Creative Writing Classes by a TEDx Curator and Storyteller – Build Your Style, Structure, and Substance

Find out more about Akhil

• Tell us more about your subject. How did you develop an interest in this field?

  My relationship with words began before I even knew what to call it. In Class 1, my grandmother gifted me an encyclopaedia and an illustrated dictionary — and I became obsessed. I haunted my school library every evening, finishing book after book, and somewhere along the way I developed my own system of reading quickly and retaining deeply, one I still use today.
  
  The first piece of writing that felt truly mine was a poem — an ode to fire and the flame I felt within me. It now sits printed on the back of my first book, Obsessions of a Firewright. Fire has been a poetic muse for me ever since.
  
  Debate followed naturally. I headed my school debate club, went on to win several state and national competitions in college, and discovered something I hadn't expected — the competitive rush of systematically dismantling an argument is addictive in the best possible way.
  
  Journalling came later, during the grinding pressure of NEET coaching. It began as survival — a way to process stress and quiet intrusive thoughts. It evolved into something far richer: a daily ritual for practising handwriting, developing ideas, exploring stories, and grounding myself in how I want to use the time I have. It became less a habit and more a philosophy.

• What or who is the motivation behind you choosing to teach, and why?

  I have taught informal classes across government schools and colleges — covering everything from creative writing and reading to soft skills, disaster management, and public policy. What stays with me most is not the content I delivered, but the students who told me they struggled to express what they felt and thought — not because they lacked depth, but because they lacked practice with their own emotional vocabulary.
  
  Journalling unlocked something for many of them. They realised the problem wasn't who they were — it was simply that the muscle had never been exercised.
  
  My frustration with how reading is taught in schools runs deep. It is treated as an efficiency exercise — read to score, not to feel. Dead Poets Society is one of my favourite films precisely because it captures what is lost when we reduce art to an examination. I teach reading the way I wish it had been taught to me: as something you pursue because it gives you genuine pleasure, and that pleasure makes you want more.

• How does your work help society?

  The cost of poor communication skills in India — for students and young professionals especially — is information asymmetry. Those who can articulate their thoughts clearly, argue a position persuasively, and write with precision find themselves with vastly more options and opportunities than those who cannot. The gap compounds quickly.
  
  There is also a larger shift happening. Education is increasingly being recognised as a human-building process rather than a conveyor belt producing interchangeable outputs for corporations. The market itself is moving toward self-contained, expressive, adaptable individuals — not replaceable moulds. The skills I teach — reading critically, writing honestly, debating rigorously, journalling reflectively — are precisely what that shift demands.

• If you had to think of a role model for your work, who do you think of and why?

  Several, honestly — and they are an unlikely mix.
  
  Ruskin Bond and PG Wodehouse for the reminder that simplicity and warmth are their own form of genius. Arundhati Roy and BR Ambedkar for showing that writing can carry the full weight of political and moral urgency without losing its beauty. John Steinbeck and Robert M Pirsig for the philosophical depth that lives beneath seemingly ordinary surfaces. Sartre for the courage to pursue ideas to their uncomfortable ends. And Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner — the Freakonomics duo — for demonstrating that rigorous thinking, communicated accessibly, can make anyone see the world differently.
  
  What ties them together is that they all used language not just to inform, but to change how people think and feel. That is what I aspire to do in a classroom.

• Tell us about your hobbies outside teaching.

  I travel through forests and mountains on my motorcycle — it is my preferred way of encountering the world at the right pace. I carry a camera and photograph what I find. I cook the foods I encounter on these travels, which means my kitchen is a fairly unpredictable place.
  
  Music is constant company — hip hop, Carnatic, classical, folk, the occasional jazz and pop. I find that genres that seem worlds apart often share the same underlying emotional logic, which is something I enjoy thinking about.

• Do you have an anecdote from your student or professional life?

  One student comes to mind immediately.
  
  He began journaling as a way to process emotions and thoughts he couldn't share with anyone around him. Over time, the habit helped him through some genuinely dark chapters of his life — chapters I only learned about later, on a video call, when he told me what that practice had meant to him.
  
  I think about that often. Not because I taught him anything extraordinary, but because all I really did was hand him a tool — and he figured out, on his own, how much he needed it. That, more than anything, is what I hope these subjects do for people: give them a private language for their own interior life.