I had lunch with a filmmaker friend five years ago. He asked what I was working on. I told him I was thinking about stepping back from film composing. He looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re at the top of your game,” he said. “Why would you leave now?”
That’s the thing about knowing when to quit. The best time to do it is exactly when people think you shouldn’t.
I’ve spent almost two decades composing music for films. Fifty plus films. That number is deliberately small. I could have done 500. But I never wanted volume. I wanted to make something worth remembering. The moment a project felt ordinary, I’d pass. This meant saying no to a lot of work. It also meant I cared about every single one.
How I Got Here
After my sound engineering, I was back in Pune. I was traveling with a friend to Mumbai on a bus trip. We were meeting some folks from the music fraternity. Just for the fun of it.
He asked me one thing on that bus trip: “Do you want to become a film music composer?” He jokingly said, “What if you become a film composer for Malayalam films?”
I completely despised it. I didn’t want to become a film composer. Let alone a Malayalam film composer. I told him no.
But the way things moved, it just happened. I became a film composer. The title was secondary. What mattered was collaborating with brilliant minds. Two of my greatest mentors, Bejoy and Lijo, turned my life inside out. They were driven. Creative. Uncompromising. They saw the same raw energy in my work that they had in theirs. They felt I would be a perfect match.
That was the start.
Films was never meant to be my domain. Which is why I have no regrets about leaving it.
Why Step Away
The opportunities coming my way started feeling like repetition dressed up as new work. Old wine in old bottles. I’d sit down to read a script and think: I’ve scored this scene before. I’ve created this emotion before. I know exactly how this will sound before I even start.
That’s when you know it’s time to leave. Not when you can’t do it anymore. When you can predict exactly how you’ll do it.
The industry shifted too. Music became an afterthought. Something to mask weak storytelling rather than enhance strong narratives. Wall-to-wall soundtracks with no breathing room. No silence. Silence used to be where the most powerful moments lived. Now directors are afraid of it.
And violence. Not just on screen, but in the tone of filmmaking itself. There’s an arrogance now. Directors often don’t have a clear vision. But they’re rolling forward anyway. Dragging the sound team along in their confusion. When someone asks you to create something meaningful without knowing what they want, you’re not collaborating. You’re just filling time.
On Respect and Value
People talk about respecting the craft. But compensation tells a different story. Fair pay is rare. The hours you spend experimenting, capturing details, making something fit—nobody values that. And nobody talks about the toll it takes.
Mental health matters more than money to me. Not that money doesn’t matter. But time spent should feel worthwhile. It should mean something. When work stops meaning something, it stops being work. It starts being just time passing.
My team and I sometimes revisit our old work. We’ll play through the archives. Listen to favorite pieces. Ask ourselves: How would we approach this today? Those sessions remind us why we started. The craft. The creativity. The love of making something from nothing.
But it’s better to step back while you’re still inspired than to stay until the world chips away at what made your creativity special in the first place.
On Knowing When to Leave
This isn’t burnout. It’s wisdom.
I’ve seen people stay in spots where there’s no room to grow. Thinking they’re being loyal when really they’re just afraid of what comes next. When I entered this industry, I didn’t ask anyone to step aside for me. This isn’t about making room for the next generation. The industry will be what it is.
This is about knowing that your time deserves better. It’s about having the courage to stop even when it’s easier to continue.
The Lesson
If you stay true to your craft, the journey itself is enough. The industry can be brutal. Ruthless and fake at times. But it can also be soul-fulfilling if you know exactly why you’re in it. And when to step away.
Leave before you go stale. Leave before your work becomes routine.
What’s Next
I’ll still make music. On my own terms. I’ll use pseudonyms. Or release under my own label. But I’ll do it my way. Just like I did back in the early 2000s when Spotify wasn’t a thing. When the only place I could upload music was Download.com. I uploaded music there and became one of the top ten artists in the world on that platform. Under a pseudonym.
Almost a decade ago, I started building something else. I knew musicians have a limited shelf life. So I laid the foundation for something sustainable. Today, I have a team of eight and a successful online business serving customers around the globe. We take pride in changing people’s lives. That’s where my focus will be now.
Stepping back, just like stepping forward, can be its own form of art.