As a writer and filmmaker, I’ve learned that having thick skin isn’t about brushing off criticism — it’s about staying rooted enough to let it wash over you without losing your voice. Every story worth telling will challenge someone; every risk you take on the page or screen opens you up to misunderstanding as much as connection.
Why One Review Doesn’t Define a Story
My third short film – another step towards making my first feature length film – is a retelling of A Christmas Carol as a Diwali story. But this time, instead of Scrooge getting all the attention, it is his overworked employee, Bob Cratchit. Only in this version, he is an Indian American woman named Mala who is going to shake her toxic boss forever. Or will she?
The three ghosts are 3 female spirits, mentors from her past and future, come to help get her act together.
Overlooked and overworked, Mala has one last night to get things right. Hilarity ensues when 3 female spirits visit during the tokenist Diwali office party she is forced to throw. But do their warnings come too late? This is a twist on a Christmas classic for a new generation and culture. Charles Dicken’s timeless tale is retold and expanded with a female heroine for our times.
Turning Criticism Into Conversation
When a reviewer called my upcoming web mini series, A Diwali Dilemma “insufferably farcical,” it took me several beats to process. He held back no punches:
“The film is too schmaltzy and tacky to register an emotional punch or drive sobering depth. The writing is too lazy to pad up the emotional truths. The profundity of realisation the protagonist gradually veers to is trapped within a clutch of banal scenes littered by painfully glib dialogues.”
Lazy… well the 9 sets of revisions and year spent on the script would suggest otherwise. But this my backstory – one that viewers won’t see but I know because writing this mini series has been my life for quite some time.
“Diwali Dilemma is waylaid by its insipid dimensions to strike anywhere, affecting. It feels like a bog of cringe-inducing stabs at earning pathos and sobering growth.”
The words might sting for a moment, but they also reminds me why I made this film. The absurdity they reviewer describes seeing in the workplaces scenes were deliberate choices on my part — a reflection of what it feels like to navigate the surreal contradictions of immigrant life, where casual racism and well-meaning ignorance can become their own kind of theater. Humor, satire, and exaggeration aren’t escapes from pain; they’re ways to survive it, and sometimes, to laugh back.
Join the Movement Behind the Film, Diwali Dilemma
The film was never meant to be comfortable. It was meant to be familiar — for anyone who’s ever been visible yet unseen, exhausted yet expected to shine.
So yes, maybe it’s farce. Or maybe it’s truth with a twist. Either way, Diwali Dilemma is honest and the result of years of hard work. And if storytelling teaches us anything, it’s that discomfort often signals you’re hitting something real.
✨ A Diwali Dilemma is streaming online from October 20th. Watch it — and decide for yourself.
