ABOUT ME | Mysite

I remember it all started with my toys, I would recreate scenes from iconic action movies using my action figures ‘GI Joes’. Back then I didn't know what filmmaking was, all I knew that there were movies and I was fascinated with them. I loved watching movies and my inquisitive mind always questioned how they were made.

I was confused growing up and didn't know what I wanted to be. My parents always marvelled at their friend’s children, who knew their future from the day they were born and they would often ask me, “Son, what do you want to be when you grow up” and I would stand there blank with no real answer.

In India, those are not absurd questions. There were only a handful of professions every Indian parent wanted to hear and filmmaking was not one of them. So here I was, one day going to be the greatest engineer in the world; another day, a doctor, Nobel prize-winning physician, astronaut, pilot, a businessman and even a scientist.

But I had other plans, I wanted to be a filmmaker and to get my foot in the industry I became an actor. Even as an actor, I wanted to play swashbuckling, fearless hero saving the world, vanquishing villains, saving damsels in distress. But what I really played was character roles quizzically looking at the lead, saying, no, yes, Really? Sold cheap helmets, defective clothes, even sham cream for men, don't get me wrong, those were some commercials I did back in my days.

When Bollywood didn’t come breaking down my roads, I eventually made my way to San Francisco California where I enrolled myself in a film school to study life behind the camera. Finally I was doing what I always wanted to and within a short time, I found my calling: a director.

No lie. Browse my website, and you will see in the few short years it took to gain my BFA in Directing, I directed short films, music videos, Documentary for India’s first female bodybuilder, a PSA for the San Francisco Fire Department. And to my surprise, when I returned recently, and a new group of my parent’s friends were having tea at their house, before I had the chance to answer an inquisitive guest’s question about what I did, my father blurted out, Neil is a film director. And my mother chirped, He will someday win the Academy Award for the best Director in the world.