Anusha Rizvi,
Director, The Great Shamsuddin Family and Peepli Live
Next year, I will trust my script more than the noise around it (including my own). I will outline just enough to feel responsible and genre driven, then allow the story to slip out of the cage and misbehave.
I will write the hard scenes first instead of treating them like bad news I can avoid. I will stop polishing lines from drafts that should have been gently put out of their misery, and stop confusing ‘clean’ with ‘true’.
I will enter scenes later, leave earlier, and finally accept that silence can sometimes write better dialogue than I can. I will stop arm-wrestling the page and listen to what the characters have been saying all along, usually while I was trying to be smart.
I will rewrite and cut bravely, especially the clever bits I’m secretly proud of. And most of all, I will finish—imperfectly, decisively, on time—and send the work out before self-doubt edits it into complete silence.
Shalini Passi, art patron and entrepreneur
Next year, I want to approach life the way I approach art - intentionally, with space to breathe. I'm going back to writing thank-you notes by hand. Actual letters, good paper, a pen I've chosen deliberately. It's a small practice, but it matters. I'm also rethinking something as simple as white. I used to think white was just white, but now I see ivory, chalk, linen, cream - each completely different depending on light and texture. I'm reorganizing my wardrobe and my spaces around these distinctions. Fewer things overall, but deeper appreciation for what stays. I'll wake up earlier, not to be more productive but to have quiet before the day begins. I'll pack lighter when I travel. Ask better questions. Leave room for things to unfold rather than planning every detail. What I've realized from years of collecting is that the best pieces reveal themselves slowly. You don't see everything at once. I want to live that way too- less addition, more attention.
Padmashri Geeta Chandran, dance guru
Two things I need to crack in 2026. First, understand the impact of AI on Indian classical dance; both its potential and its risks. Also, help AI understand the uniqueness of the Indian Classical Dance pedagogy where abhinaya (expression) and manodharma (impromptu creativity) are integral to the dance experience. The second is equally important, and that is to find ways to make Classical Dance sustainable for young artists. This needs new synergies to be welded together to create a better ecosystem for dance to be both meaningful and profitable for young artists.
Neha Dixit, author, The Many Lives of Syeda X
This year, I am going to rearrange my library. There are some books that I read every year—The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and a couple of old magazine articles from India Today and Time from the 1990s, whose hard covers I have saved. I plan to put all of these on the same shelf because they save me every time I face a writing block.
I also plan to hoard less and hand over all the duplicate copies of my favourite books to friends.
Last year, I bought several short story collections—Tamil, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, and Kashmiri—translated into English. I also bought short stories by Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto. I plan to read at least three short stories every day and finish all these books by March.
I am also going to finish reading Caste Pride by Manoj Mitta, The Believer’s Dilemma by Abhishek Chadhury, and Hindi Heartland by Ghazala Wahab by May. For the rest of the year, I want to go back to finishing one book in three days, just like in my college days. Hope that happens!
Arjun Sagar Gupta, Founder, The Piano Man
I've always had a strange relationship with New Years Eve. In my childhood, it meant PC gaming marathons through the night... Sid Meier's Civilization series was my companion for many a year. Today, I see people scrambling to make the best possible plan to bring the New Year, while for TPM it is another night of wonderful music!
This year is a little different. We've just completed 10 years of consistent programming at our OG outlet. We've spend the last few years expanding really slowly, working more on building systems and processes than on building outlets. We designed, built and deployed our own software platform to manage and run our venues... 2025 was its first full year of operations. We feel ready to take a big step forward.
This big step will include (finally) plans for some of the other wonderful cities in our country, a desire to take our signature blend of infrastructure, support and ecosystem to more cities. Contributing in a much bigger way to bringing professionalism to the industry with a wonderful set of tools we are planning to release for artists, and (hopefully) bringing our venue and event management software solutions to other small format event organisers to make producing and planning events easier, faster and better planned.
To enable us to be able to do all of the above, we intend to bring on board partners with domain knowledge, expand our already wonderful senior management team and work hard!