in the creator space, I was never good at holding my phone up and shooting stuff. Continuously coming up with videos of high audio-visual quality was a challenge because YouTube is not their place, and it is a place for things that you can churn out fast, regular and at low costs. On top of that, I decided to be very picky and responsible in terms of the brands I chose to promote, which were limited by revenue sources.

Through my video 'Salil Jamdar Endgame', I told my followers my story and urged them to support my work. For almost two years, I made videos thanks to their support, for which I will be eternally grateful to them.

Apart from my latest series 'Saala Salil,' now streaming on Hotstar, where I essentially play five different personalities as a boy who suffers from 'Multiple Personality Order', my most recognised work is the Asli Mard Trilogy, which was a series based on porn addiction. Through the use of dark comedy and music, I show the journey of a severe porn addict from his lowest point of attempting suicide to light and glory as he frees himself from clutches of the freely available and limitless internet porn. I get daily messages of gratitude for this series, and the fulfilment it gives me is immense.

Another well-appreciated work is 'Asli Gully Boy' - the musical story of a kid in a Mumbai slum whose heart is broken when he finds out none of the stars he adores and idolises used substandard products they endorse with such confidence.

My personal favourite is Tere Jaane Se, a pure, melodic track that brings people back to the simplicity of the 90s when the soul of a song was of utmost importance. The video will hit you hard, I promise.

OTT Debut 'Saala Salil'

In my own unique way, the content I created on YouTube was always a showcase of what I could do given a bigger scale. My purpose was always to move towards the mainstream OTT Series/Movies zone when the time was right. Hotstar approaching me meant that the right time had come!

The idea of making a show with me playing a fictional version of myself had been mulling in my brain for some time. The thing that attracted me the most to this idea was the fact that I could put forth my thoughts and ideas through this character as he is me, and at the same time get away with many things I do on screen as it would, after all, be a fictional version of myself, which means he is not really me! This contradiction of being Salil but still not being Salil felt like a fascinating space to be in. I couldn't help but wonder what this guy would be like in front of women, and that is how came the idea of an abnormal loner going on multiple first dates.

The biggest challenge for me was to pull off entire episodes with just two people having a conversation sitting in one place. I did not have the liberty to change locations or have fancy shots to break a dull moment. It was all about the script and the performances. As part of the treatment, I decided against the use of typical gimmicky sound effects that are common in today's funny videos, keeping the moments very raw, vulnerable and natural in the process. There isn't even any background score playing at any point to support a particular emotion, except when 'Saala Salil' randomly breaks into a song, which comes from my love for fairytale-ish musicals.

'Saala Salil' is very different from what I have done earlier. I was worried about how people would react to 15-20 minutes of a boy and a girl just talking random things, with the only break being the song my character would break into. Especially when the first episode came out, I was remarkably tensed because the response would set the tone for all the episodes coming in later. I was elated to see only positive reactions and was very happy to have successfully challenged myself through this series. The best part of 'Saala Salil' is that it can go anywhere in Season 2. Let's see where it goes!

If you too have an inspiring story to tell the world, send us your story at mystory@thelogicalindian.com