"Have conversations with people you disagree with"

"People are products of their time.

We must remember this and approach others with empathy and compassion."

Rahul Puri doesn't say this casually. He says it like someone who's watched a generation forget how to sit with discomfort, how to experience something before deciding what it means.

In an age of instant judgment where social media clips become verdicts Puri's message feels simultaneously obvious and revolutionary: You won't know until you go and see it.

He's talking about films. But he's really talking about everything.

From finance and investment banking to Mukta Arts handling strategy, finance, marketing, distribution, production, Puri learned through practice, not film school. By 2013, he'd taken on broader management responsibilities. Today, as Head of Academics at Whistling Woods International and in his leadership role at Mukta Arts, he sees both the industry's structural challenges and the attitudinal shifts in those entering it.

"Students today show a strange dichotomy," he observes. "Immense access to information but a deep lack of real-world experience." They arrive radically aware yet emotionally unformed. Knowledge without wisdom. Certainty without experience.

Puri identifies the cause: "We've closed ourselves off in echo chambers that only validate our views which is dangerous." When algorithms curate reality and reward confirmation over confrontation, our capacity for empathy atrophies.

His prescription? "Have conversations with people you disagree with." Learn from art that challenges you. Give things a fair chance. It's advice that feels quaint until you realize how few practice it.

Consider contemporary cinema discourse. Films are now judged through political identity rather than cinematic merit. "People pre-judge films before watching," Puri notes, "based on social media clips, reputation, or word-of-mouth."

Cancel culture triggered by single clips stripped of context replaces collective viewing. "Excess access to online content has removed the mysticism that once surrounded cinema," he explains. The result: shorter attention spans, reduced patience, lack of deep engagement.

But this dynamic isn't unique to cinema. It's happening everywhere judgment has become faster than understanding, where certainty is prized over curiosity.

His critique of cinema exhibition reveals a more complex structural problem. The fundamental question, he argues, is whether cinema is a niche or mass product and pricing must reflect that decision. "The majority of Indians don't have the purchasing power" for regular theatre visits, he notes.

While tiered pricing seems logical, it doesn't solve the exhibitor's crisis. What's missing from public discourse is the theatre owner's perspective: rising property prices, electricity costs, and operational expenses make exhibition economically brutal. The real accessibility problem lies in tier 3 and 4 cities where screens simply don't exist. Government schemes have been attempted, "but the economics haven't worked."

Meanwhile, China built over 17,000 screens in fifteen years with state support.

India lost screens instead.

Puri's philosophy challenges young professionals to resist these forces. To actively seek discomfort. To engage with what contradicts rather than what confirms. To remember that people including ourselves are products of their time, and approach difference with compassion rather than condemnation.

"Filmmakers and films are a reflection of society," he reminds us. Which means the judgment we level at them is ultimately judgment we level at ourselves and each other. The lack of nuance in film criticism mirrors the lack of nuance everywhere else in political discourse, in social media pile-ons, in cancel culture's swift verdicts.

The path forward requires what Puri has spent his career cultivating: the patience to experience before evaluating, the humility to acknowledge our echo chambers, the courage to engage with genuine difference, the compassion to remember that understanding precedes judgment.

In a world optimized for instant reaction, Rahul Puri offers radical advice: Slow down. Sit with discomfort. Experience the thing before deciding what it means.

Because you won't know until you go and see it. And that applies to far more than just movies.

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