Small-Town Roots Meet Big-Studio Dreams

<rt-red>My first month at Studio Lotus felt like one of those montage sequences in movies<rt-red> — the kind where everything is new, colourful, mildly confusing, and weirdly perfect. I didn’t expect to settle in so quickly, but somehow, I just slipped into this new life like it had a me-shaped opening waiting.

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The first day, however, was straight-up comedy. I walked around introducing myself to what felt like half the population of Delhi. I repeated my name so many times that by lunch I was questioning whether Arham was even the right pronunciation. But everyone was so warm and easy to talk to that the awkwardness evaporated pretty fast. Conversations at our desks, in the corridors flowed easily, and it didn’t take long to feel like I belonged. <rt-red>People here don’t just welcome you — they absorb you.<rt-red>

And then there’s Ajay Bhaiya, the unofficial guardian angel of Lotus. He appears with coffee exactly when your soul leaves your body after lunch. The machine exists, sure, but let’s be honest — Ajay Bhaiya’s is the superior caffeine experience.

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Somewhere between laughing too much and trying to understand everyone’s inside jokes, deeper moments snuck up on me. Before my induction session <rt-red>on Lotus’s philosophy and identity,<rt-red> Sarthak told me it might move me. I laughed it off… and then ended up getting emotional like a full filmi character. Something in that session hit so close to my small-town roots that my eyes started doing their own thing.

On the work front, I jumped into presentations and explored 3D renders with Mohit. It turns out depth has… more depth than I thought. Like, “Oh, I see nothing and you see seventeen layers of meaning” levels of depth. Our presentation for ‘Hotel in Dehradun’ even got the go-ahead to be shared with the client, which we celebrated at Big Banana — a place so shady it should honestly come with a torch.

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<rt-red>Office rituals added their own flavour to the month<rt-red> — a farewell, spontaneous music blasts with Samiya every Friday, and the legendary lunchtime pilgrimage: up to the dining hall then down again to sit in front of Bobby Canteen, like college kids with full-time jobs. Even the neon-lit autos I take home make me feel like I’m starring in a low-budget music video.

Somewhere between <rt-red>small-town roots and big-studio dreams,<rt-red> thus passed my first month. And honestly, if the rest of the journey is even half this fun, I’m in for a wild, wonderful ride.