Sometime last year, on a fine Thursday evening, I received a call from Shruthi ji. She asked if I was available to shoot pictures for an ad she was directing the next day. I immediately said yes because I was jobless at the time. However, I didn't ask her about the project or who I would be shooting. All she told me was that it was another Spotify project. I had known her for almost five years, but I never had the chance to work with her except for covering a couple of her family events. My friend Ram had introduced me to Shruthi, and he had previously worked with her on a Spotify ad where she directed Ilaiyaraja. He spoke about how she handled the project with such ease for 15 minutes straight.

The next day, when I arrived at the shooting floor, I saw two photographers already shooting the behind-the-scenes footage. I stood there feeling clueless because I thought I was there to do the same thing. Shruthi came running to greet me, and she asked her associate, Krishna, to explain what I was supposed to do. Krishna informed me that I was there to shoot pictures for the Spotify billboards. I was visibly surprised and asked him who the artist was. He replied, "Aandavar."

The Spotify team showed me four reference pictures they had for the billboards, which were pretty easy shots. "Perfect," I replied. They told me they would give me five minutes once the shoot was over to take the pictures. Five minutes with Kamal sir. Just Kamal sir and me. I went back to the shooting floor and started taking BTS shots. I watched Shruthi directing KH with such ease and a million questions ran through my mind. "How is this woman so calm? How is she smiling during takes?" She was giving cues to Kamal Hassan and saying "ACTION." Having worked on a film set before, I knew the tension that runs in a film set. I imagined that a film set with a star would be even more tense. But here, they were casually doing takes, one after the other, and wrapped up the shoot in less than three hours.

My moment had arrived. I could hear the sounds of my stomach. I put my camera on burst mode and kept my finger on the shutter button. I got the four shots I wanted, and I was pretty happy with the output. I packed up and left for home. The real goosebumps moment happened when I was editing the pictures on my big screen. The variation of expressions on his face in every shot was mind-blowing. I'm pretty sure that Shruthi felt the same when she was editing the shots herself.

You might ask me, "You shot Kamal Hassan. So what? Why is this an achievement? You can do so much better." I understand where you're coming from, but what you may not be aware of is where I was mentally two weeks before I received the phone call from Director Shruthi ji. I had not been shooting frequently, like how I used to in the past. There was a lot of self-doubt running through my mind, which is quite common among people in the creative field. In fact, everyone goes through this feeling, if I'm not mistaken. The right word for it is "self-sabotage." I wasn't even aware of this term until my therapist pointed it out to me a few weeks ago.

Shooting Kamal sir shattered that feeling into a million pieces. It's a small win for me, to be honest. I can't thank Shruthi enough for giving me this opportunity. If there was darkness in my life, Shruthi ji's call was like a torchlight that illuminated it. (Pun intended.)