The watch, aurora and two music videos: Nimish Ravi opens up on the stories behind his Instagram posts

Scroll through Nimish Ravi's Instagram and it reads like a highlight reel of a career on the rise, London promo events, Iceland skies, film sets.

In a candid rapid-fire round with Mathrubhumi English, the cinematographer revealed the stories behind a few frames fans have long speculated about, including one tied to his ‘Lokah: Chapter 1’ co-star Kalyani Priyadarshan, and another to his ongoing creative partnership with actor, filmmaker and YouTube creator Ahaana Krishna.

One photo, taken during a UK promotional trip for ‘Lokah: Chapter 1’, shows Nimish wearing a watch. The story behind it is more personal than the picture lets on, it was a gift from the film's lead, Kalyani Priyadarshan.

"She had gifted me this watch at that time," he says, describing a private running joke between them about how the film would perform. "It was very emotional that way. I just felt that I should put that in my Insta."

Also Read: From clicking DPs for friends to shooting Mammootty, the self-taught rise of Nimish Ravi

Separately, Nimish's creative collaboration with Ahaana Krishna runs deep. The two have worked together on two independent music videos, ‘Thonnal’ and ‘Pookkal,’ passion projects, in his telling, more than paycheck work. "It doesn't bring us back a lot of revenue," he admits. "But it's purely out of the passion of seeing those small stories be alive."

He describes Ahaana as meticulous and hands-on as a director, mapping out every shot in advance and personally producing the videos, a sharp contrast to her more spontaneous, in-the-moment style when she's filming her own travel vlogs.

Then there's Iceland, a trip he describes simply as "the most spellbound" he's ever felt by a landscape, watching the Aurora for the first time with, in his words, his best friend.

He's careful, throughout, not to frame any of it as more than friendship and shared creative work on record, but taken together, the music videos, the years of "brewing" ideas together, and the description of her as his "best friend" are exactly the detail that turns an interview clip into a trending topic.

For a cinematographer who insists his work should always be led by the story than a fixed image, it's a fitting irony, his own life is generating a narrative he hasn't fully written yet.