If you’re an outsider — truly talented, charismatic, hardworking — and you think that alone will help you make it in Bollywood, then I hate to break it to you: it won’t.

Not unless you bow down to the unwritten rules of groupism — the harshest, most suffocating reality of this industry.

What is groupism? It’s when a small set of insiders — directors, actors, producers, and PR handlers — form cliques that control the narrative of the entire industry. They decide who gets promoted, who gets ignored, who wins awards, and who gets buried.