Because I haven't said everything I want to say yet. Because a brief still excites me. Because a blank page is still terrifying in exactly the right way. Because the day it stops feeling like something — that's the day to stop. We're not there yet.

Honestly, it depends on the day. These days, I am busy running a studio and building my two apps that nobody asked me to build. Or I teach. I'm writing a novel. The honest answer is: I make things. With words, mostly. Sometimes with people. Occasionally, with a deadline. All my life I tried to understand what my dad did. Now, it’s his turn.

No. I wanted to be an animator, but I became a writer. One book became a national bestseller. The next one didn't. A film I wrote won awards at festivals across countries. A comedy channel I wrote was ahead of its time — which is a polite way of saying nobody watched it. None of it went as planned. All of it went somewhere. I've made peace with the difference.

I started teaching at 25 because nobody came to my stand-up shows. I've been doing it for seventeen years now, so either I got better or my students got more polite. The truth is, I learn more than I teach. Every classroom has at least one person who says something that makes me rethink everything. That's a hard thing to walk away from.

Ask aishwarya@sanedifference.com, ask riya@thepropolis.co, ask swapnilgaikwad1997@gmail.com, ask saeekanade123@gmail.com, ask roynikita1693@gmail.com.

Deeply committed. Possibly unhealthy. Whenever I am on my way to a meeting, I am always thinking about where we're eating after. I believe a good meal solves more problems than most meetings. I have no data to support this, but I have a lot of meals to point to.

I think the question is whether the universe takes any of us seriously, and the evidence so far is mixed at best. We are, after all, a species that invented philosophy, art, and literature — and also the reply-all button. I take the work seriously because the work deserves it. Myself, I hold more loosely. It seems the only reasonable response to being alive.

Does the sun rise from the east? Failure is deeply underrated as a life experience. It's the only thing that happens to you that's entirely yours — nobody can take credit for it, nobody can claim they saw it coming, and nobody can make it mean something other than what you decide it means. I've come to think that a life without failure is just a life lived too carefully. And careful is a terrible thing to put on a gravestone, though I am going to be cremated.

Now, yes. As a child, aggressively no. I spent the first twenty years of my life avoiding books with the dedication most people reserve for reading them. I think the late start helped. I came to reading without obligation, which means I only ever read what I actually want to. That turns out to be the only way to read. Or do anything else, in fact.

Hmmm. I think it’ll be telling stories that help people find their story.

Doubt is the birthplace for possibility. Take a step forward, it becomes real. Take a step back, it becomes a memory you’ll soon forget. I always step forward.