An influencer reflects on what a summer shoot in Jaipur taught him about love

I was standing in Jaipur in the middle of the afternoon. And mind it, it's May. And the sun was doing what it does, which is burning my skin, without asking. And I thought: Why am I going through this?

Not bitterly. Just honestly. The way you ask a question you already know the answer to, because sometimes the asking is the only thing that makes the weight of it bearable.

That's what love has always been for me.

I come from a place and family where love was practical. Measured. Given in the form of things done and duties kept. Doesn't mean that's not love, but that's not what love is for me. I have always loved too much, without checking whether the ground beneath me was solid. And I have fallen, every single time.

(Sings: Whatever I've done... I've done it for love — "One More Hour" by Tame Impala)

And every single time, I have gotten up and done it again.

The Indian summer doesn't apologise. It arrives and takes everything: your water, your sunscreen, your patience, and the careful distance you keep between yourself and feeling a bit too much. Standing in that heat, wearing those clothes, in those streets that have held centuries of longing and loss (that's a nice read, please read it when you can), I felt something clarify.  

Love is not warm. That's a lie we tell ourselves to make it sound safe. Love is the afternoon sun in Jaipur in May. It is blinding. It is relentless. It will give you heatstroke, and you will lie there, completely undone, thinking: I would do this again tomorrow, maybe with more sunscreen and experience.

'Love, Actually' was shot across Jaipur and Delhi in the summer of 2026. Gourab Ganguli and I looked for the kind of light that doesn't let you hide. We found it in the frescoed havelis such as Saba Haveli, the iron-studded doors, and the ancient ruins at Qutab Minar (some small talk with the guards was involved), where something had stood long enough to outlast everything it ever loved.

Different fabrics and a feeling of love, not so warm but scorching hot. Dressed and undone at once.

I will choose love every time. It exhausts me. It costs me. There are "afternoons" where I genuinely wonder if I would have been better off without it.

But I would not have been more alive.

(Sings again: Whatever I've done... I've done it for love — "One More Hour" by Tame Impala)

Image credit: Gourab Ganguli

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