It was the end of July, we were chilling by the sea in Mumbai, with Twenty-one pilots playing in the background with a view.
Mid jam session Ayushman looked at me and asked me, “I wanted to ask you something. I know we’ve been wanting to do a creative project together, and I just thought you could officially join The Sheeples and we could grow this together? "
With no second thoughts, I yelled yes and here we are, already three months in.
Last year when Ayushman and Zee started this journey called 'The Sheeples' together, it had my attention, I always called myself their biggest fan. I religiously liked and shared their work. We often got on long calls discussing interesting aspects of what they were doing. Everything The Sheeples was about and still is does feel right at home.
The past few months since I joined, being committed to this and growing it has been very fulfilling. I enjoy going to work, creating art, filming all day, and even the strategy meetings (my loved ones might gasp hearing me say that). It still feels like quite the dream. I won’t lie, I’m very grateful for the privilege I have that allows me to follow my dreams.
In a short span of time, The Sheeples has become my source of sanity in between all the noise. Nothing feels greater than creative freedom for an artist and a storyteller. This platform feels like an extraordinary friend who helps me stay true and authentic to myself and everyone else.
While everyone calls it our “start-up”, which it is to be fair, for us it’s more than that. We want The Sheeples to be an inclusive space for everyone. We want to start conversations that are long overdue. We want to tell the stories that need to be heard. We want to build a community of people fuelled by kindness and inclusion. Most of all, a safe space, not just for others, for ourselves too. A space where our expressions are accepted and heard, a space we can grow into hoping someone out there feels seen in our art, our voice, our lives.
As cliche as it may sound, this is just the beginning and I absolutely can’t wait to see how everything we aim to do pans out and where The Sheeples takes us.
An idea, a collective, building a community, one piece of art at a time, one conversation at a time, one day at a time.
This is Varshini Raaj signing out!