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Can stories make us better human beings? I've always believed that they can. When we enter
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the lives of others, see the world through their eyes, we develop empathy and perhaps
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even compassion. The more we experience the world through stories, the more we can transcend
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our own limited experience and understand how human beings everywhere are bound by the
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same emotions and values. And what about storytelling? When you tell a story through the eyes of
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someone else, do you become that other person in the course of the telling? Does every story
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that you tell change you in subtle ways? And what about conversation? When you enter a
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conversation with someone, a genuine conversation in which you trust the person you are speaking
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to and in which you listen, really listen to them, opening yourself out to them, does
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that change you as well? Should we cherish every form that can take us outside of ourselves?
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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science. Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen. My guest today is Nilesh Mishra, the storyteller and
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conversationalist I have admired for a long time. Nilesh started off in journalism in
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the 1990s, even wrote a few books and then became a radio legend as a storyteller. Many
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of his stories set in the now mythical town of the Yad Sheher. These stories about common
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people in common situations struck a chord across India and soon many people were contributing
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stories they had written to his show. And a remarkable community of listeners and storytellers
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emerged from there. He also launched India's biggest rural media platform, Gaon Connection
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and pioneered what he calls a slow movement. I'll provide links to all of these in the
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show notes. He also hosts a brilliant interview show on YouTube called The Slow Interview
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which shares my personal ethic of letting a conversation breathe and spread out and
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digress. I was keen to have Nilesh on my show to discuss both storytelling and the art of
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conversation and I was delighted when he agreed. Before we get to the conversation though let's
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take a quick commercial break.
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How would you like to start your own podcast? Since you are listening to the seen and the
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unseen I don't need to sell you on the power of podcasting. Audio is a unique medium different
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from any other and it allows for a level of depth and engagement that no other form does.
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You have no doubt experienced this in the long form conversations that I've had here
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but even for storytellers this is the most exciting medium and the best part of it all
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is anyone can start a podcast. You are limited only by your imagination and desire and I
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want to help you by sharing my insights with you. I've just launched an online course called
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The Art of Podcasting in which I will talk about what makes audio so unique, the different
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forms of storytelling that it enables, the art of the interview and what will make your
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podcast stand out. I'll talk about these broader concepts as well as the nitty gritties of
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what equipment to use, how to record, how to distribute, how to market your podcast
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and build your brand. My course consists of three webinars over three Sundays and costs
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rupees 10,000 plus GST or about a hundred and fifty dollars. For more details and to
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sign up head on over to sceneunseen.in slash learn. The Art of Podcasting at sceneunseen.in
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slash learn. Nilesh, welcome to the scene in the unseen. Thank you. Nilesh, you know
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when I first started my podcast the scene in the unseen before that I wasn't someone
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who listened to much audio frankly I didn't really have a habit of radio so I figured
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as a research I should listen to some good podcasters and figure out what it's like so
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someone recommended that you have to listen to Nilesh Mishra and it was so intimidating
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because I thought my god this man is such an incredible voice and you know I heard your
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storytelling shows and it was just so engrossing and brilliant and normally when I sort of
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research for an episode I you know I enjoy it often I have to read a bunch of books and
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all of that and you know it's good fun in its own way but this was one of the most enjoyable
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episodes to research because I watched all your episodes of the slow interview many of
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them many times and absolutely loved it because conversation is so dear to my heart as well
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and to see someone who is clearly a master of it was such a joy for me. Thank you. Let's
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kind of start you know the way you often start in fact by talking about your early life talking
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about your childhood you know where did you grow up what was that like? I was born in
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Lucknow and at an early age I went to Nainital so I did much of my pre-schooling etc there
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my father at that time was teaching geology his field has been geology at the university
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so I went to school there and it was a new world because you go into the hills and there
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are definitely some sort of perceptions about outsiders and there was this need to belong
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even as a child and also because we were far away from home for the first time missing
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Lucknow but more than that my Nanihal and my sort of childhood here and then I slowly
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adapted and started loving Nainital and when I used to be in Lucknow I used to say I'm
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from Nainital and when I was in Nainital I used to say I'm from Lucknow so it was like
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a dual identity and I think I learned a lot of things unknowingly in Nainital which came
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in handy later in my career most important you know everyday emotions and those small
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emotions that I could feel which perhaps if I had grown up in a big city or even a relatively
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smaller city like Lucknow I would have missed out like one thing I remember is the sanctity
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of touch and spaces individual spaces so when I went to Delhi for example for the first
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time and wasn't traveling in buses standing and fairly violated because I had come from
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a place where there was a space there's personal space so I went to the school called Bishop
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Shaw English medium school it was right by the lake and it's called Tallitaal Nainital
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has Tallitaal and Mallitaal Tallitaal is the lower end of the lake where we also used to
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live and then after some time I went to St. Joseph's College from class five which was
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one of the big sort of convent schools there Nasiruddin Shah and a lot of illustrious people
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who were students so it was very aspirational for my parents at the time not us because
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we didn't know that much and I remember and I have a twin brother we are fraternal twins
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not identical Shailesh so I remember that the session had started and then we seemed
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to have missed out on the admissions when our neighbor Mrs. Shah who used to teach at
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the at a school called St. Mary's they were like a brother and sister school she told
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us about it and then my father went and met the principal and accidentally he turned out
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to be from Newfoundland Canada where my father had done his research and that's how you
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know it became a conversation starter and we got in and so I often look at these things
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about you know these beautiful coincidences of life what if he was not from Newfoundland
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would my journey have been different and there I then I was a shy timid sort of a boy but
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in class seven I think for the first time I started to come into my own when the teacher
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one day said that he was choosing the classes debate team there used to be inter-class competition
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and I think on a whim I raised my hand and then he was supposed to read out something
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the next day and and I got selected I mean that again I feel it was one of the invisible
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turning points in my life because I would have remained a very inward looking very shy
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young person but public speaking and then we won the gold medal that year and it just
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gave me a lot of confidence then I started to write for the college magazine, poems etc.
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I've never narrated this story of mine people keep saying that aap kabhi slow interview
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anachi but so it's good to remember a lot of things and I was never good at sports I
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was a day scholar and that's a that's a regret I think I had because my classmates were sports
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they stayed back for sports it was a huge British school with stone walls and big auditoriums
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and all that so they stayed back for boxing and athletics and etc. and I and I think there
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was a feeling of urdu word is a feeling of feeling less I think that would have been
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there in some way because I had joined the school in class five and until class seven
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I was fairly okay in academics but I mean like I would be like among the top ten students
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but not like you know first top three or something so the high of achievement I would say that
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was not there until I started public speaking and that kind of filled up for the absence
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or the feeling of being inadequate in terms of achievements in some way now that I look
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back and that then set me off on to different things I remember one of my classmates was
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Sajeev Wazid whose mother Haseena Wazid was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh later Sajeev
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and I used to compete in English and sort of debates etc. etc. it was it was great time
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it was multicultural there was of course the day scholar border divide and day scholars
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I mean the border used to steal my lunch every day these two there was not bullying as you
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would call it today but definitely I mean because they were all from very rich families
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and I was from an ordinary middle class family so there was also that sort of not an inferiority
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complex but I was very aware of the fact that there was a gap and school holidays started
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their parents used to come in their big cars and used to hear of their big farms and etc.
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somewhere all that was shaping who I was and after class 10 the question was what to do
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next and I because Saint Joseph's was only until class 10 and so I moved back to Lucknow
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again a big shift because I was from a very small town and I didn't even know how to ride
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a bicycle I learnt it after class 10 and then I had a grey bicycle which I used to ride
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to my school my school was Mahanagar boys even Mahanagar boys I mean I got an admission
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because my that same neighbor Mrs. Shah Mr. Bhavna Shah knew someone here and you know
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the way it happens in in middle class India and when I came in the first sort of thing
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that really bothered me was I had come from huge classrooms where the desks were like
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you know five feet apart and you owned your space and here there was no space you just
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crammed together in small rooms and it was hot and you know it was just some other world
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and then I came and realized that the school had no college magazine so I wrote a long
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letter to the principal brother Mani saying that you know I've come from a place where
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I was the I was writing regularly for our school magazine and we should have a school
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magazine so well he called me and I think he found it very unusual that a boy would
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sort of he was very feared and he made me the the student editor of the magazine and
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so in some way I mean because I was disliking coming back and this new kind of school which
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would have been a normal for a lot of people if they're grown up in the city because crammed
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spaces you know small classrooms but it was not normal for me so but but this maybe again
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brought me back to the creative space and to showcase some kind of achievement so we
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started the school magazine and at that time I started a very oddly named group and I don't
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know looking back I don't know why I named it so it was called the shower club and I
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think I named it so because I thought it would be like a shower of ideas or something like
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some silly reason so the idea was that to start and I mean looking back to start something
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was brave right and I was never like the outgoing kind of type A personality that I later became
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in life at that point I was these these small acts of becoming the captain of the debate
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team in class seven or writing that letter to brother Mani those were unusual but I think
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it was beginning to I was stepping out of my mental sort of cocoon my threshold and
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so I found that and and we like formed a hierarchy I was the president of course and then there's
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a vice president and a treasurer it was a it was it was interesting and then we said
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okay we will do a debate competition an inter-college debate competition so to me it was great
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because I was doing something with public speaking I was coming back to that and also
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kind of scaling it up I mean I didn't know this phrase then but yeah so but for the other
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students they would get to go to the girls schools and get to meet girls and officially
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so by now the college management and the principal etc trusted me enough to say key during school
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time in my school dress we used to go to other schools to Loretto convent to there was an
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army public school here to st. Francis etc so we organized the debate competition and
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looking back I don't know how I did it it was the year when I think the some big anniversary
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of Jawaharlal Nehru was being organized and the government was spending a lot of money
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to do a lot of cultural events so someone told me this my one of my mama's friends
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said keep you're looking for a sponsor why don't you approach the cultural department
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to sponsor this debate competition so okay well we wrote we had a letter pad proper saying
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shower club and which was this was the type setting era so it was at that time so we went
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to the state secretariat and looking back I think it was really brave so me in my school
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dress and my classmate Chandrasekhar Masiwal who's now should be about to become a general
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in the in an army so both of us went on our bicycles and I don't know I don't know why
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they let us in but they let us in they made a pass for us and then we went to the then
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secretary for culture is a gentleman called Atul Bagai which was my first interface with
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an IS officer with that world with governance it was fascinating and he had a very peculiar
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habit he he had like a pile of papers in front of him he would to sign and he would sign
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and throw them behind him so they went like flying in the air and there were like 15 such
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papers and somebody would come in later and collect them and it was it was very cinematic
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my first sort of view of the Indian bureaucracy was a very cinematic moment and so we had
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this letter which I'm assuming he found very cute we had asked for four thousand rupees
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to sponsor this competition and so he signed it and okay and then well but when we went
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to look for a venue and I wanted it to be in a really nice venue so I went to this hotel
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called Clarks Awadh which was then like the best hotel in Lucknow and they said we will
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charge you whatever some two three thousand rupees per day I hope I'm not sounding very
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old to your listeners by saying so which created a budget crunch so now the budget was coming
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to six thousand so what do we do we went back to the same Atul Bagai who smiled and he said
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because we had given an entire breakdown to you know the letter to the government said
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we thought it's the government you know you have to give all the details so that happened
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and alongside I had this fetish to start a magazine which was again oddly called Shower
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so the Shower and this is the Cyclostyle era so I went up to my father one day and he still
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remembers the story and I said I said I want to start a printing press and he was a university
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professor middle class family never had anything to do with business or never had a lot of
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money or he found this very odd and also we lived in separate cities I mean he was still
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in Nainital you know at the university and I was here in Lucknow at my Nainihal so when
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he came on you know one of the holidays I said I want to start a printing he said why
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I said I want to print a magazine so he said well go to another printing press and print
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it so then there was a I don't know I'm looking back maybe those were entrepreneurial skills
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in some way although I was never entrepreneurial in that sense but so I went to one of the
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rich philanthropists called Mr Gupta in Lucknow who my mother knew through some satsang or
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somewhere and he was considered very stingy he never gave anything and my parents said
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they won't give you a single rupee so and this is still a joke in my family so I convinced
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him and I said this is what I want to do and he didn't give me money but they had a paper
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mill or something so he gave me paper like a lot of paper so that helped and everybody
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said like wow you got paper out of Mr Gupta I mean he was a nice person but obviously
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would want to see other ROI you know tell me I didn't know that and so then we how
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do we illustrate so it was exciting and we took out a few issues I wrote something and
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some other contributors wrote this to send handwritten and then I started taking subscriptions
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for the magazine and the annual subscription I think was 20 rupees or 50 rupees something
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like that and I even conned my barber in Nainital into buying a subscription he had a classic
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haircutting saloon and what I did was I wrote a piece about him and there used to be this
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magazine called Target magazine at the time published by India Today my first poem was
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called A Fisherman's Song it was published in Target magazine and I remember the day
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because I had written to the editor I even remember her name Rosalind Wilson was her
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name and I was in Nainital in this small town and I had I mean I had written this letter
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to the Living Media India office F1415 Connaught Place and I sent her and then I got a letter
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from Rosalind Wilson saying you know your typewritten letter on lovely paper beautifully
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printed saying that your poem has been published and it'll appear in the next I was delighted
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so every day this is I think I was still in class 7 every day I used to go to the Talital
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market from my home to the bookshop and the moment it came you know I saw my name and
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I rushed back home because I wanted to show it to my father and I think that was the inspiration
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to do something like start a magazine of my own and which was like mad but whatever but
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I had bought a subscription to Target so I thought okay let me sell so then I started
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regularly getting something or the other published in Target and one piece that I wrote was a
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very funny story called The Barber's Barber and it was basically about my barber and how
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he like shook me up and I wrote Classic Haircutting Salon now Classic Haircutting Salon was an
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actual place where I used to go to and that's where I borrowed my name so Mahesh was the
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owner so when I was selling subscriptions I went back to Mahesh and said look he was
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thrilled I mean he didn't realize that I had made fun of someone like him who was like
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a part wrestler part barber that kind of thing so he gave it but we could never publish enough
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so it happened for some time that some friend was yeah so I used to avoid many people maybe
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about whatever 20-30 people because we were afraid that they would ask us for the subscription
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money or the magazine and my brother Shailesh was also a sort of party to this and although
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he had no creative interest he works for Adobe he's a tech guy so that's how I mean those
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little seeds of whether public speaking or kind of some writing some publishing those
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were happening and then class 11-12 in Mahanagar Boys and then I came back to Nainital to pursue
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Why this happened is an interesting story so my father wanted me like a lot of fathers
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of that time to become a doctor and I had zero interest in science but because he wanted
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me to and this is a prestigious school Mahanagar Boys was one of the best schools in class
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11 at the time so I joined the biology stream and I was hating it and you know we used to
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have to cut frogs at that time and you have to go to these shops of where you used to
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buy frogs and I was terrified of seeing blood still I am and so it was just starting out
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start of class 11 and I thought like I mean so the first parent-teacher meeting happened
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and our class teacher was Mrs. Vimla Mishra very tough very very stern everybody was really
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scared of her barely spoke barely smiled very respected so my father sat there and Mrs.
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Mishra and it was a I think the meeting was in a science lab or somewhere you know the
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first few minutes of that session I said the unspeakable or I said ma'am mera koi man
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nahi tha science lehne ka ilhone mujhe zabardasti daala hai and there was an awkward silence
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in the room what does my father say what does the teacher say oho bata yeh toh ghar-ghar
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ho gaya ab kaisa karein me toh 2 saal para hai my father all this while thought up his
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wily plan to tackle with this unprecedented situation so as we left he said yaar aisa
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karte hain ek shard lagaate hain agar tumhari intermediate mein first division aagay toh
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jo tung chahoge ho hoga otherwise jo main chahunga ho hoga now in UP board getting a first division
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was extremely tough it is like the toughest board of the country so it was a very wily
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trick that he had come up with sitting there which would make me study hard if I had to
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win the life I wanted and you know in those biology there was physics it was an alien
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world for me I did not relate to them while all of my classmates were pursuing their dream
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careers they wanted to be doctors and engineers etc etc so I you know I perforce studied hard
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and I did get a first division I think I got 74% which would be considered very high at
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the time although you know there were toppers like the UP topper would be from one another
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boys it was that kind of an institution and then my father kept his word so then I said
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that I want to study the arts so each boy in my class wrote the CPMT exam to become
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a doctor and I was the only one who didn't and my father said exam to dido mat karna
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I think he was still clutching at straws so I said look if I write the exam and get through
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then you will not leave me then I will have to become a doctor and if I don't get through
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I will live with a sense of defeat so I didn't write the exam I was the only boy in my class
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who did not write that exam and then of course like I said he kept his word I went back to
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Nainital I joined the BA course with history political science and literature this was
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also I think he had a he had a thought because now that I had given up on medicine he wanted
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me to write the IS exam and these three subjects seem fit towards that journey I topped my
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university and that was a great time I used to sing you know with friends we used to there
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were competitions I think I was gathering the moments that would later appear in my
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storytelling I used to go for long walks along the lake for the first time I was experiencing
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female attention that was also new because until this point and I used to be very very
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skinny growing up so both my brother and I had a huge complex about it we never wore
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t-shirts because we were like so thin it was a big deal when I would have first started
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wearing t-shirts I'm sure every skinny boy or girl would relate to it but some you know
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one interesting thing had happened alongside which was that when I was in class I think
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around class 12 or so still in Lucknow I used to like I said go by cycle to my school and
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on the way there is a big intersection called Burlington Choraha.
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So on Burlington there was the office of Swatantra Bharat and Pioneer which were then big newspapers
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Swatantra Bharat was huge as big as Dhanik Jagran today it was like a household paper
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and Pioneer had just kind of started and it was also with its modern design it was also
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a new refreshing sort of alternate to Hindustan times or times of India it was interesting
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it was like what Asian age was perceived as in Delhi when it came.
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So one day as you look at this building every day and one day I mustered the courage and
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I went into that building and I walked up to the person I you know the first person
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I saw who had a thick beard and he was sitting and had towards the table and as Luck would
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have it he was the features editor called Ravi Verma deep voice and again I had gone
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in my school uniform so it was an unusual sight for him to see a boy in a school uniform
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come up and he said ji so I said mai akhwar mein likhna chahta hu.
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So he looked at me top to bottom and he said badia and maybe boys in small towns at that
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time didn't do these things didn't go up didn't start magazines didn't go up to the features
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editor etc and he asked me to write a piece at the same time I went in to meet the editor
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of the pioneer it was the first time I had met a newspaper editor-in-chief and I had
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written something and he said okay where's the story so I was quite offended because
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he had called it a story I didn't know that a news story is called a story I thought he
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is calling it fiction I said it's not a story it's news.
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So I which he found endearing and but then when he saw it he said well if you want to
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come work for us someday come back after you finish school so then I started writing regularly
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for both of them and that's how I was starting to earn my first earnings started and the
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first thing I bought was a Phillips like it had these twin cassette recorder so you started
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one and then you know it would stop and the other one would play a lot of your listeners
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will not know what we're talking about double deck if I remember correctly yeah it was
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called a double deck it was a big deal to get it so the aspirational piece for me so
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and I saved money I used to get about four five hundred rupees per piece my first piece
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was Sunday magazine front page full story so it was a good debut and then I got spoiled
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that's I only wrote cover stories for them and and I think because I didn't know journalism
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or I didn't know feature writing I didn't know how to write a piece I was doing it in
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my own way this was the time of the first Iraq war in Kuwait and looking back this has
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been my strength in anything I've undertaken which is I have no baggage of convention I
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don't know how things are done so when I start doing something which is new I don't know
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how it's done so I do it my way so I didn't know how articles are written so I was writing
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like my you know there was a piece on snowfall on a snowfall and Nainital and first person
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piece there was a my first piece I think and I was telling Chang the other day on my show
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the slow cafe it was about Indian Chinese you know the community dentists and in the
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beauty business etc so it was interesting that I was starting to go to and you know
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the act of reporting is not an easy act you go to somebody you have them evoke enough
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trust in you to open up and you listen to them carefully so a lot of the things that
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came in handy later in my career I became a good listener I'm I think I'm a damn good
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listener where I'm genuinely interested in the other person and all this started at that
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time so my mother one day said she had a favorite tailor called Akram and who had vanished because
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he went away to Kuwait and one day she said Akram wapas aage she was very delighted kya
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ho gaya toh we linked back that I went up to Ravi Verma and I said I want to do a story
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on Indians who are returning after the and so this was very unusual for him and something
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that his own reporters had not thought of so to be able to you know we were getting
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like a human face of a top international story which was in the news at the time so I did
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that and and these many other so I said money so about I think eight thousand or something
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is what the double decker cost me at the time eight or ten thousand and I used to listen
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to Jagjit Singh Ghazals and Walaam Ali Ghazals and me and my father was were living alone
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in Nainital at the time my mother was looking after our village school and my brother had
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what was in Lucknow and he had chosen to be here so yeah I think that's a very long answer
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to your short question it's a it's a delightful answer and there are many strands I want to
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unpack and ask you about no I was you know I'm born in the same year as you a few months
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later so a lot of what you were saying made me nostalgic in a different way I mean obviously
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I wasn't in Nainital but I was a day scholar in a school which had a lot of borders in
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Pune now the bishop school and otherwise and another thing that sort of struck me about
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what you were saying was your memory for these small small details and I just realized that
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I might not remember what happened last week so clearly but you know when you talk of writing
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you know posting a letter to f14 f15 cannot place and all of that it's just you know I
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can see why those would kind of stick out in your mind now a bunch of questions I'll
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go through them one by one one is you know I read in I heard rather in I think you were
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interviewing Warren Grover I think it was in that one where you oh I forget which one
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it was but you mentioned how thin you were and that also struck a chord because something
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that I often tell people which they can't believe looking at me now is that I was so
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thin in college that I didn't like wearing t-shirts in fact my clip about that is I would
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step out of my hostel and if I was wearing a t-shirt I would not want the wind to blow
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against me because you could count my ribs so depending on which way the wind was blowing
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I would go either to the tapri or to the canteen and I was quite sort of moved by your story
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about you know how when you know Borders used to take your tiffin you've mentioned in another
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of your conversations that in a sense you felt good that you know you're having the
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same food as them that kind of sense of fitting in and belonging in a sense and I realized
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that you know one of the early anxieties that we have is people that we never quite lose
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that is very hard to lose I think I probably you know managed to control it in my middle
#
age is that anxiety of what other people think of you you know that desire for validation
#
and you want to fit in and you want to be part of the crowd and I mean I kind of totally
#
get that at the same level and so it was interesting to me that all of these things that you did
#
whether it was you know the debating in school or whether it was you know sort of taking
#
the initiative to start a magazine in your next school when you went to Lucknow and all
#
of that that do you think that this you know your artistic expression and your ways of
#
doing that now obviously you loved I'm sure you loved writing and you loved debating and
#
all of that and you were just being true to yourself but at the same time was all of that
#
also a way of fitting in and a larger question is that you know at what point did you sort
#
of like I know you're a very self-reflective man that's very obvious from the conversations
#
you have at what point did you become aware of this kind of anxiety and begin to become
#
comfortable in your own skin and sort of you know coming to terms with all of that?
#
I think when I was in school in St. Joseph's there was this feeling of being an outsider
#
because in Nainital itself there was the feeling of being an outsider, bahari desi terms chalte hain.
#
I have a lot of amazing local friends and I mean I sort of like I said I'm half bahari
#
I count myself as half bahari but maybe that's where this thing started of trying to fit
#
in if I had grown up in Lucknow it would be different I probably would be a different
#
person and then school where a borders were definitely a notch higher than day scholars
#
which was very clear in the school hierarchy plus they were very well to do you know well
#
off borders so being aware that you're not as prosperous as them and but the equalizers
#
were small being the captain of the debating team and winning the gold was one equalizer
#
you know starting that club because even when I came here all my classmates were from very
#
rich families they would have a scooter and there were no cars then but they would have
#
the that gray Yamaha bike and those were the signs of being rich at the time for a student.
#
When I started doing new things or taking initiatives maybe it was my defense maybe
#
it was a way to stand out make a mark to sort of go against the current and looking back
#
I seriously don't know where that courage came from because it would have required courage.
#
I was in a school in Lucknow where the only thing valued was studies because they were
#
all potential toppers in the state and you know they were all it was a school of very
#
intelligent students and I was not like a very intelligent student by as academics go.
#
So maybe that was my way of standing out but what it did was that and again I'm analyzing
#
that now today because you asked me this and maybe those little milestones those little
#
successes gradually transformed me from being a person who's trying to fit in to a person
#
who's doing small innovations to lead in some way and I mean how would a boy in class
#
11 have the courage to go into the imposing state secretariat building to even walk in
#
to give even get that pass made I don't know I mean it surprises me looking back but after
#
that time when I saw that my ideas were sort of elbowing their way that the school principal
#
would suddenly feel good because something I did I would go to a debate competitions
#
and other schools and we would win and then at the school assembly you know he would honor
#
me sort of this was new this was this was quite amazing so I think in doing these things
#
it was emboldening me in some way for you know to do new things and maybe that is what
#
gave me the courage later in life to do even far more risky things far more crazy things
#
and if I had followed the safe route the correct route if I had given that medical examination
#
you know my life would be different I would I would be different so maybe these were the
#
little I was chipping away at my own destiny at what was to be the destiny of this regular
#
ordinary middle class boy with medium level grades but hey here were these two three things
#
which I could also do and then that made me stand out in some way no and it's it's you
#
know you mentioned the word destiny and it also strikes me is how contingent you know
#
the direction our life takes can often become on little things like you pointed out going
#
to Nani Tal and and I guess you know it's also resonant to me that you would tell your
#
Lucknow friends that you're from Nani Tal and vice versa because you're a different
#
person then you know just because you know made that shift and that's so fascinating
#
to me another thing that sort of struck me about you know your background which is very
#
interesting is your father's idealism in a sense that you know he studied in Newfoundland
#
in Canada then but he wants to give something back to his society and he actually you know
#
you know I was looking him up on Wikipedia and elsewhere and he's noted for fossil discoveries
#
and even in that young career he had you know already started making a mark but he decides
#
he wants to give back to society and he comes back to this village near Lucknow and you
#
know looks after the school and runs the school and did some of that idealism rub off on you
#
in the sense that I know that when we are growing up everything about our parents is
#
normal even if they are extraordinary we won't think of it as extraordinary so it sort of
#
and this is also like what your father did this act of great idealism saying that you
#
know I will not do the supposedly conventional sensible thing in making a career I will come
#
back and do this also seems at odds in a sense with his personality as a father when he's
#
telling you nahi beta medical karo or nahi beta IAS karo and all of that so one was there
#
an awareness of this and was this sense of you know the fact that you know your father
#
himself was so principled was there an awareness of that and did that then also in some way
#
of osmosis or whatever rub off on the way you approached your life for sure and like
#
you said when we were growing up we don't realize any of this but my childhood was I
#
mean I used to be in Nainital my mother like I said was in Lucknow and what were their
#
conversations when they spoke to each other on the phone which was at our landlord's place
#
they were not romantic conversations they were about it was like it was shop talk it
#
was just everything was about the school and I was addressing students recently at our
#
village school and I said that we are just nuts this is not an ordinary family because
#
our conversations even our family group like me my parents and my brother it's named after
#
the school like what next for BGV or something like that so I grew up the uncertainties were
#
how to run the school I used to listen in we used to go spend time there in the village
#
whenever we could I remember falling sick and I had high fever because the coits had
#
attacked a hut two homes away so it was a very different kind of life it was while we
#
were city boys but we were acutely aware of our rural connection and it was normalized
#
so there was no looking down on rural India and later I now that I look back me pursuing
#
my journey in journalism then going to Bombay and then giving it all up and coming back
#
to Lucknow and then even that now living you know mostly in my village is the same kind
#
of return that my father did from Canada because when I gave up my life in Bombay I was not
#
following any script I was not following a journey I was not saying oh I am inspired
#
by my father I just did it you know without thinking but looking back yes I gave up a
#
lot of things when I returned from Bombay as my career there in the films was kind of
#
taking off I was meeting top directors and you know top composers etc so yeah I think
#
somewhere definitely there was this osmosis for sure.
#
And was your father proud when you bought that double deck and you know with the money
#
that you'd earned doing your you know freelance journalism and all that?
#
Yeah I could see that he was proud that I was kind of that in college people would know
#
me that his fellow teachers would talk about me that was new and by this time I mean to
#
give him credit so I've written a story called Papa Se Shart which what happened was in the
#
season one of my show a lot of students from Kota there's a huge listenership for my show
#
in Kota so they used to say that we are very stressed can you please narrate a story from
#
your life which is uplifting so I said well there's hardly anything uplifting in that
#
sense but yeah there's this story so I wrote a story called Papa Se Shart which was about
#
that bet which my father lost and then at the end I had my father on the phone and he
#
says that I'm really happy that I lost that bet and I would ask all parents to not force
#
their ambitions on their children so it was very you know interesting because so by this
#
time he had realized that this was my calling that that that was an alien world for me I
#
was really enjoying I was coming into my own in the arts and getting recognition and then
#
he used to say that he'll make his way is what sort of he used to tell so I think my
#
maverick ways and my unusual unorthodox ways is something that by that time he was quite
#
comfortable with and he never stopped me from anything in my life after that I never had
#
to make any this decisions keeping his desires in mind because he never expressed or imposed
#
desires of any kind perfect let's let's take a quick commercial break and then when we
#
come back we'll you know go down the rest of your journey all right are you one of those
#
people who not only loves to read but also wants to write better if so I have something
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for you since April this year I've been teaching an online course called the art of clear writing
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four webinars spread out over four Saturdays in which I share whatever I've learned about
#
the craft and practice of writing over 25 years as a professional writer the course
#
also contains many writing exercises discussions on email and whatsapp and much interactivity
#
it costs rupees 10,000 or a hundred and fifty dollars you can check out the details at india
#
uncut dot com slash clear writing this link will be in the show notes if you want to bridge
#
the gap between the thoughts in your head and the words on the page then the art of
#
clear writing might be just what you need November batches begin on Saturday November
#
7th so hurry and register before then india uncut dot com slash clear writing welcome
#
back to the scene india unseen I'm chatting with nilesh mishra you could say I'm doing
#
a slow interview of nilesh mishra if I may be audacious enough to say something like
#
that so nilesh you know where we left off on your sort of journey and besides your journey
#
of course I'll have a lot of broader questions which we'll explore as we go through this
#
conversation but where we left off on the journey was you know you're in nanital you're
#
in college you're writing for the pioneer and so on and you know from there how do you
#
sort of move on and become a full-time journalist how do you kind of get into that career and
#
is that what you wanted to do like your conception of what I want to do in life was that more
#
to just a general thing of being an artist and you know the journalism just came along
#
and it seemed to make sense or you know did you specifically you know think about journalism
#
and get excited about it no I never wanted to become a journalist and I never had a very
#
good view of journalists I used to call them magnified stenographers is the phrase I used
#
to use at that time so what happened was that I did my graduation and then came to Delhi
#
which was a new chapter in my life I had been only once to Delhi when I came to meet the
#
same Rosalind Wilson who wrote me that letter so I had come to cannot place to meet her
#
but apart from that I had never sort of spent any time and the huge roads it was a it was
#
a completely different world for me and I stayed as a paying guest for about a year
#
while I was preparing for my IS preliminary exam and I used to get these brilliant tutorials
#
these big packets that came and two or three days before the exam I started getting some
#
very excruciating pain in my ears and it didn't go away and I wrote my exam like that and
#
I didn't get through and my father said and thank God I didn't get through now when I
#
talk to young people I always tell them about my failures did you want to get through no
#
in fact I didn't even know what it entailed what because I was from Nainital we didn't
#
I mean I had heard that Delhi boys do this thing called TOEFL and SAT and how they go
#
to study abroad and I used to feel quite awful that I didn't know how to do it where to apply
#
where to you know what to do and in the same was there for IS that I didn't know what happens
#
when you is it the name of a job I mean what is it like so I wrote that exam of course
#
I mean of course during that year I understood what it is but it wasn't really a life of
#
my choosing but then there was no alternate life to be seen and I didn't know then that
#
a career could be made out of creativity it had to be that thing you do on the side as
#
it is for millions of people so I didn't get through and then I was I was devastated because
#
I had studied a whole year for it then I wrote the international relations exam in JNU and
#
I didn't get through and thank God I didn't and at that time when I was at a low you know
#
my lowest ever in life because I had come from Nainital and spent money and let down
#
my parents in my view they never said it so but that's how I saw it so I joined French
#
classes in Bharti Vidya Bhavan as a as something I was doing on the side while I was figuring
#
out what to do next and after the classes I used to go to Janpath where there were these
#
two or three shops which used to sell cheese sandwiches and because like every other student
#
my eating habits were all over the place there was no fixed time so that's that used to be
#
like my lunch at whatever time of the day and that's when one day I saw a boy coming
#
towards me who I realized was my classmate called Gaurav Agarwal classmate from Mahanagar
#
Boys from class 11-12 and then we got talking we met we were both living then in Noida and
#
he said he had two forms for the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and I said I don't want
#
to become a journalist I think journalists are lousy they're magnified stenographers
#
he said so I wrote that exam and he didn't get through I got through I mean again beautiful
#
coincidences what if I had not seen Gaurav Agarwal at that moment having sandwich at
#
that place whatever DePaul's or something I used to love the cold coffee at DePaul's
#
I was in Delhi at that time as well for a brief while for a year and so I got in I remember
#
I was then in Nainital I got this brown government letter you know a brown envelope like an official
#
letter which said that I had made it and after these two big setbacks not making it to the
#
IAS and then the JNU this is something that salvaged some amount of pride at a difficult
#
time so I went and when I went so I was not sure because there were I mean 50 percent
#
seats were reserved of the remaining we knew that a lot of pushes and pulls happen calls
#
from the information broadcasting ministry this seat that seat so there were 36 seats
#
in all and of that there were like six or seven seats nationally that we were competing
#
for so according to statistically it was almost as tough as making it to the IAS so I was
#
very nervous also because I didn't want to fail this one more time and everything depended
#
on the interview and when I came for the interview I had like my weapon which was all the articles
#
I had written for Ravi Verma since class 11 when I was studying for the IAS in Delhi I
#
had been writing for mainstream that magazine that used to come out at that time so I had
#
a big sort of thick bundle of things I'd written and I was confident that that's what I told
#
myself as I walked into that room and it was a good interview I was happy and some days
#
later I was told that I was in I learnt pretty much nothing at IMC and I was in the print
#
journalism later they invited me as a guest lecturer after some time and I went back and
#
I very tactlessly said this to the director's face that I didn't learn anything it was
#
a very cinematic moment they used to get these checks of 500 to 1000 rupees the registrar
#
was slipping her hand sliding the envelope towards me when I said the sentence the hand
#
stopped in the middle of the table a very awkward moment again once more something very
#
interesting happened which was that when the course was about to end our professor MR Dua
#
was lining up internships for everybody which was compulsory so I went up to my professor
#
and I said sir this was a very subversive thing to say because all other students were
#
dependent on professor Dua to find them internships and there was this shit of a boy coming and
#
saying don't look for it so I was confident that I would find it on my own and in the
#
phone directory I found the number for Reuters and Reuters was at one Kautilya mark in Delhi's
#
diplomatic enclave and I reached out to this burly seven-foot Irish bureau chief as I later
#
discovered Paul Iardale and Paul gave me a date to come and meet him and a time which
#
I did not understand because I didn't understand his accent so I went at some other time to
#
meet him and he was waiting and he was very upset so I said I'm really sorry and da da
#
da and again that whole bunch of clippings and everything and I had taken and so anyway
#
he gave me the internship and he told me to join on the first of April I started my career
#
on the first on fool's day and as it turned out when the final exam roster came that the
#
last paper was on the first of April which was broadcast journalism now I had no courage
#
to go back to that seven-foot Paul Iardale whose accent I didn't understand and to explain
#
to him once again that you know this has happened can you move that meeting to whatever just
#
the next day and secondly I thought to myself and it was I remember it was very very logical
#
thinking I said look why did I do this IMC course you know I did it for practical knowledge
#
and a job where is my likelihood greater of getting a job is it by writing that exam
#
or is it by doing this internship because at least I'm getting to show what I know there's
#
a greater likelihood of them hiring me right so do I want that piece of paper no I don't
#
want that so I was the only boy once again in my class like in class 12 I had not written
#
the CPMT exam for medical I was again the only boy to not write this exam and everybody
#
said you're nuts why did you study all this way that's really like I can't give up this
#
internship and then I did the internship and then I got my first job at India Abroad which
#
was this expatriate paper for it then used to have a edition in London also apart from
#
US editions and a lot of my friends who joined other places they looked at me as this fool
#
like what had I done then they had their convocation and they took pictures in their black hats
#
and of course I was not there so that well I was not getting any degree and they said
#
well we missed you and how foolish of you to do this but two to three years later I
#
got a call from IMC and they said well we wanted to give you that degree and I said
#
I'm not going to write any exam he said no don't write any exam but I don't know why
#
they called it was out of the blue out of the blue that same professor called Dr. Raghav
#
Chari and I said sir I can't write any exam so he said give me something for the file
#
some newspaper article something or the others has given them so I gave it and they gave
#
my degree finally you know it added up and then I at India Abroad I started my journey
#
but now I started liking journalism because this was a different kind of journalism it
#
was big I mean if I had not interned at Reuters for example if it was somewhere else my distaste
#
for journalism would have continued but it was I was really enjoying it and I had amazing
#
I mean one of my seniors there was Narayanan Madhavan so Gurudev hai maare ko aur so there
#
were you know a couple of others Rahul Sharma was now a dear friend he was the deputy director
#
general of FICCI until recently and editor in chief of Kali's Times so I learnt a lot
#
I was like the youngest there by many many years I learnt a lot at Reuters and the same
#
at India Abroad because they were also writing for an international audience so there the
#
storytelling the craft all of that was like really good and so and because I was the youngest
#
and everybody else was senior there was a gentleman called KS Nair amazing amazing person
#
a guru to me I was there and he lives in Kerala back home now Tarun Basu of course was my
#
first boss KPK Kutty who was earlier the editor in chief of UNI he was there so all the running
#
around assignments I started doing so and there was so much happening at the time my
#
first sort of outstation assignment was the mid-air collision Charkhi Dadri and I remember
#
and I was getting very little money so I was living in like a seven quarter like this little
#
room outside I remember getting a call at that point and rushing to Charkhi Dadri in
#
the middle of the night and walking in this field where there was this debris on one side
#
and walking over limbs that were dismembered etc etc it kind of catapulted me into another
#
universe completely because it was like being thrown into the deep end it was not like you
#
reported on the municipal corporation and a little bit of this beat and that beat and
#
finally you got I was given like the biggest assignment right away it was the top global
#
story and I was doing it Narsimha Rao was being tried at that time in the Hawala case
#
Saint Kitts trial was happening Bofors trial was happening Chandra Swami I mean these names
#
that we had we were heard were right there before our eyes Narsimha Rao would be sitting
#
there Chandra Swami would be sitting there it was a so I grew very fast as a journalist
#
in my head because it involved very very responsible journalism I couldn't go wrong on anything
#
and I started really loving my job and the kind of the fact that there was no beat the
#
fact that it was about the long form it was about storytelling and so I worked at India
#
abroad for three years and then I was looking around for a job and many places I went to
#
they said you know we love your work we don't have a position the position that we have
#
is kind of beneath you it's like a maybe an intern or some and now I wonder for example
#
there was I had one of Time magazine Tim McGurk used to be there and BBC William Woodridge
#
was there and they all said you know we love this we love your work but we don't have a
#
full-time position and I what if I had taken that you know that stringer position at Time
#
magazine I would have gotten confirmed in a few years right and become full-time and
#
then who knows where in the world I would be or join the BBC or so I mean again parts
#
that I did not take which I could easily have taken which would have paid me more than I
#
was getting at the time and etc so at that time I went to the AP the Associated Press
#
and when I went there they made me write an exam I remember my news editor was Donna Bryson
#
a very very warm affectionate African-American lady is such an amazing amazing woman and
#
I wrote my not an exam she just gave me a story to edit and I edited it and she said
#
well I don't know I know what to say it's like ready to go you just got the style right
#
because I was already writing for an overseas audience so I was getting all the background
#
and context everything so I started working at the AP and and immediately what happened
#
is the nuclear test this is 1995 watched by government nuclear tests and now after so
#
firstly I started long form and now I'm in the business of like immediate journalism
#
of immediacy where and this is way before breaking news but or I mean what what we have
#
by way of breaking news today but we were competing against AFP and Reuters for minutes
#
every day and now I look back and laugh at it I mean nobody gave a damn about who reported
#
what one minute in advance but one minute would be a like a lifetime and there used
#
to be this little chart a long chart actually that used to come every day from our Asia
#
office and then from the New York office about who had so many stories published in which
#
paper so there'd be like a score every day so on so and so on tsunami story it'll be
#
1565 so AP Reuters AFP every day we used to see that score and feel good or bad etc and
#
and then the super cyclone happened in Orissa and I was sent there and it again coming face
#
to face with death with destruction all these very very powerful human emotions that I was
#
experiencing very early on in my career that shaped who I was going to be as a communicator
#
and I was in Orissa for a few months couple of months at least because that was the thing
#
with the agency people you know you go in first and you get out last then the Kargil
#
war happened so I think I got the dates wrong earlier so 95 is when I joined India abroad
#
and 99 is when I joined the Associated Press so the Kargil war happens and 98 sorry 98
#
is when I joined that's when the nuclear test took place and the next year the Kargil
#
war happens I'm there when I'm about to go I get chickenpox and I'm like really devastated
#
because I badly wanted to go so my departure is delayed by about 15-20 days my colleague
#
Hima Shukla who now lives in the US she went and I sort of replaced her and again life
#
changing for the first time in a battlefield so close there are the shelling happening
#
you don't realize that you're so close to life and death situations and you see the
#
army at work for the first time understand sort of life from their point of view all
#
those assignments were a great training in life for me and as a person a person who has
#
who developed great empathy because of those experiences and I covered Kashmir extensively
#
I covered insurgency very extensively Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, the northeast so I was able
#
to now start seeing the world from the point of view of others and that's something that
#
I have never let go of I can you know I remember interviewing this Pakistani Jaish-e-Mohammed
#
terrorist who was arrested for bombing something and someone had died and I he was 25 years
#
old I remember and he was from Bahawalpur the same town as Masood Asar and I interviewed
#
him for two hours and then I said so I could I could see the world from his point of view
#
I could see why he did what he did I didn't agree with what he did but I could see why
#
he did it and I could see how he got there and I think since that time I have managed
#
to hold on to this whatever few skills I have but this definitely skill I have is that I
#
have a great sense of proportion I can not like something someone says but still like
#
that person and I can make that difference and that is often challenged on social media
#
because you know like I recently tweeted I unfollowed or muted a lot of people because
#
of what they were on social media but I like who they are in real life and I want to continue
#
liking them as they are but when they come on to Twitter they become other people so
#
I don't want to engage with that version of them so I can I think I'm able to make that
#
difference and all this looking back and now trying to make sense of it I learned at that
#
time in the earlier phase but I was able to look at the world from other points of view
#
and that's a valuable lesson to learn which is extremely handy in today's time when we
#
are so angry so outraged and we want to become outraged we seem to be looking for things
#
to be outraged about all the time you know yesterday my daughter whether he was five
#
so she often becomes upset for no reason and she'll sit in a corner grumpy and I was telling
#
my wife as soon as she's getting upset over nothing she should be on Twitter so yeah that's
#
how and I as a journalist I learned storytelling I did the biggest possible assignments for
#
the AP I was doing the you know the tsunami happened I was in the Andamans for a couple
#
of months I covered earthquakes floods I you know all kinds of natural disasters which
#
meant that I came face to face with a lot of human misery and human pain and resilience
#
I mean I remember when the tsunami happened and they were doing a survey of the Nicobarys
#
tribe they were doing a you know assessing loss for everybody and they had people had
#
to list their losses and people from the quote-unquote mainland listed you know we lost this house
#
and this radio and this TV and the Nicobarys listed well I lost three of my pigs and two
#
of my cows and that's all that mattered to them the homes didn't the huts didn't etc
#
and also I realized that they don't have a word for orphan in their language because
#
nobody's orphan the community takes over the community takes care of them so there's no
#
word for orphan in the Nicobarys language so it was yeah it was an it was a fascinating
#
time and I still love journalism I'm an old-fashioned journalist I miss being a reporter and I'm
#
very I mean it's become a joke now in my office that I have to do reporting sir you've been
#
on Borough so becoming an entrepreneur has you know come with huge sacrifices but yeah
#
I want to be a ground connection reporter not its founder I want to write stories for
#
my show not you know be the storyteller so yeah I'm rambling I think no no I mean that's
#
fascinating and that's that's what I kind of love about my show when I can get people
#
to ramble I remember when you know the tsunami happened I traveled on the coast of Tamil Nadu
#
around that time and I was in fact blogging regularly during that and you know one of
#
the interesting things I remembered is and and it took a while to put the pieces together
#
is that as we would go along the coast at different villages people showed us watches
#
and clocks that had stopped when the waters came in this and they had stopped at different
#
times and you could actually make out through your journey how the water came in just by
#
the stopped times on the clock and that kind of strikes me as you know I remember blogging
#
about that and today just as I you know as you mentioned that you were there it strikes
#
me as just a kind of concrete thing that you would remember and put in your stories and
#
and we'll come to your storytelling later which I'm a big fan of as well but before
#
we get there I had you know a question which is that you know young people today often
#
take it for granted that look we have the world at our fingertips so I can go online
#
and all of journalism is there all of storytelling is there kuch bhi music hai like you said
#
back in the double deck days it used to be so much hard work to get a mixtape made of
#
something that it was supposed to achieve and today everything is there at the fingertips
#
and it also strikes me then that for people of our generation you know privileged as we
#
were but for people of our generation still the world was largely closed there wasn't
#
an internet and a question that often strikes me is of the question of how are we formed
#
like in terms of your journalistic values and aesthetics like you pointed out working
#
at Reuters obviously helped because that sense of values which is there at a top class organization
#
is percolating down and you're continuing with it in India abroad and of course AP but
#
in a sense of storytelling how does that sort of work out because I can kind of look back
#
at my past and say that okay these are the kind of books that I liked growing up and
#
this is sort of what has shaped my aesthetic values and so on and obviously today a kid
#
growing up has the best of world cinema and the best of Bollywood and a kid in Bombay
#
would also have the best of Tamil cinema and Malayalam cinema which otherwise back in the
#
day there would be no access to even that what was that sort of process like of forming
#
your taste and coming to a sense of this is who I am this is what I like this is the kind
#
One of my shortcomings is that I've not watched a lot of films I have not read a lot of books
#
but I've met a lot of people and I often say this that I don't have a lot of knowledge
#
but I have a lot of experience and that comes from the experience of others and the ability
#
to listen to them and live their experience and if I was doing journalism in an Indian
#
newspaper I know that that kind of storytelling would not have its place the kind of long
#
form that you know I would do on a regular basis it was not a luxury I would do it on
#
a regular basis because you were explaining your stories to an international audience
#
and the point was that how would an ignorant American reader who didn't give a damn about
#
India how would you get him or her interested used to be what you know our bosses used to
#
tell us and because I was at India abroad earlier anyway I was right so writing for
#
the foreign audience might seem to some like you were dumbing down things like you were
#
saying the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and things like that but to me it was an opportunity
#
to bring a lot of storytelling into my writing and I used to challenge myself because I didn't
#
want to become predictable in the way I wrote my intro the way I wrote I structured a story
#
was I becoming repetitive was I becoming boring so it's like a challenge you throw at yourself
#
how can you how do you open a story how do you find you know ten different ways to open
#
the same story and I used to love that of course being in an agency often our bylines
#
were not published it would just say AP or when I was at India abroad in India they were
#
going to as INS which was then India abroad news service now into Asian news service so
#
that some amount of anonymity was there so in that sense you were not doing it for fame
#
if I was you know today's journalism and I say this so much that it's become like a
#
cliche to myself also today a lot of journalists seem to believe that they're not covering
#
the news they are the news and I come from a time when the anonymity that we had gave
#
us the humility that we had and which is extremely crucial you had to earn your byline it was
#
not a given if your subscriber in the US or Europe liked your story like really good they
#
would retain your byline or not and suddenly you would get this big bunch where your bylines
#
would be in the Washington Post or the Philadelphia Inquirer or you know some other paper and
#
I find you know I think our generation was extremely uniquely placed and because we've
#
seen both the AD and the BC we've seen the arrival of the internet for God's sake you
#
know that's a path-breaking moment in our lives but we've also seen what happened before
#
that so we carry the right amount of nostalgia and the right amount of modernity among us
#
which is a deadly combination nobody else can match it nobody who came before us or
#
after us can match what we have it's a beautiful mix we are a you know that test tube which
#
will never get these two chemicals together we've seen that television that opened with
#
the creaking you know loud sound that wouldn't shutter we've paid one rupee and one and a
#
half rupee per song to get our you know cassettes filled with the songs we love we have seen
#
that time before air conditioners before coolers and been fine with it we've heard that ugly
#
sound of dial-up which would come at the end with this rough sound which was the most beautiful
#
sound in the world because we were connected to the internet and we would get you to our
#
yahoo mail or you know our yahoo search or whatever and here we are in the world that
#
is now already you know experiencing artificial intelligence and virtual reality and augmented
#
reality who can match this life I would pay to be you know born between these two eras
#
so it's I think it's fascinating and I think that has come across in all my work where
#
I am able to hold on to a lot of nostalgia to hold on I know those people and in our
#
stories I think I'm able to keep alive those people in some way and a lot of people often
#
ask me and I also wonder my youngest known listener is five years old like everyday listener
#
and my oldest is like grandparents why would a five-year-old or let alone a five-year-old
#
why would a 12 year old 13 year old 16 year old listen to our stories they don't relate
#
to this world I was in Kasali many years ago and there was this rooftop restaurant the
#
hotel was owned by my friends who used to push me to sing every evening and I was singing
#
a song I had written and I found this young boy 18 19 years old who was singing along
#
and came up to me and said sir I cry when I listen to this song and I'm thinking why
#
does this guy relate to it he was not even born I think or must have been very young
#
when the song was written and the answer is as follows the answer is that as a communicator
#
if our work has universal emotions we can never fail and it's a science I've learned
#
during the course of my journey when I have narrated stories and I've had people from
#
Kashmir call in from so poor from from northeast from where in the case of Kashmir you know
#
they would not like the idea of India but in in the night they would hear stories from
#
this guy who's rooting and setting his stories in that very idea right that very geography
#
that very place and crying with those stories and why because there is a universal emotion
#
there the father-son emotion the feeling of loss the the words that we talk about or when
#
I get a call from a listener in Guwahati who very sweetly says a male listener who says
#
why does he say that why does he relate to these stories or people in the southern part
#
of the country or different age groups or different people from different social strata
#
so when I started this journey I had no excel sheet in front of me I had no plan in front
#
of me I didn't know any kind of stories that I wanted to narrate but I was just in the
#
first season I wrote all the stories and I was just it was my stories from my growing
#
up years my small town Lakhnau they were set in this imaginary city of Yadshah but they
#
were actually everything had either happened with me or around me or I had seen that and
#
I found that I might be digressing in this answer but I found that I had scraped somewhere
#
that the urban dust of you know of the average listener in a country with some of the oldest
#
and richest storytelling traditions of the world we had forgotten them and you know I
#
have these two imaginary milestones in my head about how did storytelling die or rather
#
the simple act of parents and grandparents narrating stories to their children first
#
the cable TV arrived until that point Doordarshan was kind of held the integrity compass when
#
it came to content whatever else you might call it it believed in good content but that
#
became a level playing field in a bad way in my view when cable TV arrived because suddenly
#
now it was all about you know winning the audiences so different kind of content was
#
there but it had huge takers so suddenly when your 9 p.m. programming 10 p.m. programming
#
started that simple act of narrating stories to your children went out of the window economic
#
liberalization or the economic reforms when they happened and you know I sometimes draw
#
the direct linkage between the economic reforms and storytelling might seem odd but suddenly
#
the father or the mother who used to come home at 530 was now coming home at 930 because
#
privatization brought different work cultures different working hours the whole definition
#
of nine to five was changing and so the time spent with the family where storytelling was
#
a very strong bond within families that change even grandparents became busy and then of
#
course arrival of the mobile phones etc etc so when we started storytelling it was nothing
#
new we were just scraping the dust of the urban existence of people and a lot of people
#
realized that this is the world that they left behind this is the world that they miss
#
but they might not have heard that voice in so many ways also nostalgia had not been creatively
#
captured until then the only reference before that to nostalgia was Ali had their song Purani
#
jeans and after that nothing really had happened I remember writing a piece in brunch which
#
kind of started this entire journey I was working at Hindustan Times I was the deputy
#
executive editor and I was doing a story a series called Mission Kashmir but I was traveling
#
with a Kashmiri Muslim and a Kashmiri Pandit colleague and we used to sort of look for
#
stories in remote Kashmir as we journeyed and Poonam Saxena was then the editor of
#
brunch said ki tum kere the cover story likho gaye tum brunch ke toh likho gaye on 50 years
#
of Doordarshan and I wrote this story which I realized was my own story as I started I
#
started writing it reluctantly but then I realized it was me it was it had my grandmother
#
was coming with guavas and salt and that little a different kind of a salt called Buknu sprinkled
#
on it I remember that it was about that wooden case of the TV and India versus West Indies
#
cricket matches and Srikanth and Malcolm Marshall and you know that era and in the response
#
to that one piece told me that it had touched some raw nerve which I didn't even know existed
#
and that then led to me sort of creating this music company had approached me and then we
#
did a music we created a band called band called nine and then we did this album called
#
rewind and then when we wanted a radio partner for that it became a radio show and all of
#
that and everything then came together again the journalism the nostalgia the small town
#
sort of experiences all of it was coming together and because I was straddling these two worlds
#
I was able to remain content it was I think it was a it was a new take on nostalgia because
#
it was contemporary at one level but it had roots and it in that sense it defined how
#
we are you know millions of us urban Indians who we are you know that when when a pooja
#
is happening at our home we do think of whether we can look for that kurta pajama you know
#
kept somewhere away which we would otherwise you know might not wear enough for denim jeans
#
that's who we are that's so the contemporary and our roots they walk side by side they
#
exist side by side and I also realized that audiences also have a split personality young
#
people I suddenly realized that when I started storytelling I started with of course not
#
because I wanted to but because I wanted to sell the CDs of my album and promote it and
#
etc I'd done just a three month contract with big FM to do it and I thought I'd do it and
#
I'm out of it my album would work but at that point also I thought that I was my audience
#
was 30 35 and above people who would have some nostalgia and I suddenly realized that
#
there were 12 year olds 13 year old 16 year olds who were loving these stories and I that's
#
when I realized that it's we the communicators who stereotype our audiences it's we who say
#
that oh this is a 13 year old audience well oh they'll be dumb no it's we who was dumb
#
we don't work hard for our audiences we don't create good content that they would like it's
#
not that they don't like this stuff we didn't work hard enough for them to like our stuff
#
and so they've been great learnings as a communicator in this entire sort of road that I have traveled
#
I feel this and I quite mean it when I say that I've become a better person in narrating
#
stories because once again that thing I started with my journalism every day I become the
#
other every day I become someone else and in doing so I am able to see the world from
#
someone else's point of view it might be an unpopular person it might be an angry person
#
it might be a woman it might be a little child and that that helps me in my real life also
#
look at everybody from and look at the world from their point of view so a number of strands
#
I mean one of course is very resonant to me when you talk about you know us sort of being
#
that bridge generation which is kind of rooted to the past and nostalgic about it but also
#
there is brave new world we've entered and equally I'm you know it's almost become a
#
cliche to my listeners how I keep saying people contain multitudes and what social media often
#
tends to do is become very reductive that you you know you choose your ideological tribe
#
and you are in your echo chamber and then you are sort of trying to raise your status
#
within it oh don't get me started on social media yeah so here's a thought that kind of
#
has been with me for a few weeks I recently so I teach this writing course where I talk
#
about how we should always look for the concrete and favor the concrete over the abstract because
#
that is what makes things relatable I did an episode with Achal Malhotra recently she
#
did that great book on you know memories of partition where again she's exploring concrete
#
objects and through that what you find is that you know when you get to that intimate
#
level of a particular object you see the good side of people but when you get to larger
#
abstractions you know like nationalism or like religion and all of those and it's those
#
abstractions that can sometimes tear you apart and like one observation of mine obviously
#
is that what seems to have happened though I will hold that cable television and liberalization
#
are a big net benefit but I understand your point exactly that what seems to have happened
#
is that they allow abstraction to scale and therefore they subdue the concrete by giving
#
it less time so instead of you know a father sitting with his daughter and telling her
#
a story at 8 p.m. you have the father coming home late and you have these toxic narratives
#
of whatever is happening on news TV dominating and one of the things that I love about your
#
storytelling is how you privilege the contract like the concrete like there's a story called
#
Sare Gamma Pa which you know wrote in your first season which you know towards the beginning
#
has this girl who loves music and she's gotten married and she's entering her marital home
#
and she overhears a new husband telling the servant ki ye you know harmonium harmonium
#
store you know and she's passionate about music that's a big passion and suddenly that
#
kind of brings home and that whole shift is so beautifully communicated by that concrete
#
object and in one of your other conversations you know you spoke about how so many people
#
got in touch with you after that and said apko kaise pata ye to meri ma ki story ye
#
to meri story hai it was really amazing so my question is is that you know this sort
#
of guideline that I for example tell my writing students that privilege the concrete or whatever
#
this golden rule of storytelling almost is something that completely comes to life in
#
your work now when you are getting drawn to storytelling and you've already spoken about
#
how that like I was actually going to ask you a question of about your transition from
#
journalism to radio but while you were speaking I realized that it's not really a transition
#
that your storytelling you've just kind of move from form to the other but my question
#
now here is that you know we will read all these books of writing advice and some people
#
will do courses like mine and there will be all these guidelines you know people who want
#
to write for films will buy Robert McKee story or all these Sid Field books or ye three act
#
structure hai ye waise hai there's a great book by Christopher Booker called the seven
#
basic plots which is ki saati kahaniya hai everything is a version on those now as you
#
are discovering the craft of storytelling and the other thing that I wanted to ask you
#
about which is related is that you've done something extraordinary in the sense that
#
you've not only told your own stories but you've taken the stories of others and you
#
know made them come to life while the conventional understanding and my understanding also I
#
must confess would be that not everybody can be a great storyteller but what you seem to
#
have done is almost democratized that and told stories of many others and given form
#
So give me some of your sort of insights about the craft of storytelling and how your understanding
#
of the craft of storytelling evolved in this time like is there a structure and so often
#
what can happen is a convention can become a formula so from something positive it can
#
become a negative so do you think in terms of structure what are the important facets
#
of storytelling that you consider how do you approach the art of storytelling.
#
So like I said in the beginning my biggest strength in my view is that I have no baggage
#
of convention I have no I don't know how something should be done so I cook up some way of doing
#
that I didn't know how to start a band or start a role media company or do on camera
#
interviews I had never done video.
#
So when radio started and it started again I was asked by the CEO Tarun Katyal who now
#
heads Zee5 that you will do a show and I said I don't think I can do radio.
#
He said no you can do it.
#
I said okay I will tell stories and I was just I was bluffing my way actually because
#
before this what had happened was that when we formed the band Amit Khanna was then the
#
chairman of Reliance Entertainment he called me and long story short I mean he said you
#
should do an album so I realized that piracy had killed this whole business and they said
#
you should do live shows and earn money and then you pay us our advance back and etc.
#
And I mean I had never remotely been connected with anything like a band I don't even actually
#
understand English music one of my big regrets because I don't understand the accent people
#
laugh at it but I don't understand it.
#
So when we formed this band with a few friends who were musicians etc. and I said let's create
#
a storytelling band I said okay how will that work because I was fetish for like new ideas
#
I was just bluffing my way I said okay well the storyteller will start the story and he'll
#
go off stage the song will start which is written by the same writer and then he'll
#
come back and continue the story and then said well this can't work and then I sort
#
of convinced them we debuted at the Kalaguda festival and just like I had kind of remained
#
try to remain relevant in a band as a writer because they said okay you know I said let's
#
form a writer-led band they said what will a writer do on stage and in that instant moment
#
that was truly a life-changing moment because I said it out of nowhere I said well the writer
#
will tell a story and all I was doing was I wanted to not be the non-playing captain
#
to sit there and you know watch that was all I wanted to remain relevant and that had led
#
me to this moment when I was being offered a radio show and only to remain relevant
#
I said okay let's do storytelling okay so I went back and I wrote a story and the story
#
was called Diwali Ki Raat it was my first story it's extremely simple and until then
#
I had never written a Hindi story in my life I had just written one story in English which
#
was an awful story in my childhood that was it in a real sense I had never even written
#
a story in my life so forget craft or anything like that I didn't know you know how to structure
#
it it was a simple story about a man who cannot go home for Diwali and I think this thing
#
that I talk about the universal emotion a lot of people related to it because whichever
#
faith you follow not going home not being able to go home for your festival is a very
#
common thing and when they okayed the show I barely had one or two stories ready and
#
you know suddenly I was riding a tiger because it was a daily show so I would write all night
#
and I would record in the morning and then have lunch at the big FM office and then go
#
back and start writing again it was like the toughest and most creatively satisfying three
#
months of my life I was writing a new plot every day new characters were not even writing
#
like a whole series and that's when I started to think very differently so I would go to
#
like I'm sitting here there's an armchair next to me in my study and I would think that
#
okay what if this armchair was telling its story how many people would have sat on it
#
or how many things it must have heard how many secrets it must have heard once I wrote
#
a story of a Chavanni's story when they were phasing out the 25 paisa coin and Chavanni
#
is telling her own story so I started again this whole thing of seeing the world from
#
other people's point of view I was kind of extending that too often seeing it from inanimate
#
objects point of view and there was a story on this old postman who was about to retire
#
and his son wants to move away and he like resents it and the wife explains and the grandson
#
says papa baba aapka time gaya abhi email karna email ka time aagaya because he is a
#
postman but I was I think I was learning as I was writing and and there was no other storytelling
#
show to be afraid of or to compare it against so I had no nothing holding me back I had
#
the creative control so slowly I think what emerged was I mean in the first season again
#
I mean there was no craft I followed there was no rule I followed because I knew no rules
#
but what happened after that was that a lot of young people tried to come to me ki hum
#
likhna chaate hain kahania and I said look main kahania kharidne ke dhande mein nahin
#
main teacher ka beta hu to saath batke kar saktein thoda aap se sikhunga thoda main aapko
#
sikhaunga so when season one was over none of that was on my mind when season two started
#
between that there was a gap and some young people started coming to my home in Bombay
#
and because I had called them on Monday at 11 o'clock every Monday I used to call them
#
at 11 and I said okay I have a you know I have a thing for naming and branding things
#
and stuff so I said okay let's call this something I think it looks like this will become something
#
big I said after the first two meetings I said let's call it the Monday Mundly and then
#
the Monday went off and it became just the Mundly now how do you create a form I didn't
#
know how to teach writing or anything and the structure of my small living room was
#
such that there were two sofas on opposite sides so they would all sit there you know
#
before I knew it there were like 10 12 people coming all these aspirants and I used to sit
#
on the same rocking chair like this old grandfather and so one person would narrate a story and
#
then I would for the first few times I would such a what did you think of it and we would
#
go around the room when everybody used to say what they thought of the story and slowly
#
a form was emerging a process was emerging until then there was no process now they couldn't
#
I said you can't say I liked it if you liked it why did you like it if you didn't like
#
it why did you not like it so in the beginning it was me who was doing most of the talking
#
because I spoke in the end and slowly as we went by I realized that I was doing the least
#
talking because they had said what I wanted to which was delightful because their craft
#
of appreciating or not liking a story and even you know I was also now analyzing stories
#
what about this protagonist and slowly we evolved a science to it so it's a six segment
#
story on radio the first segment kind of introduces the protagonist and something of the plot
#
the premise the one-liner the second takes that forward and around the third the conflict
#
sets in and you know so on so forth then we started enjoying that process so I did for
#
example I did something called ending punch so I did five store and I said I'll write
#
the first one so the story was it would start with one moment and you had to write five
#
separate stories with the same names of the character and five completely different stories
#
not not even endings so story was that there was a park in an in a corner of the park was
#
a bench there was a woman sitting she was sitting seriously and there was a guy looking
#
for something in the grass that was the moment who are they what's their relationship are
#
they strangers do they know each other what's he looking for the grass for in the grass
#
we don't know so that evolved then I used to say okay move the camera the story is told
#
from one person's point of view move it to that subsidiary character's point of view
#
the POV changes what does the story look like now but most of all what is a story a story
#
is a journey that takes the listener from a certain place through a certain place to
#
a certain place so a letter could also be a story a page written in a diary could also
#
be a story as long as the listener has traveled somewhere between the beginning of the story
#
and the end of it so we started experimenting we started doing concepts like I will give
#
you the title of a story and you will write it and today the titles will be around colors
#
the story is lull this week I'll give you stories around different times of the day
#
so your story is that's the title your story is so I think we were having fun it was like
#
a laboratory and we were evolving I now regret I should have recorded a lot of you know I
#
speak passionately at these mandalis and I often say the same things and etc but slowly
#
I think the craft emerged that that yes there was some kind of a science behind it I was
#
also extremely mindful that as we got along as we you know down the show that we'd never
#
wanted to stereotype or objectify people on the basis of their color of skin or weight
#
or which part of the country they came from or the usual shortcuts that communicators
#
use on radio or tv I was also I didn't want my listener to feel defeated at the end there
#
was one story I had done so there was one story called meri pyari eks patni aur uske
#
agle din thi mere pyari eks husband meri pyari eks husband mein jo wife hai she is a
#
very evil character who you know really destroys deceives this guy and a lot of the listeners
#
wrote in that's the only story they wrote in they said sir we didn't like this story
#
because this was an ugly character and there they should be no ugly characters in yaj shahar
#
because this is our catharsis this is our de-stressing time so there are negative characters
#
there are you know characters you don't like but you can't have a character who's out
#
to destroy someone and there's no arc there's no redemption there's there's nothing the
#
bad person gets away so those were some of the things that I like I'm not doing these
#
are not documenting or time so they will I'm very mindful of the impact of whatever I do
#
whether it's storytelling whether it's journalism the impact is hugely important to me and that
#
impact should be either through journalism you solve problems there's a hospital that
#
has shut down you get it started there's some injustice being done you know you point it
#
out through storytelling a lot of people have told us that their depression was healed and
#
people of different age groups students have said it from quota young adults have said
#
it young couples have said it older people you know grandparents have said it so all
#
kinds of people have said their depression was healed that really that I mean is so exciting
#
what can be more exciting as a communicator a lot of young people have said they got better
#
grades because of our stories so people and again students they say that because we didn't
#
feel the stress people have said we are able to do math better because while we're doing
#
math we are your stories playing and I can never understand that but I've heard it so
#
often that I'm curious to find out the link so the impact is so you know you could you
#
could say that these stories are far removed from reality that nobody not nobody but the
#
good people don't lose in them you could say that but at one level they are about reality
#
and they are about how we think the world should be I mean and an interpretation of
#
living with differences with living it with our shortcomings with coming to terms with
#
our past our present and things like that so but the one thing that kind of saddens
#
me is that the literary world does not see my work as literature they look down upon
#
it they look I think they look at it just like you know that this is entertainment when
#
we were writing stories whenever we write the brief in the monthly is that you're not
#
writing for radio you're writing literature but because it's on a mass medium because
#
it's not in the form of a book because it did not first appear in the form of a book
#
I've and that upsets me that is classist that upsets me other than that I think I'm extremely
#
happy that our stories have had an impact that many of the forms of communication might
#
not have had I often tell our monthly writers that you are what you're doing is far more
#
powerful than some of the biggest singers some of the biggest artists some of the biggest
#
actors because what you're doing makes people make their life choices we've had so many
#
people writing in hundreds and hundreds saying that we repaired our marriage because we heard
#
such and such story my family was breaking apart my mother and my wife were not getting
#
along and then we heard this story and we wept and they wept and we became fine or I
#
was in a bad relationship and I realized that and I got the courage to break up with my
#
boyfriend or my husband because of certain story I mean imagine that power that is the
#
power that our stories have had on our audiences and people write to us in the most personal
#
of ways I mean what are the form of communication would have this so it's a great act of responsibility
#
also that has to come with it yeah so I'll make a bunch of sort of speculative points
#
there one as far as all these people tell you that you know it helps them do math if
#
your story is not in the background that would simply be because of your very soothing voice
#
like when I am working on something I'll also put on some soothing instrumental music generally
#
but something that doesn't really interfere with me so maybe that's a function of your
#
voice but getting sort of more serious I think one I mean there are of course many reasons
#
behind the snobbishness of the literary thoughts and where that could be coming from but one
#
interesting sort of distinction and I'm just thinking aloud is that whereas that kind of
#
literary writing sets out to reflect the human condition what you try to do in your storytelling
#
is also address the human condition in the sense that people crave stories for whatever
#
reasons and you fulfill a certain kind of narrative craving within them now again thinking
#
aloud and I don't know if you have any thoughts on this but what we see increasingly in modern
#
times is that you know we know that people explain the world to themselves through stories
#
but there is also a craving for a certain kind of story which often baffles me whether
#
it's sort of cue and on movement in the US of conspiracy theories or whether it's what
#
what happened here recently in Mumbai after you know SSR died and there were all these
#
conspiracy theories that actually he invented 4G and that's why they got rid of him or he
#
had a cure for covid so that's why they got rid of him and all these yeah yeah so there
#
was he had a patent for covid and all of that and that's why they bumped him off there was
#
another story which had Akshay Kumar as a villain because apparently SSR had invented
#
4G these were all happening on Twitter and all of that and I'd come across them and take
#
screenshots because what if they disappear but they're just all over you can find them
#
and it kind of so it's not just the stuff that is on news television the toxic stuff
#
of murder and drugs and all that there are also these completely wild angles which become
#
viral because people want to believe the more outrageous it is it seems people want to believe
#
now I can understand that people find your sort of stories soothing and meaningful because
#
one they provide a sort of comfort and tradition and all of that too they make you see the
#
world through the eyes of the other like you've pointed out about how you know a story by
#
your daughter can be so meaningful to you because through her eyes you realize how tall
#
a table is or how high a door is and I can see why that can actually change people with
#
the way they look at the world but you know do you have any speculations on why there
#
is this deep desire for all these bizarre kind of stories as well like we've seen recently
#
I think it is a titillation of sorts that we want you know did what happened to Sebastian
#
Bose we don't know right but a part of us wants to believe that he's alive that he was
#
alive to a certain point or whatever so I think this side of us that does not want closure
#
on certain things things that might be dear to us like with Sebastian Bose like with Sushant
#
Singh Rajput or things that had a packed explanation that doesn't satisfy us also we have been
#
fed with so much by way of research for conspiracies now you have OTT shows that actually teach
#
you how to kill right and you know you have a ustra here's the part of the neck where
#
you hit and here's how the blood comes out you can watch it like so before OTT I mean
#
so I might seem like a very old-fashioned person when it comes to communication but
#
I realized that my views have been very very consistent there was once a celebrated Hindi
#
author on a TV show with me this was after that song came out DK Bose and they put me
#
on TV and and I said like what nonsense is this what about why can't good lyrics be
#
written was my point of view and he said he's no more he said
#
you don't want to let the dirty feet of the poor come into your house and the poor speak
#
like this the poor curse so I said don't the rich curse how did this poor angle come
#
and he said we are showing the reality so I said if you're showing the reality well
#
there are many other realities you know which might be even more gory the act of going to
#
the latrine every day why don't you show that if this is not reality this is titillation
#
and that is the tussle what is the purpose of communication and what is the purpose of
#
a communicator if it is to solve problems for sure show the grisly gory reality which
#
is what journalism does but if it if the purpose is to show the unseeable or what was earlier
#
seen as unseeable I mean at that point what I said there was no OTT then but I said when
#
you have these songs with lyrics like these with lyrics that objectify women that I will
#
become like women and you eat me and when you're doing that and the same song is playing
#
at the school reception at the hospital reception on mass media TV I mean what are you doing
#
are you realizing the impact of it are you able to limit children or young adults from
#
watching it no you're not but in the name of the freedom of expression you're not realizing
#
the impact that you'd most communicators do not realize their power or if they do they
#
don't give a damn and that includes journalists that includes writers when a journalist stands
#
and holds a mic and says teen aatankwadi shayar mein ghusaye hain you know what that does
#
that what that does is that someone will not send their daughter to their friend's birthday
#
at the McDonald's because they said it on TV so that journalist that reporter for him
#
or her it's just a news bulletin and it's over they don't know their power and if they
#
know their power because now a lot of them do they are very powerful then they're not
#
using that power responsibly and the same is for lyric writers it's the same for film
#
producers and I seem like you know I seem so old-fashioned and like apna yeh dhol bajate
#
rehte hain ki responsibility honiche communicators ki but I strongly believe that I strongly
#
believe that you know with the explosion of content in our face today what I'm so scared
#
of what my daughter watches because the algorithm of the YouTube she might start with a nursery
#
rhyme or Peppa Pig and might land up god knows where and I have no control over that
#
right so that bothers me these days as you know I'm infuriated against this whole white
#
hat junior business right it it's not about a company it's not about it's about the fact
#
that it's about the audacity that you've crossed one more Laxman Rekha you've crossed many
#
Laxman Rekhas when the chocolate industry came when the diamond industry was invented
#
out of nowhere it was you know this FOMO fear of missing out this whole IT and medical thing
#
that you and I have we lived through that era if we were not clearing those exams but
#
childhood for the education space a sacred space however sold out it might be I mean
#
that's where I draw the line and as a father of a five-year-old I will not take this and
#
I will speak out in which I have been doing so the responsibility so for example you know
#
I might go as a founder of a company with a business idea that is a great story and
#
I might get some 50 million dollars of investment today will the investor or investors look
#
at the social impact or the you have fantasy cricket apps today you're gambling you're
#
legitimizing gambling and you're encouraging people not just encouraging nudging them you're
#
you're putting you know campaigns of tens of millions of dollars behind them so that
#
people young people go and gamble do you even know what that will do does is there no sense
#
of responsibility for that universe or is because you're your heroes in that investing
#
business are the people the blue-eyed boys because they're and they're mostly boys are
#
you know the flavor of the season who's got this investment of a hundred million two hundred
#
million one billion that's it what they're doing what is the impact of that nobody gives
#
a damn that's why my Twitter bio the first line reads decency is my is my business model
#
and through everything I will stand for that that through whether you know so we doing
#
the slow movement now which includes slow content slow products so and so experiences
#
we selling slow cookies also but there is an honesty in it that I am standing for this
#
there's no this will not be lying on on a label like you hear all the time if our venture
#
is selling honey I guarantee you that it's pure so it should reflect that honesty and
#
that's what bothers me that everything cannot be up for sale if you are a content creator
#
you have a huge power if I was the head of one of these big TV networks imagine the power
#
I would wield and I would say hey let's do something that ends female infanticide because
#
I know I have that power through content if my you know tiny little effort on radio can
#
have people say that they were healed of depression well imagine if I had a gazillion times more
#
eyeballs so that bothers me and I think that's a conversation which is uncomfortable I might
#
seem like that angry Fufa in a wedding jo kone me rehte aur humesha gussa ho jatein
#
but yes I am that angry Fufa who's bothered by a lot of things and in the middle of all
#
that I don't want to be perpetually upset perpetually angry perpetually outraged because
#
if I'm outraged all the time on social media it draws me away from the other things I do
#
which have a positive effect which have a good effect so those things sap my mind if
#
someone abuses you on Twitter it affects my day it ruins my day some unknown person who
#
never gives a damn who abused you and went on to the next person to abuse but you feel
#
so defeated yeh kone yaar isne aisa kaise kya diya yeh mere saamne hota iski aakhon
#
me aake dalke me kaita ki tu soch bhi raha hai to kya bol raha hai bhai agar wo aapke
#
saamne hota to bolta hi nahi but have you heard of the Ashish Nehra approach to internet
#
trolling no what is that so Ashish Nehra was once in some kind of controversy and he was
#
getting madly trolled on Twitter and people abusing him and all so three days after it
#
started a reporter went to him and said ki Nehra ji yeh sab trolling ho raha hai what
#
is your reaction so Nehra ji is like what trolling and then he takes out his phone and
#
shows him and it's one of those Nokia push button phones so you know if you don't allow
#
yourself to be trolled they can't troll you I mean what they're gonna stand outside your
#
house and throw emojis at you or something yeah let's you know there is so much more
#
to talk about let's take a quick commercial break and then we'll get to speed towards
#
the end all right if you enjoy listening to the scene on the unseen you can play a part
#
in keeping the show alive the scene on the unseen has been a labor of love for me I've
#
enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations expanding my brain and my universe
#
and hopefully yours as well but while the work has been its own reward I don't actually
#
make much money off the show although the scene on the unseen has great numbers advertisers
#
haven't really woken up to the insane engagement level of podcasts and I do many many hours
#
of deep research for each episode besides all the logistics of producing the show myself
#
scheduling guests booking studios paying technicians the travel and so on so well I'm trying a
#
new way of keeping the scene going and that involves you my proposition for you is this
#
for every episode of the scene on the unseen that you enjoy buy me a cup of coffee or even
#
a lavish lunch whatever you feel is worth you can do this by heading over to scene unseen
#
dot i n slash support and contributing an amount of your choice this is not a subscription
#
the scene on the unseen will continue to be free on all podcast apps and at scene unseen
#
dot i n this is just a gesture of appreciation help keep the sink going scene unseen dot
#
i n slash support welcome back to the scene on the unseen I'm chatting with Rilesh Mishra
#
who just described himself with one of my favorite words in the Hindi language he said
#
he is the angry Fufa which is such a delightful word so you know one of the other before we
#
I also want to move on to the art of conversation and chat about that because again that's something
#
at which was such a master but before we go on to that a broader question that I had earlier
#
that you know you've come from a slightly different background from somebody who's been
#
a journalist for Reuters and AP and all of that in the sense that you've grown up in
#
these small towns which are also different from each other as you pointed out and you've
#
been multilingual in the sense key coffee journalists whom I see around me are you know
#
English English English everything is English and you know I used to read Hindi once upon
#
a time but now I don't know if I'll be able to read a book in Hindi for example but in
#
your case it's sort of been an even influence and does that also shape the sort of person
#
you are that sort of being easily multilingual and you know does it shape the way you look
#
at the world and does it then also shape the form of whatever you do I think so I think
#
it gives me a kind of a familiarity for my audiences and also a confidence because for
#
example if I mean I've been an English journalist for my entire work life but I started Hindi
#
storytelling and then started ground connection and it was all Hindi journalism so often
#
when I tweet in English some people say sir Hindi me bol do sir Hindi me bhi toh kabhi
#
bol diya karo kuch troll type toh phir mai bolta hu ki toh mai kahania kya Farsi me suna
#
toh bhai so I think I have that gives me that authority I would say with the English speaking
#
world it gives me a slight subversiveness to tell them in English that there are other
#
realities especially in the rural context so often the kind of stereotypes that the English
#
media has and perpetuates about rural India I think I can rather than looking in from
#
the outside I can tell them in the language that they understand in and that gives me
#
a slight subversiveness and yeah so I think it helps.
#
One of the things you've spoken about with regard to storytelling is you're seeing the
#
world through the eyes of the others so therefore empathy goes up it changes you as a person
#
and so on and so forth which and it seems to me that the conversations that you have
#
for example whether in the slow interview or all of the other you know the slow cafe
#
which you've done recently in the lockdown seem to me to be also an extension of that
#
because like what we see in modern conversations which really irritates me which I see in modern
#
interviews is that I don't see people listening so the interviewer will be interrupting all
#
the time he'll be trying to show how smart he is and you know and he'll be playing the
#
gotcha game and it says Stephen Covey once said that you're not listening to understand
#
you're listening to reply which is almost a toxic habit and what you do in all of your
#
interviews so well is that you'll just give the person all the space in the world like
#
one of the things that I love about your interviews which it you know takes to an extent greater
#
than with any other interviewer I've seen is that you really allow for silence that
#
there will be these long stretches of silence I remember your interview with Tigma Unshudholia
#
when you asked him about his friend Irfan Khan who is so ill and he's lost in thought
#
and you don't say a word you just you let the silence be there you don't edit it out
#
and I found that's and you've done that in other conversations as well that there are
#
moments where you know you haven't felt it I have to force the conversation along flow
#
chalna chahi abhi mein kya puchu oh this is the next question on my list yeh puchta hu
#
instead you just how did you arrive at that thank you that's a very perceptive question
#
so the slow interview was not planned as a show like most things in my life when over
#
the last many years when I taking a step back I was living in Bombay and I started Gown
#
Connection in 2012 and then I was coming here once in a while I used to come for 15 days
#
20 days literally living out of a suitcase and then going back and then one day my wife
#
asked me where's home and it was a again a life-changing question because I couldn't
#
give a clear answer if it was Lucknow or Bombay and I said that it does she said well if you
#
are so passionate about Gown Connection then let's move here which was unthinkable for
#
me at the time completely unthinkable because I was then working with the biggest of movie
#
studios etc etc and I was fairly sorted so anyway I started coming here and over the
#
of course running Gown Connection has been an entire other battle itself my biggest battle
#
of my life but the school that my parents started that got left behind in some way in
#
the battle to run Gown Connection and that used to give me guilt so when I went there
#
on one of the occasions I said let's build a room here and so that we can come and at
#
least stay here once in a while and if I'm here then I'll look at the school also and
#
its problems and maybe I can help address them in some way so my wife then built three
#
rooms and little drawing room and all that and I had never thought I would spend any
#
considerable time there but it came out quite well and she said she one day said that I
#
need a name for this because sign lagana hai bahar so I didn't want to give a name like
#
Lands End or so and so Kutir or so and so Villa or whatever I didn't think much I thought
#
for just two minutes I said let's call it slow and she immediately approved it liked
#
it I said you know it should be called what we feel here the state of mind here we call
#
it slow and then I started going there staying there so the mental block of being cut off
#
from the city slowly evaporated and I started liking that and I used to post pictures on
#
social media sometimes so my daughter who I'm delighted that she has friends in the
#
village also friends from rich families also friends and you know my parents middle class
#
building also so some picture of hers I put with her friends in the village on the veranda
#
which is like black and white like a chess board colored so Pankaj Tripathi is someone
#
I knew on social media I never met him so I was going to Bombay and I messaged him
#
like mille thein finally he said main to aapke shahir mein so I met him the next day and
#
I said kaun chaltein so I drove and we I had asked two camera persons to sit just sit
#
behind us and shoot randomly and we were talking and normally and they were shooting and we
#
were so unprepared that we had one mic between the two of us so there was no show or anything
#
like that planned when we reached and we spoke some more there and then when Pankaj left
#
I said it was something like that Monday-Monday moment when I said yeh kuch bada ban jayega
#
lagta hai isko ek naam de dete hain the same thing here I said lag raha hai ki kuch yeh
#
achha hai isko naam dete hain because it is done at slow let's call it the slow interview
#
and it also very well and very honestly defines that conversation that this is not an interview
#
which will be sensational or hurried or will have a you know what do they call it rapid
#
fire or you know this is not that so very clearly for the audience it defines it so
#
we put it out and once again I was at that juncture in my life when I was doing something
#
I had never done I didn't know how to do it I have never I am a newspaper person I had
#
while I am not afraid of the camera I have come in front of the camera for different
#
reasons but I was not a visual person so now here I was kind of directing a show and so
#
the camera team initially and very capable colleagues they said sir wo yeh axis hota
#
hai aise yeh axis cross mat kareega maine ka bhaad mein gaya axis tumhara maine ka ek
#
word yad rakh lo takya ke niche list le na lurking the camera should be lurking that's
#
it two people are talking and the camera can be anywhere it's lurking and we started working
#
on camera it was exciting for me I was experiencing the same thrill again like we used to do these
#
kahani ek ending paanch those little experiments with something that you have control over
#
but no conventional knowledge of so there's no pressure ki wo mere purane boss ne bola
#
tha ki aise hi kiya jata hai when like when I was doing storytelling if somebody else
#
was doing it before me I would have that pressure ki wo to aise bolte hain aise bolte hain wo
#
yes I could be myself so I always narrated stories as if I am narrating to a person next
#
to me on a park bench that was always my reference and here I was again you know at this juncture
#
of my creative career where it was the same excitement of starting something again and
#
I told our team that this is not an interview this is a scene imagine that this is a scene
#
from a film how would the camera look at the subjects they would not look at like you know
#
two people sitting left right and you're looking at it right so we evolved a new visual grammar
#
we broke all templates of how interviews should be shot because I didn't know how they should
#
be shot my ignorance led to us creating a new form and suddenly these colleagues of
#
ours who are from the biggest TV channels and they left that world came here and they
#
were I think somewhere conscious and unsure that we are breaking all the rules what will
#
the veterans think and suddenly they were getting messages like oh my god this we've
#
never seen anything like this what are these camera angles then the new video editor arrived
#
and I remember he edited the Manoj Bajpai interview and I watched it and I said my reaction
#
was where are the pauses shit sir those were long pauses I said pauses are the show so
#
I mean that I'm quite happy you pointed out the pauses and the silences and that's what
#
it this is not a show that looks for headlines this is not a headline hunting show this is
#
not a sensational show there have been at least two occasions when guests have called
#
after the show which any other TV channel person would jump because you know they were
#
controversial or too honest and hence you know controversial or whatever and I think
#
it goes back to the humility of communicators it goes back to knowing and realizing that
#
this show is not about me my playground is separate when I have the mic when it's me
#
talking and people are listening that is a separate playground this is not that this
#
is I am and I often tell this to guests in these exact same words it's kind of a cliche
#
I tell them that I am a postman I am a librarian so I also don't want these conversations
#
to be dated I never ask them which is your next film and I tell them in the beginning
#
I'm not interested this is not the show where you promote your next film you can do that
#
in slow cafe we've designed a new show digital show you can talk about but not in the slow
#
interview and what happened was that initially I mean it's a bit like everything else I've
#
done in my life that we were if we had told people that I'm starting a show which will
#
have nothing controversial nothing newsy nothing about their filming gossip and will be this
#
long somebody might have said the same sentence which I've heard in many forms when I've started
#
something new which is that this is a brilliant idea it will never work so when I started
#
it I was slightly hesitant the first Pankaj Tripathi episode is only 30 minutes which
#
seemed very long to me because the conventional wisdom handed over by the pundits was that
#
YouTube is about snackable content short form content etc etc but I realized that the people
#
said so agla part ka hai so we do did another part of 30 minutes and it was the same people
#
who watch Netflix and Amazon and they were loving these conversations which you know
#
had nothing titillating to offer they were exactly the kind of tonality that we are talking
#
about in right now and there were also internal academic sort of tussles within the team on
#
the format of the the length if it became 45 minutes initially people would start getting
#
antsy so it's very long and I used to say even if it's two hours let the viewer decide
#
if they want to watch 30 minutes let them watch it but there might be 10 people out
#
of 200 who might watch the whole two hours now why are you depriving them when you have
#
that conversation so slowly and when the numbers started coming in when we had millions of
#
people watching them we got the graceful and humble confidence that we have invented a
#
new form a new type and then suddenly we started getting requests from people to feature them
#
or their artists in these interviews I don't know if viewers notice or not but I go in
#
my interview with zero preparation I don't like talking to my guests before the shoot
#
begins because how I am off camera is exactly as I am with them on camera there's no put
#
on there's nothing that's artificial the show doesn't even have a formal opening or ending
#
it just drifts off and I've seen that guests open up in the most remarkable of ways when
#
they are on the show a lot of guests say that I don't know they find something some of them
#
I know but some of them I don't know I've met them for the first time but we're talking
#
about some things that are often deeply personal and I don't want to prod if I don't want
#
to talk to them about okay how was your relationship with your wife but then if I feel that you
#
know the conversation is going that way if someone says that I didn't get along with
#
my father I will say you and some ways just that one word question like also a lot of
#
things that they are never asked like I've asked many guests are you a good father and
#
they reflect are you a good son they break down on the show they it's I mean it's been
#
a great journey for me great journey my fear is it's like you go to some shows you go prepared
#
like right you go to a comedy show you know there's going to be a certain kind of conversation
#
so you I don't want people to come prepared to my show I don't want people to come ready
#
to tell a sob story and I need to work on myself as an interviewer there to not sound
#
too predictable it's the same as when I was there as a reporter so how should I should
#
I open you know what should my opening question be how should I take it forward like with
#
there was one preparation which I did with Ayushman Khurana where one of my colleagues
#
she went to his parents and he spoke about a punishment room and I opened by saying what
#
if I tell you that I know you have a punishment room in your house and he I mean that look
#
on his face was priceless so yeah I mean I just want this and and also we didn't tie
#
it down to any periodicity that's very very conscious as a decision like people people
#
keep saying sir agla kabar hai agla kabar hai so people also know that that it has no fixed
#
periodicity so and also what happened was that after the Pankaj Tripathi interview came
#
and then Vishal Bharadwaj and initial few ones we didn't define the show the audience
#
started to define the show like the audience started saying sir aisa lagta hai hum piche
#
ki seat pe baithe hain aur do log baat kar rahe hain hum sun rahe hain paas so that was
#
I mean it's like the audiences had started to define our storytelling ki sir jab aapko
#
sunte hain to kuchh seekhne ko milta hai ek baithar insaan ban jaate hain aisi cheeze
#
dekhte hain lagta hain humare samne ho raha hain so from there came the tagline of the
#
radio show kahaniya jan mein aap milte hain khud se it came because a lot of people said
#
that ki lagta hain humare saath ho raha hain lagta hain yeh toh meri kahani hai you know
#
yeah it's been a good journey this year we couldn't shoot anything because of covid but
#
now we'll be starting some shoots we just shot one with Suresh Raina because he was
#
very keen and we were talking about him coming down and so he drove down and also now a lot
#
of guests we request them to stay overnight and they stay at my home and so and that the pace the
#
language nature of it just comes through and everything and and people notice like just
#
yesterday somebody said ki sir wo tigmanshu dhulia mein aap jo breakfast ho raha hai aapne
#
unko kyuni pehle serve kiya and i realized that because i'm i mean i'm kind of a loner so the
#
niceties or the decorum of hosting others my wife also said it i mean after watching the show ki
#
tumne unko kyuni pehle diya ab nahi hai mujhe yeh tamiz kyunki mein khaata hi nahi ho zyada
#
logon ke saath akela hi rehta hoon but the viewer said it apne wo re ki sir in our parts yeh toh
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theek nahi hai sir aapko pehle unko serve karna chahi tha but i love that you know they the smallest
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of details they notice so it's been a it started again as a beautiful coincidence a new creative
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journey but uh uh who knew that sitting out of my village i would be able to do these conversations
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which would be watched around the world and like when nawazuddin siddiqui came he he said
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apke ziddi hain aur apki zid hai ki aap bambai chod ke aagayin ab aap kera hai sab yaha pe aayiye
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aur me isili aaya hu yaha haan aur sari duniya yaha pe aayegi so uh i mean it's amazing like
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taapsee pannu is sitting on a gaon ki puliya bahar pe baithi hai ya suresh rena jhule pe baithi hai
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you know so didn't realize that it would sort of you know become and after that i realized that a
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lot of other film related interviews people are getting the courage to do longer in like so a lot
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of film interviews now are like one hour one which was unthinkable earlier so and they tell
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me also that many friends so i think maybe it's given encouragement to longer form conversations
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because it's got the numbers because guests oh you know so it's good yeah no that's that's very
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evocative with me because that's a refrain that i have constantly also heard in my life that this
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is idea brilliant it will not work like you know before i did my blog india uncut if i was to
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pitch it to somebody through a platform or whatever they'd laugh me out of the room right
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if i took someone i'm going to do a three hour interview podcast where i will take an obscure
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i will take an obscure topic with a guest and talk about it and whatever i i would have laughed
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myself out of the room and just evolved this way and it happened to work and i guess speculating
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one reason for that might be that while we contain multitudes and while we are a very large country
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where even the smallest niche actually has good absolute numbers uh you know when people think of
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content or when they look at it from a marketing perspective ki iska kya audience hai then it
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becomes reductive it becomes reductive to that most popular strand of a person's behavior and
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not necessarily to you know uh the other kind of aspects of that nature though you know you know
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if there is one complaint i have about the slow interview quite honestly it's that it's not long
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enough i understand that i have the luxury of saying that from a perspective of audio because
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people listen to audio in a different way you're listening at double speed while you're commuting
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or working out so you can feed that sort of hunger for depth a little more you're not stuck in front
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of a laptop looking uh at a screen the the other you know the interesting thing also that i noticed
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about your show which came out of a conversation i had with a recent guest where she was sort of
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talking about how my approach towards the conversation i had with her was kind in her
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words and gave her the space to sort of uh you know flesh out her thoughts and my thinking was
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that no she was the one who was kind because from the first moment of the interview she trusted me
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completely absolutely absolutely and i like i saw that in your interview for example with piyush
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mishra where initially you ask him just one question kaise gayi zindagi something like that
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and he just goes on for 45 minutes on that and it's brilliant that whole flow where you don't
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have to do anything and there is that element of trust and you know and it felt magical to me and
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is there in so many of your sort of interviews where the manshu says uh in one interview when we
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in the second part where we sit on a puliya he says um because i've not met him uh i had not met
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him before that and it seemed like we had met and he said is that a good thing or a bad thing
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he said no it's a really good thing uh but they trust me and like anurag kashyap had tweeted that
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ki kaise nikalwa lete ho tum but you know i i think i think just being a good listener is a good
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starting point and being an earnest and honest listener who's not looking at your words as a
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commodity who's not wanting to make it a headline who's not doing it for the traffic who wants to
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just chronicle this for some years in the future when you might or might not want to say these
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things or all that so yes i i feel that that uh guests do have that i mean like with sanjay
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mishra which is like amazing another kind of interview such a and and there's laughter but
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there's some tears also there and but we had never met and when we spoke on the phone the day before
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the shoot he said i'm dying to come so there's that thing also too it's not it's not that you
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know these are guests who would wait to be on camera or wait to be an issue i think it's
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that moment because you never asked you never have these conversations in the world they never
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have these conversations and uh just that island of calm or comfort where they do not have to be
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fake um like when we shot with manoj bach and i had never met him and just before the shoot i
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said that um so he had seen one or two episodes i think he said he said i know anurag for 27 years
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but even watching your show i came to know a few things which i hadn't i never knew
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you and he said uh so he looked at the uh assistant he said
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so they get it that it's not you know like a studio there's that and the other and and from
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the beginning we've had that that someone bringing tea uh you know all that like the pause it's just a
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slice of life it's nothing else and has it changed you doing the show because i realized
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that a lot of the questions that you ask also seem to have a personal resonance for example
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you were chatting i think with vishal bhardwaj and you asked him about fatherhood and he said that
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you know and i remember the expression on your face as you're nodding at that point in time and
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it's obviously resonant there and a lot of your questions also seem to be almost as if uh you know
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you're asking yourself in a sense so you've thought about these things and equally you're asking the
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viewer and it's all you know so intimate that that that whole setting tell me a bit about that no i
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i think a lot of these questions they sound very simple but they set you off on on a mental path
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that you've not gone down before just asking yourself have you been a good son you know it's
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a five word question that you've probably never asked yourself before are you a good father
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so in asking them i'm also asking the same things of myself i'm also reflecting and
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uh the searing honesty that my guests you know reply with is something that i take away uh and
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for short i mean it's it's very personal it's uh the idea of a lot of people speak about losing
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their loved ones or what happened and uh it it makes me afraid too it makes the fear of losing
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our loved ones and so yeah it it it resonates and uh and the same thing happens with our viewers
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because in a sense i'm asking them those questions and they're reflecting as well
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uh because our guests are then coming out from their pedestal to show us their human side and
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most of them are very very wonderful very simple people actually in real they're very simple people
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and that's what comes through and because they're not putting on it's not fake um it it it comes
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through yeah and you know i'm not going to one by one ask you the questions that you asked
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your guests about you know fatherhood and are you a good son but i'll ask you a sort of a general
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question which encompasses all of that and which is something i think about as well is that you
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know Kant the philosopher Emanuel Kant not Amitabh Kant uh Emanuel Kant used to speak about the
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categorical imperative that never treat other people as a means to an end but as an end in
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themselves and i think what we tend to do almost by default in our personal lives is that we are
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the center of the universe and everything revolves around us and therefore we do treat other people
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as if they are the means to an end and there is this self-centeredness which we need to fight and
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and sometimes we can step out of our own minds and reflect and we can become aware of what we
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are doing and in those moments we can give other people the respect they deserve as autonomous
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people and actually care about them and all of that but otherwise the rest of this time we are
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in this reflexive mode where we are the center of the universe everything revolves around us
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everything revolves around us everyone has their roles rather than you know we can't see them kind
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of beyond that now you've sort of taken that step out more than most people whether it's through
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your storytelling by inhabiting the skins of others or whether it's just asking this question
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of all of your guests uh you know you've had a sort of chance to reflect upon all of this yourself
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what is that sort of journey like you know in that sense do you see yourself as having changed let's
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say even over the last 20 years you know is the nilesh mishra of 2020 very different from the
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nilesh mishra of say 1990 or even even 2000 yes one thing i've overcome very clearly is jealousy
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and as creative people that is the one thing that you know we all contend with
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when you see a someone else write a great song or do a great story or win some journalism award
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and i used to be insanely jealous until a certain point and when you do that this next
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uh emotion is that you question you run them down
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but i remember that uh it's when i was working in the hindustan times
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i kind of remember that moment also it was an amazing moment and i was telling swanan
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uh the other day in one episode of slow cafe where i was at the traffic light in front of
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the hindustan times building on kasturba gandhi marg and swanan's song bavaraman had just become
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a big hit and i'm sure i felt jealous often you feel jealous because you ask yourself
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why didn't you do this i could have done this why didn't i do this why didn't this thought
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strike me why didn't this imagery this use of words which is so beautifully simple why did it
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strike me and i remember that it was as if it was a moment when everything melted in my mind
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and i picked up the phone uh and i called swanan i had his number
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and i said i'm just calling just like that to say how beautiful you've written i mean it's
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an amazing piece of writing and i wish i had written it and that's the biggest compliment i
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can pay to you and and i meant all of that and since then and when i went and when i went to
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and when i went and when i went to bombay did an interview with him and so we were reminiscing about all of that
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i with my colleagues with my peers fellow writers
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so i i i think that has most definitely changed and it happened
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um somewhat over the end of 2009 i think since then uh i've been able to win over jealousy um
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i don't take fame seriously and i don't mean that as a cliche at all fame doesn't
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attract me because the fame i have got is accidental i never expected it
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i was a reporter i would have been writing you know stories because i love journalism i would
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have been a fairly good reporter and i would have been a very good reporter and i would have been a
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reporter and but this happened and suddenly the written word was forgotten and and the voice became
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my identity so the idea of being famous i mean i enjoy that idea i like that idea but i would
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rather be in a room in in the corner of a room in the shadows watching people enjoy my work rather
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than be in the center of it so being on camera or doing interviews or winning awards if i was
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to die tomorrow morning i'm fairly content with what i've achieved in life and i would feel
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privileged that i've been able to do this much because i mean it's been so many lives all rolled
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into one and to be able to do all of that to be able to pursue something new and then succeed
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is a privilege is a blessing so i feel that definitely is something i i notice about myself
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over the last 20 years i could never have imagined being an entrepreneur and that comes
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with its own mindset if you're an individual person you hold on to honesty values
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if you're an entrepreneur often that might feel challenged so how do you remain honest there or
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retain the values there mr ks nair who i mentioned earlier who i count as one of my gurus says
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told me once that it's not just necessary to be honest but to seem honest to the world
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with the worst situation like my auditor told me last year that you know you are honest
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but the it would be a disaster if you seem dishonest after being so ruthlessly honest that
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you're you know so there have been a lot of challenges there in running these startups
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and has come at a big emotional cost how do i keep the artist in me alive because that's been the
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because that's been the big sacrifice i've had to pay and along with that because until a point i
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was a lone wolf i was the reporter who was going out there doing whatever and suddenly now when
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you're the boss you can't the worst boss is the one who competes with his team or is jealous of
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his team or doesn't support his team member to do what he was doing and to do better and i think i
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have i mean i love for example i love it when people in my team get credit awards i want to be
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at the in the background i want them to remember that i did something for them it's not entirely
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selfless that way i want them to definitely remember i want them to remember me well even
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if they move on in their other conversation in their careers but i feel that that amount of
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selflessness is something i've been able to achieve in my regular life
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and there's an honesty that i've been able to hold on see my entire journey has been
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been extremely unorthodox even now when i'm on the fringes i'm living in a village or or a city
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far far away from where the action is but i know that i'm i'm relevant i know that
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whether it's storytelling whether it's the slow interview whether it's the whatever new things
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we keep that gives me confidence i know that you know the big media companies and i might not be
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working together because i don't reach out to them but i know that tomorrow if i write a film script
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i can reach out to five production offices or directors so i think i'm living my life on my
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own terms and i'm still relevant i'm in the mainstream i think and i actually i rarely use
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the word i but because this is my personal journey but i think we have invented a new mainstream as
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we go along whether it's ground connection whether it's whatever we're doing with slow
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so it's subversive like end of this year we are coming out with a small ott platform slowest will
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become an ott platform we don't have the funding to whatever but whatever because we have a lot of
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content we have a we are a magnet for talent very very accomplished people talented people approach
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us so we want to give it a platform and our positioning is extremely clear decency is our
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business model and if i look back at my entire journey that's what it's been about when the
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word slow defined my entire life my entire journey my journalism my radio my storytelling band
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everything what i've done in content in journalism and in all of that i think that's one thing i've
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obstinately clung on to that i will not do anything for which i will repent or regret
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years later seeing my name against a song that might have you know obscene lyrics or
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or whatever things like that so that that between 2011-12 and now being catapulted onto mass media
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onto the center stage so to say of the creative universe and still get away on your own terms
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not having to conform that has given me a lot of confidence and i intend to continue building on
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that retaining that not losing that flavor not using losing the honesty that i really want to
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work with and that integrity that i think not just me but all communicators must have but
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until a year and a half ago i so ground connection was my own was the centerpiece of my life
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and one day i reminded myself that i have no savings and i'm a father of five
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and everything i earn i use it to run ground connection so i said okay let me do some things
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which are seen as quote unquote commercial but should have the same value system which
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everything else i do or with has so if you're doing slow products and if you're coming out with some
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60 organic products they should have the same promise of honesty for the customer
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for the consumer and him should empower the farmer just as ground connection wants to so that also
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comes from a place of graceful confidence i would say very humble confidence but for sure confidence
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that we've carved out our own space we've carved out a universe of people not just us who believed
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in this kind of content and who are out there in the millions because if you're if this world is run
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by numbers reach traffic well then let's speak your same language i'm not going to say that i am
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doing parallel cinema that 100 people will watch and you're mainstream and hence you're bad i will
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fight you at the on the same pitch i will fight mainstream with mainstream and i will show you that
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you know this stereotyping of audiences as the same person can watch an action film a horror film
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a govinda film and enjoy honey sing and listen to me it can be the same person because that's
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how we are we like different things at different times right but it's us who have bracketed people
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stereotyped people stereotyped audiences and we are proving that wrong with everything we do and
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we're doing things on our own terms and um that's what gives me uh confidence i have fears also my
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biggest fear is what will happen when this country doesn't want to listen to stories from me every
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artist comes with a shelf life i think i'm privileged and blessed that i am still being
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heard by people after eight nine years a decade that's a that's a lifetime for any artist
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also what will happen in the emerging world of artificial intelligence where machines will
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will come on board but i do talk to scientists about it sometimes and they say well they can
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never replace storytelling they can never replace empathy or emotion so how do we do storytelling
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in the era of artificial intelligence is now the next frontier that i want to open up i think you
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know when if i can quickly sort of butt in there i would say that one thing artificial intelligence
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cannot do is that when it speaks about a married woman's love for the music of a childhood it
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cannot bring up that image of that harmony being kept in the attic i think that's that's something
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that requires uh storytellers to kind of grasp that uh you know that that little bit of magic
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but you know i just want to say i think your fear is completely unfounded this is the one moment in
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conversation where i'll disagree with you because good stories i think last forever and you know i
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could speak to you for another three hours quite frankly you know i can take it slower than you
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can even imagine but uh you know we've not done any justice to talking about gao connection which
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can be an episode on its own and the slow movement and all of that but you know you've been so
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generous with your time and insights and i'll have to sort of uh let you go now thank you so
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much again for uh you know agreeing to come on the show and uh again being so trusting and open
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thank you so much it's been quite a delightful conversation
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if you enjoyed listening to this episode head on over to the show notes where i've put links
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to much of nilesh's work if you'd like to follow him on twitter you can do so at nilesh mishra
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that's one word n double e l e s h m i s r a you can follow me at amit varma a m i t v a r m a
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you can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen at scene unseen dot i n thank you for listening
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did you enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen if so would you like to support the
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production of the show you can go over to scene unseen dot i n slash support and contribute any
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amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank you
