Santanu Hazarika's journey from engineering to art has been quite spectacular. Shantanu, who was in a relationship with actress Shruti Haasan, till a few months back, is himself an illustrator and doodle artist. He is also the co-founder of GAO, Gauhati Art Project, which is an urban arts inititative that targets building art community in the Northeastern region of India. In a recent interaction with Zoom, Santanu opened up about the constant social media scrutiny on his love life and relationship status. He said, “I mean, if you're in the limelight, obviously people will talk a lot of things around my personal life, but I'm pretty much open.”

“My whole story, my life is pretty much like an open book. You see what you get. And I have nothing to comment on, on gossips and rumours and all that,” he replied. The artist further went on to add, “It doesn't have space in my life or in my mindset because I'm here to do one job and one job only. My duty is to make art, to design, to create, and that's all there is to it. Everything else is just secondary. Everything else is just like a passing wave. It'll come and go.” Santanu went on to explain that such rumours are not held in a lot of regard by him, stating, “It doesn't affect me at all. I generally don't give it that much attention because I don't want to empower it by even thinking about it. So yeah, to me, it's completely vague and futile, all these things.” Meanwhile, Santanu is singularly focused on his art. "Long-term goal would be to actually have a global influence when it comes to art. And my long-term dream would be actually to create inspiring movements, art movements, or campaigns, and create things which can be consumed by everyone around the world, be it fashion, be it art, be it," he signed off.