On Episode 72 of #LearningStories we chat with Karthik. He has been writing poems, essays and stories since he was a in primary school growing up in Bengaluru. As a teenager, the allure of living the ‘good life’ got him to pursue Engineering and then Management. He worked at Warner Bros. India in Marketing and Distribution of films for nearly ten years before quitting the job and leaving Mumbai city. He returned to Bengaluru and enrolled into Azim Premji University for an MA in Education. For two years, he engaged with questions on equity, children’s wellbeing and the role of literature in classrooms. On graduating, he joined Gubbachi Learning Community – a Bangalore-based NGO that is working towards providing quality education to out-of-school children. Since 2023, Karthik has been writing the ‘Reading This World’ newsletter on Substack where he writes personal essays, social commentaries, short fiction, poems and also, personal essays as a response to films – the kind of writing he is now known for. You can find him on Substack.