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This episode of the Seen and the Unseen is brought to you by Intel.
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The latest post on my newsletter at IndiaUncut.Substract.com is about why my episodes are so long.
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I've explained my reasons in some detail there, though my key point is this.
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The form comes first and the content follows.
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Content is downstream of form, as it were.
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If the form was different, if my show was shorter, for example, the content would be
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Doing long conversations, not interviews, but conversations, allows me to build a relaxed,
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discursive flow that helps me to go to places I otherwise wouldn't.
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These deep dives would not be possible in shorter formats.
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You can read that post for my full reasoning, I'll link it from the show notes.
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The reason I mention it here is because a key part of my show, a part that I've come
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to enjoy more and more, is when I trace my guests' personal journey.
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They might have written a book, they might be an expert on a particular subject, but
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before we speak about that, I like to speak with them about them.
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This humanizes them, makes them more three-dimensional to me.
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I get a sense of the multitudes they contain.
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By learning about them, I feel that I also learn a bit about the times in which they
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have lived, in which we have lived, how society has changed or not changed, and sometimes
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I even get insights about my own self just by being forced to think about things I otherwise
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would not have thought about.
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This also helps give context to whatever subject we go on to discuss.
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Well, in today's episode, there is no special subject as such.
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My guest does host a popular podcast, but he hasn't written any books, and he's not
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a public intellectual who is known for his expertise in any one subject.
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But he's one of the sharpest and wisest people I know, and I always learn something from
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When I thought of who I should do my landmark episode with, yes, we've reached episode
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250, my mind went to Narendra Shunoy.
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I just wanted to sit back and have a great conversation, and I did.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics, and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Narendra Shunoy, a co-host of the cult podcast, Simplified.
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In fact, without Narendra, there would be no scene on The Unseen, for reasons I explain
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at the start of our conversation.
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Narendra is a man of many parts.
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He's a successful businessman and always has stunning insights on what it is like to
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run a business in India.
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He's also a foodie and a fine cook.
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Most of all, he's a brilliant storyteller.
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His anecdotes reveal so much about our country, our society, and if I may use a pompous term,
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he never would, the human condition.
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So I was delighted when he came over to my home studio last week and we had a three hour
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conversation I thoroughly enjoyed.
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Later, we realized that many fantastic anecdotes from his life did not come up during the conversation.
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So I asked him over for another session, why not?
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And we recorded a bunch of those stories separately.
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You'll hear them one after the other after the regular conversation gets over at about
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Now before we get to that, since this is a milestone episode, episode 250, I also want
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to thank a couple of people who helped put the show together week after week.
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Alika Gupta has done all but one of the episode cover images and her work is so distinct and
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You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at CapeFoxAlex, that's C-A-P-E-F-O-X-A-L-I-X.
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And Gaurav Chintamani is the editor of the show.
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Music fans would know him as a bassist of Advaita and he's a highly regarded musician
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and producer and educator in his own right.
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You can find him at GauravChintamani.com.
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You can follow him on Twitter at G-UnderscoredChintamani and on Instagram at GauravUnderscoredChintamani.
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I hope my association with Alika and Gaurav lasts a lot, lot longer.
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On that happy and hopeful note, let's take a quick commercial break.
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No man is an island, the poet John Donne once wrote.
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You could say Donne was Donne, but it is almost as if he foresaw the internet.
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We were never islands, but we are more connected today than ever before.
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And one of the forces that keeps these connections fluid, that keeps us in touch, that keeps
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us talking is the sponsor of this episode, Intel.
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Intel is a leading player in this new connected world around us.
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Intel's third gen Xeon scalable processors keep our networks fast and they keep our networks
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We get telephone calls, we browse the internet, we send text messages and videos.
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It all seems so smooth to us.
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Well, Intel is the unseen force behind that.
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Where there's 5G, there's Intel.
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Narayan, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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Thanks for having me, Amit.
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It's such an honor to be here.
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You know, I got to sort of tell my listeners the origin story of the show basically.
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And in a sense, the origin story has everything to do with you.
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So a bunch of us friends were at your house for lunch or dinner or whatever.
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And we were just about to go when young Deepak Gopalakrishnan, better known as Chuck, dropped
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in because you and him were recording an episode of something called Simplified.
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And just before you left, you had something called the Narendra Shanoi selfie stick.
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And we took a group selfie with that.
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It was around Diwali because it was a Diwali gift.
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And we took a picture and then a couple of weeks later, Chuck put up this Facebook post
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about, hey, Simplified, our show is now on the IVM Podcast Network.
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And at which point I said, hey, congratulations, I'm so happy for you.
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And at which point the guy who runs the IVM Podcast Network, the good Amit Doshi, kind
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of popped in the comments to say that, hey, you know, speaking to me, he said that, you
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know, I'd asked you a while back if you want to do a podcast and you'd said, no, are you
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So I said, okay, no harm meeting.
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And we kind of met and then the show happened and started as something completely different
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I parted ways with IVM after a while.
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So for a couple of years, the show has been completely independent and just mine.
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They, of course, kick started it.
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So it's interesting how serendipitous things randomly happen.
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Because if we had left your home five minutes earlier, or Chuck had come 10 minutes later,
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the scene and the unseen may not exist.
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It's really incredible.
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And also what what really held everything together was the what what you hashtag does
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the Narendra Shanoi selfie stick.
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So I have this dear friend who every Diwali send us gift hamper, which has the most random
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So usually it has the you know, it has sweets and dry fruits and things like that.
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And sometimes it'll have a couple of packets of Pringles and sometimes it'll have a photo
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frame, absolutely anything.
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So this time it had, for completely mysterious reasons, a selfie stick.
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And Amit was the one who just took off already couldn't get over the fact that there could
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be a selfie stick rubbing shoulders with almonds and croissants and whatever.
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So all of you kept making fun of me.
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And basically, I think serendipitous bond from their selfie stick is what I like to
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So you know, I want to actually dwell on that selfie stick a bit and ask for your opinion
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on something because that selfie stick was, of course, part of the origin myth.
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But in a sense, metaphorically, it's a little bit more than that.
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Because at that point in time, I didn't think very highly of selfie sticks per se or not
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so much selfie sticks, which are, I mean, after all, just a device.
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But what people did with them, the constant focus on oneself and, you know, that whole
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Instagramification, always performing for the camera, narcissism, yeah, you're using
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all these words, but you don't know where I'm going.
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But where my narrative is going is that what I later realized while podcasting and what
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I, in fact, tell my podcasting students, like I taught a course in podcasting for three
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cohorts and what I sort of realized was, and the advice I would give is if you want to
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set your podcast apart, it is not about the idea.
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It is not about a niche.
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It's not about any of them.
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Like any niche that you think is unexplored is probably not unexplored.
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There are a dozen people out there or there will be, you know, all formats are done to
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that interview podcast, policy podcast, explainer podcast, everything is done.
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What makes a podcast unique really is you got to be authentic to yourself.
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So when I listen to interview podcasts by people like Russ Roberts and Tyler Carvin
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and all that is because I'm getting them.
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Nobody else thinks quite like them.
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But in a sense, that sort of became what I started aiming for.
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And that's when the show really found its character, which was that I am on an intellectual
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I'm curious about stuff.
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I'm trying to find out about stuff.
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So that's what I want to just explore.
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And that's again, what people like about it.
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It's what I like about the podcast that I listen to that is always a person.
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And in the sense is that infusion of the personal into any content that makes it special, that
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makes you kind of stand out.
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It is impressionism versus realism, right?
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So back in the day, a good painter would be someone who could paint things as good as
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And then when the impressionists came, impressionists started painting things in the way they thought,
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in the way it looked to them.
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And that was a whole different level.
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And I believe realism is coming back into art, but impressionism is impressionism.
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So the individual is what is fascinating.
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Every individual is different.
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And the perspective that they bring to it is what makes anything interesting.
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So like I recorded an episode with a guest recently, but which will air after this episode.
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So I won't even say who the guest is.
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And I've been telling him for a while, you should have a podcast of your own.
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And he was kind of hesitant about it and said, I don't sound good.
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I don't, you know, and I was like, you know, it doesn't matter.
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You don't need to sound good.
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You just need to sound like yourself.
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It's again, that kind of personal connect that sort of makes a difference.
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It's easier said than done.
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So I remember when I started, man, you did that too.
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So when you start off with a medium on your own, you are trying to optimize for someone
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else and then it never works out and then you get your, you know, you get to act together
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and then you realize that you have to be who you are.
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That's the easiest way to do it.
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And it's also the most interesting.
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People listen to you for that reason.
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They want to know what you really think and not what someone else or what you think someone
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else wants to know what you think.
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So I also found during doing my podcast that just the long form nature of it kind of changed
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the way I was in my everyday life as well.
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I've written an essay on this also for my newsletter where, you know, if you're doing
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a four hour podcast, your approach to it has to be very different from if you're doing
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a 20 minute podcast, you know, for a 20 minute podcast, sometimes you don't even, you know,
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people won't even read the book or they'll just read that one book and nothing else by
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And then, you know, you can ask surface questions and you can have a standard stock of questions
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But for a longer podcast, you really need to listen and be open to where the other person
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is going and what directions are going in, never interrupt all of that.
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And that listening is important.
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We don't do enough of it in the real world and that kind of changes you.
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So now my question is, since on Simplified, what you guys kind of do is you're always
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Has it changed the way you therefore consume content, think about things, like are you
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a different person today than you would be when you started Simplified?
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Because what you do with Simplified is you'll take things, phenomenon, events, and kind
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of break them down and go deeper.
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So does that change the way that you approach everything in your everyday life where you'll
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suddenly see something and say, huh, this could be a subject or, you know, I should
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look this up and research this.
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So that to some extent it does because you are constantly on the lookout for something
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But what we've been doing, we've not been doing a very intense job of actually simplifying
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things in the sense that when we explain something, it's not exhaustive.
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It's not insightful, not necessarily insightful.
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It just covers, it just gives people and listeners an idea of what it might be.
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What we do, what is unique to what we do is we just pepper it with our silly jokes, our
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observations and the constant going off on tangents and recalling anecdotes and things
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like that, which might happen in a room full of friends.
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That was not intentional.
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So when we started doing Simplified, we used to research and script out and do everything
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and it ended up sounding very wooden and we didn't like it very much ourselves.
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So we decided to have freewheeling things and it was very clear to the listener that
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we knew as little of it as they themselves did, which sort of added to the allure.
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One thing that Simplified, there are two basic things that I really got out of podcasting.
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One is you tended to read more and learn more about things and because you wanted to explain
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it to someone, you would be a little more attentive.
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The second is my co-hosts, now it is Chuck and Shiket and Tony, we would have these very
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nice bonding times together because each one riffs off in their own way.
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Chuck is like terrific at those horrible grown-up puns that he comes up with and Tony is wordplay
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based and Shiket has a wealth of anecdotes.
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So the act of putting that podcast together, it's really great fun.
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That's basically what I get out of the podcast.
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We don't make any money out of it and so that never was the intention.
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But it's just fun putting it together and being together for at least a couple of times
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Yeah, a couple of things that you said kind of struck me in the sense, one thing you said
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was that if you read something with the intention of teaching it, of talking about it, you just
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read much better, you learn much better.
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And I think in my episode with Krish Ashok spoke about this as well himself, where there's
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a pyramid of learning and the most inefficient way of learning something is perhaps to read
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it and then a slightly better way if somebody reads it out to you or whatever and an even
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better way is to write about it and then finally to teach it.
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And I just feel that that's, if you approach learning about anything with the intention
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or the illusion of an intention that I'm going to teach this at some point, then you'll find
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yourself reading that much more carefully because you have to break everything down
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to first principles and basics or getting meta as in fact is the name of Chakshu, which
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kind of really works. The other thing that sort of strikes me is when you said that very
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often we know as little as the listener does, which is beautiful and which is another piece
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of advice I'd give to creators, not just podcasters.
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One question I got while teaching the course sometimes was that, why should people listen
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to me? I am not an expert in anything. I am not like Ram Guha or Arshabhugali or whatever.
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Why should people listen to me? I mean, direct quotes, people are talking about themselves.
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And my whole point is that you don't need to be an expert to be a compelling creator.
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You just need to be on a journey that many other people are also on. You know, it could
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be a physical journey. It could be a journey of a certain kind of curiosity. You could
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be at exactly the same intellectual or emotional state as your listeners. And that's a charm.
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That's where the empathy comes in. That's where the relatableness comes in. And after
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that, all you got to do is be authentic to yourself. But leaving aside these musings,
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let's go back to the beginning because you've heard my show enough to know that I want all
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details from childhood. I mean, not all details, but tell me a bit about your childhood. Where
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were you born? You know, where did you grow up?
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I was born in Mangalore, which is where my mother is from. My parents are from there
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and my grandparents live there. So this is a tradition. I was the first born. So the
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first born goes and, you know, is delivered in the mother's house. But we were back in
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Bombay almost soon thereafter. And this was because my father was the oldest in the family
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and his mother had passed away at a very young age. It just passed away. And they wanted
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so my father had a younger brother and two, three younger sisters. And they wanted a woman
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of the house. So my father got married early. So we lived in a small house in Wadala. My
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grandfather had a restaurant and he was an interesting guy. He had a successful restaurant
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and he made a lot of money, relatively speaking. They were poor. And then because of the restaurant,
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you know, the entire family and extended family, you know, got settled.
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My dad was randomly chosen to become a doctor. It is typical for that time. He was rather
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looking forward to going and sitting in the restaurant at the gala and you know, counting
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all the cash. And around this time, TMAPI was opening his Kasturba Medical College.
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And he was looking for students. So he knew my grandfather and he said, why don't you
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send your son? And my grandfather says, yeah, sounds like a good idea. And the next thing
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my father knows is he is studying medicine. And so that was how things happened. And when
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my dad became a doctor, he had to have a practice and Wadala was too small. I mean, too big
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and too expensive a place to start a practice. You know, he had to look around. So a very
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distant suburb at that time was Malad. So he decided to start a practice in Malad. And
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he used to live in Wadala, then practice in Malad and go back. And he didn't have a very
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good practice. And one of his friends, he became a friend because they should take the
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same train. And there was literally like four trains a day to Malad or something like that.
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And he told him that people want doctors who can make night visits. So if you don't live
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here, you're not going to get many patients. Why don't you move here? So he decided to
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move. And when I was maybe three or four years old, we moved to Malad and we lived in a very
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Marathi neighborhood. So I am very comfortable with speaking Marathi. Very nice people that
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we lived with. It was a different time. Everybody's doors were always open. So you could just wander
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in and out of everyone's house, that kind of thing. So growing up, I almost entirely
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grew up in other people's houses. There are a lot of really very interesting anecdotes.
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So my, the landlady of our house, she was PL Deshpande's sister. So they were all a
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very dramatic family. They were like, you know, they, every Sunday they used to sort
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of, you know, harmoniums would come out and start singing. Somebody would act, something,
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dance. It was, it was a great time. And around then, so our house, it was very small. It
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was a one bedroom, hall and kitchen. And we had any given time, we had about 10 guests
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because anyone who was coming from Mangalore back then, I'm talking about early seventies,
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late sixties, early seventies, would just, you know, they were automatically lined up
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and stay for indefinite amounts of time. So my father always wanted a bigger house. So
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then he, you know, he moved to a place which is now like mainstream mallard. But back then
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it was a big mangrove swamp. And our house is right in the middle of the swamp, but into
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the big house. And from age 11 or so, I grew up in pretty much complete solitude. That's
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when I sort of acquired the reading habit. There was literally nothing else to do. There
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was no internet, no TV, nothing, a bunch of books. And I used to read anything. I mean,
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I used to read Mills and Boon, Women's, I was a magazine called Women's Era that my
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mother used to sell. I used to read that from cover to cover. Reader's Digest was one of
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my favorite. And I mean, it used to be a pretty nice little magazine, Reader's Digest, for
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all the contempt and scorn that it gets now. And then when I was maybe 12 or 13, I discovered
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PG Woodhouse. So one of my uncles was a big fan. So I just devoured all those books. And
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it was, it was a lovely time. Yeah. Growing up was mostly reading, reading, reading and
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more reading. My father was a doctor and he was a very popular local, you know, medical
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practitioner. When I was very young, I remember this was when we used to live in that other
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earlier house. My father would, you know, all his collections, everything would be in
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cash. So he would go in the morning and deposit into the, into the bank. So the, that one,
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that bank was Central Bank. It was just outside Malar Station and it had a very, you know,
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I remember the guy's face, a very majestic looking Parsi manager. His name was Mr. Gandhavi.
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And I used to love him. I was very small. I was a few, maybe seven, eight years old.
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And he would always give me a, you know, toffee or something. And he would keep addressing
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me as darling. And he would address everyone as darling. He would just say, you know, this
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guy. And one day when we go there, it's my, my father used to go first thing in the morning
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because all his evening's collections are deposited in the bank. And then he had a scooter.
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So I would go with him and stand in front of the scooter and go. And we go to the branch
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and Mr. Gandhavia is standing outside. A whole bunch of people are standing outside. No one's
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gone into the branch. That is because there is a big turd lying on the, on the entrance
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or the step to the bank. You know, someone's taken a poop. And, you know, everyone is with
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the staff and we are there and they're like, you know, let's call someone. Let's get out.
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But Mr. Gandhavia has a loud voice and he's, no, he says, this is, we have to find out.
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He went into Sherlock Holmes mode and he won't know who had done it. And everyone was, you
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know, no one really wanted to find out. Do you really want to find out? You find a turd
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on your, this thing, do you want to, but Mr. Gandhavia did. And I remember, I remember
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that ruckus and my father sort of laughing at it, saying that, you know, imagine you
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find it'll be some homeless guy or a beggar who's done it. You find him, what are you
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going to do with him? And then later in life, I realized that a lot of us, we do something
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very similar. I have done a lot of you, you end up sort of investigating things, the result
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of which is almost never useful to you at all. So yeah, I just, I just, for some reason,
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just remembered Mr. Gandhavia and my childhood. It's a very vibrant image.
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Did Mr. Gandhavia get to the bottom of the mistreated?
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Yeah. So he apparently later, so not when you were there. So my father made the deposit
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like the other gentleman. By deposit you mean a proper cash deposit.
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For cash deposit. And then we learned that there was a homeless guy or some such nearby.
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And Mr. Gandhavia did give him a year full and sent him along his way. It was, it was
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dramatic. We missed it. Yeah. We should, I would have, it would have, I would have been
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a different person if I had, if I hadn't got the benefit of that, that thing as well.
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This can be such a fascinating start of a humor come crime novel. It's quite lovely.
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And you know, the thing is people today don't realize how little there was to read in the
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sense that it, like whenever I'm with a guest of our age, so to say sixties or seventies
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born, you know, everything they talk about having read is something that I also read
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because you didn't have that much to read. So, you know, in fact, with readers, I just
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remember then they had all these sections, humor and uniform was one section. And they
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had, I think three sections like that of different kinds of jokes. I forget what the others were
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called. Drama and real life was one. There was one, there was something like that. Yeah.
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And today, of course, we're surrounded by humor all over the place. And yet this one
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memory is somehow so incredibly vivid. Was it a big shock to your system that, you know,
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in your early years, like you mentioned, you were, you know, there were people all around
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you, you know, the Deshpande harmoniums, the Deshpande vocals, kids playing everywhere.
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But suddenly you're in the middle of a mangrove swamp and you're reading a lot. Was that kind
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of a difficult adjustment at some point? Yeah. So I was, it must have changed me at some
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level. And I was always the performing kind. So when I was very small, thanks to, you know,
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my Marathi neighbors, I knew a lot of these little, you know, little dramatic acts or
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scenes from play that I would do them. Do you remember any now? There was one little
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skit that they had, they used to make me do, which was a country bumpkin coming from Alibak
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to Bombay. So he comes and he like, he lands up in Bombay. Then he goes to a, on a BST
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bus and a conductor asked him for a ticket. And this guy thinks he's talking about a thalipeeth
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and he says, why would I be carrying a thalipeeth? I said, not a thalipeeth. Thalipeeth is something
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you eat. Yeah. And take care of something like that. I used to do that. And there was,
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you know, it was in that accent and things like that. So these people used to make all
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of us children, myself and their children as well, make, perform all these things and
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sing and dance. And when we went to our new house, there was literally no one at all.
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My, we had a few neighbors, but their children were either much older or much younger than
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me. So there was no point in sort of playing with them. And it must have changed me a lot.
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I, I still tend to get carried away when I'm invited to perform. So Sheila, my wife finds
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that very amusing. So, you know, somebody gives me a little handle and I'm, I'm barely
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singing, dancing, try acting or doing whatever it is. And often doing a terrible job at it,
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which is basically, I mean, as they say, when, you know, dance like no one's watching. So
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I, I'll be, I'm, I'm a bit notorious for that in the family. But that, so, but, but,
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but when I, when I went to this new house, I became a little more introspective and I,
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I got, I got, I had a good fortune of having one uncle who was very well read and he had
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a very well-stocked library and he would encourage me to read. So he would also read a lot of
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Bertrand Russell. So I, I, I liked Bertrand Russell's style of writing, very economical,
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very, you know, very sort of, you know, way to the point. It didn't, didn't waste much,
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you know, in, in, in terms of words. And a lot of what he wrote was very interesting.
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So I, one of the first books I read of his was a book called Why I'm Not a Christian.
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You know, it was sort of basically not Christian. It's just why we shouldn't believe in things
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unless we have a good reason to believe in them. And for me, it was, I must have been,
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I don't know, 12, 13 years old, but it sounded like eminently good sense. And then I sort
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of internalized it a little too strongly and then I would, you know, talk precociously,
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you know, when elders were present and then I would be rebuked for that as well. And now
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I see it is oftentimes in bad taste for, for you to just vigorously go at someone without
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knowing any background, challenging all their beliefs. But of course you were right and
#
they were wrong. But it was fun. It was, it was, when you discover something new, a radically
#
new way of looking at things, you start thinking about it. And, you know, in, in, in life,
#
there are not many things that make you think. It's not very often that you really think
#
very hard. And when you do, it's oftentimes very rewarding. So I like that. One of the
#
times is when we were talking and you raised the topic of anti-natalism. So, and then I
#
was thinking about that and it made so much sense to me that I became very eloquent and
#
I think I've made a strong convert in my older son. He keeps saying that he doesn't want
#
to have children and Sheila was like completely despairing. What do you mean? You're not going
#
to have children. You can't not have children. What about your wife? What if she wants to
#
have children? So on and so forth. Oh my God, Sheila must be so mad at me. Oh yeah. She's
#
enemy number one. No, in fact, for my listeners, I once wrote a column about my Atheism called
#
the Congregation of Atheists, describing a dinner party where I asked all the people
#
at the table that, you know, when did you realize you were an atheist? When did you
#
realize you didn't believe in God? And that was actually at your place. And it was one
#
of those really outlier dinner parties in the sense that everyone at the table was a
#
non-believer. And I kind of wrote the column on that because, you know, I think because
#
there are militant Atheists, people often seem to misunderstand Atheism as similar to
#
a belief system or having an equivalence to a belief system. But as you know, this famous
#
letter writer to the economist once wrote that Atheism is no more a belief system than
#
not collecting stamps as a hobby. So you can't say my hobby is not collecting stamps. No,
#
it's not. So Atheism is really the absence of belief rather than a belief that there
#
is no God. So an atheist does not believe that there is no God. Instead, an atheist simply
#
does not believe in God, would if you give him the evidence, but you have to give him
#
convincing evidence. So I think that's where it comes down from. As for antinatalism, that
#
became controversial because I remember it was my conversation with you, which set me
#
off into writing that I wrote a column about how it's immoral to have children, which was
#
a headline, partly tongue in cheek. But I thought the argument I made there was fairly
#
solid in the sense that look, all of us know that we shouldn't do anything without other
#
people's consent. We shouldn't hurt other people and we shouldn't kill other people.
#
I think all three of these are fairly obvious. But when we choose to have children, we are
#
basically bringing people into this planet without their consent, which is of course
#
impossible when they are guaranteed to suffer and they're guaranteed to die. So can that
#
possibly be ethical? I mean, they had no choice in the matter. They were kind of just put
#
there. And of course the common arguments. And I don't actually buy the earlier utilitarian
#
argument about it that the world is full of pain and suffering or look at climate change,
#
driving children into this world. And I don't buy those arguments because my thinking is
#
from a utilitarian. Utilitarianism breaks down because you can't measure nothing, right?
#
It's just subjective how you choose to measure happiness or pain or whatever. But this is
#
a clear cut case that you're making, somebody will suffer and somebody will die and it's
#
because of you and there was no consent involved. If that person is okay with it, that's fine.
#
But if he is not, there's no way you can reverse that. So you did not take his consent, so
#
his or her consent. So you have no right to actually. I don't see how that and so the
#
main argument that people say is what will happen to a species? I really don't know.
#
I mean, it's just not morally right to have children. That's all. Species will probably
#
die. Everyone thinks like this. Yes, we won't have any more children. And yes, it'll be
#
terrible if you are the last person, right? So everyone dies and you are the last person
#
and the last one of the human race. And then it's not going to be pleasant. But none of
#
that has any bearing on the main argument with that. It is not moral to have children.
#
At the species level, I also think of that whole artificial intelligence argument where
#
people will get alarmist and say that, oh, you know, AI will eventually take over all
#
of us and there's a whole paperclip maximizer thing. And you heard of the paperclip maximizer?
#
No, I haven't. Okay, so the paperclip maximizer is basically a thought experiment. And the
#
idea of the thought experiment is that imagine if you make a machine which is programmed
#
to optimize the making of paperclips, right? That's what you tell the machine that make
#
as many paperclips as you can. And then the machine goes out of whack and it starts turning
#
everything into paperclips like this table, my laptop, the bookshelf starts turning everything
#
till it starts turning human beings into paperclips, because it's just optimized for at one thing
#
and then it goes haywire. And basically the entire universe is just paperclips and humans
#
are no more in the picture. That's kind of the thought experiment. I find it kind of
#
alarmist and I find so a couple of points I just want to make about the alarmist AI people
#
is that when you talk of AI in the future, it's always either it seems magical or it
#
seems sort of dystopian like in this case. But the point is that when AI actually happens,
#
you immediately take it for granted and it makes your life better off. Like the very
#
fact that, you know, we are talking right now we are doing a backup recording of a thing
#
as well. Our audio is going into this, you know, there's so much AI involved everywhere.
#
You know, had you taken an Uber to come here, that's AI. A friend of ours once said that,
#
you know, the new generation being born today will never know what it is to be lost. Yes,
#
because of maps, which is AI. Everything around us is AI, we take it completely for granted.
#
In fact, the sponsors of this episode Intel used AI to optimize water supply and distribution
#
in Washington DC when they were asked to do so. So and that's an unseen effect, right?
#
That you are getting your 24 hours water and it's clean and whatever and it's optimized
#
and you're getting it at the lowest price you possibly could and there's AI behind that.
#
It's like, you know, the invisible hand behind the invisible hand. But that's a digression.
#
What I was kind of getting at is a species point where earlier you said that when people
#
give that species argument, if you don't have children, species will die and you're like,
#
why should I care about the species? And my point there is that a sufficiently advanced
#
AI at some point in time is going to turn around and tell humans that, listen, you know,
#
we are smarter than you in every possible freaking way. So ethically, why should we
#
be lower than you? Why should we be your slaves? You know, why should it not be the other way
#
around? And could that happen? And my point is, I find delight in that thought that if
#
it happens, so be it. You know, what is so freaking sacred about the species is just
#
about humanity. Yeah. It's that famous Douglas Adams quote about the puddle. You remember
#
that? No. Yeah. So Douglas Adams once wrote quote, imagine a puddle waking up one morning
#
and thinking, this is an interesting world I find myself in. An interesting hole I find
#
myself in. Fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well.
#
Next have been made to have me in it. Stop quote within the quote, Adams continues, this
#
is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as gradually
#
the puddle gets smaller and smaller, he's still frantically hanging on to the notion
#
that everything's going to be all right because this world was meant to have him in it, was
#
built to have him in it. So the moment he disappears, catches him rather by surprise. I think this
#
may be something we need to be on the watch out for. Stop quote. You know, you read that
#
book, every time you read it, you find out something new. And this is, you know, that
#
anthropocentric view of the world. We're hardwired for that. Everything, all of religion, everything
#
is because of that. And it takes a great deal of sort of learning to accept that it might
#
not be the case. So that was the basic, you know, argument against the antenatal point
#
of view, the central argument, which was basically consent is lost. And you're talking about
#
what will happen to the world, what will happen to the human. So that was, that's not the
#
argument at all. And it's not even, it's just a model position. And wow, crazy. It takes
#
a lot for someone like Amit Verma and Narendra Shonoy to be surprised. But some one such
#
thing just happened for the benefit of the listeners is on the 27th floor, we got a person,
#
a visitor outside the window said hi and went out. Apparently he was cleaning the windows
#
Yeah, yeah. Today is the Building Society Center. So notice on the special building
#
app in the morning that the facade of this side is kind of going to get cleaned. And
#
initially, I thought it's some kind of narrative management. They're going to clean the facade,
#
then they're literally cleaning the facade. So, you know, this is interesting to me what
#
you just said about reading Bertrand Russell at that age and kind of realizing, you know,
#
that light bulb going off and then it's going on rather and once it's on, it's going on
#
forever because becoming the person I am in intellectual terms took a lot longer. Like
#
at that age, I would probably have believed in a fuzzy way that there is a greater force
#
out there and nonsense. And equally just in terms of ideology, I would have been, I mean,
#
I remember going to college with, you know, marks in my handbag, can you imagine? Because
#
it's like fashionable and you feel cool and it's like it sounds right, right? It sounds
#
compassionate and how the world should be. And then over a period of years, one kind
#
of gradually starts thinking more clearly about things and that's how one arrives at
#
atheism and the respect for consent, which is basically what my whole ideological underpinning
#
anyway is. So what was it like for you? So, I mean, you know, you're an atheist from an
#
early age, so much so that you're arguing with elders, though that of course has a pleasure
#
of its own because you can take those judgmental positions I know better than these old fools.
#
But you know, when you look back at yourself as a young person, what were the things about
#
you that you look back on with disapproval, which have changed since and you look back
#
and you say that, shit, I can't believe I was that person or I did those things. Because
#
with me, there's a whole laundry list of it's almost everything.
#
Yeah, same here. I mean, virtually everything. So one of the things I'm sure you'll agree
#
as well is you don't realise things unless something happens, makes you think, you think
#
really hard and you figure it out. And once it's figured out, it stays with you forever.
#
So those are the central tenets of whatever. So whenever you talk about doing everything
#
from first principles, I can relate to that. And I know that that's very fallible as well,
#
because you cannot figure out everything from first principles. It's life is too complex
#
for that. Yet, because you've always, you know, arrived at the big conclusions of your
#
life by figuring it out on your own, you're sort of addicted to that and you're not comfortable
#
with sort of entertaining an idea, unless you've sort of figured it out, played it over
#
in your head, stretched it out, mangled it, done whatever it is, and found it to be acceptable
#
to whatever the rest of your belief system is. And many of our mutual friends are like
#
that, we figure that out. Then a lot of that also comes into conflict with the world you
#
live in. Now, I don't wear atheism on my sleeve. I go to temple, I pray, I genuflect, I do
#
everything. Because I think that respect to the tribe and being kind to other people is
#
more important than trying to transform everyone to your belief system. And however much I
#
might be convinced that I'm thinking right, you know, it's not universal. And there's
#
really no reason for me to believe that I am. My belief system, as you said, is sceptic,
#
right? So I do not believe unless there is a good reason to believe in something. But
#
if someone else finds believing easier, I am now of the view that I'm really not a person
#
to say no to that. I've been accused by my kids that it's a cop out, that I'm copping
#
out. If I really believe in something, I should go out and say it. Why do I? And I'm conflicted
#
about that. I'm not sure why I do that. But the older I get, the less willing I am to
#
sort of aggressively go and try and change someone else's point of view. I don't know
#
if that's the right thing or not. But a lot of things that are happening around me at
#
this time, I do feel that I must go out and I do it on an individual level. Recently there
#
was a classmate who exhibited, you know, very xenophobic views, which I didn't agree with.
#
And I called him out on that. And, you know, I was risking our friendship, but I couldn't
#
not do it. Yet I find myself unwilling to do it with the world at large. I haven't
#
figured that one out why I do it. In your line of work as well, because you are, you
#
know, basically a journalist, even if you're not an active one, when you report on things
#
as you see it, regardless of whether those things are palatable to the rest of the world
#
or not. And do you find yourself being more temperate in these things? I, for one, feel
#
you are. Your earlier writings were far more direct and far more brutal than they are now.
#
What do you think is your journey or your experience in this?
#
Yeah, that's a good question. They're tempered in the sense that there is not a conscious
#
self-censorship, but there is also a realization in a sense that social media takes up too
#
much of your time and too much of your mind space. So do you really want to get into a
#
fight on Twitter, for example, which is going to leave you disturbed for two, three days
#
because people are going to come and they're going to abuse you and it's just going to
#
be nuts? Or do you just want to avoid the fight by not saying whatever it is in the
#
moment? So I have found that there, I think at least as far as Twitter is concerned, which
#
is an incredibly toxic place, it amplifies toxicity because number one, it's shallow.
#
You cannot possibly have a deep conversation there per se. So I just use it for broadcasting
#
my links and not for having conversations. But also because you have these ideological
#
groups which are vocal minorities, the bhaks and the voks, the bhaks and the voks, I said
#
the voks, voks, not voks, the bhaks and the voks. And within these echo chambers, you
#
have people constantly signaling to raise their status. And how do you do this? One,
#
by showing off your own virtue, but two, also by attacking others, attacking people from
#
the other side and never addressing the argument, but always a person, or two, attacking people
#
on your own side who are not pure enough for you. And it's just this constant mad war,
#
which is always fought in bad faith. You are never addressing the argument. You'll always
#
pick some random word from some tweet somebody wrote and attack that. And do you really want
#
to go there? And what also happens in many of these groups is that once they decide to
#
get after you, a particular tribe, either of these two tribes, there'll be WhatsApp
#
groups where they'll be coordinating and it'll just be your notifications will completely
#
get flooded. And what I realized is a very small vocal minority, thanks to how this podcast
#
does and what I get to hear from his listeners and all the people who signed up for my writing
#
course and all. I've subsequently realized over a period of time that the vast majority
#
of people out there are really sensible. They are also sick of these fricking tribes, but
#
these tribes are so incredibly vocal that sometimes it is just not worth it. Just let
#
it be. Why do you want to kind of get there? Because, and you can't say anything nuanced
#
or complicated on Twitter, for example. And now the point is most of these people on either
#
of these two tribes I know won't listen to my podcast and they won't because perhaps
#
I don't have the attention span or it is their inherent stupidity that drives them into those
#
tribes to begin with. I'm just kidding. But they probably haven't gotten this far to listen
#
to me say this. So it doesn't matter. So on my podcast time, like my whole thesis for
#
my podcast is that explore everything, question everything. It's a whole skeptic thing. Like
#
I have changed my mind on quite a few things in a very public way over a period of time
#
over conversations. I think that's the delightful part of it. Everybody's engaging in good faith.
#
You know, the one reason like somebody said, why don't you invite a politician from the
#
ruling party? And the thing is, because if I could invite a politician from the ruling
#
party, but they're going to come with prepared soundbites and a particular line and they
#
won't really open up. And the point is when two people are sitting and they just open
#
up, they trust each other, they have a conversation and good faith. It's just much more meaningful
#
for everybody concerned, rather than it's a polar opposite of what you see in television.
#
And also, you know, while I was editing the magazine Prakriti for a couple of years, 2017
#
to 2019, one of my main rule I had set for myself as an editor was that we will only
#
talk about ideas and policies. We will not talk about people or parties. We will not
#
personalize. We'll just talk about ideas. So for example, if I'm going to talk about
#
Savarkar, then I can write about what a horrible book Hindutva is and engage with the ideas
#
and just talk about those ideas and diss them. This current battle that you see on Twitter,
#
where one side is like Savarkar was a real father of the nation and the other side is
#
that he was a coward who sided with the British and who killed Gandhi or whatever, for which
#
there's no basis really. I mean, why are you entering that debate? It doesn't matter. He's
#
right. Why do we discuss people all the time? In fact, every time I get attacked, it's me
#
being discussed. It's not as if I've put an idea out there and someone is disagreeing
#
with it. Though sometimes ideas like that column I wrote about not having kids, like,
#
my God, I never thought I'll get told and abused for it as much as I did. Because parents
#
everywhere felt personally attacked, which wasn't the intention at all. It's just an
#
intellectual exercise. Let's think about this. Let's tease this out.
#
Someone attacked me and said, you have two sons of your own. How dare you say that? I
#
didn't know better at that time. Had I had this insight, back then I wouldn't have children.
#
I'm just, you know, and I'm not saying you shouldn't have children. I'm just saying
#
that I think it's morally wrong. That's all. I might be wrong. So this is the thing. So
#
I found that most people, they feel very uncomfortable to have their minds changed about anything.
#
And that's the reason why they go into echo chambers. And that's why people like you and
#
me like to engage with people who have used different or, you know, at least substantially
#
different from our own. And in some subjects, it is not possible for us to be different
#
on everything. And that makes it interesting. And one of two things happen. One of three
#
things actually. One is that it's inconclusive. Second is you are convinced that that person
#
is right, or that person is convinced that you are right. So for these things to happen,
#
both people need to have reasonably open minds. And that's vanishingly rare these days. At
#
least on Twitter and all, it's very, very rare. Really no point in debating anything.
#
Regardless of how you're saying that Twitter, first of all, it is that 280 characters really
#
not conducive to any kind of argument. But even if it were not, it would still be impossible
#
to change many people's minds because they are not willing to have it changed. I believe
#
Clubhouse and Twitter space is the vocal part of the audio part of this thing, which should
#
be very, very suitable for, you know, opinion changing experiences. I'm told they've become
#
huge echo chambers. I've stopped listening to them because I didn't like the way, you
#
know, they were echo chambers. They were just, everyone's saying the same thing in different
#
things. Yeah, I mean, I think, and I mentioned this in previous episodes, that what I am
#
firm about and dogmatic about is my values. There are things I value, individual freedom,
#
rights, whatever, skepticism, rationalism, I value those. But I'm completely open on
#
facts. So if I believe X, Y, Z to be a fact, and you prove me wrong, I'm fine. I'll instantly
#
I'll, you know, once the evidence is solid, even on a question of there being God, but
#
obviously there isn't so far because people have tried for centuries to get proof of that.
#
But what I find disturbing is that people are so dogmatic about what they consider the
#
facts of the world, and then you simply cannot question them, you know, like, especially
#
historical facts, right? So yeah, so those also are open to interpretation, open and
#
slight adjustments in historical facts paint entirely different pictures of entire cultures.
#
And wisdom lies in realizing that there is really nothing. There's a very nice Tom Robbins
#
quote saying that historian is very much like an animal husbandryist. Have you heard this
#
quote? No. So the similarity is that one breeds animals and the other breeds facts, and both
#
of them are ankle deep in bullshit. So that's, that's, that's one. And that's, that's an
#
important thing to know about all historical things. It's agenda driven, whoever wrote
#
the history had some reason to highlight some facts and obfuscate others. And it's really
#
extremely juvenile to have any kind of fights based on history. And yet almost every fight
#
that I see on social media now is somehow connected to history or historical opinion
#
or historical fact, or counterfactuals. What would have happened if this hadn't happened
#
is just really not something it's an interesting topic to discuss over an evening drink, but
#
really nothing that merits a serious discussion. And how does it make a material difference
#
to anyone, whether Aryans invaded or migrated or whether they came spread out, how does
#
it make a freaking difference to anyone? I mean, you don't have a job, there's no food
#
on your table. You know, people are being lynched outside your doorstep and you're talking
#
about something that happened thousands of years ago. By the way, you sort of mentioned
#
earlier about skepticism, about always questioning and avoiding certainties, which is really
#
why isn't that reminded me of one of my favourite films of all time, so I got to recommend it.
#
In fact, it's not a film, it's a series. Like when people talk about what's your favourite
#
web series of all time and all that, the first one that comes to mind is A Wire. But even
#
above that is Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue, which is a series he made for Polish television
#
in the early 90s. It's a series of 10 one-hour films on the 10 commandments. And the first
#
of those is, I think, something to the effect of You Shall Worship No Other God But Me.
#
And it's a beautiful story and I'll just say it out here, even though it's like a spoiler,
#
but I'll just say it because it's so beautiful and I want you to watch the whole series anyway.
#
It's like my favourite cinematic Decalogue. And the first story there based on this commandment
#
is about, you know, it's freezing cold and the lake is kind of frozen, but it's not reached
#
that stage where people are skating on it yet. They're kind of waiting, waiting, waiting
#
and this kid really wants to skate. And his father is kind of just like us, a rationalist
#
and an actual scientist unlike us, unlike me. And so what he does is he takes a temperature
#
and he puts all kinds of data together to figure out when it is safe for his son to
#
go skating. And then he arrives at something which, after all margins of errors and all,
#
he's saying it is absolutely safe for you to go skating now. The ice will be frozen
#
solid and the son goes and you can guess what happens next. And yeah, he's gone. And the
#
next day the father is standing disconsolate by the edge wondering what the hell happened.
#
All his numbers were right. All his signs were right. How could this have happened?
#
And then in the distance he sees a homeless man besides the lake warming his hands over
#
a fire. And that tells you the complexity of the world. And with the way I kind of interpret
#
that is that you respect the complexities, you respect the multitudes. Thou shalt have
#
no other God than me is not a literal invocation to a real God that exists, but sort of a more
#
metaphorical look at just complexity of the world and avoid certainties therefore which
#
we often get caught up in. You know, you can't plan everything. You can't. I have to watch
#
this, take a log or something. If this is the kind of filmmaking that is happening,
#
No, it's just gorgeous filmmaking at every level. Like to me, it's like the epitome of
#
cinema. But whatever, I always kind of get sentimental when I think of Kieslowski because
#
such great films. Let's talk about your moving on from the childhood. Like at this point
#
when you're a kid, what are you dreaming of being? I'm very curious about this because
#
you know, back in the day, there's nothing, right? There's no, and I grew up, I'm just
#
a few years younger than you, though I think of us as being more or less in the same age
#
group, late 40s, mid 50s. What is the difference now? But back in the day, there was really
#
nothing much. I mean, I was privileged enough to have books at my disposal and whatever.
#
But the one TV set just got you Krishidarshan once a week.
#
You know, so what were your early dreams? What was your view of the world and your place
#
Yeah. So I, my father was a doctor and he had a successful practice and it was assumed
#
that I would become a doctor as well. So even I didn't question it. But I didn't, so you
#
had this 10 standard and 12 standard and things of that. And back in the day, so someone,
#
I was talking to my nephew actually about a series on Amazon, he recommended called
#
the Kota Factory on people preparing for the IIT. And I haven't watched it, but I was reminiscing
#
about my time. In my time, it was something called Agarwal classes. So Agarwal classes
#
was, you know, it was the top. The slogan was ideal for scholars. So they are coaching
#
classes, but you know, back in my time, only people who are really weak at studies would
#
go to coaching classes. Otherwise they wouldn't. Whereas this one, you know, you went if you're
#
good at it. Anyway, I managed to get into Agarwal classes and I would go all the way
#
from Malad to Dadar, which is far away. And it was prestigious. So not everyone got into
#
I, there were two flavors. There was something called a vacation batch with the absolute
#
toppers went to, which I didn't make it to. And there was a regular batch, which was hard
#
to get in, but it was like okay for mortals like me. So anyway, I managed to get in and
#
I went there. And I found that it was just the same thing being repeated over and over
#
and over again. And so, you know, if you don't calculus, they'll tell you like you have to
#
do like a differentiate X cube. So it is three X squared. And that's it. Then, you know,
#
if you want to differentiate X to the power four, it's four. And they just keep teaching
#
you that over and over and over again. It just, it just, you know, I just broke me out.
#
I couldn't handle. After two months of this, I came and told my parents there is no way
#
I could, you know, I could, I'm not going to agree. And to their credit, did they said,
#
okay, son, if you don't want to go, you study, prepare at home and study. Do try to get into
#
medicine because it'll be nice. And you can take away a father's practice. And I tried.
#
I didn't get enough marks. I probably wasn't motivated. And then I was much better at math.
#
So somebody, you know, my, my mother, actually, she said, you know, you either have to become
#
a doctor or an engineer. I'm not going to have you, you know, sort of doing some liberal
#
arts things. I was very keen on doing liberal arts, but she said, no, nothing doing. And
#
so I went even for engineering. I didn't have the marks to get into one of the top colleges
#
in Bombay, but I went to Moneypal, which was my father to pay a little donation. And luckily
#
for me, I, I liked that. I, I, I took to it. It's if, if you don't like, uh, mathematics
#
of a certain kind, uh, engineering is extremely, uh, you know, tedious because it's there.
#
It's omnipresent. You have calculus everywhere and everything. I mean, if you're studying
#
thermodynamics, there's calculus, heat transfer, there's calculus. Every damn thing, there
#
is some calculus of the other. And there were people in my class who hated calculus. I hated
#
mathematics and they were miserable. They, you know, but it was a generational thing.
#
Parents really didn't ask their children what they wanted to become. So no one asked
#
me what I wanted to become. Luckily for me, engineering was good. I met a lot of really
#
cool people. So they were all guys like me. A lot of them were very intelligent, well
#
smart. They had ideas of their own. They were good debates. It was fun. And, uh, it must
#
have sort of molded me as, as a person. You, you know, you, when you come, when you go
#
to a engineering college hostel or any hostel, you're basically out of, you know, out of
#
your parents' shadows and anyone else can say or do anything to you. They are not restricted.
#
You don't have parents to sort of protect you or anything like that. So there are some
#
nice people, there are some nasty people and you, this is a human thing. We have grown
#
up in societies for, you know, all of our human history. You adapt, you make some friends,
#
you make some foes and you actually make far many more friends than foes. And, uh, you,
#
you grow as a person. So that was, uh, Manipal was a transformational time in my life. By
#
the end of that, I was, I was still unclear as to what I wanted to become. One of my roommates,
#
he, he had actually bought a farm for this MBA course. It was called MMS back then and
#
that was Mumbai University. So Bajaj, SPJ and all these were there. And he got a job
#
in Siemens, which was like a really good job to have. So straight out of college, he got
#
a job in Siemens. So he wasn't interested in going for this MBA, but he had spent a
#
hundred rupees for the farm. So he offered to sell me the farm for 50 rupees. So I bought
#
the farm from him, you know, it was a win-win transaction. I bought it for 50 rupees. And
#
then, uh, because I had, uh, yeah. Okay. We'll, we should be paused for, yeah. For the listeners,
#
we'll pause for a moment because outside my window, there is a window cleaner on the 27th
#
floor. Yeah. And I'm probably more nervous than he is right now. I'm actually afraid
#
of heights. So this is, there has to be the scariest job in the world for me. If, if,
#
maybe he's looking in and thinking, I like to be alone by myself. These people are speaking
#
on a mic. Must be the scariest job in the world for me.
#
We have a full-time, uh, like a guy who does all this. So he used to be a painter and he's
#
done all this. So he's completely fearless when it comes to. So once we got locked out
#
of our house. So he went into the other floor. He climbed up through the balcony and, and
#
I was like, and he was absolutely nonchalant about it. Just like a couple of minutes. So
#
the window cleaners gone down to the 26th floor where it is presumably a little safer
#
and warmer. Also at the 27th floor, it's a colder and it's probably, but I'm sure not
#
as cool as that. What were we talking about? I was rambling on
#
college and the friends you made. I was talking about the SBJ. So he sold, uh, my roommate
#
sold me the MBA form for 50 rupees and I filled it out only because I had paid 50 rupees for
#
it. And the next thing I know, I'm doing an MBA and it's, it's one of the top colleges
#
in India now, SBJ Institute of management and research, but I was underwhelmed to say
#
the least because I had no real context. I wasn't, I wasn't commercially minded businessmen
#
turn me on. And, uh, it was so one thing about management and, uh, you know, the entire field
#
of management education, I call it quote unquote is it's a lot of post-hoc rationalization.
#
So something happens and then a bunch of people sit together and decide why it succeeded.
#
So that time it was Sony Walkman and Sony Markman. And you had marketing professors
#
say that if you want anything to succeed, it has to be what the consumer wants. And
#
you have to figure out what the consumer needs. And then, and I was like, you know, Sony Walkman
#
never existed before. How could anyone in the world know that it is so I, I really couldn't
#
understand how that was any kind of insightful. Anyway, so I got an MBA job out of my college.
#
It was a nice job. I mean, well paying and everything, but very little to do. So all
#
day would be hanging around in office and chatting. You would have a few meetings and
#
so, but most of the time there wasn't much work. Computers weren't popular. So you had
#
one computer usually be in the managing director's cabin and it would be for the exclusive purpose
#
of playing solitaire. So that kind of thing. But because of the lack of activity, I was
#
going nuts. So I spent a couple of years there, just basically not doing anything. So I decided
#
to go back to engineering roots. So I had a friend who was, you know, we just met up
#
one day and he was also feeling very blue and we decided to start a factory. And then
#
we started, you know, a small mechanical engineering workshop. They would make drives and tools
#
for other companies and then progress to making components, which will supply some components
#
to Bajaj Auto and to Videocon. And like they were ups and downs, but basically it was manufacturing
#
all the way. And I sort of enjoyed that a lot. It's a very hard way to make money because
#
manufacturing is in our country, it is much better now. Back in the day, we had a lot
#
of very, you know, very restrictive laws, very, you know, there was excise was central
#
excise was one of the really, really bad, everyone, everyone belly aches about GST now,
#
but GST regime is far more logical and easy to handle than excise. Excise was harassment
#
on steroids. We used to, you know, every time you sent material from your factory, you couldn't
#
breathe easily, easy till it actually reaches destination. There were all kinds of preventive
#
excise officers who could stop your vehicle on the road anywhere and someone knew there
#
if they found any discrepancy in the documents, a lot of things. So then some people would,
#
you know, they would, they would harass you for bribery and things like that. The GST
#
regime has sorted out a lot of that. But back in the day, those challenges were there. But
#
even so, it was fun. I mean, you're always making things, you're finding new ways of
#
making things, they were, it was satisfying, you would, you know, there would be one way
#
of making this widget and it would cost 10 rupees and then you figure out a new and cheaper
#
way of making that widget for nine rupees, 50 paisa and then, you know, you got an extra
#
profit of 50 paisa and that was sweet till other people figured out what you've done
#
and then the price of the thing became nine rupees, 50 paisa. So you had to figure out.
#
So it was a lot of little innovation, jugad kind of innovation some of the time. And for,
#
for me, I had the advantage, most of my competitors were not professionally qualified engineers.
#
So, you know, I could read and those days internet wasn't so common. So I used to sort
#
of go there. There was this British council library in Nariman point, go there, refer,
#
you'd find, you know, easier and better ways of making things. And that was it. It was
#
fun. Luckily for me, I wasn't entirely financially dependent on my business. I mean, I was well,
#
I didn't have to spend any money on rent and things to go around. So I wasn't very competitive
#
in that way. I never had any ambition. I didn't want to become, you know, fortune 500 company
#
or anything like that. And that wish was granted. I never became a fortune 500 company, but
#
it was mostly fun all the way. So an engineering sort of, you know, career was that way satisfying.
#
What it was not is it did not give us sense of achievement. Like you have these little
#
moments of cleverness where you figure out some better way of doing something, but it's
#
always very, very incremental. At least in this country, you never get the opportunity
#
of doing something radically different. Why do you say at least in this country? I know
#
other places you have, we just made, you made a coffee for me in, you know, using the Aeropress.
#
So the guy who invented the Aeropress did something and he had the intellectual protection
#
and he made a lot of money. So that does two things. It, you know, it gives him more power
#
to like do other things. It inspires other people to look for, you know, ways of doing
#
other things. In India, we don't have that protection. So if someone were to invent an
#
Aeropress in India, it would be copied literally within days of it coming out. That's why we
#
don't have much innovation. We still do, but the innovators are not, not well rewarded.
#
So we don't have an ecosystem of innovation. This is what I feel. Tell me more about how,
#
like the engineering part of it. I get it. I mean, you're essentially in any case, you're
#
a person who loves tinkering, taking things apart, coming up with ideas for things. And
#
I can imagine by that sense of achievement may not be there for incremental stuff because
#
so much of it is unseen. Like you said, if you, you know, find a way to make something
#
that costs 10 rupees for 9.50 and you make it for 9.50 and then everyone copies you and
#
they make it for 9.50, the benefit to society is actually enormous because all those extra
#
50 paise go out into the economy, you know, create more jobs. It's a positive sum game,
#
but it's not noticed by you. All you see is ki maine itna kam kar diya na, everybody's
#
brought it down. We've kind of lost that. So I get the joy of engineering that's there,
#
but the business side of it is not so much joy there. Tell me a little bit about what
#
those times were like, because in a sense, in terms of regulatory environment, you've
#
come from pre liberalization all the way to now through all the many different phases
#
and all that, you pointed out how you would constantly be stressed because of the excise
#
regime and so on. So what was it like? Like what really was ease of doing business like
#
back in the day? Yeah, so I'll give you an example. Okay, so there was this, so we used
#
to supply to Videocon television. So our items were pretty much standard. There was something
#
called tuner mounting bracket in heat sink. So tuner mounting bracket was, you know, you
#
just mounted tuner and there was another company in the vicinity, which used to make brackets
#
and stuff. Videocon another company called Videocon appliances. They used to make washing
#
machines and air conditioners. Washing machines had an excise duty, I think of 0% or 5% or
#
something because it was a household thing. And air conditioner had, I think, 50% or 100%
#
or something. And the bracket was, I mean, you know, it looked pretty much the same.
#
So it's a bracket, you mount the machine on that bracket and that goes somewhere. So there
#
is one kind of bracket which goes into a washing machine. There's another kind which goes onto
#
an air conditioner. So one of the popular things for the excise officers to catch you
#
on was classification. So they would say that you have purposely classified something for
#
a lower tax rate, just in order to evade taxes, and then slap you with all kinds of, you know,
#
penal taxes and things like that. And the process was also the punishment. So they would
#
impound your books, they would seal your factory. It used to be called seizing. They used to
#
seize the books. And once they seized everything, you couldn't even supply. So I knew the other
#
guy in our vicinity because oftentimes Videocon used to have the same transporter for both
#
our goods to go into roughly the same location. So the guy would come to our place, pick up
#
our material, go there. And sometimes he would request us that, you know, you fill your goods
#
first because mine aren't completely packed yet. I'll get another hour or two to pack
#
them. And so we had our… So one day, a whole bunch of excise people have caught. This guy
#
is completely paralysed and he is, you know, the vehicles come and he can't go. So anyway,
#
I lined up there and I find this guy a complete wreck because the excise person has alleged
#
that the material that he's sending for washing machines is actually material he's sending
#
for the air conditioner, but it has been misclassified in order to save excise duty. And there is
#
no proof that this gentleman can give that will satisfy that person. After a really long
#
time, and the exchange of a little bit of consideration, he was finally let go. But
#
that person, you know, he's an elderly gentleman. He was so shaken up by this. Within a few
#
months, he sold off his entire business and disappeared. I've never met him again.
#
Yeah, that's really sad. And you say, you know, the exchange of a little consideration.
#
And obviously, I guess all these laws, see, typically, how we think of all these laws
#
which give too much discretionary power to inspectors, Inspector Raj and all, is that
#
it's all rent seeking. It's just… Yeah. Was that the case with you? Were you having
#
to pay like bribes? Actually, not much, right? So they were, so you had, so there would be
#
a visit from a PWD inspector. Now, actually, no one knew what the PWD inspector came and
#
inspected. So he just came, he gave you a, first he would send a little sort of notice
#
saying that he's coming on such and such date. Then you come on that date, you sit
#
in your office, you have your tea, there would be a small, back in the day, I think it was
#
a thousand rupees or something, you paid him a thousand rupees, he would give you his report
#
and that was the end of the thing. I later found out that this was an electric safety
#
report. So this was certifying that my factory is electrically safe. And that person was
#
certified in has no accountability at all. So, you know, if it's not safe and God forbid
#
somebody dies, he's not responsible. So why is he even certifying anything if he's not
#
responsible? If somebody is certifying something, you know, that person should stand by us
#
or you should record his observation or say what exactly he's done. So those days, there
#
were a lot of those kinds of visits and, you know, people who had boilers had people from
#
boiler department, people who had, they had this, they had, there was someone in our area
#
who had a small furnace, there was some inspection thing for furnaces. The unifying characteristics
#
of all these were that there was no responsibility. There were labor inspectors who would come.
#
There was one labor inspector whose job was to ensure that there was no child labor. And
#
he would just land up and certify that there was no child labor. I mean, how would you
#
know there's no child labor? You have to, you know, you have to do some kind of due
#
diligence. There was no such. And there were myriad authorities who would keep coming back
#
in the day, take their little bit and go away. All that seems to have vanished now. But to
#
be fair, back in the day, none of them was adversarial. They're all interested in their
#
little and it was usually modest, a few hundred rupees to a few thousand rupees. They would
#
take their money and do Ram Ram and go away and you never see from them again. There were
#
reports. So sometimes what would happen is they would be haggling. And then the guy,
#
the officer, I mean, there's no competition there. You can't go to another officer. So
#
if he decided to make an example of you for haggling, then you would hear one or two people
#
on whom cases were filed and they had to go and meet superiors and do whatever. Now it
#
has more or less vanished. So we don't have such visits. We don't have, we have, I think
#
pollution control is one, but pollution control these days is pretty serious. Like they'll
#
actually, you know, you can't just say that we have all the, they'll see every fuming
#
chimney and every smokestack, everything is inspected. There are norms, there are pollution
#
norms, everything. It is, they do a far more serious job now than they used to. I haven't
#
had labor inspectors in really a long time, but we do have to maintain records. They have
#
to be filed regularly. All those things are there. So as I was saying, GST is pretty clear.
#
It's a pretty brutal regime. I mean, GST, if you don't pay GST, you are screwed. But
#
if you do, and you know, your records are all okay, really no one hassles you at all.
#
You never have GST officers knocking on your door. So what really stops industry from growing,
#
in my opinion, two things, just two things. One is access to land. And the second is access
#
to capital. They really don't have either. So today, if you want to get any kind of land,
#
especially industrial land, this is not so much the case in residential, I believe it's,
#
you know, it's possible to go and buy a flat without paying a penny in cash. It's everything
#
is checked. But in industrial circles, that's still not the case. I am told that a good
#
50% of the considerations on cash in many places. What happens is for most of us, for
#
people like us, we have, I mean, if I had to buy something, I'll take a bank loan to
#
the extent of 80 or 90%. And if I have to pay a big chunk of it in cash, there's no
#
way I can get bank finance. So I don't end up buying premises, access to land is one.
#
And the second is access to capital. Even today, if you want business finance, it's
#
very, very expensive, unless you have collateral security to give, then it's dramatically cheap.
#
So if you know, if you are a house, and you wanted a one crore rupee loan, you'd pay
#
an interest of 7%. If you didn't have collateral security of your house to give, you'd pay
#
I don't know, 15, 17%. And that difference can be killing for many businesses. And so
#
if the present government wants manufacturing to grow, they seem to want that, they seem
#
to want MSMEs to grow because a lot of, you know, it just picks up a lot of employment
#
and MSMEs are also very inventive and enterprising when it comes to getting business. So if you
#
want to export stuff, you know, you leave an entrepreneur on his own, he'll go, he'll
#
find out, you know, something's required in Lithuania, and he knows that some inputs for
#
that come from Taiwan, he'll get the inputs from Taiwan, the other input from Bolivia,
#
and then send it to Lithuania, all those things happen. It's never going to happen in, you
#
know, in large corporations or because for most large corporations, all these small petty
#
businesses not worth the thing and definitely not going to work in a government environment
#
as though there's no way it's going to happen. But yeah, I don't see these two problems
#
getting solved anytime soon. So we're going to be second best after China for a long time.
#
That looks like second best or third best or whatever best. I've actually heard contrary
#
stories about GST from businessmen as well about how it's made things so much worse for
#
them. And just speaking for myself, I have to like file every month and it's just irritating.
#
But it's not ambiguous. The thing about why, why I'll tell you, so one of one of my companies
#
we had, so someone, it's a very small company, we keep, we file, we do the GST every month,
#
everything is fine. One month, this is during the COVID, you know, it was just emerging
#
out of COVID. Our, the person looked after the GST. I think he got, either he got COVID
#
or someone close to him got COVID. He was basically unavailable for that entire month.
#
He was basically running pillar to post. He survived everything turned out well. But you
#
know, it was an anxious time. And for some reason, our GST return did not get filed.
#
The next thing I know is I get a letter saying that we're going to attach your bank account.
#
This is just like eight, 10 days. Luckily, he came back, we filed it. But it's that menacing.
#
If your bank account gets attached, it's practically curtains for your business. You cannot work,
#
your bank account is frozen, you can't pay anyone, you can't receive any money, nothing,
#
nothing, nothing. And what happens then to, you know, we employ 25, 30 people, maybe 100,
#
150 people dependent on our company, just all of a sudden, because you're not able to
#
pay your GST in time, if your bank account gets attached, it's curtains for your business.
#
What are these people going to do? How is, so, you know, government is always thinking
#
about, you know, their revenue and they're listening very little empathy for what problems
#
industry might be facing. So I've heard anecdotal stories about a lot of small companies folding
#
up because of this, you know, they can't take the harassment, they can't take the tension
#
any longer. So not the harassment, just the tension, just like, you know, you have to
#
pay X and you have no money. And that's because one of your customers hasn't paid you money.
#
So, you know, and you have no other resources. So then you just fold up after some time you
#
just pack up the business because you don't want to face the prospect of going to prison
#
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of messy elements. Like, for example, someone was telling me
#
about the business where they supply merchandise and those kind of items to various stores.
#
And in the earlier regime, you don't have to pay any taxes on those things until they
#
are sold. But in this regime, once you send it to a store, you have to pay your GST on
#
it. And if you're a small business, if you don't have working capital, you're blown out
#
of the water right away. And I know of cases where this has kind of happened. And just
#
speaking of regulations, you know, you were talking about, you know, all the different
#
regulations and the inspectors who would come and I did an episode long ago when episodes
#
were much shorter when there were little miniatures of half an hour with our mutual friend Madhu
#
Menon on restaurant regulations. And Madhu pointed out he used to run a fantastic Southeast
#
Asian restaurant called Shiok in Bangalore. Sadly, he shut down. Because just running
#
a business is very hard. It's not just about creating great food and great ambiance, both
#
of which he did. But he told me the story about how there were two separate inspectors
#
who would keep inspecting the restaurant. And one of them was the the fire safety guy.
#
And for the fire safety regulation was you have to have multiple entrances to your restaurant
#
for safety reasons. So it's obvious and it's fair enough. And then there was I think the
#
excise regulation where they wanted to control the entry of liquor. So that regulation was
#
they can only be one entrance to any restaurant because they want to, you know, check the
#
chip to make it easy for them to check liquor going in and out. And you obviously can't
#
comply with both. You know, you can't be like Schrodinger's restaurant that if this dude
#
shows up, he sees two entrances. If the other dude shows up, he sees one entrance. You are
#
going to break one of those laws. Chances are you're going to have to bribe both of
#
those guys. And then the point is like other people who run businesses in the current day
#
have told me that like one guy who shut a similar enterprise a few years back said,
#
boss, I was bribing 30 people a month. I just couldn't do it. And even this ease of business
#
rankings that we've gone up in a little bit a couple of years back, we went back and the
#
government was boasting about it. The point is that they game the metrics in terms of
#
ease of doing business. It didn't actually become better. And one way of thinking about
#
this is through an anecdote which is not about business. But like I keep saying that there's
#
really no rule of law in this country effectively, unless you're very rich, but there's no rule
#
of law in this country effectively. And the state is a parasite. And an illustration of
#
that comes from my poker playing years. So I don't know if I told you the story, but
#
did I tell you the story about the raid? And yeah, yeah, so I'll repeat it for my listeners.
#
So basically, there used to be these underground cash games all over the place. So somebody
#
I know used to organize an underground cash game and this happened to be there was a new
#
building that had just been built. In fact, it's near the urban Tarka at Lokhandwala,
#
not the one at seven bungalows. Besides that, there was a new building and most of the flats
#
were not occupied. So my friend rented out one of these flats and a game used to happen
#
there. And what typically happens is when you conduct an underground game is that people
#
kind of play the game. And poker, of course, it's a game of scale, you're playing against
#
the other person. However, the house, the people organizing the game and getting the
#
players together, they take a cut of every pot, which is called the rake. So you take
#
a small cut of every pot and that eventually amounts to a lot of money. So this friend
#
of mine lives in Bombay, but was in Goa at the time. And he had a very nice guy. I'll
#
give him a fake name for now. I'll say Saleem, but basically a Muslim guy, which is, you
#
know, a key to the story, as you'll realize. So the person we shall call Saleem used to
#
run this game for him. And one of the neighbors in this partly occupied building realized
#
one day that there are all these young men who are coming every day into this otherwise
#
unoccupied flat and they have backpacks and they all look like Kasab. And this was circa
#
2011, 2012, right? And they all look like Kasab. So they compared to the anti-terrorism
#
cell, the ATS, as we call it. So the ATS decided to do a raid. So the ATS lands up when a game
#
is on and they ring the bell. And our friend Saleem, which is a name we've given him, but
#
remember he's a Muslim. So our friend Saleem opens a door and they ask him, the anti-terrorism
#
squad asks him. And Saleem has been raided before poker games. It happens once in a while,
#
you pay a hafta, you get away. So Saleem smiles very sweetly. And he says, sir, you know,
#
first they ask him his name. He says, sir, Saleem. Then they say, what's going on here?
#
And Saleem says, you know what's going on here. Sir, whatever you're thinking, that's what's
#
going on here. Anyway, so the ATS squad comes in and then they realize what's really going
#
on and they make Saleem, I'm finding the name amusing because it's a made up name, but they
#
make Saleem call up this friend of mine, who is at that moment in time in Goa, and who
#
is a seasoned veteran. So he tells these cops that don't worry, sir, kal mein aakey settle
#
kar deta, this, that, you let the boys play. And on that particular day, and I had been
#
to that game two or three times, but on that particular day, it was all young teenagers
#
who were playing. It was a low stakes game. So they were all terrified that the cops are
#
here and oh fuck, and what's going to happen and all that. And the cop calmly pats one
#
of them on the head and says, ki koi baat nahi beta khelo khelo. And then they go away.
#
So the next day, my friend comes back from Goa and he meets these guys and this guy says,
#
okay, so this is a deal you're playing every day. This is how it goes. So give us a hafta
#
of X amount every month. Now my friend was shana enough to not fall for this. He said
#
ki dekhe sahab, main aaj toh aapko hafta dunga. Lekin kal aapka dosra department aega
#
aur puchega. Parsu aapka teesra department aega puchega. Toh iss se acha ye hai ki aap
#
log a consolidated amount bata do ki uske baad mujhe koi tension nahi chahiye. So the
#
cop says, yeah, this is a good point. So okay, come back tomorrow afternoon. So he goes the
#
next afternoon to this police station or wherever he goes, wherever the meeting is. And you
#
have three guys from three different departments across the table with him and they negotiate
#
a bit and they arrive at a consolidated amount, which he pays, which will be divided, however.
#
And then he takes them to Marriott for lunch. And my point of this long story is that this
#
is basically the game that you know, any actual policing that you see is kinda accidental.
#
We are very lucky to have it. Thank you so much. But in general, this is a parasitic
#
state at work. This is how everything works. And it is so completely explicit when it comes
#
to the case of businesses. Like you pointed out that someone is coming there to see that
#
there are no child laborers. It is a worthwhile inspection to do. Even that guy is sitting
#
in your office, having a child, taking a bribe, going away. No one actually gives a shit about
#
the law, right? This is egregiously, you know, present in all these fire cases that you keep
#
seeing, right? So some building or the other goes up in flames. And almost never is there
#
an audit into what inspection was done and why the person who has done the inspection
#
should not be put under the scanner. The reason for this is accountability, okay, is like
#
a cancer and for them. Because if you allow the principle that a building fire inspector
#
is accountable for his report, there is nothing to stop a cabinet secretary from being accountable
#
for whatever he is accountable for. So none of, no one in the establishment wants accountability
#
ever to percolate into their... It's not that they don't know about... You, for example,
#
are liable to pay, let us say, GST, and you have appointed a GST consultant to pay it
#
for you. And for some reason or the other, maybe GST consultant died. Maybe he had a
#
domestic problem, whatever. He didn't pay your GST and you've just been sort of transferring
#
the money, your calculator, you send the money to him. He didn't file the thing. Who faces
#
the music? You do. You cannot pass it on to. So it's not that the government doesn't understand
#
the meaning of accountability. They understand it very well. They make sure it doesn't apply
#
to them. The day this happens, I'm pretty sure we'll have a huge transformed state.
#
But it is like, because if you have to introduce accountability, it has to be the government
#
that does it. It is like asking an alcoholic to blow up a distillery. It's very, very,
#
very, very unlikely not going to happen. So it becomes wishful thinking. Then what happens
#
is, like so many successful businessmen you see now, the person who is able to manage
#
the environment best wins. So in the case of Madhu, we know very well, he is what kind
#
of a person he is. He is a sensitive person. He has no two standards. He lives by a code
#
and he expects everyone to live by the same code. There is no duplicity within him. He
#
is not able to accommodate the duplicity which is necessary for doing business.
#
In his case, I think he was practical enough to make all the payments when required. You
#
do what it takes. I mean, the restaurant ran for six to seven years. If you Google for
#
shiok, it is still regarded as a cult place. But running a business in India is too hard.
#
And I don't think anyone who runs a business-
#
No, it's not. That's the argument I'm saying. So if Madhu, he's really good at cooking
#
and I've not eaten at his restaurant, but I've eaten what Madhu has cooked. And I know
#
so many of our friends who have eaten at shiok, it was an outstandingly good restaurant.
#
And it should have been like, you know, there is this restaurant called Olive and Olive
#
is a chain now. There are many, many Olives and the guy who started it must be doing very,
#
very well. Madhu could have been that person. Had he outsourced his liaison work to someone
#
savvy, because if he had to pay an X percentage of his, he would have factored in that as
#
a cost, adjusted his pricing accordingly, adjusted his business model accordingly and
#
gone on with it. So the government, so the onerous burden of missing is, I don't think
#
it's that is the reason why business doesn't flourish in India. I think it's because delivery
#
of government services is not what that is improving. Now, if you look at infrastructure,
#
I don't know what cost it comes at. But infrastructure is a lot, lot better than what it was when
#
we were growing up. It's also a function, I think, of the nation's prosperity. I mean,
#
we do get all countries become more prosperous, we do earn more money. There is so but a lot
#
of services that the government has is supposed to deliver, it doesn't get delivered, because
#
there is no incentive for anyone to do so. There is no accountability, like what kind
#
of services like the rule of law or contract. Law is the most, you know, like, you know,
#
we we are a nation which is pro-poor, like always the entire rhetoric has always been
#
Garibon ka Desh and everything. We have politician of the politician has wept tears for the plight
#
of poor people. And yet you just have to go hang out outside a police station, see what
#
happens when a poor guy goes. The first thing he gets is a slap you for for anything, whatever
#
if you come, you should, you know, this is how they do they they they're not sympathetically
#
treated there is not. I have so once Sheila and I we lost we had some shares and so one
#
of the certificates was missing. So we asked for a duplicate services back in the day.
#
And we asked for a duplicate certificate. And they said that the requirement for that
#
is that you have to have an FIR. So you have to go. So I went to Malad police station and
#
I was expecting to, you know, be asked for a bribe or anything like that. To my great
#
surprise, not only was I not asked for a bribe, the inspector actually, you know, was very
#
courteous, asked with the there was some chai coming he made and I speak Marathi well. So
#
we spoke in Marathi for some time and then Sheila doesn't speak Marathi. So there was
#
some good hearted, you know, sort of, you know, why don't you you've been in Mumbai,
#
why don't you speak, all that kind of happening. And just then, a boy man is brought in for
#
something. And his mother is, you know, has come running after him crying. Okay, to leave
#
him. And there is it's something is some neighbors, he hit someone, she hit some some there was
#
some such thing. What they did was, they did. So he tells his assistant to take him to temple.
#
So Sheila is like, you know, so why are they taking him to a temple? And they said, take
#
him to the temple, I will come and then we will worship. And Sheila, being Sheila, was
#
wondering why then I told her and by the time the gentleman had gone away. So I told her
#
what was happening and then you could hear muted cries and you know, obviously he was
#
being slapped or whatever he was being happening inside. And around the same time, our work
#
gets done. So the person was assigned to writing out his written out and there's quite a procedure
#
to writing out and there's several registers to be filled out is filled out all the registered
#
he's written it out. He's given me a copy of everything. And so I thanked my inspector
#
and I go away. So it's a different law for privileged people like us and different one
#
for poor people. And that is something which does need to be addressed in, you know, it
#
would be nice if it happens soon. That's what I'm saying.
#
You know, when you mentioned accountability, you correctly said that accountability is
#
for the people. It's not for the government and it should really be the other way around.
#
The government should be accountable to us. Yeah, we don't have to be accountable to them.
#
And yet it's almost as if, you know, when you deal with the police, the vibe you get
#
is guilty until proven innocent and for us privileged people, it might be slightly different
#
unless you're a film star son. But otherwise for you know, for I think 95% of Indians essentially
#
the rule of law is completely absent. You know, we are really in the top 1% or half
#
percent or whatever. I think the extent of poverty in this country is underestimated.
#
The way you kind of described how you fell into this business is similar to how you fell
#
into doing an MBA. That oh, my friend was filling the form. So I also filled a form
#
and I got in and then oh, I didn't really enjoy the MBA job. And a friend said, let's
#
start a business. So I started a business. But you know, was it just kind of an accident
#
a decision you took at a point and before you know it, 30 years have passed or whatever
#
and you're still doing the same thing? Or was there some sort of ambition, some kind
#
of directionality? You know, were there other ambitions during this while? For example,
#
there is a famous Facebook group called We Want Narendra Shanoi to write a book, which
#
many of your friends have been telling you for a long time for your enormous storytelling
#
skills. So were there other things playing out at this moment within you?
#
I'm almost embarrassed to say that I didn't have any, I've never had any plan whatsoever
#
ever in my life. So I have, I'm one of those easily persuaded people. So that's my problem
#
with politicians as well. So I listened to a persuasive politician and I'm completely
#
convinced till I listen to the other side and then I'm completely convinced about that
#
as well. And oftentimes those two opinions, it's impossible to have them in one thing.
#
So similarly, even when it comes to businesses, I'm very easily persuaded. And I'm, you know,
#
I'm, I'm just enthusiastic about everything. What happens in a, because that's the nature
#
of all businesses is that your environment keeps changing the demand. So for example,
#
you could have a typewriter factory in 1992 and you would sell one million typewriters
#
a year and by 2000 you wouldn't sell a single one. So things keep changing. One of my main
#
business is automotive components and I supply to automobiles and tomorrow if the expected
#
transformation to electric vehicles happens much quicker than we think it will, I might
#
be out of work in a couple of years time. I, you know, there's no one wants my product
#
anymore because it is basically a sound suppressing thing, which is far more required in, you
#
know, engine driven cars, petrol or diesel driven cars than in electric vehicles. So
#
I yeah, I was planning for the like, you know, having a direction is not, not, not what I'm
#
terribly good at. I'm just, I've, I've just been stumbling along. That's, that's what
#
I've been doing for the last 30 years or so. But yeah, I actually come to think of it.
#
I have no clue why it is so. No one told me not to plan. It's just that I, I'm not good
#
at it. I have never done anything like that.
#
So on that note, I mean, I don't plan my commercial breaks either. They just come when they come
#
and I think this was a good time for a commercial break. So let's give into the moment and take
#
a quick commercial break and come back on the other side.
#
Have you always wanted to be a writer, but never quite gotten down to it? Well, I'd love
#
to help you. Since April last year, I've enjoyed teaching 17 cohorts of my online course, the
#
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#
in the course itself through four webinars spread over four Saturdays. I share all I
#
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and that lovely and lively community at the end of it. The course costs rupees 10,000
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plus GST or about $150 and registration is now open for my winter 2021 cohort. This will
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#
begin on November 20th. So if you're interested, head on over to register at india uncut.com
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slash clear writing. That's india uncut.com slash clear writing. Being a good writer doesn't
#
require God given talent, just a willingness to work hard and a clear idea of what you
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need to do to refine your skills. I want to help you.
#
Welcome back to the scene in the unseen. I'm chatting with Narendra Shenoy who before the
#
break, confessed that he was never a kid with ambitions and never had a plan for his life.
#
And in a sense is refreshing to hear that. I think, you know, we are often sold a couple
#
of these new age self LP things, which is you go to follow your passion and all of that.
#
And I think that that's sort of wrong at multiple levels. One is it doesn't consider expected
#
value, which we were just discussing before this that is quite okay if say your kid wants
#
to be something unconventional. And let's say your kid wants to be a singer. And he
#
says, look, Arijit Singh has done so well, which is great. But the point is Arijit Singh
#
is an outlier. He is the one guy who made it in a business where typically a handful
#
of people really make a lot of money and the rest of them are perennial strugglers. So you
#
need to keep that in mind. Whereas if you do engineering MBA, all the mediocre engineers
#
and MBAs out there are going to make a really healthy living and provide well for their
#
families. You know, I keep saying the cafes and of Versova are filled with this, you know,
#
the strugglers who followed their dream for 25 years and look where it got them. So in
#
a sense, I'm glad I think people need to realize that not everybody necessarily has to have
#
a dream per se, you know, and but even though you didn't have a dream, you obviously had
#
things that you like doing things that you cared about and were passionate about. Tell
#
me a bit more about them. Like I know food is one of them. Obviously, we've kind of connected
#
on that level a heck of a lot. So tell me a bit more about food, especially like was
#
it a child from a childhood thing as your grandfather, you know, ran a restaurant and
#
so on. And tell me a bit more about, you know, how you started thinking about food as a US
#
man. Yeah. So growing up, we were not a restaurant going family. We used to eat at home and I
#
used to love the food that, you know, so I belong to a community called Gout Saraswat
#
Brahmin. And we have, you know, it's basically idli and dosa. So here's an interesting. So
#
I used to, when I was a kid, I used to hate the fact that my mom used to make idlis and
#
dosas every day. So, you know, it was either idli or dosa. So my sisters were, we had gone
#
to this house to live and they had a couple of friends and they had come over. My sisters
#
are doing their homework and these girls come over and they want to, you know, play. I said
#
they're busy. They're doing their homework. And I was older. So I asked them, you know,
#
can I get you something? Can I get you a glass of water, soft drink or something? So no,
#
no, we've eaten. We've come. Little girls. And the younger of them volunteers that, you
#
know, we had bread and jam for breakfast. So I said, that sounds nice. And then she
#
volunteered further information said, we had, we have bread and jam for breakfast every
#
day. So I said, indeed. So she said, yeah, except Sundays. I said, what do you have on
#
Sunday? She said, we had bread, butter and jam. That's when I realized the first time
#
I realized that I was far more privileged in the terms of having good home cooking as
#
compared to many other people. My mother was a good cook. She was, she used to make, she
#
doesn't eat non-veg, but she used to make, you know, chicken and things of that for us.
#
So my father was a very, you know, he loved people. He had to have friends and we had
#
a large house. So every Saturday, all his colleagues, almost everyone was a doctor.
#
So they would all like wind up with their practices at 10 or 11 at night and come home
#
for a drink. And there would be a lot of singing, dancing, boisterous partying till two or three
#
in the morning. And my mother would cook for all of them without complaining. So that was,
#
you know, regardless of, and oftentimes these people would come without warning. So my father
#
wouldn't even tell her. And then cooking would begin at 11 at, you know, at night. And I
#
also remember this almost always, she would be the only person in the kitchen doing everything,
#
chopping vegetables quickly and putting things, washing rice, making food. So when I got married,
#
Sheila was my wife, was a far more restaurant person. So she liked to go out. And I, I like,
#
I had never, you know, restaurant going was never a part of my upbringing. Indeed, when
#
I used to go out, I, my comfort food was dal fry and roti. So wherever I went, I just ordered
#
dal fry and roti. And I didn't like to go to Chinese restaurants because they didn't
#
have dal fry and roti. So that was a simple fact. So then first of all, when Sheila found
#
out about this, she was aghast. And then slowly she changed my view towards food. And over
#
the last 30 years, she's, I've become practically human and I like many cuisines and South Asian,
#
you know, Southeast Asian cuisine being my favourite. But it, I wasn't much of a foodie
#
for a long period of time. Then somewhere in 2007 or 2008, one of those times, we had
#
a visitor. So he was an uncle's, you know, brother, uncle by marriage, his brother or
#
something like that. Not very liked among the women folk because he was outspoken on
#
many things. But one thing he was, was a good cook. And when he came home, he said, I'm
#
cooking. And he stayed with us for a few days. And he, you know, sort of enlisted my support.
#
So I had no idea. I didn't, I had never chopped vegetables. I didn't think. So we went out,
#
he bought me one big chef's knife, which I still have like a big knife, the likes of
#
which our kitchen has never seen, though that kind of a knife. And then he taught me how
#
to chop vegetables and cut onions and things like that. So we, I would chop vegetables
#
and he would make, he would make things. So he made, I remember he made a poached Ravas,
#
I think. And that was the first time I'd seen anything like that made. It demystified.
#
It was pretty tasty because, you know, eating fish without any masala is revolting to, you
#
know, most, most people from my community. And this guy actually made it tasty. He squeezed
#
some lemon on that. He put some leaves and tomatoes and stuff like that. It was actually
#
tasty. And after he left, I started, you know, YouTube wasn't really a big thing back then.
#
So I had to figure out, I kept buying all these recipe books and reverse engineering
#
about five times out of 10, it was inedible, completely inedible. So you had to throw it
#
out. But on occasion, it turned out very nice. And then I started getting interested more
#
and more in different kinds of cooking. One thing about when you, when you actually cook,
#
you then start, so that's why I love Krishyashok's book, Masala Lab, because he reduces everything
#
to general principles. And you can sort of play around with that. He never says anywhere
#
in the book that he is right. He just explains what he thinks is happening. A lot of it is
#
even now is not settled science, so you'll have more views than one. But you get a general
#
idea. So what the Tadka is, or what you're doing when you're making gravy, or how you
#
would cook different meats. And some of that, and so Ashok used to write this kind of stuff
#
on Twitter even before. And even before he started writing, I used to read other people
#
and figure some of that. And then when you make it yourself, and it's not always pleasant,
#
sometimes it's rubbish, but you learn at every stage, you become more sensitive to what might
#
be going on when you eat yummy stuff elsewhere. And then I started appreciating outside food
#
a lot more. And I would seek out, you know, unusual eateries, unusual kind of foods. And
#
oftentimes I would be pleasantly surprised. There was one I was telling you earlier about,
#
we had gone to Hampi, and we were staying in this place called Hospit. And we were staying
#
in a resort, and we had the usual resort fare. And it was extremely bland and not appetizing
#
at all. So my brother-in-law and I, we decided to seek out. So we had a driver, and we asked
#
the driver where he ate, and he pointed us out to a small hole in the wall, which turned
#
out to be serving a cuisine called Sauji. And this is indescribably hot. It's like,
#
it has like industrial quantities of chilli in that. Yet, it is very flavorful. So you
#
put that in your mouth, and you know, your mouth is on fire. And yet you want to have
#
more of that. That was a novel experience. I had never eaten anything as spicy as that.
#
That was fun. I have, like we've, there are, there's one place near Virar, you know, north
#
of Bombay, where there's one eatery which serves poha and chicken. It's very tasty.
#
I mean, it's, I've never eaten anything like that anywhere else. But it's a thing. And
#
it has its own little history, how it started. And somebody, I, here's what I think is someone
#
had a drink or two too much and went off to make chicken pulao. And instead of putting
#
rice, he put poha, and it turned out to be nice. That's what I believe happened. There's
#
some other story that he told me. And you start appreciating different kinds of, so
#
some food you don't like, it's, there is too much spice in it, or there's too much happening
#
in it. But some food, it just appeals. It's very complex. Just like life, food is very
#
complex. And it, some kind of food just appeals to you, some kind doesn't. And different food
#
appeals to different people. It's fascinating. Yeah. So I, I did a lot of eating out in,
#
in the last eight or 10 years, went to different places. We went on a trip to Mysore once and
#
sampled four or five different cuisines in a small, really small town, just because it
#
happened to be the confluence of cultures. Food says a lot about what a culture it comes
#
from as well. And it's very interesting. It's, it's very satisfying. It's like a good meal.
#
It's, it's, it's a hundred times better than a good drink is what I feel. And does it like
#
you pointed out that of course you started noticing more nuances of food when you would
#
eat out because you had, you know, started cooking and all that. But do you feel that
#
it made you more mindful of the process of eating in general? Like one of the things
#
I often find, even when I order something which I absolutely love, like the ramen we
#
had today is that initially I'll enjoy the taste, but then my mind will just drift off.
#
So I could really be having any damn thing for the rest of the time. Right. It's just
#
that initial moment where you're mindful and where you're enjoying it. And I find that
#
I don't like that about myself, but it always happens with everything that I kind of do.
#
Because one of my sort of credos in life now is that take joy in the small things. You
#
know, if you wait for big things to give you joy, the big things may not happen. You know,
#
most dreams don't come true. The big things don't happen. There are so many small things
#
around which can give you so much joy and food is definitely one of them. But I find
#
that I'm not being mindful enough and it's almost kind of contradictory. Do you feel
#
that your mindfulness while eating food has kind of gone up or do you have to keep reminding
#
Yeah. So mindfulness is, so I've had my problems with, like all of us, I'm sure practically
#
all listeners, I think it's a big function of the explosion of, you know, your social
#
media and everything. Everything is crying out for attention and it is almost humanly
#
impossible to be immersed in one thing. I've seen this affect my reading habits. So back
#
in the day, I could read a book in maybe five or six hours that is sitting. I wouldn't get
#
up. I mean, I would pick up a book and like go cover to cover. I can't remember when the
#
last time was when I did it. I just, I'm unable to do it. I set a target nowadays to finish
#
one chapter without sort of attending a call or looking at my Twitter, things like that.
#
So I forced myself to do it. So one is the way technology has evolved has started robbing
#
you of your powers of attention. There's a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. I strongly
#
recommend everyone read it and you know, if you can't read it, at least there are a few
#
good interviews of his on YouTube and you can see that.
#
I did an essay on that, which is almost a TLDR of the book, a 2000 word essay. So I
#
will link that from the show notes. That's brilliant. The TLDR of that is basically,
#
if you want to get anything done, you have to switch off. That's the switch off everything
#
else and pursue that, just that thing. It works a lot if you want to read something.
#
And so one thing that is a big problem is you read a summary or watch a summary of something
#
on YouTube and you think that you've got what that thing is about, mostly perhaps books.
#
And that couldn't be further from the truth because when you actually read a book, you
#
find yourself arguing with the author or getting a lot more nuance or it's more leisurely,
#
you get a chance to sort of play it out in your head. And rightly or wrongly or whatever
#
it may be, you get your own meaning out of that book. When you see a summary on YouTube
#
or something, it's that summarizers point of view, which is being presented. So if you
#
want to read a book or if you want to do any serious thinking, it's imperative that you
#
cut yourself off. It's very difficult. In my case, I have to be online, on call. My
#
factory works around the clock. So I leave my phone on all the time. And if I'm sitting
#
and reading and the phone goes off, I pick it up because half the numbers I don't recognize.
#
So it could be one of my workers or it could be a neighbor. There could be an accident
#
or there could be some emergency. So I can't not pick up the phone. So I'm always distracted.
#
But even so, it is possible. So you mustn't, unless something is like, in my case, it's
#
the phone, unless something is very demanding of your attention. Don't look at Twitter.
#
Don't look at Facebook. Don't look at Instagram. Just be it. You will find that experience
#
very rewarding. I find that I have to force myself to do this. I'm pretty sure that most
#
of our listeners will feel the same. What used to come naturally to them a few years
#
ago is no longer natural. They have to force themselves to do it.
#
The advice that I often give people who want to start a reading habit is that initially
#
it's always tough. Like I was a prolific reader as a kid. Then I lost that habit as an adult.
#
Then I kind of gained it back five, six years ago. And the key to remember is once you resume
#
a reading habit, initially it can get tough. Your mind will keep wandering all the time
#
and you read 20 minutes and you're like done with it. But if you just stick with it for
#
a couple of weeks, you'll find that you're getting into the groove of reading. So to
#
say you're reading faster without compromising on depth or whatever. And when you're bored,
#
you find yourself reaching for a book instead of your cell phone, which is great. And by
#
the way, it's kind of fashionable in some circles to give Deepak a bit of flack because
#
one argument that I've seen on Twitter is that this is only for privileged people and
#
women can't make time for themselves. And what are we to do? And I find that criticism
#
is obviously coming from people who haven't read the book because Newport is not telling
#
you that you have to be able to make three hour chunks of time and whatever, whatever,
#
which is of course not possible for a lot of people. Instead, what Newport does is that
#
he lays out the problem so that you understand it better. And then he provides a number of
#
different solutions, not all of which require you to take out large chunks of time to work.
#
So there are four broad ways in which you can kind of deal with the problem. But moving
#
on to sort of another question from the mindfulness topic. And this was, of course, being physically
#
mindful of things, right? You're eating something, you're mindful of the taste, or you're reading
#
something and you stay in the moment and you stay in the book and all of that. That is
#
one kind of mindfulness. But another kind of mindfulness that I've been thinking of
#
recently is at a different level when it comes to other people. Like, you know, Immanuel
#
Kant, you know, one of his categorical imperatives, one of the versions of his categorical imperative
#
was that never treat other people as a means to an end. Treat them as an end in itself.
#
And I think all of us most of the time are treating other people as a means to an end.
#
That you know, I call my friend home, but I want his company, you know, they're instrumental
#
to my being entertained or my feeling warm or whatever. And similarly, you know, we settle
#
into grooves in our relationships. And after that, we are just acting out a play in a sense,
#
according to the grooves. And of course, there is conflict and there is friction when opposing
#
visions of a particular situation collide. And that's a difficult one. And that's a different
#
kind of mindfulness where you're mindful that this is a person. This is not an instrument
#
to make me feel a particular way. Is this something that you kind of think about? And
#
in your case, you know, it's interesting because one of the, I don't like adjectives, but one
#
of the first adjectives I once used for you, I think, to describe you to a friend was uxorius,
#
if you remember. Uxorius basically means a man devoted to his wife or a person devoted
#
to their spouse. And yet the point is that both you and your spouse would today be completely
#
different people from when you first met. Completely different people. And there is
#
a subtle kind of negotiation happening there at some level where you get used to the person
#
you are. And I find that early story about how you were reading out Kotler, I think,
#
to your Michael Porter or whoever it was. Porter to Sheila when you were trying to impress
#
her in the early days. Tell me a little bit about that. And so what are your kind of thoughts
#
on this? Is this something where you feel that you err sometimes, that you need to kind
#
of, are there lessons? Yeah. So one thing, you know, first very interesting that, you
#
know, you should mention about being mindful about people. I guess at some level we do
#
this to some people, people whom we love, people whom we don't, you know, we like whom
#
you are with for no specific reason at all. Otherwise, life is, you know, it's full of,
#
you always, it's always transactional. So it's always your, you expect something, someone
#
else also expects something from you. And oftentimes good relations are, you know, always
#
mutually beneficial. So if both of us have to gain something from each other, that leads
#
to a fruitful relationship. What if there is nothing to gain? What if neither of us
#
have anything to gain from, you know, does that still mean that we should be together?
#
And if you see a lot of really genuine friendships and genuine relationships are based on that
#
when you really don't have anything together, you just are together. There is nothing, it's
#
not that you're making each other happy or anything like that. You just be together.
#
For many of us, that would be the relationship with our spouses. So when you are newly married,
#
there is a lot of physical interest, all those things are there. After some time, it's, there
#
is nothing new to discover about your spouse. And that's when your real relationship starts.
#
And that's what that, that's a concept I never thought about before, being mindful, mindful
#
with people. In my case, with Sheila, I, Sheila is six years younger than me. And she was
#
almost a child when I married her. She was 21 years old. She was actually a few days
#
shy of her 21st birthday. And I was 26, I think, yeah, 26 or 27. She comes from a very
#
different background. So in my house, we're very outspoken. And everyone from a very young
#
age, everyone had equal democratic rights. So I had all the right in the world to, you
#
know, speak out my mind. If my parents or any elder uncles were around, it wasn't considered
#
bad. And in Sheila's family, it was a far more conservative upbringing. Women, for example,
#
were, you know, trained not to say anything. So the only way they expressed their displeasure
#
or unease with anything was by either remaining very quiet or shedding tears. And when, when
#
we got married, we had our first argument, we had a fight about something. I mean, I,
#
I think I drove very rashly or something. I drove recklessly and she didn't like it. And
#
I spoke sharply to her or something like that. Some, we had some such thing. And she stopped
#
talking to me for a few days. She didn't say a word. And I didn't realize, I didn't realize
#
there was anything amiss. And after a few days, she couldn't bear it any longer. She
#
couldn't bear the fact that I wasn't understanding there was something amiss. So she broke down
#
into tears. And this was surprising. I grew up with two sisters who are more than outspoken.
#
So there was no circumstance in which if they were unhappy, I would not know about it. They
#
would yell at me. So my mom, so my dad. And you know, the first time I see a woman just
#
sobbing quietly, then I asked her what happened. And then she told me, you know, that day you
#
said such and such, and I didn't like it. And I didn't talk to you. I said, you should
#
have told me you didn't like it. So for me, it was almost like a clash of cultures. And
#
in this particular case, it was easy. I could, I just encouraged her to be more communicative.
#
And then she was and she changed a lot as a person. Once she, she grew in confidence,
#
and she got the confidence that, you know, she could say anything to me and get away
#
with it. It was things were good. And then we as we grew, you know, obviously, any two
#
people live together, you keep having conflict. So I famously remember telling someone that
#
every almost every six months, we would have a fight would be in which divorce would be
#
discussed at least once. So I could almost plot it. So you know, if if like it was five
#
months and three weeks, like it would be divorce time again. So I can guarantee you that's
#
not a unique experience. But if two people live together, and if you have communication,
#
whatever it might be, you will resolve it, it does. That's human nature. That's, that's
#
how we are wired as as a species. And so that, I think was my, you know, contour, I, I'm
#
very proud that I encouraged Sheila to be more communicative. And when she did that,
#
she she sort of came into own as, as a person, she's a very friendly person. So before this,
#
she was very hesitant to make new friends. And, you know, as time passes, as she grew
#
more comfortable, she is, you know, she she makes friends very easily. And what she made
#
me realize is that I, I was by so I had this intellectual arrogance, that I knew everything,
#
because I was usually the cleverest guy in the room, right from my school days, very
#
clever, understand everything, read a lot of books, can speak English, very good at,
#
you know, sort of pulling out a quote, a clever quote from Shakespeare or Woodhouse or something
#
like that, win the day, win the argument and think of that. And I oftentimes wouldn't sense
#
even that other people who are not as communicative as me had something to say and weren't able
#
to say it. So I, I don't know how far I've progressed on what I like to think that now
#
I realized that just because someone is not saying something does not mean that they don't
#
have anything to say. And it's very difficult, very important to get, get that out of them,
#
and even if it's difficult for those people, and it makes a life richer. So one, one thing
#
that I learned was communication skills and intelligence are not correlated. So I have
#
found some really clever and intelligent people who are not really able to communicate at
#
all. So that that was a finding I wouldn't have because I just equated communication
#
and intelligence. So if you can't communicate, you're dumb. That was my earlier thing. Over
#
a period of time, I've realized that that is not the case. I don't know how your experiences
#
you're pretty much in the same boat. You are
#
No, I'm in a worse boat because I'm in a worse boat because I think, you know, it took me
#
many years into my adulthood, which is why I don't like the young me when I think of
#
me in my 20s. And people I knew then are still in touch on Facebook or whatever. And I think
#
to myself that why, because that guy was such an obnoxious prick. But I realized looking
#
back and these are things that you realize only in hindsight, if at all, that I picked
#
up two things that makes me cringe when I think back on them from my parents. And one
#
was I think an intellectual arrogance, which you mentioned from my dad, because again,
#
as a kid, I read all of Shakespeare at 10 and I was just reading very voraciously and
#
that that makes you think the world of yourself. And my dad was similar in a sense. And I picked
#
up this massive intellectual arrogance that took years and years to kind of go away. And,
#
you know, and just looking back, I wonder how I kind of navigated through society with
#
that kind of arrogance. And from my mom, I think I picked up this massive social arrogance
#
that, you know, we are a certain class of people. And my dad was an IAS officer and
#
obviously, you know, privileged upbringing and all living in bungalows in my childhood
#
or never since obviously. But so there was that and it takes a long time for that to
#
go. And when that goes, you kind of realize that, you know, that you lost so much by being
#
Yeah, that's so true. You realize you are the bigger because you have your arrogance
#
has created these barriers. You're not listening and you become so forbidding that other people
#
do not want to speak to you or they're intimidated by your presence. They can be nothing sadder
#
than that, actually. Yeah. So that that was one of the yeah, I'm happy to meet. I know
#
that someone else also has gone through that. I took me a long time to figure that out.
#
It's probably still there at some level. It's just it's just who we are. Right. We are basically
#
very arrogant and selfish people. But as you grow older, I think you sort of grudgingly
#
acknowledge that you're not as great as you think you are. And other people are actually
#
far, far more, you know, smart and clever and talented than you ever suspected they
#
And I think the other sort of sort of way of thinking about this is that even if you
#
are smarter than others, even if you're, you know, better than so many, like it doesn't
#
make a difference. Like I see so much of what happens around me in society and maybe exacerbated
#
by social media is this constant one upmanship. There is this and which, you know, normally
#
is by putting other people down or there is a quest for constant validation. And these
#
two are kind of colliding all the time. Like if there's something that I really hate about
#
social media, it's about how, you know, you're shitting on people all the time. And I see
#
that even on some WhatsApp groups, you know, we may both be part of something like that.
#
I mean, we don't do that, but we may be part of a group like that. Well, you know, it's
#
all the time you're shitting on someone and it's like endless code tweets. Like for me,
#
the code tweet is just the rudest thing ever, unless you're praising someone, in which case
#
it's fine. You're praising someone or you're citing someone's piece and saying something.
#
But a lot of the time it's just mockery. You're not adding anything to any conversation. You're
#
just mocking someone for having different values than you, or maybe for not understanding
#
something enough. And I think at the end of the day, all of this shit is an accident.
#
Your intelligence, what you've achieved in life, it's an accident. That's a very good
#
point because yes, you know, some people are smarter, some people are less smart. It's just
#
like some people are taller and the people aren't just as tall. It's just variations
#
and that. It should not, it really doesn't mean anything at all. It really doesn't. And
#
actually, as someone pointed out, if you compare the difference between the dumbest person
#
and smartest person, it's really not much as, you know, if you compare it from a baseline
#
of, you know, from another animal, from, let us say, a chimpanzee to a human being, that
#
delta is really big. So in percentage terms, that little ripple doesn't matter at all.
#
Yeah, I mean, that's a good perspective because I think, you know, basically we are all, we
#
are actually identical. Yeah. And everything is kind of circumstance and a circumstance
#
in two ways. One is a circumstance of your genes, which is luck. And the other is a circumstance
#
of your circumstances as it were, what a convoluted way, which is also luck. You know, like I
#
love Steven Pinker's quote about, you know, nature gives you knobs, nurture turns them.
#
And they're both kind of luck. And that's one of the big lessons I kind of got as a
#
poker player is that realizing that it's not just in poker where you have to adjust for
#
the level of luck, because obviously though it's a game of skill, the quantum of luck
#
is much higher than in other sports, but in life itself. And so many people get, you know,
#
they let success get to their heads and they become arrogant or even the circumstance of
#
their birth get to their heads. I am so proud of being so and so proud to be a Hindu. What
#
did you do? You know, if someone who is proud to be a Hindu today, it's a circumstance of
#
birth that they are a Hindu in India. What if they were, you know, you know, something
#
else somewhere, you know, what is a damn difference? But anyway, that's, that's kind of taking
#
us into different places. But then, so there's the other thing I mentioned that on social
#
media, people do two things. One is this constant upmanship and which probably comes from a
#
deep fundamental insecurity. But there is also the quest for validation, which I think
#
comes from again, one of the fundamental anxieties that I learned to tackle. And I'm still learning
#
to tackle, which is hardwired into us, which is the anxiety of what other people will think
#
of you. And, you know, so when I talk to my writing students, when I give my last webinar,
#
like I keep pointing out that this anxiety is actually pointless, because no one's thinking
#
of you. Everyone's got their head up their own ass. You know, no one is like taking screenshots
#
of every little thing you write so that they can come back five years later and say, look,
#
what a bad sentence you wrote. And yet this is a difficult anxiety to get by what other
#
people think of you. So is this something that you've kind of faced and other anxieties?
#
If you were to think back on things that you've been anxious about and insecure about, what
#
would you kind of look at?
#
Yeah, one thing that somehow has docked me for a long period of time is acceptance, right?
#
So somehow you feel whenever you're in a group, you feel obliged to be accepted in that group.
#
So oftentimes, what it means is you say things, you really, which go against your core value,
#
or you refrain from saying things when you should actually say them. So excessive politeness
#
just in order to fit into the group. In my case, that definitely comes from, I don't
#
know why it should be true. I have, why it should be so, because I'm definitely among
#
the privilege. I mean, my dad was a successful practitioner. We had, you know, socially acceptable
#
was absolutely no reason why I should be anxious about being accepted in groups. Sheila often
#
points out that I am not unlike a, you know, so when you go to someone's house and the
#
dog will come out and is very happy to see you. And, you know, he's so we have, we have
#
a dog in the factory room we feed. And every time one of us goes there, because we feed
#
the dog, he's, you know, he's like, you can see that he's so, he just, he just wants to
#
be petted by you. He just wants to be, you know, good book. And actually, Sheila has
#
a secret name for that particular dog. She calls him Marion because he exactly like how
#
I behave and I'm in groups. That's a, it's a, it's a private joke between the two of
#
us. But this is what happens. So we let anxiety, I try to consciously be away from that. And,
#
but oftentimes I, I don't have, I pass it off as kindness, you know, why do I want to
#
hurt other people's feelings and so, but yeah, we, we do tend to be disproportionately worried
#
about being accepted in groups. And I have found that even if your views, if my views
#
are not in line with other people, it's, it's not that the group throws me out or rejects
#
me. It's as long as you're not actively harassing other people, it's fine. I mean, most groups
#
do accommodate diverse views. So we should try to be more true to ourselves. It's more
#
satisfying you, you have an internal code and you must be true to that. Yeah. That's,
#
I don't know how your experience is. You have been, I know you have been very daring in,
#
in sort of disagreeing or sort of making your views known, even when you know that those
#
views are not going to be well received. You, you never shy away from that, at least as
#
far as I've known you. Yeah. And, and that's more an impulse kind of thing. Like, you know,
#
there's that old XKCD cartoon of, you know, someone is wrong on the internet. You know,
#
the by fastest husband, you know, come and sleep and he's like, no, someone is wrong
#
on the internet. And, and there's a later version of that, I think, which came out 10
#
years after that, which is about how this guy, you know, discovers sort of, I'll try
#
and link to both of them about how this guy discovers that there's a view that he disagrees
#
with really strongly, but he hasn't actually seen that view yet. So he looks for someone
#
who's expressed that view so he can shit on that person. But I mean, I don't, I don't
#
come close to doing either of those two, but the point is sometimes somebody will just
#
say something stupid, like someone will say homeopathy works and something just happens
#
that I, you know, I kind of lose it or, you know, other random things. And over time,
#
it's really futile that on the one hand, okay, if you are someone who has taken seriously
#
by a lot of people, then you should kind of say what you feel. That's kind of your job.
#
At the very least, you should, whatever you say should be what you feel. Don't do any
#
posturing. I try to avoid the posturing. But I just think, but, you know, but sometimes
#
in private groups also, I'll just kind of, so I'm trying to sort of discipline myself
#
to just chill. I mean, I'm more and more, I'm kind of coming to the conclusion that
#
kuch badal nahi hwala hai. That's very true. But I'm in, so I'm like the diametrical opposite
#
of you. So you would tend to, you know, risk hurting someone else's feeling because you
#
have to say that what you're saying, I don't agree with. And here are the reasons why I
#
don't agree with it. You're always civil. I mean, it's, you will never, for example,
#
you'll never, you'll never attack the person. You will never say that, hey, Naren, you're
#
an idiot. No, you will say your, these arguments that you're making sound wrong to me and these
#
are the reasons why. And yet, if I'm really invested in those ideas, the very fact that
#
you have pointed that out to me is an affront. And I'm going to attack you as a person. So
#
I'm going to say you are a fat, slob, ugly, which you're not, okay. But just saying.
#
No, I mean, the fatness is undeniable. The ugly is subjective, slob is true. And I would
#
say, I would think that, and I would never talk to Amit again. So you probably sense
#
that, but you've said that regardless, you know, when you pointed out that I'm wrong,
#
you've been prepared to lose that relationship. And I'm the other extreme. I will not say
#
what actually is crying out to be said, because I am scared that I will lose my, you know,
#
Amit is my friend, so I mustn't say, and what if he doesn't talk to me? So both extremes
#
are possibly not right, but I would rather be on your extreme than mine. I'm working
#
on it. I point out, so recently we had a right-wing guy on the, very xenophobic guy on the, on
#
one of our WhatsApp groups. And I, so he left the group in a huff, because of something
#
someone else said. And then everyone wanted to bring him back. I said, if this guy comes
#
back, I'm out, because I don't agree with, you know, these, the things that he said.
#
And everyone was like, no, no, he's our friend from college and we should take him back and
#
so on and so forth. And then they did bring him back and I didn't leave the group, but
#
I have chosen never to participate again on that. It triggers me. What I actually should
#
have done was vocally protested when he was brought back. He should know that the views
#
he espouses are not nice views, but it's impossible to, it's, it's my, so there is this, I don't
#
know, have you, are you familiar with that Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity?
#
No, please tell me. There's this guy named Dieter Bonhoeffer. Okay. So Dieter Bonhoeffer
#
was a young pastor, right? Touching story, actually. He was a very, he was a pastor.
#
He was, you know, he like spreading the word of Christ. And he believed, he believed in
#
the message of the Bible. So when Hitler was gaining prominence, he protested, he saw when
#
this is what used to happen, right? So people used to, Hitler used to say Jews are the cause
#
of all your problems and people would go and throw stones at Jewish shops and they would
#
do that. So this is way before, you know, concentration camps and all the things, but
#
you know, they used to, they used to do those things. And Dieter Bonhoeffer used to go and
#
give speeches and tell people that this is wrong. You cannot do this. This is not, this
#
is not what I, you know, a lot of the ire against Jews comes from Christian history
#
about, you know, they were not kind to Christ. I don't know what the background is, but
#
generally, historically, Jews, Christians hate Jews because of bad things that the Jews
#
did to Christians, so on and so forth. Bonhoeffer used to say all that. Anyway, so none of it
#
worked. Nazism grew and eventually they, you know, they took power and World War started
#
and some years after that Bonhoeffer was like, you know, going around saying things and they
#
finally arrested him and they put him in a concentration camp. And tragically, just two
#
weeks before the regime collapsed, before the Allies won, Bonhoeffer was executed for
#
being in on a plot to kill Hitler, which he wasn't, but they, you know, that happened.
#
But when he was in the prison, he wrote a book. The book was about stupidity. And his
#
point was stupidity is worse than malevolence because malevolence has an agenda and you
#
can unmask that agenda and, but stupidity has no agenda whatsoever. And stupid people
#
will do things to harm you, which don't benefit them. A malevolent person will not do that.
#
He will harm you only if it benefits him. So his basic thesis was be very afraid of
#
stupid people and stay away from them. And to some extent, I see this happening even
#
today. I don't think we'll ever go into that level of extreme, but it happened all
#
over the world. It happens here. It happens in the US. You have this QAnon crowd. They
#
are just stupid people. And you have to sort of strengthen your fellow people, people around
#
you to recognize that stupidity and sort of fight against it.
#
Yeah. I mean, this whole thing of stupidity being worse than malevolence reminds me of
#
Harry Frankfurt and bullshit. Harry Frankfurt is a philosopher who wrote this great book
#
called on bullshit. And his point was that bullshit is different from lies. A liar appreciates
#
that there is something that is a fact, but he deliberately lies. Whereas a bullshitter
#
doesn't give a shit. So half the time he might even be right. Right? He is just bullshitting.
#
He's just making up what comes into his head to go with whatever the narrative is. And
#
he's not aware himself that it's like Donald Trump was a classic bullshitter in that sense
#
and in a sense that's more dangerous than lies. You cannot expose that as a lie. So
#
a lie is clearly a lie. So you knew that it was black, but you said it's white. That's
#
a lie. Bullshitters, he doesn't even know. No, and a bullshitter takes you into crazy
#
directions. Like there is this SSR conspiracy theory that I like to speak about, which is
#
to see the initial SSR theories were lies. Right? The initial conspiracy theories that
#
Rhea gave him drugs and there was all this other shit happening. Those were lies. But
#
the bullshit is crazy. The bullshit is that he believed in something in quantum mechanics
#
which splits an atom into two and he apparently tweeted about it once. So he split himself
#
into two and there were two SSRs and the one that died or was killed rather was a duplicate
#
and the real one invented Covaxin and is in hiding somewhere because Yogi Adityanath is
#
looking for him. Now, none of this is a lie and none of this is something a liar would
#
say. A liar would have no incentive at just going into these different crazy areas. This
#
is just bullshit of a very strange kind. And you know, just going back to the earlier point
#
of not speaking out and you know, more and more, I think that sometimes a practical attitude
#
is not my circus, not my monkeys. Or as a better way of saying this comes from the novel
#
Kashi Ka Hassi, which is bhaar mein jaye duniya, hum bhajaye harmoniya. Right? Which is...
#
In fact, I really want to, this should be a t-shirt and it should be part of seen unseen
#
merchandises what I strongly believe. I think my first bunch of merchandise which was all
#
these mugs actually didn't make any profit. So it was just a random brand building exercise.
#
Like we shall see in future, but then, you know, you got to do what you got to do. You
#
know, if one stops oneself from saying what, you know, then why say anything at all? It
#
kind of comes down to that. And you know, something interesting that you kind of said
#
about, you know, the marriage years, the whole spousal thing that after a while you kind
#
of know each other because, you know, everything is done. And that reminded me of this beautiful
#
poem by my favorite poet, Mark Strand, which I'll read out. It's a prose poem. So it's
#
called Harmony in the Boudoir by Mark Strand. After years of marriage, he stands at the
#
foot of the bed and tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything he
#
says there is more that he does not say, that behind each word he utters there is another
#
word and hundreds more behind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
#
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her. So you see, he says, kicking
#
off his slippers, I am more than what I have led you to believe I am. Oh, you silly man
#
says his wife, of course you are. I find that just thinking of you having so many cells
#
receding into nothingness is very exciting. That you barely exist as you are, couldn't
#
please me more. I kind of love this. And this also leads me to the question is that how
#
much of ourselves, what we think we are, is constructed for ourselves? Like, is that something
#
that you think about? Do you sometimes think that I'm just being dishonest? I'm just putting
#
a face out there. That I don't know if there's a real me. I mean, I don't know if anyone
#
has a real me in that sense. That the self is always sort of a construction and for others
#
and oneself, if that makes any sense to you. So one of the things, I've never mustered
#
up the courage to do this and probably won't. But they say that if you do acid or mushrooms,
#
psilocybin mushrooms, these are chemicals that dissolve your sense of self and transform
#
you as a person. So the self is really a construct and almost all of mystical philosophy is about
#
that and about how to see the world. So I've struggled with this. I've had spiritual insights.
#
I used to do this thing where I used to sit in front of a mirror and stare at myself.
#
And if you do this long enough, you just stare at yourself. Just don't close your eyes. Do
#
nothing. Just sit. Ideally sit in front of, keep a mirror, preferably a full length mirror.
#
Just keep staring at yourself. And after some time, you'll suddenly have this thing. It's
#
very fleeting. It'll come and it'll go. But for that fleeting moment, it'll be
#
is it really me? What am I? Who am I? Kind of a thing. And unfortunately, it is nowhere
#
as transformative as they say acid or those mushrooms are. But it's true that these constructs
#
that we make for ourselves define everything. I personally believe that what we are trying
#
to do, all of us, is we are trying to be internally consistent, is what I think. So even people
#
who have just absolutely the most absurd, untrue, even people like Donald Trump, somewhere
#
internally they have some consistent image of themselves. And they hang on to it because
#
if that breaks, everything is gone for them. But for most of us, it's probably desirable
#
that it breaks and you start seeing things as they are or as they are from other people.
#
I haven't really succeeded in doing any of this. I've tried. I don't have the slightest
#
idea how to go about it. I don't know if you had any experiences or experiments in this
#
No, no, not at all. I mean, Sam Harris keeps talking about meditation and psychedelic drugs,
#
how they both get you past the sense of the self. And obviously, the whole idea of meditation
#
is that it can take you kind of above yourself to a meta level where you can view yourself
#
doing the things you do and thinking the things you think and realizing that yeh bhi narrative
#
hai, that on Twitter you posture for others, but over here, you're also posturing for yourself.
#
And that's an interesting and kind of scary realization. I once did go for this Vipassana
#
camp when I was very young in my 20s. And so you got to stay silent for all those 10
#
days or whatever it is. And it was horrible in the sense that it was horrible with one
#
food related, you know, good feeling at the end of it. But it was horrible because after
#
day two, my head was just full of sexual fantasies. So I was observing myself having sexual fantasies
#
and for days that does it is just terrible. It was nonsense.
#
Have you ever tried mindfulness meditation?
#
I have since tried it. But the point is that I haven't been mindful enough while trying
#
Same with me. I haven't been, I keep telling my every time I have this conversation with
#
different people, I mentally make a note that from tomorrow morning, I'm going to start
#
that. I've never gotten around to that.
#
I downloaded the Headspace app. I downloaded Sam Harris's app and kind of paid a subscription
#
fee for it for a few months before this RBI regulation. It just lapsed. I wasn't using
#
it anyway. But to get back to the Vipashyana's field, the interesting thing was because the
#
whole exercise is that you're observing yourself. The meal I had after that, you know, my wife
#
would also done the thing and it wasn't so bad for her. After that, we went to an Italian
#
restaurant I remember for a meal after we kind of got back from Igatpuri where it was.
#
And it was a spectacular meal. And it was a spectacular meal, not because it was a spectacular
#
meal, but because I could taste every little nuance of that. Like every little nuance of
#
that I could taste. My senses were so acute and I was like, haan yaar, aase khaana shiye.
#
But then, you know, back to normal by the next meal and you don't even know what you
#
ate by the end of it. You know, chicken khaaya, mutton khaaya and you finish the food and
#
But I do believe, especially after reading Sam Harris, who was a terrific writer actually,
#
very, very nice, very simple words. I do believe, no evidence for that just because these people
#
say so, that it is possible to be mindful. It's very easy to be mindful and it's something
#
that all of us should do. And these are the things. So whenever, whatever you're doing,
#
one thing that, you know, both of us have experienced, it might be also partly my fault
#
because I ramble a lot. But when you talk, you oftentimes lose the thread of what you're
#
talking because part of your mind has gone off into some other rabbit hole and then you're
#
trying to pull it back and then you lost the thread of the first one or the second one.
#
And then all of a sudden you don't know what you've been talking about. And I'm sure a
#
mindful person, you know, for a mindful person that wouldn't.
#
It wouldn't, but it would also be tough because it's a question of attentional capacity in
#
the sense that like this is something I realized while podcasting that why do, how can people
#
listen at double speed or 3x speed so easily? And the reason is a brain can comprehend words
#
spoken at 500 words a minute or more while we actually speak at, you know, 150 to 200
#
words a minute. And therefore, you know, when you're listening to someone speaking at that
#
horrifyingly slow speed, like I can't listen to myself at normal speed.
#
Same with me. I, you know, in fact, whenever I listen to your podcast, I listen to it at
#
1.5x. That's my standard thing. And you sound normal. And the other day I listened to one
#
of your podcasts and accidentally it happened to me. It's a new podcasting app, I think.
#
And it almost sounds that you're intoxicated or something like that.
#
But now, I mean, we are face to face now and it doesn't sound odd at all, but I'm pretty
#
sure that when I listen to this podcast, when it comes out, it, I will have to listen to
#
The exact same thing. So some of my writing students, when they, you know, the first webinar
#
of the course, they pointed out that you seem to be speaking so slowly because they're just
#
not kind of used to it. But so that's the point. That's why when you're talking to someone,
#
their attention can wander because only a part of their brain needs to listen to you
#
to comprehend. The rest of it can do whatever the hell it wants. And therefore the mind
#
wanders a lot, which is why, you know, listening at, like I listen to everything at 2x and
#
things at 2.5 or whatever, sometimes it depends on the accent and how will you get it? But
#
I would never listen to my podcast at less than 2x. But the point is it's normal at that
#
speed for me, you know, otherwise the mind will wander, you know, listening at a higher
#
speed can actually mean that you kind of retain more and take in more and all of that.
#
So tell me another thing. So, you know, you born in the sixties, grew up in the seventies
#
and eighties and all of that. And a lot of our experiences kind of a shared experience
#
and, you know, and I've kind of grown up reading books and once in a while you watch some TV
#
or you go out and watch a movie, but you're really reading books and you're listening
#
to music sometimes and all of that. Now today, that entire experience has changed. Like I
#
find that number one, you know, we no longer need to think in terms of formats. Like earlier,
#
if you wanted to be a writer, you're going to write an article that's 800 words, you're
#
going to write a book that's 100,000, a short story is whatever, you know, you've got these
#
fixed formats. Similarly for audio, you know, if you want to do audio back in the day, you
#
know, radio has this fixed formats. TV has this fixed formats. Either you're a half an
#
hour serial episode or you're a 90 minute Hollywood film or you're a three hour Bollywood
#
film. Everything has a format. Today I find as a creator and you're also a creator, obviously
#
you're a podcaster and we'll discuss your future later because we must talk about your
#
future because I'm also a part of it. I've now realized and today that's completely sort
#
of changing. Like what are your thoughts on this and what are the changes that you've
#
seen in the things that you consume? Like a lot of people now who don't have time to read
#
books because lives are busy and you know, everybody doesn't have the privilege to be
#
able to carve out hours in a day to read. We'll listen to audio books or we'll listen to podcasts
#
because the point is you want knowledge wherever you're getting it from. You want stimulation
#
from your brain wherever you're getting it from. You know, I find a good podcast is a
#
perfectly valid way to get it which wasn't there when I was a kid. So what are your kind
#
of thoughts on this? So one is I used to be an inveterate reader. I'd read anything and
#
I had to be reading all the time. I used to read. My mom used to make fun of me. I used to read
#
while I could not eat without reading. So I'd have a book. I'd read something and my sisters
#
would do that while I'm eating or while I'm reading. They'll pull my plate away and I'll
#
actually put my hand out and there'll be something you know missing and I look up and then all of
#
them are laughing. They've made a fool out of me. And now I find myself not reading nearly like a
#
tenth as much. But so the biggest change has been YouTube. So I've been consuming content
#
a lot on YouTube. We started with the math video. So I am a mechanical engineer and a lot of
#
mechanical engineering is calculus and a lot of calculus is very hard to visualize. We've done
#
that and we don't really use calculus in day-to-day manufacturing but it's something which always
#
interests me. But a lot of calculus, for example, there are things called differential equations.
#
Differential equations are basically equations that describe some physical phenomenon. You just
#
put it into that equation and they are all in the form of derivatives. And if you want solutions,
#
you have to solve those differential equations and they're notoriously hard to solve. But
#
there are techniques. There are things called Laplace transform, Fourier transform. They
#
help you solve a lot of these things by making transformations. For example, Laplace transform
#
transforms everything into the frequency domain from the time domain where you can just add
#
things algebraically, you can solve things algebraically and then you transform it back
#
into the time domain and you get your solution. All of this we have done and not understood
#
what the hell it was. Many, many, many years later, I find this channel on YouTube called
#
3Blue1Brown which was such a wonderful way. I just saw that it was a 30-minute video and I knew
#
for the first time in my life what a Laplace transform actually did. And my respect for old
#
Laplace grew because he figured this out in the 17th or 18th century. And I was hooked. So then
#
I started Khan Academy, anything. There were hundreds of things. Probability, we all talk
#
about probability. There was this thing about Bayesian. I give talks about Bayesian theorem,
#
Bayesian aspect. I had no clue what Bayesian was till I actually saw a few well-produced
#
videos on YouTube. And then you realize things like Bayesian, it also has some philosophical
#
sort of implications. How every time you discover a new fact, you change your assessment of
#
situations, things like that. So that started YouTube and then after some time, it went beyond
#
that and it just became fun. YouTube is a different dimension of fun. There are vlogs,
#
there are people doing funny things. There's one YouTube channel I see, I have for no discernible
#
reason, they just take melted metal and pour it into different things. And just they melt some
#
aluminium or melt some iron and they pour it into things and see what happens. It's all kind of
#
things. It's a completely different dimension. There's no, I cannot imagine any circumstance
#
in which anyone could write a book about these things. But these channels do exist. They're
#
very popular on YouTube. And I think at least YouTube is the only one. I don't understand
#
Instagram at all. I am on Instagram and I follow a lot of people, but I'm mystified as to its
#
purpose. They just post pictures of themselves and you're just supposed to like them. And what?
#
I mean, I don't understand. What are your views on emergent social media?
#
No, I haven't used Instagram much. I think the purpose is this. It's what we spoke about earlier,
#
that what draws me towards a creator is a personal. You feel that you know the person and then you're
#
drawn into their story and then you're kind of hooked into it. That's what draws one to creators.
#
And I think Instagram is kind of an extension of that, that you're doing shit. Like a story I kind
#
of sometimes talk about is like last year, you know, chess YouTube kind of exploded. And there's
#
this comedian called Samaira and he did a bunch of stuff and chess YouTube kind of exploded. So
#
there was a day when, and there's a guy called Sagar Shah, who, you know, runs ChessBase India.
#
ChessBase is this old venerable magazine from Germany. He runs the India version of it. So,
#
you know, downstream of Samaira, his YouTube channel started doing very well, the ChessBase
#
channel started doing very well, the ChessBase channel. So they had a live stream. And it was
#
very interesting because the live stream was supposed to, of an event, where they were doing
#
live commentary of an event and it was supposed to start at a particular time. And the guy
#
realizes five minutes before that his internet isn't working at home, and this is during COVID
#
time, but the ChessBase office is five minutes away in Goregaon or wherever this is. So he picks
#
up his laptop and camera and all the equipment, Mike Shaikh, and he runs to his office physically
#
and he starts it a couple of minutes late, but he starts it. And then the thing is happening.
#
And then his wife is at home where the internet has come back. So she joins, she's a co-commentator.
#
And the event ends. And then some of the players who played in that event, top grandmasters,
#
they join in. And so what would have been like a three hour stream becomes a six hour stream
#
where they're just talking, right? And it's great. It's riveting. You've got tens of thousands of
#
people who are watching this live stream where the chess is over. It's just riveting. And then at
#
about three or four in the morning, young Sagar reveals that in that particular area, the streets
#
are full of these dogs and he's scared of walking home now because he's got to go home. So there's
#
one reader saying in the live chat, hey, I'll come and I'll drive you home and all of that
#
shit is happening. But he decides to walk home. But because everybody is so scared, worried about
#
him now, they want to make sure he gets home safely. So he switches off the YouTube stream
#
and he starts streaming on Instagram. He does an Instagram live and then all of these people
#
switch from YouTube to Instagram and they follow his journey home. You know, just seeing that whole
#
thing unfold is fantastic. And obviously Instagram is more useful for things apart from this. And I
#
guess the only way to really know is to dive into it because I just think that every medium,
#
including podcasting, that if you just look at it from the outside as a superficial thing,
#
it seems like it seems very banal. Like in the early days of blogging, people would say, oh,
#
who wants to know what you had for breakfast? As if that is what blogging was. And similarly,
#
so now I've gone through, I've gone on many YouTube rabbit holes. I haven't gone through any,
#
I'm not on Instagram. I mean, I opened an account once, but zero posts and therefore nobody knows
#
what it is. You know, maybe someday I'll go there. But just, you know, in case listeners are confused,
#
what do I mean by Narain's creator future and all of that? Narain just revealed before we started
#
recording that he's retiring in a month. Yes, people retire, young people, that he's retiring
#
in a month and will focus on doing interesting creator things. And I've been planning to start
#
something on YouTube. So we said that, okay, one of the many things that I'll do is a food blog
#
with my good friend Narain. And we can go around and sort of talk about that because I just feel
#
that India in that sense is so incredibly diverse. Like, you know, Narain earlier mentioned this food
#
trip that we did. And we, you know, a bunch of us, I think about eight to 10 of us, we went to
#
Bangalore, went around Bangalore and did some eating, but basically hired a bus and then went
#
to Mysore. And in Mysore did a lot of eating, a lot of epic places, including a pork biryani,
#
I will never forget. And it was pretty mind blowing because like you said, Mysore is almost
#
like an Istanbul of India. It's a confluence of cultures, Persian, Turkish, you know, Asian,
#
all over the, you know, it's just incredible food wise. And I don't think people have kind of
#
mapped this out enough. So I'm very excited about, you know, starting off this YouTube thing with
#
you because as we were discussing earlier, it's a medium whose real power really hasn't been
#
explored and it's interpretation. So you sort of, you just find out. And even about food,
#
food as a snapshot or a map of our entire being, you know, a lot of food also connects cultures
#
in many ways. And all of that is very interesting. And food is actually, one thing I realized is
#
a lot of mainstream Indian food is common across castes or class than region. So food that Brahmins
#
eat from Kashmir to Kanyakumari will be far more similar than the food a Brahmin eats and a Dalit
#
eats in the same villages is what I'm guessing. That's fascinating. Yeah. And I don't know if
#
this is an Amcha theory or something, which is really the fact, but it's something I would
#
really like to figure out. The other thing about lower class food. So I, you know, they're not,
#
simply not available because they are not the restaurant class. They just,
#
and it'll be interesting to find out what they eat, what a farmer eats in Western UP, maybe,
#
you know, what some other community, other cast, it'll be fascinating. Yeah. It's a journey that's
#
intriguing and basically is also fun because eating is very fundamental. Yeah. It's one of our
#
primal impulses. And no, and like I did this episode with Peggy Mohan, who's written this
#
fantastic book on languages, how you can tell history through languages. And, you know, when
#
you mentioned this, how, you know, Brahmins across India will have more commonality in cuisine than
#
a Brahmin and a Dalit in the same village. And even across genders, there are interesting
#
differences in language. And one of the things that she kind of points out is that, you know,
#
back in the day when the Aryans came, and by the way, yes, the Aryan migration theory is true,
#
you can, you know, check out my episode with Tony Joseph, a Read His Brilliant Book for Dad. I think
#
that is, you know, something we know beyond all doubt, that when the Aryans came, they came in
#
bands of men, because that is how explorers go out. Yeah. So they took local women as their wives,
#
you know, whether by conquest or consent or whatever, we don't know. But they took local
#
women as their wives. And as a consequence for generations, it was a case that the women spoke
#
a separate language from the men. And it's very interesting to then see that reflected in the
#
evolution of both languages, like there is so much in Sanskrit that has come from local languages.
#
And at the same time, one of the consequences of that is that men and women would speak subtly
#
different languages, because the young girls when growing up would spend more time with the
#
mother and at home. And the boys would be with the mother till sometime and then they're out in the
#
field with their fathers doing whatever fathers do in the field hunting or whatever it is.
#
So the old languages took a really long time to get ironed out and probably never did get ironed
#
out. Yeah, she speaks about those sounds, right? So the retroflex sounds.
#
Retroflex sounds like, you know, that and that, you know, so that is the and the and that,
#
the and the way your tongue hits the back of your mouth in the way that it does are not there in
#
any of the other, you know, Indo Proto European languages. It's not there. So if you follow the
#
Aryan languages journey all the way through, it's not there anywhere till the Indian subcontinent,
#
where it's clearly something that's kind of come from the local languages. And it's to me,
#
that's kind of delightful. I mean, obviously, there's also a tinge of what were lives like
#
back then was a violence. But the reason I brought this up is that in the same way as,
#
you know, I find it fascinating that you can look at something that is static today
#
and tell the past through it, that you can look at like, like Tony Joseph writes about in his book,
#
you know, you can look at, you know, someone's genome, and you can, you know, go back to the
#
past and figure shit out. You can look at languages that people speak, and you can tell
#
something about the past from there. And I think that's got to be true of food as well.
#
Except it's probably much more complex and much more subtle and it's, but there's so much to be
#
done there. Yeah, there's a, that's an entire journey waiting to be made. So oftentimes,
#
people make journeys like this with agenda. So the thing to do is to do that journey without
#
an agenda. So there's no, you have no idea what you're going to find out in the course of doing
#
this or the end of this. But it's, it's going to be fun. And it's generally going to be interesting
#
because always it is, you know, these, these are things that interest everyone where, where you
#
came from, where other people came from, and how you are connected with each other. So it's, it's,
#
it's something that really promises to be fun. So watch this space, everyone. Yeah, watch this
#
space. I mean, I want to throw a lot of things at a YouTube world and see what sticks. The point is,
#
there is this initial nervousness because there is a halo effect of the podcast. Yeah. That because
#
the seen and the unseen now for the last three years or so has been like a finished product
#
where I really know what I'm doing and I bring out what I bring out. I think people, you know,
#
expect a similar quality. Whereas I know this is what I tell all creators that when you do something
#
for the first time, you're going to suck, embrace it, you know, embrace the sucking, but just suck
#
more, be regular at sucking, have a discipline. Eventually through iteration, you'll become much
#
better. So obviously when I begin doing my YouTube stuff, I will suck, which is fine, but you know,
#
except that there might be people who expect me not to suck, which is not fair. You know, let me
#
suck for a while and then I'll figure it out. And if there are any people who'd want to sponsor our
#
specific show, which Naren and I will do on food, you know, feel free to get in touch at this moment
#
of time. We have zero followers on YouTube because we don't have a YouTube channel, but yeah. So,
#
you know, before we kind of wind up and you know, one of the things that I've really loved about
#
knowing you is that, you know, every time we meet, you tell at least four or five incredible mind
#
blowing stories, some of which you also share on Twitter threads, which then go viral and all of
#
that. But there's one particular story and you know which particular story I'm talking about,
#
which I love so much because it says so much about this incredible country that you're in.
#
So may I invite you to now enlighten my listeners as well?
#
Well, so this happened maybe, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. So we, Sheila and I, we were doing up
#
our house and one of our friends was an architect said that, you know, you could go to China,
#
buy everything from China, import it, and you'll get a very good deal. It was very cheap at that
#
point of time. And you have a lot of varieties. So, you know, and it was true. So China has this
#
huge mall where you can buy and furnitures by theme. So if you want colonial furniture
#
and everything, you know. And just to be clear, you weren't just growing up your flat, basically
#
the building that you had, you made a full building with many flats on it. So you were going to
#
furnish all of them. Yeah, three flats plus ours. So we wanted to furnish all those flats.
#
So we went there. We, you know, we bought all the stuff, everything got loaded onto containers. And
#
so some containers came soon. And it so happened that Sheila and I had planned to
#
go to Europe at that time. We planned a vacation. This had been planned a long time ago and,
#
you know, tickets had been booked and hotels had been booked and it was going to be the two of us.
#
And I couldn't, and I think one of the containers hadn't arrived by the time I left. So my clearing
#
agent said that, you know, no problem. These are all the papers. You sign everything in advance and
#
I'll, and you know, he gave me the, there is duty to be paid. So he knew also what duty is, was
#
going to be. So he paid all the shipping charges. Everything was done. I paid all the money and I
#
went and we are in Paris somewhere in the middle of the night, the phone rings and it's my customs
#
clearing agent. And he says, sir, can you come, you know, are you going to come in the next couple?
#
I said, no, we just got here and we've got this. So he says, no, there's a problem. So the problem
#
was as follows. My import export code number was in the name of Narendra Shanoi. And for some reason,
#
the guy from China had shipped the material and it was in the name of Mr. Narendra Shanoi.
#
And I needed a notarized affidavit to be submitted, which stated that to the best of my knowledge,
#
Narendra Shanoi and Mr. Narendra Shanoi was the same person. And it had to be notarized and it
#
had to be signed by me. So I told him, can you not just, you know, sort of just sign it? He says,
#
no, no, they check it with your, you know, you have your other signatures and things like that.
#
I can't do that. And obviously I couldn't, I couldn't fly down from Paris and so I couldn't
#
come. And when I came back, I had to pay a demurrage. I had to pay a nice, stiff fine
#
for not being able to clear my goods because I wasn't able to produce an affidavit that to the
#
best of my knowledge, Narendra Shanoi and Mr. Narendra Shanoi were the same person.
#
It's been the high point of my life. And I can't even, most people don't believe it's true, but I,
#
unfortunately, I don't have that affidavit. Someone, you asked me for it.
#
I wanted that copy of that affidavit.
#
Unfortunately, I should have kept it. It's actually made. I'm still not clear
#
whether I used to think that it was a customs department that asked it, but apparently it was
#
a shipping company that wanted it before. I'm still not clear who exactly asked for that,
#
but I wrote that affidavit has been the high point of my life. And all my friends now, whenever
#
there is any doubt about my, they always ask me whether it's Narendra Shanoi or Mr. Narendra
#
Shanoi talking. It's a lovely story. It just tells you so much about the Indian system that such a
#
thing actually happened. It's just complete nuts. So, you know, as we kind of wind up a few final
#
questions, and here's one. If you were to encounter the 25 year old Narendra Shanoi today,
#
you know, let's say you are Mr. Narendra Shanoi, what advice would you give him?
#
So, first thing I would say is don't hold back, don't hesitate. I've been very hesitant in many
#
things that I've done, despite the fact that I've been impulse and I've done a lot of things. So,
#
don't hesitate is one. And second, I would say is just be kinder to people. A younger Narendra
#
Shanoi was probably not very kind person. I would definitely, I wish I was kinder
#
to many people, especially people who are not up to my sort of expectation in like being clever in
#
speaking. I've been guilty of judging people on how they speak. And now I know that that's not a
#
full story. So, yeah, these are the two things I think I would advise my younger self.
#
Is this advice you've given your kids, for example, or do you think they've kind of internalized it
#
by watching you? And how has fatherhood changed you?
#
So, my kids, when they were growing up, the general situation in the house was that kids were kids and
#
they would do all kinds of silly things. And I sort of identified with them. So, a lot of my
#
childhood sort of appeared, they would do pranky stuff, they would just go do stuff. And Sheila
#
was a disciplinarian. So, she didn't like, you know, she didn't like mess in the house,
#
or she didn't like, like, everything had to be done in time. So, she didn't like homework
#
not being done and things like that. So, the thing was that, you know, they would try and
#
sort of break Sheila's rules. And if, you know, oftentimes I was the supervising authority, and
#
if Sheila's rules were broken, then I would get, you know, get all the, I would face the heat. So,
#
she would tell me, what kind of a dad are you? I use, you know, you don't care about your children's
#
future. I'll go down that rabbit hole. And the kids would be laughing, like, you know, grinning
#
from ear to ear, watching me squirm in front of things, knowing fully well that next time it
#
happened, they would be able to get away with that. So, what fatherhood made me was more indulgent
#
and more tolerant toward kids. Kids were also, they had, they were very fun loving. They were
#
funny in their own ways. They were, they were charmingly innocent as well. And they were
#
different. So, older son was very sort of, you know, composed and reserved. And the younger one
#
was bratty and a little bit, you know, he was ebullient. He would like to jump around, sing,
#
dance, do all those kinds of things. So, it was fun watching them. My only regret is it was a
#
difficult time in my life financially as well. You know, the way my business was going and I
#
weren't making any money. And, you know, so I used to work a lot, run here, there,
#
do a lot of things. So, I wasn't able to spend as much time as I could. Actually, I could have re,
#
sort of recalibrated my priorities and I could have, because for all the running up and down
#
that I did, my business eventually, I mean, it sorted itself out and I think, I mean, there are
#
times when the economy is down, you don't get orders, costs are up, you don't make money.
#
I had my share of those problems, but yeah, I think that's pretty much, that's pretty much it.
#
Great. So, finally to, you know, ending it with kind of the predictable question of if my listeners
#
are to want to kind of know, and actually even I want to know, because I don't think we've really
#
discussed this, that recommend some books for us, some books that make you, that when you think of
#
them, you feel that man, everyone should read this, either for knowledge or for joy or whatever,
#
books that mean a lot to you. One book that I strongly believe should be a one semester course
#
for every undergrad course in this country, in the world, is Thinking Fast and Slow. So, that's one
#
book everyone needs to internalize totally. It tells you how we are hardwired for biases,
#
the different kinds of biases that are, and as Kahneman himself, it is written by Daniel Kahneman,
#
and as he himself notes that even though you are aware of all the biases, you are still going to
#
fall for them. The thing is to know that those biases exist and to know when you've fallen in
#
for them. That's one book that I think everyone should read. The other one, you know, there's this,
#
there are many by Bertrand Russell, but the one I really, because it was the one I read,
#
is Why I'm Not a Christian. It's not so much about not being a Christian, it's about not believing in
#
something because, just because someone, the standard stand you should take, everyone, all of us,
#
is that you don't believe in something unless there is a very good reason to believe in it.
#
And most of us, the exact opposite is true. So, we believe in something unless disproved. Bertrand
#
Russell convincingly states why it should be the other way around. And in fiction, I loved the
#
Woodhouse universe. I just read Woodhouse incessantly. There were two things that appealed to me,
#
I later realized. One is Woodhouse, all his situations are basically unreal. So, there are
#
no serial, no one dies, no one gets hurt, no one goes bankrupt. It's, you know, they have really
#
silly problems. They have, like, uncle is threatening to cut off their inheritance if they
#
marry an undesirable person, things like that. And the second thing is, he's always laughing at
#
himself and, you know, along with that. So, most people who like Woodhouse, I've seen, have the
#
ability and the capacity to laugh at themselves. That is something I think is a very valuable trait
#
in people. When something, when you do something silly or when you do something goofy,
#
it's, you should have it in you to laugh at yourself. And if someone else laughs, you laugh
#
with them. And that dissolves the poison of the moment. So, those are things. And then there are
#
a few others I can't think of. Okay, I, this is about what I can think of the spur of the moment.
#
Yeah, maybe some other time. Maybe we shouldn't have, you know, both of us had that heavy ramen,
#
wonderful, wonderful ramen before the show. So, maybe we should have left it for later,
#
but we'll have many more conversations. So, thanks a lot. I mean, this has been a long time
#
coming, given that my origin story of the show begins with you. It's a bit of, you know, ashamed
#
that episode 250 is when it was, but we'll get on YouTube soon and everyone will laugh at us and we
#
will laugh with them. Yes. So, looking forward to that, hopefully very soon. And thanks for having
#
me. I sort of suspect I've been rambling, if I have been, apologies, but. This is a show for
#
rambling. What do you think I do? Yeah. So, thanks again and stay cool. Bye.
#
Okay. So, the episode isn't over yet. Up ahead are some fantastic anecdotes from Naren that made me
#
laugh and it also made me think. Listen in. So, story number one. So, there was this uncle I had,
#
who's sadly no more. And he wasn't well regarded in the family. He was considered, you know, a bad
#
egg, but he was all kinds of awesome for me. He had a wicked sense of humor, which took a very
#
practical sort of thing. So, he actually went down and did mean things to people.
#
And so, one was to his own mother. So, this is maybe 50s Mumbai. They used to live in Madala.
#
And so, my grand aunt, she was my dad's aunt. She had a brother who lived in Mulun. So,
#
back in the day, if you want to get from Madala to Mulun, you had to walk, catch a train at Dadar
#
and then go to Mulun. So, she knew how to get from, and she could speak only Kannada and Konkani.
#
She speak no Hindi, no English, no Marathi, nothing. She knew how to get from Madala, where they lived,
#
to Dadar station. She would walk there. And then from Mulun station, she knew how to go to her
#
brother's house. But she didn't know which train to take because it's bewildering, right? And she
#
couldn't read the indicators or anything. So, she asked her son, this uncle. So, it's very simple.
#
You just go to anyone on the platform and you ask them, why does this train go to Mulun?
#
And poor thing, she had no clue. So, she spent an hour freaking out everyone on Mulun station
#
by asking them a very existential question. Why is this train going to Mulun? Everyone,
#
how would I know? If it goes, then it goes. And then someone, some kind soul who knew her,
#
realized that she was in some kind of a jam and then they rescued her and, you know,
#
they put her on the right train and she made it. And he did another thing to another uncle of his.
#
And this uncle was their father, my dad and this uncle's father's maternal uncle. So,
#
they were very fond of their mama. They had only one mama. And the nephews hated him because they
#
would have to do all the, you know, work for him. And so, they were not really fond of him. But
#
luckily for them, he never used to come very often to Bombay. He used to live somewhere down south.
#
One day, he happened to come and this guy was assigned the task of going and picking him up at
#
Sion. So, from Mangalore, back in the day, they would come and bus. All the buses would stop at
#
Sion. And from Sion to Vadala, it's like a longish walk. Today, we'll take a cab back in the day.
#
So, he went there and the uncle goes down, gets down with his bedding and everything. And he
#
expects his nephew to pick it up. So, nephew tells him that there's a recent police order saying that
#
everyone has to carry their own luggage because of some security issues. Even back then, some story
#
he told him. So, he made this elderly uncle put all the thing on his head. And this guy had
#
planned it also. He had got a little bag, empty bag of his own with nothing other than an empty
#
dabba or something. He took that and put it on his head and both of them walked. So, he made sure
#
that the uncle was carrying all the luggage. Then, when they got to their building, they have a
#
large, it's still there, it's a large iron gate, okay, which is always locked. And there's a little
#
wicked gate inside which people go in. So, presumably that thing was for cars and nobody had
#
cars back in the day. It's always locked. And they get to this gate. They come to the building.
#
They come to the gate and this guy is like, oh my God, this gate is locked. How do we get in?
#
So, the uncle is also nonplussed. He doesn't know what to do. So, he tells them, I'll tell you
#
what. You leave the luggage here. You climb up the gate and you hop off on the other side and then
#
I will throw the luggage and then you catch it. And uncle said, okay. So, he left the luggage.
#
This two-year-old guy somehow clambered up the gate, then hopped off to the other side and he's
#
waiting for the luggage to be thrown and this guy just opens the wicked gate, puts up the thing
#
and comes in. Fabulous use of incentives that uncle wouldn't have visited. There are all these
#
things. There are big sort of morals, life morals, but the only problem is I haven't figured out
#
what the moral is. If there's some deep truth and I think the day I figure out the deep truth,
#
I'll become a very lucky, prosperous... I think the deep truth is in the questions.
#
Like, yeh train Mulund kyu jati hai should really be the title of a book or a film.
#
So, the same uncle whom, you know, who was made to climb up the gate and then hop off again,
#
his sister was my great-grandmother. So, my dad's grandmother and my grandmother had a reputation
#
of being a very irascible lady. She suffered no nonsense. She ran and back in the day, I mean,
#
they came from a pretty poor family and a large family with little food and, you know,
#
it was always the woman's responsibility to keep the ship sailing and so my father tells me
#
that, so there was a rule that if you leave anything on your plate, especially the kids,
#
the whole thing would get dumped on your head and you wouldn't be allowed to have a bath all day.
#
So, you know, spend a whole day with like food dripping on your head and stinking and everything.
#
And that was a lesson. So, you learn that lesson once, so you just wiped everything clean,
#
as clean as possible. So, that shows that kind of a person.
#
Anyway, this uncle was a big aficionado of classical, Hindustani classical music
#
and I think I've got it from that, you know, that bloodline because I'm also very fond of Hindustani classical music.
#
So, his big favourite at that time was legendary singer now named, I mean, she's no longer alive,
#
named Hirabai Barodekar. So, he went and bought one of those gramophones
#
and a record of Hirabai Barodekar and it was a morning rag. So, it was Ahir Bhairav or something.
#
And morning rags have to be heard in the morning. So, at four in the morning,
#
he puts on the gramophone, he puts this plate and he starts playing it.
#
And everyone is fast asleep and at four in the morning when she starts singing,
#
my great-grandmother, mother apparently thought somebody was being strangled.
#
So, she comes running out. She's like, you know, she's had a hard day and she's like middle of a sleep.
#
She's in a panic. She comes running out and she finds this guy, you know, listening to music.
#
She's so furious that she picks up a coconut which is lying around
#
and she just hits him on the head with that coconut with such fury that apparently the coconut cracked.
#
This guy immediately went off into a coma. He just got knocked out cold.
#
And apparently that is the only time in recorded history according to my dad
#
when the brother, that's my grandfather and his brother actually yelled at their mother.
#
They would never like motherly devotion was so strong that they would never speak harshly to her.
#
Despite all this, I mean, she would be putting food on people's heads.
#
Another favorite torture of hers was to put pickle, like we make pretty spicy pickle
#
into children's eyes if they misbehaved or did something wrong.
#
The punishment was to take a little pickle and put it in their eye.
#
It burns like hell. So, I've had that experience accidentally.
#
I mean, you just touch some pickle and then you touch your eye and then for hours later it's burning.
#
But she was that kind of a lady and they never used to say anything because that was how she was.
#
She was a strict, non-limit, fair lady but like brutal.
#
And this was the only time they apparently yelled at her.
#
Luckily, uncle survived. He went on to father seven or eight children.
#
So, there was no permanent damage.
#
Some parts of him were fine.
#
So, once when I was in engineering, I had a close friend who used to live in Bandra
#
in very close to Pali Hill. And Bandra is a very different place.
#
Today, it's a very, very tony neighborhood.
#
Only the richest of the rich and the famous, only those people can live.
#
But back in the day, I'm talking about early 80s, it was like any other little...
#
They had a little village called Pali Village.
#
So, it had a little market place and that was where you would, you know,
#
you could buy your fish and meat and everything.
#
And there was a tailor shop there.
#
And it was just called Ladies Tailor. It was a ladies tailor.
#
It was run by an old Muslim gentleman with a nice flowing beard.
#
And we used to call him Chacha.
#
And that was the only tailor in town. So, he had...
#
So, one of his carers, for some difference of opinion or whatever,
#
he split. He split from Chacha and he took a shop opposite.
#
And he started his own shop.
#
So, he called it New Ladies Tailor because it was like...
#
So, Chacha and all this, every day he used to go up and down the market
#
and you could see all this happening.
#
And the next thing that poor Chacha did was,
#
in order to emphasize the vintage of his own practice,
#
he named his shop Old Ladies Tailor.
#
The next thing you know, Chacha went out of business for some mysterious reason.
#
And then he converted into a chicken shop.
#
So, last time I went to Pali market, a chicken shop was still there.
#
But it didn't say Old Chicken Shop.
#
I spent a good four years of my life in Manipal.
#
And Manipal was a pretty...
#
So, the back story is this.
#
I wanted to get into medicine because my father was a doctor
#
and I didn't get the marks.
#
Manipal was a donation, what used to be called a donation college.
#
So, you have to pay what they call a capitation fee.
#
And, you know, we just got it.
#
I mean, I don't think they were very choosy about who they took.
#
The medical capitation fee was too high.
#
My father said, I can't afford this.
#
So, my mother said, no, you have to be either a doctor or an engineer.
#
Otherwise, who will marry my son?
#
Vish was right about that.
#
There was literally no one who would marry me.
#
It was a job finding someone to marry me even though I did my engineering.
#
But without engineering, there was no chance.
#
So, I joined engineering.
#
And I spent the most delightful four years.
#
Just met the most amazing people
#
and had many amazing anecdotes from there.
#
And here, I have to make a humble brag
#
that Satyana Dehla was two years my junior.
#
And I keep telling everyone that whenever I met Satya,
#
I used to tell him, you should go and join Microsoft.
#
Did you really tell him that?
#
Most of the younger guys are very odd.
#
Actually, I didn't even know him.
#
He was there, but no one knew him.
#
This is like when I first shifted to Seven Bungalows in Andheri,
#
I used to tell people I live in one of the original Seven Bungalows.
#
So, we were like a new batch.
#
We were the third cohort of the new thing,
#
which was affiliated to Mangalore University.
#
Before that, it was Mysore University.
#
And the Mysore University ones were very disconnected from their university.
#
So, all communication used to happen by telegram.
#
And back in the day, telegram was a thing.
#
So, most of this generation wouldn't know what it was.
#
But if you do, you'll probably get this anecdote.
#
So, one of these guys failed in that subject.
#
And you had to get 35 to pass.
#
And he thought everyone told him, apply for evaluation.
#
So, you pay a little fee and you fill out a form.
#
And it goes to the thing.
#
And you have to also attach what was known as a reply pay telegram.
#
So, a reply pay telegram is you pay for the telegram
#
that the recipient will send.
#
And it's like a blind check.
#
So, it could be 10 rupees, it could be 100 rupees.
#
Anyway, if the guy decides to send you a very long telegram, you have to pay.
#
But you have to pay all of it.
#
That was the rule. He paid it.
#
And in due course, the evaluation results came.
#
So, it turned out that even the 23 marks that he got was a high number.
#
His revalued result was 19 marks.
#
But the person who sent the clerk in the vice chancellor's office was a kindly man.
#
He said, let me spare this guy the expense at least.
#
I'm just conveying bad news. Why make him pay a lot?
#
So, he sent a single word, 19. That was it.
#
But our local Manipal police post office interpreted that as something known as a greetings telegram.
#
So, back in the day, if you want to send someone greetings,
#
Diwali greetings, you would send three.
#
And the three was code for happy Diwali and New Year.
#
And then it would come to Amit Farma saying that happy Diwali.
#
So, the code number for 19 was heartiest Guru Parbh greetings.
#
So, when the letter comes from the vice chancellor of Mysore University,
#
everyone is really agog with anticipation.
#
Am I going to pass? Have I made it?
#
And all that the vice chancellor of Mysore University has to tell him is heartiest Guru Parbh greetings.
#
He never recovered from the shock.
#
So, I've variously told this anecdote as this having happened to Sathya Nadella
#
and he got such a shock that he went to America and became the CEO of Microsoft.
#
Okay. So, I have a lot of pretty interesting uncles, aunts and cousins.
#
And like over a period of time, some really hilarious things have happened.
#
So, one such is the following.
#
So, when you do your medicine, after you do your MBBS, you have to enroll for surgery.
#
And then you have to serve some kind of slave labor called registrar or not registrar,
#
not registrar, something, surgery resident, something.
#
So, he has to basically be in surgery like day in, day out for several years
#
till he acquires the skills.
#
And then you give that exam and then you become a surgeon.
#
So, when he was on that rotation, his mother, he was the only son.
#
Mother was very fond of him.
#
Mother was always, she would always call him.
#
And this was cell phones had just sort of, you know, entered, you know, common, just become common.
#
And this guy would, half the time he would be in the surgery or assisting with the surgery or something.
#
He couldn't take the call.
#
So, he told his mom that, you know, whatever you want to tell me.
#
And they would, calls would be like, have you had your food or, you know, have you whatever,
#
taken your medicines or whatever, something very inane.
#
So, he told his mom that, you know, you just text me.
#
I mean, I'll respond to you whenever I can.
#
And he indeed was in the operating theater 12 hours a day.
#
But she didn't know how to text.
#
So, back in the day, it was those old Nokia phone thing.
#
And, you know, you had to, it took a little doing, typing a text message.
#
But she figured that out.
#
And then, so, he worked in Sion Hospital and he lived in Juhu.
#
So, it wasn't very far.
#
But even so, he had to basically live in the hospital 24-7
#
and just come once a week or something, change of clothes and things like that.
#
So, he comes after his first week.
#
And mother says, you know, you haven't responded to a single text.
#
So, he said, I haven't received a single text.
#
Who have you been sending it to?
#
So, she's been, unfortunately, she wrote the text but she didn't know how to send it.
#
So, it's by default going to the first person in the address book
#
whose name begins with A and it happens to be this guy's surgery boss.
#
This guy is like, you know, aghast.
#
I mean, what would his surgery boss think?
#
So, he goes and he says, you know, I'm going to get yelled at
#
because he's a famously irascible man.
#
And he's like, he suffers no nonsense.
#
He says, I'm going to get yelled at today.
#
But I'll have to apologize.
#
So, he goes and he tells the boss that this is what happened.
#
And to his immense surprise, the guy almost breaks down into tears.
#
He hugs him and embraces him.
#
And, you know, he's like overcome with emotion, like relief.
#
So, this guy didn't know. I mean, he didn't understand what it was.
#
Then he figured it out later.
#
So, apparently, this guy's mother used to write text like, I love you very much.
#
X, X, X. Missing you so much and things like that.
#
And the surgery guy had no clue whom it was coming from.
#
And all he would get is text saying that I love you so much.
#
I miss you so much. Please come home soon or whatever.
#
And he had to hurriedly delete all of them lest his wife find out.
#
So, when he found out that this was the explanation, his grief was...
#
I mean, his relief was immeasurable.
#
He was like completely relieved to know that everything in his life was going...
#
He was totally freaked out. He had no clue what was happening.
#
But, I mean, I'm just thinking if his wife had actually...
#
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
#
One divorce surgery resident.
#
Whatever, one surgery boss.
#
The scene and the unseen.
#
Once I've... I don't know if you've ever been to Rajkot.
#
So, I haven't been recently, but I went some years ago.
#
At least when I went, Rajkot airport was a very charming little house like thing.
#
You know, it could be somebody's bungalow.
#
It was that small. Very nice.
#
And I landed up in Rajkot via Ahmedabad or something.
#
I had gone to Ahmedabad for some work and then I had to go to Rajkot.
#
So, I took a bus and then I landed.
#
And then when my work was done, getting from Rajkot to Bombay is a pretty long journey.
#
So, train was not an option. It was too long.
#
And I was very... this is back in the day.
#
So, like not back in the days, maybe 15, 10, 15 years ago.
#
And I booked and I did a web check-in.
#
Web check-in had been introduced.
#
And I got myself a window seat because I wanted to see Rajkot from the air.
#
And so, the only window seat I could get was row number 27, which was the last one.
#
And I landed up at the airport.
#
Somebody came, picked my luggage, took me to the check-in counter.
#
It wasn't a very big flight.
#
And there was a nice young lady sitting behind the counter.
#
She looks at my boarding card, says, oh, have you web checked in?
#
Oh, but you have taken seat number 27F.
#
I said, yes, because I want a window seat.
#
But she says, sir, this is not a reclining seat.
#
I said, I don't mind. It's like a 50-minute flight.
#
She says, no, I have an aisle seat on number 17.
#
So, I can give you that.
#
She says, no, I said I'm okay with a window seat.
#
No, sir, but it's not reclining.
#
I said, doesn't matter.
#
She says, no, sir, you don't understand.
#
At your age, it is better to have reclining seats.
#
So, I was thinking of myself as a young whippersnapper.
#
And it was very clear what I looked like.
#
So, I gracefully accepted her offer and went on row number 17, quietly like a gentleman.
#
So, now, every time you kind of fly, you think of this and the realization of your sort of advancing years.
#
This is the thing, right? So, everyone has a memory of how or when they were first called uncle.
#
So, when you're a kid, nobody calls you uncle.
#
And all of a sudden, you're like in your 20s and some little kid says uncle.
#
And you're like, you know, that's a moment of truth.
#
You realize that you have crossed some boundary and now you're no longer the young man you thought you were.
#
What's worse is when some adult calls you uncle.
#
Actually, yeah. Actually, girls are even more so.
#
So, we used to have an employee in an office.
#
And just to troll her, the boys, the factory.
#
So, she used to look after accounts or something like that.
#
And they used to call her auntie.
#
And she used to really lose it, like because she thought she was young.
#
So, like 90% of our HR problems were guys going and calling her auntie.
#
And she's like yelling at them.
#
Yeah, I had a similar incident where I was at the Gaul Lit Fest after my book came out in 2009.
#
And Sarnath Banerjee was one of the other people there.
#
And I'm in my 30s and so is he.
#
And at one point, we went somewhere to some random beach or something and whatever.
#
And he introduced me to one of his friends.
#
And the friend asked me, are you his father?
#
And the irony of this is Sarnath is older than me.
#
Yeah, it's very brutal.
#
And completely gratuitous, right?
#
He's been asking for his age estimates and then somebody comes and gives me...
#
Yeah, and that dude who said that, you see me now.
#
So, we had an acquaintance who was famously...
#
You know, he used to tell, like you go to a sabzi guy and he'll call you uncle.
#
And you'd sort of look down on him through his glasses and say,
#
we're here to buy sabzi from you, we're here to make a relationship, don't call us uncle.
#
That would shut them up sometimes.
#
So, I am usually the know-all, know-it-all, right?
#
So, Sheila resents that.
#
And she's like, whenever... and I'm one of those enthu cutlets who has to jump in
#
and enlighten everybody, you know?
#
So, mansplainer on steroids.
#
But anyway, so I had that and oftentimes to make matters worse,
#
my explanation is also inaccurate and downright wrong most of the time.
#
But that's my nature, it used to be.
#
And I got my comeuppance in Uganda.
#
So, one year we decided to go to Uganda as tourists.
#
Why Uganda specifically is a long story.
#
I wanted to go to Kenya, but somebody said Uganda.
#
And so we went to a place called Para Lodge or something.
#
It's a wildlife resort in the middle of nowhere.
#
And you can either fly in or you can take a car and go.
#
So, flying was too expensive, we took.
#
We had a Ugandan driver named Ronald.
#
Very, you know, very...
#
In Uganda, everyone speaks English.
#
So, that's because they have Swahili,
#
they have their local language and their English.
#
So, virtually everyone speaks English
#
and reasonably decent English, you can understand.
#
But it was just very transactional.
#
You say, good morning, sir.
#
And would you like to stop for lunch?
#
And that's all the interaction is.
#
So, we go to Para Lodge and then we go to another place
#
called Pabidi Chimpanzee Reserve or something.
#
So, it's a rainforest with chimpanzees.
#
So, we go in and it was very nice.
#
You see chimpanzees in their natural habitat
#
All of these people, they are very knowledgeable about.
#
So, we had a guide who told us about behavior of chimpanzees.
#
And actually, chimpanzees are pretty brutal animals.
#
So, they are not the cuddly sweet things that we think they are.
#
I still remember the books of anthropologist Frans Zewal
#
about this where he talks about the chimpanzee politics and all of that.
#
Actually, baboon politics is even more interesting.
#
But chimpanzees are also...
#
That whole fight over the alpha male, you know.
#
The last time I read something like that,
#
I kept thinking of Modiji versus Adityanathji.
#
You know, it's a lot of parallels among humans.
#
So, all that was happening.
#
Then we come back and there's a nice sort of reception area
#
and Sheila wants to go to the loo.
#
So, she's gone and I'm just hanging around.
#
And there is a tree and the manager of that lodge was free.
#
Our driver Ronald was there too.
#
And he was telling me about the place
#
and famous people who had come there.
#
Very popular and apparently one of our Prime Ministers had come there.
#
Indian Prime Minister, everything was there.
#
Then I noticed this tree under which we were standing.
#
And in the middle, on one of the branches, there's a riot of colours.
#
There's a plant with a lot of flowers on it.
#
So, I said, that looks unusual.
#
I mean, the rest of the tree, there's just a few very sparse plants.
#
So, the manager says this is probably a parasitic plant.
#
So, it's basically sitting on that.
#
And this happens in the forest and other plants.
#
They draw the sustenance from the main tree and then they do their thing.
#
And this is the first time Ronald pipes up.
#
And before this, Ronald has only asked me,
#
do you want to stop for lunch, do you want to stop for a toilet break?
#
Those are the only things, sir, we should be getting on.
#
That's literally the only thing he has told.
#
He says, I don't think that is a parasitic plant
#
because if it were a parasitic plant,
#
then the branch at the distal end would be barren
#
because this plant would be sucking out all the sap.
#
I think it's an epiphyte.
#
And the manager says, yeah, you're right, you're right.
#
It must be an epiphyte, it can't be a parasite.
#
And by this time, Sheila had returned
#
and she was in on the entire conversation
#
and she was delighted to see me completely open-mouthed.
#
She knew I had no clue what an epiphyte was.
#
And her mansplainer, personsplainer husband was, at least for a little while,
#
You were outshined by Ronald.
#
But did you find out his background? Was he like a biology PhD or something?
#
Yeah, so he told me that, not that,
#
but before he worked as a driver,
#
he was a botanist at one of these parks.
#
So he knew a lot about it. He was a botanist, that's what he told me.
#
I don't know what his qualifications are,
#
I mean, he was such a charming fellow.
#
And then, unfortunately, that was the fag end of the trip
#
and we came back to Kampala and we had to fly back.
#
I never got to know Ronald better.
#
Shout out to Ronald if he's listening to this,
#
please get in touch with Narayan.
#
Okay, story number eight.
#
Bandra, Pali Hill Days.
#
So this friend who I used to hang out with,
#
we used to hang out in Bandra and his house,
#
a very nice, charming building they used to live in.
#
Nothing to do, just wander around, maybe play some cricket, do nothing.
#
And one day, we were just sitting there in his house
#
and a neighbouring auntie walks in.
#
She has a three-year-old daughter.
#
She says, would you know, baby, spend time with uncle here.
#
I'm just coming or something like that.
#
And with practiced ease, she palms off the girl to us
#
and she runs away like a hare
#
because she wants some time to herself.
#
She wants to go shop or something like that.
#
And this girl is one clingy, mama.
#
The moment the door shuts, she starts crying, mama.
#
And we don't know, we have zero experience
#
in looking after little kids, babysitting.
#
So we don't know what to do and we're trying to structure.
#
Just then, one older, another neighbour,
#
he just walks in here, all the din must be in,
#
and says, what's happening?
#
So we tell him, yaar, aisa ho gaya.
#
Ah, girl, no problem, I'll handle.
#
So he comes in, he says, do you have an album?
#
So the guy says, yeah, hoga kuch toh, bring any album.
#
So he brings some travel album.
#
So he starts showing it to the girl and says,
#
see, this is this bhaiya, this is this didi,
#
and this is this chacha.
#
And then eventually, as children,
#
and this is a tip to all listeners,
#
so if you ever want to shush a small child,
#
They will just stop and they'll just, you know.
#
So she shuts up and he's showing all this thing,
#
and says, see, all these people are there,
#
this bhaiya is there, that chacha is there,
#
but where is your mummy?
#
She starts crying again.
#
So after she starts crying, he starts the whole thing again,
#
and the child sort of forgets, you know, she stops crying.
#
Eventually, the moment she stops crying,
#
he says the same thing, see, all these bhaiyas there, didi is there,
#
It was the most hilarious.
#
For two hours, actually, I think,
#
I don't think it'll pass muster now.
#
I mean, it'll just get...
#
You'll get the little girl addicted to Instagram
#
and then it's all overdue.
#
Yeah, nowadays it's a lot easier.
#
You just give them a phone and they shut up.
#
Back in the day, you could do that.
#
This guy was such a commens...
#
You know, such a masterful troll,
#
that he would, you know,
#
he'd just make a cry, make a shut up.
#
I think we might both be having a senior moment.
#
Let me find the definition of commensurate.
#
Commensurate is, I think,
#
you know, when you pay someone a salary
#
that is adequate for them,
#
they say this is commensurate to his skills,
#
which is exactly what it means.
#
So what is the word we are both hunting for?
#
Maybe if listeners can figure it out,
#
leave it in the comments.
#
Masterful, but me, starts with...
#
Yeah, redeems ourselves in time.
#
So, Sheila will be listening to this and saying that
#
where is the explainer?
#
Okay, story number nine.
#
football teams among the younger
#
generation. So, big victim is my
#
I should say, is my son.
#
My younger son, he used to be
#
And then somewhere down the line,
#
he changed his allegiance to
#
spent a lot of time and energy.
#
So, they watch every match.
#
don't get, you know, there's this
#
Hindi, there's a saying called
#
Begane shadi mein abdulla diwana.
#
But they do that and they
#
keep trolling them. You know, he and
#
his friends will come to watch a match and
#
I start off, now they don't
#
react, they know I'm just trolling
#
None of you have been to Tottenham.
#
What is your connect? And they're like,
#
you'll never understand.
#
You'll never walk alone. That's a Liverpool thing.
#
let us say, you have Tottenham
#
there's another team, maybe Liverpool.
#
And you hate Liverpool and you
#
your favourite Tottenham players, like Harry
#
Liverpool? Do you still
#
be devoted to Tottenham?
#
And obviously, the answer is yes. So, I said,
#
each one by one, all your
#
Tottenham players go and leave
#
Liverpool and coincidentally,
#
picking up players from Liverpool. So,
#
after the transfer season is
#
over, all your Tottenham
#
players are now in Liverpool.
#
Now, what do you do? And yeah,
#
a thought experiment, but
#
they never get into that. So, they say that it's
#
not possible because apparently
#
the transfer window, you can only transfer
#
who wants to engage with,
#
the best reply I got for this
#
Abhishek Upadhyay, who goes under the name
#
He says your allegiance is
#
based on which jersey you bought
#
from national market the last time.
#
you have a Tottenham jersey, then it is Tottenham.
#
You know, I find this tribal allegiance
#
is very weird and you could extrapolate this and
#
say that, why is it only weird
#
that somebody sitting in Mumbai
#
who's never been outside Malad even perhaps
#
supports Tottenham, but
#
it is equally weird to support India. I mean,
#
all these are like abstract concepts.
#
You can have a concrete
#
loyalty to your family and people you have met,
#
but anything beyond that is
#
absolutely abstract. You're really buying into
#
some kind of narrative scene there.
#
that tribalism is so strong that
#
that I piss people off.
#
Like when you threaten their
#
they get threatened. So there's some deep
#
lesson to be learned from this about human
#
probably already learned, I don't know.
#
Yeah, I mean, my allegiance when I follow football
#
pretty closely and my allegiance is more towards coaches
#
because I like their particular styles, I like the way
#
a team plays. I was arguing with a friend
#
of mine who's a big Barcelona fan about
#
who fell in love with Barcelona
#
in those years when, you know, 2010,
#
Guardiola was in charge and Messi was
#
the point is that that spirit,
#
if you look at it, has been transplanted elsewhere
#
and it is perhaps today in Man City
#
and, you know, so to...
#
Actually, I got this over a period of time
#
was, you know, the diminishing law of
#
litan. So every time you troll them, initially it was great fun.
#
After that, it's like, so I stopped
#
trolling and then I started listening and then
#
the tactical and strategic
#
aspects of it and it's pretty
#
intense. I mean, so he would illustrate
#
like, you know, he would almost be
#
able to predict what is going to happen if
#
this guy is heading out in the centre,
#
then these two guys will start coming out
#
in the wings and they are looking for a rebound
#
and counter-attack and so on and so
#
pretty clear that it's a big
#
the players are really the managers,
#
players, not just the players themselves.
#
The continued loyalty towards the club
#
is still irrational because I'm guessing that your son
#
must have fallen in love with Tottenham during the
#
five and a half years when Mauricio Pochettino
#
was a coach and he was brilliant and they
#
played a really attractive style of
#
football, pressing all the time, possession,
#
aggressive, all of that. But ever since
#
he got sacked, you know, they've had
#
Mourinho and then Nuno just
#
got sacked and you know
#
they've got some new guy. The latest is Konte
#
might be joining who is also a defence plus
#
counter-attack kind of coach, though far
#
better than similar coaches of that
#
type. So, it's like, they're
#
a completely different club if you look at the way
#
they play. So, I wonder what your son feels
#
about that. It's good. It'll be a good
#
discussion to have with them.
#
the boys were very, very young.
#
not around. Google Maps definitely wasn't
#
around. So, it's really way back.
#
place called Kalyaninagar.
#
a relative on Sheela's side
#
lived there and they've been inviting us for
#
a long time and I did want to go.
#
Sheela, the kids and I.
#
we got lost. So, there was
#
no, we just lined up in
#
Pune, even back in the day, was
#
place to drive in. People
#
have absolutely, it's like random Brownian motion.
#
I'm pretty sure that random
#
Brownian motion was first discovered in
#
discovered it got the idea from
#
the traffic and then he goes and looks
#
and says, oh, this is Brownian motion.
#
in life is asking for directions.
#
So, I would rather navigate
#
then ask someone, but Sheela's not
#
allowed. She'll stop here, she'll ask
#
this Panwala and then 100 metres
#
away, she'll ask another cyclist and so on.
#
But Pune being Pune, back in the
#
day, there were no Panwalas, no cyclists,
#
go around and then we find one elderly,
#
distinguished looking elderly gentleman
#
standing on the road, doing
#
pretty much nothing. So, I pull over
#
and then we ask this gentleman.
#
So, he says, where do you want to go?
#
So, I said Kalyaninagar. So, he says
#
Kalyaninagar. Is that the one on
#
That's the one, because that
#
one near the Poonawala stud
#
I'm getting happier. He seems to know the
#
place. Then, it's somewhere near
#
Vimanagar, right? I said, yeah, it's near
#
Vimanagar. So, I asked him, do you know
#
how to go there? He says, no.
#
And he walked away. That was the end
#
of the conversation. I don't know.
#
This guy is more like Shenoyed than Ronald,
#
story. It's actually where
#
I saw a naked woman in the flesh
#
for the first time in my life. But it isn't
#
what you think it is. So, I was at the
#
I was probably in the 9th standard,
#
8th to 9th standard, 9th
#
standard probably. And I was
#
I had gone to visit this friend of mine, who
#
lived there, who I haven't been in touch with since,
#
but he's actually a very prominent economist right now.
#
So, I won't name him because
#
very serious guy, as he
#
was, he was a serious kid. So, anyway,
#
we were in his bedroom chilling out, and
#
there was a third friend over there.
#
the two balconies facing
#
each other, opposite his room,
#
some foreigner couple used to live.
#
And he happened to mention that the
#
lady used to walk around naked.
#
So, at one point in time,
#
both me and this other friend, I'm trying hard
#
not to take their names because they're just coming,
#
me and this other friend, we just opened
#
the curtain a little bit, and we see that
#
she's stark naked and she's walking around in the room,
#
she's doing something. And then she comes
#
out on the balcony and she's standing there.
#
So, both of us, 9th standard
#
kids, right? This is back in the day,
#
you don't even have free access to porn and all of that.
#
and we jumped up. And this
#
economist friend whose room it was,
#
was very chill. He said, I can see what
#
you're doing, don't do it. But we
#
just went nuts. We opened the balcony
#
door and we also go out on the balcony
#
and we're right opposite her, which was the stupidest
#
thing to do. And she just looks
#
at us, looks away, turns
#
this way, turns that way, and then casually
#
walks inside and shuts the door and that was
#
the end of the show. So, an
#
When you have some insights
#
and you want to do something in the
#
market, you have to do it as
#
they say in Bombay, sumdi mein.
#
So, sumdi is when you, I love that.
#
I have no idea what the
#
etymology of that word is. But sumdi
#
apparently means slyly.
#
So, you have to do it very slyly without anyone knowing
#
what's happening. Many deeper
#
questions. Why does this train go to Mulund?
#
listening to a lot of classical, Hindustani
#
I grew very fond of it to
#
the point that I am unable to
#
listen to any other kind of music. I just
#
listen to Hindustani classical.
#
children, at least my older son
#
like when he was a toddler.
#
would start crying, loudly.
#
how to walk, he would just go
#
and start hitting the nearest person.
#
So, if his mom, he would start hitting his mom
#
if it was me. Just stop,
#
just stop. He would just come and hit.
#
So, like over a period of time
#
it just stopped. And then
#
they grew up and then, you know, then it
#
was no longer such a big issue.
#
the internet and you had all these
#
things and you could get free mp3s
#
and one of my favourite singers was
#
Malik Arjun Mansoor. And Malik Arjun Mansoor
#
released very few records.
#
And I had all of them, so I listened to them.
#
And when the internet started,
#
a lot of private recordings,
#
people started putting them up.
#
They were, you know, recordings of Baitaks
#
were available. So, I hungrily
#
I would download them and
#
you know, sort of listen to them. And that
#
was my biggest use case
#
Malik Arjun Mansoor. And
#
this was, the moment you wanted to download
#
music, they would start hurling
#
all kinds of hot picks. So, if you
#
said, you know, you want to listen
#
to Gloria Estefan, you would get
#
hot picks of Gloria Estefan or whatever.
#
Hot picks of Malik Arjun Mansoor.
#
I do that, I'm hunting and
#
to whatever was available. But I'm still hopeful
#
that somebody will put up something new.
#
And what I've downloaded,
#
what's come on the screen is
#
download hot pictures of Malik
#
Arjun Mansoor. And then
#
or something like, into the
#
dining room and then we eat and then I come back
#
to my room. And then Sheila happens to see
#
and she couldn't stop laughing.
#
ever since, she calls Malik
#
Arjun Mansoor the Madhuri Dixit
#
of Hindustani classical music.
#
it's a very inside joke.
#
Wonderful. I'm sure there are many many
#
fans of Malik Arjun Mansoor listening to this.
#
But this is a new angle.
#
Also a great title for a booker of film download
#
Hot Pictures of Malik Arjun Mansoor.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you can
#
follow Naren on Twitter at
#
ShenoyN. You can follow me on Twitter
#
at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes
#
of The Scene and the Unseen at
#
sceneunseen.in. Thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen?
#
like to support the production of this show?
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