The Judgement and Trolling an Artist goes through
None of these ever matter, here's why.
Raw and Real Conversation
Before we begin, here is some trivia that might be helpful for today:
I am a CA turned full-time writer. Yup, the latter is my full-time work for more than 6 years now..
Why am I telling this to you?
Because now I will take you through the most fun story of trolls that I go through, and how I have fun with it :)
I was once in a conference, where an acquaintance of mine was introducing me. So I believed I would be introduced with some teeny tiny bit of respect for the work I do, duh? What I instead got was “it takes courage to give up a lucrative career as a CA and pursue a small life as a writer”. I wish I was making this up :)
Earlier this week I met a practising CA, and after knowing my story, she said, “You must be needing more time that is why you perhaps became a writer?” Sigh.
This one is my favourite. A retired principal of a school (the kinda aunty whose grandkids go to Vietnam for a summer vacay :)) was borderline heartbroken when she heard about my career change. She legit looked at me from top to bottom and back to top, in pity disguised as concern, and asked, “Guzaara ho jaata hai?” I laugh about her reaction to date :))
Hand on heart, I must tell you all these are really nice people. Something our education system has successfully converted into believing you become rich only by a corporate thingy, and certainly never by pursuing arts.
I don’t blame them either. Our cinema has done the same for the longest time.
In the movie Dil Chahta Hai, it was the business tycoon’s son Aakash who lived in a bungalow in Mumbai, drove to Goa in his Mercedes, and flew to Australia in first class. Meanwhile Sid, the artist, ran from his home to his neighbour’s home. His financial existence was so minuscule that the makers didn’t even bother to show how he went from Mumbai to Kasauli :)
The reality of making money
Which is why, I want to walk you through the reality of how money functions. Not to prove the trolls wrong, but to help anyone think deeper beyond what is visible.
After a few initial years of working, it does not matter which background you came from. What matters is your attitude towards life and the conversation in your head. But only people with the right attitude would agree to it.
You’d be surprised to know, but richness has got nothing to do with how much you make (assuming people think I make less than a working CA). Richness is created out of a habit of investing. This means someone making ₹20,000 could be rich, and someone making ₹5,00,000 per month could be poor, based on their habits.
A wealth manager I know often tells stories about people’s relationship with money. If there is only one thing I could tell you from so many of such stories, it is this: What you see in people’s lifestyles never a reflection of people’s wealth. Read the previous line again because it is so important.
At some point, money is all a mindset.
When you have the self-worth to not judge people by the society’s standards, that is when you are really rich.
Why is it important to have this conversation?
Not to prove how much my income and net worth is. That is not the point here.
It is important to have this conversation because:
So much of what we see is our biases playing through. Coming back to Dil Chahta Hai, we all see the rich Aakash because he is wandering around in Sydney because he is bored. But we could never imagine Sid doing it, even if he was filthy rich. He would very well be sitting in his home and painting. An artist is so fulfilled with their lives that they forget everything else automatically. But I think only the artists have the art to understand it.
There is no right or wrong way. If you love corporates, go do it. If you hate it and are an artist, I am happy for you too. This is no diss into corporate cuties. Fun fact: Even I became an artist because I was pushed into hell with no parachute. Might as well learn to fly :)
Why is money still a metric of success in 2026? Wasn’t everything about being a nice person? Like a really nice person who cares but who draws boundaries, etc. waala nice person.
Last year, I had gone to Om Shanti Retreat Centre in Gurugram for a 3-day meditation retreat. One of the practices of the retreat is when the spiritual class gets over around 7.30 am, everyone should ideally go and do sewa for 30-60 minutes. It is sort of we “earning” our meals for the day. I happily went for the sewa of painting the block boundaries surrounding the garden. Think of painting the yellow and white blocks on the pavement. In those 30 minutes, I learnt at least 5 nuances about painting. Yet I can bet the blocks I painted were the worst. Every job appears easy when someone else is doing it.
The point I am trying to make here is that there is almost zero correlation between what someone does for work and how much money you have.
It becomes all the more important to live with this nuance, because life is rarely black and white.
That is it.
Oh wait, one more thing. I thought for long if I actually wanted to write this essay, but I went ahead with it for just one reason:
Artists should not see themselves as worthless. You can become and build anything you want to. Only if you want to. When you see the worth in you, the world does not matter.
Just in case, btw, a detailed essay on how to become a successful freelancer drops exactly after 2 weeks, on 04th July.
And for the trolls that wonder how much I make or do I make more or less than I would as a CA, well: Dude, I am a Sindhi way before I became a CA. What do you expect?
To explain more to trolls, I honestly do not have time today baby. Today is the due date of payment of monthly GST, they might know. Oh wait, how would they know :)))
2 Raw One-Liners:
“You don’t have a lot of friends because you are not cunning.”
— my Mom
No one regretted an hour of workout. No one rejoiced an hour of social media.
3 (for) Real realisations I have been having about life lately:
The biggest factor to making yourself fitter is stretching well. It gives you the power for the next workout.
Do the nice things even if no one is watching. There is nothing more liberating than being true to yourself.
And when people know you are by default nice, be nice still, without having them walk over you and crush your niceness (I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here, coz I remember it All Too Well.)
Alrighty friends, let me know how you found today’s essay. I personally enjoyed the blend of fun with a serious conclusion.
Chalo, I will see you next Saturday.
PS: The “5 things” essay now goes on my daily blog nishtha dot blog every Wednesday, just in case you were wondering.
If you weren’t, awesome. Nothing changes at your end. Have a great weekend. <3
Nishtha Gehija
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