The End of the Beginning: Akhada of the Dead Completes Shoot

September 12th, 2025

The cameras have stopped rolling, and for the first time in weeks, I can hear myself breathe. The akhada is quiet now. No footsteps in the mud, no shouts of crew, no buzzing generators or barking dogs. Silence. A silence so sharp it feels like it’s pressing against my ribcage, where just days ago everything was rattling and breaking apart inside me.

It’s strange when the chaos finally ends, you expect relief. But I don’t feel relief. I feel emptied out.

The Storm That Was

Dogman in making

These past days were a storm, one I walked straight into knowing it would bruise me. The fights over costumes, the gamble with makeup, the constant hum of doubt. Dogman came alive, not through prosthetics or budgets we didn’t have, but through raw hands, paint, sweat, and desperation. He isn’t perfect. But he’s ours. And in those moments on set, when the camera saw him move, growl, exist, I felt something bigger than the compromises.

The sound was chaos. The akhada breathed too loudly, and the city bled into our frames. Trains roared like uninvited monsters, vendors shouted as if competing with my actors. ADR will patch the wounds, but scars remain. Maybe that’s what cinema is anyway: scars dressed up as stories.

After the Battle

Now that it’s over, I keep replaying it all. The shots we nailed. The ones we lost. The faces of my actors when they pushed themselves beyond exhaustion. The crew, running on tea and sleeplessness, still holding the camera steady when my own hands were shaking.

And me: trying not to fall apart in front of them. Trying to hide the panic behind call sheets and shot lists. Some nights I thought I wouldn’t make it. But every morning, the set demanded me, and I showed up.

During the Shoot

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The Quiet After

So here I am, with the film inside the hard drives, waiting for its next life in post-production. The ribcage pain is gone, replaced by something softer, stranger, and an ache of emptiness. I lived inside this storm for months, and now the storm has passed.

But I know myself. The silence won’t last. Another story will come. Another storm will build. Another ribcage will shake. That’s the curse and gift of this life.

For now, though, I’ll let the silence speak.

Akhada of the Dead has wrapped. See you in the next battle.

After the last shot.