A decade and a half ago, I worked for one of India’s most popular online portals. It has long sunk into obsolescence, so I won’t bother mentioning the name. I took the role because I looked up to the firm and believed it took journalism seriously. Cruelly, and ironically, it became the place responsible for my first break from that vocation, when I realised how shallow it was on the inside. That break stemmed from the editor’s insistence that I try my hand at being a movie critic, which I wasn’t qualified to be.

There are two relatively common schools of thought when it comes to criticism: Those who believe that one person’s opinion is as important or unimportant as anyone else’s, and those who accept that some people are more qualified to comment on some things than everyone else. I have always been a firm supporter of the latter.
I find it extremely annoying when people trot out that inane statement about critics being people who are too lazy or devoid of talent to create something themselves. Filmmakers and actors bring it up often, dismissively, to compensate for their feelings of hurt when an abysmal movie they have made is called out publicly as rubbish. It is perfectly okay for writers, actors, dancers, or filmmakers to claim that they never read what critics have to say. It is equally ludicrous to assume that critics don’t need to exist.