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Here's a question I sometimes ask myself, how often in my life have I been actually
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By which I mean engaged in what I am doing, living in the moment, questioning what I really
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want and not just following a groove set out for me.
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Here's the thing, through our lives we often get on a path and follow a default.
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As young people in our society we look at our parents and the people around us and sometimes
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become those men and women and don't think for ourselves.
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If the conventional way is to get married and have kids, we get married and have kids.
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We get the education we are supposed to get and then embark on the career we are supposed
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In our workplace we tick the boxes we are supposed to tick.
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In our personal lives we play the roles we are supposed to play.
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It's as if we've been coded to live in a particular way and we are machines of flesh
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and blood following that code.
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But sometimes we can step back for a moment and see the matrix we are stuck inside.
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We can question our choices, think about what we truly want and not just what we are supposed
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to or expected to want.
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Are those moments the only moments when we are truly free, when we are truly alive?
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Samarth Bansal, a journalist known for his skill with data but someone
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whose journalism goes well beyond numbers and whose thinking goes well beyond journalism.
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Samarth was into math and computing when he was young, went to IIT, decided not to follow
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the typical IIT path, became a journalist, decided not to follow the typical journalist
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path and he now lives in the hills, working on the stories he wants to work on, taking
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breaks when he wants, still visiting Delhi once in a while with a different gaze than
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the one he had when he was growing up here.
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I've always found Samarth's journalism thought-provoking and when I met him at a recent conference
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in Udaipur, I invited him on the show.
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I think we also gelled well on that first meeting.
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I found Samarth thoughtful, straightforward and curious.
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And when we finally recorded in Delhi, I was so so impressed by the quality of his self-reflection.
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In this episode, he talks about his journaling habit and how that helped him question everything
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about his life and choices.
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He talks a lot about journalism, going back to first principles, asking questions like
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how do we define newsworthiness, how do we decide what stories to do.
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He speaks about ethics in his life, on the college campus, in the newsroom.
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He speaks about the choice he has made to live an examined life and how that involves
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walking away from the expectations of others.
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He speaks in detail about his time in IIT and in the media, so other IITians and journalists
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would find a lot to relate to.
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But the first half of our conversation is about life itself and I found much wisdom
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there and much to think about.
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For some reason, there's an honesty and warmth and a connection in this episode that reminded
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me of the ones I recorded with Prem Panicker and Amitav Kumar and Chandrahalsh Chaudhary.
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Except those guys were old friends of mine and I was meeting Samarth here for the second
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So I'm touched by the trust he placed in me and in all of you because you're all listening
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By the way, this episode was recorded in August and the story we discussed in it about the
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And now we're releasing it in October when the wire is in the center of another storm.
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I'm reserving judgment on it till I read what Samarth has to say.
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I know he sees angles and nuances that no one else does.
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Anyway, before we begin this conversation, let's take a quick commercial break.
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There are no commercials because but let's take a break anyway.
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Samarth, welcome to the scene.
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Thank you, Omit, for having me.
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So it's just to let the listeners know, I bumped into Samarth at this conference where,
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you know, everybody wore these name tags with them.
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And I looked at your name tag and straight away, obviously, I've been following your
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And I thought, okay, this is kind of going to be a good place for me to work.
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So I went to the conference.
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I went to the conference.
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I went to the conference.
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I went to the conference.
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I went to the conference.
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I went to the conference.
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I went to the conference.
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And straight away, obviously, I've been following your work and I thought, okay, this is kind
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of going to be interesting.
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And I think we also, when we were talking in a session there, just got into this really
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So I was looking forward to this conversation.
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And I think we'll both enjoy it.
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So let's start by you telling me or you telling us, you know, more about yourself, like, where
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What's your background?
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So I was born and brought up in Delhi, North Delhi, specifically, I like to make that distinction
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because there is this big, I think, cultural difference in different parts of Delhi.
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I went to a school close to my house, an English medium private school, medium sized school.
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But right from that time, you had some sort of, I would say, inferiority complex that,
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you know, you are not one of those kids from the DPS Archiporum or modern school Parakhamba.
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So you know, and like, it was a very homogeneous group in the school.
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Everyone in the Pitampura area is, you know, same kind of backgrounds.
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So that's the kind of school I went to.
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My family, my dad is a businessman.
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He grew up in a village near Ludhiana.
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There were seven brothers and one sister when he was 18, 84 riots happened in Punjab.
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And so around that time, three of these brothers moved to Imphal.
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And like my grandfather didn't really have like in terms of finances, the very, very
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So my dad and two brothers, they built up a business from scratch in Imphal.
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He was telling me, you know, they had these dealership of like Fruity and other brands.
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So one of the, they built their credibility and, you know, he used to drive a truck all
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across Imphal and Manipur and, you know, made good fortune for himself there.
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And then after six, seven years in the early nineties, early nineties, what I think in
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91 came to Delhi and then slowly other, other brothers came and they built a business here.
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And I think post liberalization, you know, their business grew up.
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So I sometimes retrospectively think that somehow, you know, my father's journey is
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in a way, you know, that moment where liberalization was giving opportunities to people.
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So my father was one of the beneficiaries and my mom, she grew up in Delhi and my Nanaji
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was a gazette officer and she, again, like both my dad didn't go to college.
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My mom did a correspondence course from Delhi university and then they got married, arranged
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So after that, I think since I was a, you know, right from early childhood, I was told
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that education is the thing that matters the most.
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And one of the things there was that my mom felt like a victim of patriarchy, right?
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So we have a massive family.
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It's a, I told you already, right, like seven brothers.
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Then my grandfather had like four brothers, so it's a big family.
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And my mom was somehow not able to fit in.
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So for her, the success, quote unquote success of me, and I'm the elder kid, my sister is
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80 years younger to me, was kind of, you know, to show that kids can be on their own and
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they don't need the, you know, like what she felt.
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So her, what I'm trying to articulate here is that my education and the investment that
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my mom did was in some way a reflection of rebellion, you know, about what she didn't
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feel about, you know, things that were, she didn't feel right and her response to that.
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So I gave this context because all through my school time, you know, this was a big push
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that, and she invested a lot, I can see in retrospection.
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So again, I told you in the beginning about that inferiority complex.
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So I have this vivid memory where I'm sitting in front of the school, I got the admission
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and my mom was so angry because some other elite schools rejected me.
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So you know, like you have to prove yourself in academics and do well, all sorts of things.
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So that's the long context.
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And I think, I don't know where it came from, but right from the beginning, I just absolutely
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You know, since a kid, you know, you know, that class may you're a topper, you're doing
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My mom used to take me to extracurricular activities.
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So I learned, you know, music, dance, all of those things, they were all happening simultaneously.
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So that's how it, you know, I was growing up and yeah, always on top of the class.
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And I think sometime, so yeah, school went like this.
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And in retrospection, I think that somehow like then, you know, until like fifth grade
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or sixth grade, the way you just assessed myself, I assessed myself was primarily through
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your exams course, right?
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Now that like I'm trying to build a career in journalism and writing, and I hear so many
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writers about their childhoods.
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So many of them, you know, read books, they grew up reading books, like I didn't grow
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up in that environment.
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Like for me, books always meant textbooks.
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Even again, you know, culturally, if you look at North Delhi, we don't have a bookshop.
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Like you know, it was only after I became a journalist, I learned that, okay, there
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is a Bhaari Sons in Khan Market, where now I'm a regular.
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So I'm saying that was the kind of environment you, I grew up in.
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But again, my, I remember like, you know, I was so engrossed in my math classes and
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But yeah, there were things like my cousins and my friends would play cricket in the evening.
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But I was told that, you know, it's important to study.
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So I think maybe early class three, class four, I would have felt why is this happening?
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But I think in the larger scheme of things, I was very happy with what I was doing.
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So that's the academic part kept going on.
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And we can do details later.
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But I think somehow in fifth grade to eighth grade, you know, I became like really passionate
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There's a whole series of things that happened while I was growing up, which led to that.
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And in seventh grade, I requested my parents that please, I want a computer at home.
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And it was a big deal to ask them.
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And one of the things I told them is that I really want to learn things and I will never
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So I promise you, just get me a computer.
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And the funny thing is that I was not even interested in gaming, you know, so it was
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not something that I had to give something up.
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But that's just the way of telling them that I really want this.
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And I think that opened the world for me.
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I remember telling myself that this is seventh grade, that God made humans, right?
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Like at the time, like now I'm an atheist, so going back that there's God, God created
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humans and humans created this machine.
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So I can now play God, you know, I can do things with it.
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I can create anything I want.
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And that I clearly remember the day when I told my parents, I'm going to be a software
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So it became very organically.
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And then I did a lot of stuff on my computer back home in school.
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All of those things were happening.
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And in eighth grade, I learned one of my cousins was preparing for this exam called IIT JEE.
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And I learned that if in India you want to study engineering, then you have to the best
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school is Indian Institute of Technology.
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I think in eighth grade, I realized that, you know, there is this college, I want to
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And I was told that the exam, you need to be good at math and science, which I was.
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And I think there was some again, it's a whole diversion into details, but there's an exam
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that I qualified in eighth grade, which gave me the confidence that I have a standing beyond
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And then I think grade nine, I joined coaching.
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And it was like, you know, it was brilliant, you know, my coaching days preparing for JEE.
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And fortunately, I got into got admission to IIT Kanpur, studied math and computing.
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And yeah, so that's the that's that's my childhood till till I went to college.
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So let's go back to, you know, the early part of the story where you mentioned your huge
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family and your mom and the patriarchy and all of that.
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And what I realized, looking back at my own life, for example, is that we figure out a
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lot of this stuff in retrospect.
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Like you said, you know, in that, you know, the world that we are in, it is normal for
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Everything there is normalized.
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This is how people kind of live their lives.
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So is it all, you know, through retrospect, when you look at your mom, that you realize
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what she was going through and this narrative is there that she was struggling against that
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Or in the moment, could you also sense her frustration and the stuff that was happening
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And this is such a common story.
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This is basically India's story that women are trapped in situations and, you know, they
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look at different ways to gain escape.
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And sometimes those are invisible ways.
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Sometimes those are just tortured interior lives.
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And so tell me a little bit, you know, more about your mom, firstly.
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And also, you know, did you resent what you might sometimes have thought was overbearing
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ki padai karo, cricket mat khelo, all of that.
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And you know how much, like you mentioned before we started that you've been journaling
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for four years and that's, you know, kind of useful and in a sense is dangerous because
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you're kind of constructing yourself as it were through what you choose your memories
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But at the same time, I think like in journaling, you know, I did an episode with Amitabh Kumar
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and we spoke a lot about journaling and it's something I recommend to everyone because
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it's a way of not just knowing yourself, but kind of shaping yourself.
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So how much does, you know, introspection at this stage, self-reflection, looking back,
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how much does it sort of shape your understanding of that world?
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I mean, and how much did you know in the moment ki yeh aisa hai and all of that?
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So I knew in the moment.
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So have you heard of this term, parentified kids?
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So the first time I heard this term, I think actually it was on a Tyler Cohen podcast.
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I can't pronounce the name of this author, but one of her book, Strangers Drowning, it's
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a book on moral philosophy, you know, seven or eight profiles, deep profiles, and Larissa
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something, I'm forgetting the name, sorry.
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So the parentified kid, when the term I heard, it just blew my mind because it is something
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that again, I try to think a lot about like who I am I today.
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What can I trace back to my childhood?
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What are the roots of who I am as a person, what goes back?
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And one of the things that hit me was empathy, that, you know, there is a, like if I go when
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I was a student in college, you know, there was this sense of deep sense of right and
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wrong that, you know, I want to make an impact.
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I want to change things.
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I'm a very different person now, but 10 years ago, that was me where you had the sense of,
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you know, or, you know, this whole Steve Jobs sense of changing the world, or, you know,
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you see, you know, you see injustice around and you feel I have to do something to help.
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So where is that empathy coming from?
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So one of the, this idea of parentified kids is that, sorry, I didn't even describe what
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it is, but it's something like when you're growing up,
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you start at an early age, start acting as a parent to your parents.
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And I, you know, I always say, you know, that to put it simply, there is the, it's a dysfunctional
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And the way to, I see that with my friends is that, you know, I talk about films.
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So there's this friend of mine and I was talking to her about Zoya Akhtar's movie, Dil Dhadakne Do.
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And she was like, what a stupid movie, you know, have you seen the movie?
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I love her other films.
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I think I've seen it in passing, but I didn't like it very much.
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So, you know, she was like, this is not how families work, you know, aise ladhai kare
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And you know, Amit, when my sister, like both of us watched that movie, we were like, wow,
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someone gets us same with Kapoor and Sons, you know, which is a lovely film, which is
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But what you see in all of these situations is just that, you know, deep, you know, like
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dysfunctional families, which from the outside, you won't know what is happening, right?
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But anything can break at any time.
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And you can't, you don't even know how to talk about it to someone.
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Even the fact that I am telling it to you now, it's because now I have, over the course
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of journaling over four years, I have now understood what it is, right?
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Five years, six years ago, I could not even talk about it to my friends.
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Now I could because I'm not comfortable with what that was, what that did to me.
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So that's where I'm saying that when you are a parentified kid, when you see dysfunction
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in family and you're, but you are not smart enough to know that who is right, who is wrong.
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You are just a kid, but you have to take that responsibility.
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So you see that things are off and that channelization is that you are responsible for like my, if
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I do well, my mom will feel happy, right?
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So these things are happening and the culmination was, you know, I remember the day I graduated
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from college and it was my convocation, right?
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That day when my mom told me that, I think I was 21 when I graduated and when I got my
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first check from the Hindu, that, you know, she felt she finally had agency because she
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had started earning because after, you know, she used to work at an office.
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It was a very, it was not a fancy job, but my mom, she just loved what she did.
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She proudly remembers that I used to do this.
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She would get a small salary, but you know, you used to spend it on others, not on herself,
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So that sense of agency, when you see has gone away, right?
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When, and my dad is the youngest, so, and again, it's a constructed story.
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So now I just feel terrible because I don't want to paint like a picture about other people
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That's not my objective.
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I'm just telling you what I felt, what I saw my mom going through.
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And there are, of course, multiple facets to the story.
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It's not even a story about other people.
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It's a story about structures and society and just processes.
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And you know, and so all of that was happening.
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So, you know, to answer your question, yes, a lot of it I was feeling back when I was
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growing up, but things started making, you know, you need to connect the dots.
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That happened, I think, over the last four or five years.
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And I will end on this note on this question that, you know, the interesting thing about
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journaling is that when you dump your thoughts on paper, you also, and you are just honest
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when you are in your diary, right?
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Like no one is going to read my diary.
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So you're so brutally honest.
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So the discomforting thoughts about the present, right?
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About what happened in childhood, like that, you know, this, let me put it this way, that
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I think a lot about as an individual, what is my relationship with society?
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What is, what do I owe to Amit Verma, right?
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We are sitting next to each other.
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You know, I believe in individual as a center of society.
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That's my worldview and individual, individual freedom.
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But then I'm also a member of the society.
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But then my parents, right, that's a different sort of relationship.
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I can't, the way I would think about Amit Verma or say my best friend, the relationship
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with parents is different.
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So where does that agency come in?
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Because when I was growing up, my mom and how, you know, I remember, right?
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You know, it's almost like she gave in everything.
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But is that something I asked for, right?
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You know, you get this question and it's, it's a very discomforting thought because
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today, how do you manifest that relationship when you are a child, when you're not an adult
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So how do you think about your responsibility?
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What do you owe to your parents?
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I don't have answers, but this is the, this is the struggle.
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And this hit me for the first time when I went to college, like I thought that, you
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know, like for me, it was a dream, you know, to study at that institute.
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And I think my years at IIT really shaped me in so many ways.
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But I went away from home, right?
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I went to Kanpur, my parents didn't realize that that will happen.
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They just thought it doesn't strike you, right?
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That like, now the kid will go away.
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So that left such a big void in you imagine, right?
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I mean, you do everything for 18 years for this one person, right?
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And my sister and I, you know, I joke with her that, I mean, she, you, I say, you have
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a more comfortable life because, you know, over the years, you know, the family prospered,
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but the love and affection I got.
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I feel, I mean, she would disagree that it was more because I'm the elder kid.
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So now when that creates this big void in her life, it changes things, right?
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And that had its own series of impressions that made me discomfort, you know, made me
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uncomfortable that, okay, what is happening?
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And now that, you know, I decided to live by myself, I don't live at my parents' house
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So that decision, you know, what would it mean for my parents, right?
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These are all questions that come to me and I am processing it in my journal.
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So again, that's sorry, it's a long winding answer to your question, but I think, yeah,
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I realized it at that time.
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But now that I think about it, it has become such a central thing in organizing my life
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that I have to, I can't just ignore what happened in childhood, but then also think about what
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is happening in the present and then just find way to navigate it.
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And is this something you've spoken to your mom about or to your dad about, is it something
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you can talk about or is a relationship sort of still in a groove, which is difficult to
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It's tricky because, like, I don't know, because you see the tension, you know, so the sense
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that I always have had with them is that I say, you know, whatever I do, I love you,
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I care for you, I will always be there for you.
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But I have a life that is outside the idea of a family, right?
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Now how do you, and they understand, you know, I mean, the choices that I have been able
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to make, you know, I still don't have an answer to it.
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People keep asking me all the time, how did your parents react to X?
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You know, how did your parents react to Y?
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And is it because of them or is it because of you?
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So I think they and I, we know what is going on, but, and there have been times when things
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go heated up and we sit and we talk, but, you know, it's almost like I realized after
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a while that look, both are right, you know, it's just worldviews are different, you know,
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they came from a certain background, they have a certain expectation.
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I grew up as a, you know, after, like after you leave home, you change.
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And after graduating from college, when I started reading, you know, reading just, it
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opens up the world for you and that happened, like, you know, since the time I started identifying
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myself as a reader, you know, the world changed for me, right?
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So your ideas expand, you just, you're just not the same person.
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So the trajectory of change, we went on different paths.
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And the problem is that, you know, within this giant family, like almost all my cousins,
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most of them, all of them are in family business, right?
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In my neighborhood, most of the kids are at home, right?
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That's how, that's how you're expected to be largely, you know, in the, in the zone
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Like people joke about it, you know, the essay hotel.
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So when you see other kids around behaving just the way she would expect me to, right?
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But then she's also proud that he has an independent life and standing, something that she wanted,
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So I think she also has that conflict and I also have that conflict, right?
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So I don't, I mean that conversation happens, but it's more of that, you know, to like
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something, something heated has happened, right?
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And you're trying to pacify it, right?
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And on an ongoing basis, I think she has like, of course, like both of us have moved, you
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know, so I think, I don't know, I still sometimes feel like, um, like I don't know the answer
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honestly Amit, that I don't know.
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And there've been other things that are too personal that I, you know, like I don't have
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problems to share, but you know, it just feels like that's her story.
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And do, do I have the right to even tell it?
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They're like, there's so many, like I've told you a lot, but I think there's this important
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things that I could not say because I think I respect her privacy of things that I could
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say or I could not say.
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So that will remain the missing bit.
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But yeah, from my POV, I'm saying that it's, it's something that I've now accepted to
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And I think my journaling is a way for me to build my own philosophy about, you know,
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to also accept uncomfortable truths.
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And in all that, like, I think part of growing up is to realize that your parents are not
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They are as flawed humans as I am.
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So and in this whole mess, you just find a way to get through things and take hard decisions.
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You criticize yourself.
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So yeah, I am now at a fairly comfortable space in my head.
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I don't know what my parents think about it.
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Does that answer your question?
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Yeah, it kind of illuminates a lot and also makes me very sad because I think and this
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is not, you know, I mean, your story about your mom sparked this off.
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But in general, this is, I think the lot of many Indian women that you don't have that
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agency as a kid, then you get married, you lose that agency.
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And then perhaps sometimes you seek a proxy.
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And you know, and that could be your kids and you seek a proxy in your kids.
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But eventually your kids go away.
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That's the nature of the world.
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And then what do you do?
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Do you, you know, how do you fill that particular void?
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And this is not a specific question or something.
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I'm just kind of thinking aloud and wondering because I don't think men in India sort of
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think about what the lives of women in India are like.
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It's just to live a life without agency and to take refuge and all of these things is
#
like such a terrible unspoken tragedy.
#
And I see that around in my society, right?
#
Because like, you know, when, when I'm home, my mom tells me other stories about other
#
women in the society, right?
#
And it feels like everyone has the same story, right?
#
There's some neighbors who I'm sure they're not going to listen to this podcast.
#
So I can just tell you that they are like super rich, like super rich, you know, they
#
built a business and they just have now this really fancy house in our society.
#
And what such deeply unhappy lives of women in that house, right?
#
I know details because just my mom told me.
#
And you see the, you know, the way, you know, an evening when my mom and her friends, they
#
These are the conversations that are happening that, you know, how it says that.
#
And I think, you know, Amit, and this is the thing that my sister has learned from all
#
That how, why financial independence matters so much because at the end of the day, right?
#
Like where do you go is the, is the question that hits you, right?
#
Like that's the lever through which lever of control in a way that you don't have independent
#
agency, like economically, like you can't do anything.
#
And that way, again, you know, I, at one point, you know, this whole thing about, she said,
#
now that you've started earning, I have started earning.
#
That sense that, you know, you, you get that feeling that now I have become independent.
#
So you know, in that way, I think that the factor of not the factor of, you know, not
#
having an independent source of income becomes a lever of control.
#
And you know, all of that, Amit, when I started reporting and I was reporting on this data
#
on suicides and I saw that I always heard about narratives about farmer suicides, but
#
every year farmers and housewives compete among who has the highest number, right?
#
And I think it was in 2017 when I saw that statistic and I was blown away because it
#
just explains the, for me, at least that there could be hundreds of reasons why what is happening
#
for my limited personal vantage of what I saw growing up in, not in my home, I'm staying
#
in my neighborhood, in my society where I grew up.
#
That was the sense I was getting that it was so the frustration that I could see in my
#
house around me that what it could lead to, you don't know, right?
#
It's, and you can't even talk about it in the, in a party, I would see, you know, not
#
a party as in like a family gathering, every, every family is happy, right?
#
Everyone is happy, but, you know, you go on one-on-one and then you see that the story
#
is different and things that happen in college, you know, when you get heart to heart with
#
your friends in a different, like one of the best things about IIT is that you meet people
#
from all across the country, right?
#
In an environment, you grew up in Delhi, I told you, it's a small homogeneous, you know,
#
community in school, everyone is from five kilometers and then you go to a college, kids
#
from all cast, class, states, languages, and then you go heart to heart with friends and
#
then you see the same story, you know, and those are also the people with whom you deeply
#
connect because you say, huh, you know, they get it, they get where we are coming from.
#
So yeah, I think it's, it's, it's just so generic and honestly, I think all of these
#
questions have such a, now that we have spoken about it, it has had a big impact on how I
#
think about the world because it just makes you, yeah, you know, the whole thing about
#
what looks at the surface, you know, like now it's, it's, let me put it this way, when
#
I see, it's a very weird thing to say, but when I see someone who is like extremely happy,
#
you know, like, you know, I feel this, there's some, there's some problem here.
#
It's like, you know, and now more that now that I'm a journalist, you know, and I want
#
to explore, you know, lives of people, it's like, I just wonder, I don't know, it's a,
#
I feel happy that they're happy in the moment, but the question is in my mind, okay, what
#
Like, you know, like, you know, the way you are asking me about my story, like, and I
#
can't just go and talk to a random person and say, you know, right.
#
But yeah, I think that has started happening because again, just to diverge in college,
#
when all of this was happening, there was a moment I had to take a semester drop in
#
my college because of something at home.
#
And that phase, I went into that direction where I thought there is no such thing as
#
Either you are unhappy that you are in the shades of unhappiness.
#
There is no such thing as happiness.
#
So for now, I don't think like that.
#
But I'm saying that when all of these impressions build up and you say, my friends even don't
#
know about what is happening behind the scenes.
#
So maybe something is happening behind the scenes with them that I don't know, right?
#
So that way, you know, this started happening that there's always a deeper life, you know,
#
I don't know what is happening.
#
So even now today, you know, if I don't like a person, right, or I'm disagreeing with them
#
or I don't like, then, you know, I just feel there's a part of me which is like, you know,
#
but I don't know iska story kya hai, you know, this, you know, ye aise argue kar raha hai,
#
you know, and like, why does he or she have these views?
#
But then a part of me tells, but, you know, I don't know, like what happened to the childhood,
#
what has made them the way they are today.
#
So I think, yeah, so long story short, I'm saying that the threads that I observed in
#
my own journey now today as a journalist, somehow it impacts you because it just changes
#
the way you look at people around you and how you think about them and the world.
#
And I'm just wondering from this, like what you said about, you know, initially when you
#
go to school, sab paanch kilometar ke radius mein hai, then you go to college, it expands
#
a bit, you meet different kinds of people and there you make connections where you make
#
connections and you find these common threads, even though you could be from different places,
#
And I'm wondering here about being able, the importance and dangers of transcending the
#
limits of geography, which we can more or less do in these current times, like earlier
#
in an earlier age, like when I grew up in the eighties, for example, you're, you're
#
sort of limited by circumstance in geography.
#
You only know so many people, you know, and your circles may expand sometimes and sometimes
#
Like you point out, many of your school friends are still living in the same place, working
#
in the family business.
#
And the good part of the circle expanding is that you can find like your sample size
#
of people with whom you could empathize with or learn something from or find that common
#
thread that sample size grows up and those connections matter because then you know you're
#
These are common experiences and those connections matter.
#
The internet can do the same thing.
#
Even the act of reading can do the same thing by giving you access to the lives and minds
#
So that's one strand of it where it works.
#
But another strand is that even in this hyper connected world, we can sometimes choose to
#
That four people are sitting in a cafe, but not talking to each other on the phone.
#
You know, so instead of embracing the concrete interactions where you can look into someone's
#
eye and have a conversation and say, what's the matter, you're not looking good today.
#
You are instead trapped in the abstract worlds of the smartphone, which make you, which give
#
this illusion of being connected and which give this illusion that you're gaining knowledge,
#
but those are on the surface.
#
So I mean, I'm just kind of thinking aloud is sparked off by what you said about, you
#
know, expanding those circles, going to college, meeting those people.
#
And I think there are those trade-offs.
#
You know, it is possible that many of the self doubts you might have or regrets you
#
might have may not have been there if you had continued living in that cocooned world
#
in a pre internet time.
#
But on the other hand, there is this sort of expansiveness.
#
So what are sort of your thoughts on this?
#
Yeah, so I read somewhere, forgetting the author, but that there's a difference between
#
connection and conversation, right?
#
So a connection is I'm on Instagram and someone posts an Instagram story and I send an emoji
#
So I'm, I'm connected, you know, someone I met seven years ago, we are in touch once
#
in a while, you can conversation is where you go deep, right?
#
And what has happened with me over the last, I would say, I don't know, maybe I don't know
#
the timeframe, but I just realized the value of deep relationships, especially friendships,
#
There was now, you know, I'm so proud that I have a bunch of four or five people in my
#
life, you know, and they come from different timeframes, like one from like a friend of
#
We went, we studied together since kindergarten, a couple of friends from college, someone
#
whom I met at workplace.
#
So different, so they know different, we are connected to in different time, like they
#
knew the different summer at different points, but they know today, like who I am, they know
#
the trajectory and they know my deepest anxieties, they know who I am, what I do.
#
And it doesn't, it, it, it doesn't happen by itself.
#
You know, you, you make that effort, you know, when you say in a relationship, you have to
#
put in an effort to cultivate those deep relationships.
#
That's where you find for me, like most meaning in terms of interpersonal relationships.
#
And in general, like, you know, it's funny because as a reporter, you have to be an extrovert.
#
Like I describe my job as, you know, I'm consistently invading people's private lives, right?
#
There was a story for which I just, you know, you land up at someone's house, unannounced
#
knocked the door that I want to talk to you, right?
#
That's that, that's my reporting when I'm reporting, I'm that person, but in my private
#
life, I'm very introvert, right?
#
You know, like I'm the guy in a party would ideally like to stand in the corner.
#
If I like someone, you know, then I will, okay, you know, let's chat that kind of a
#
So when you become that person, you just want, you don't want a lot of people to have, like
#
I'm happy to go to a cafe and actually not talk to anyone.
#
But if I want to, and if there is a connection, then, you know, I want to take it from a connection
#
And one of my recent realizations, you know, that I figured is that when you find someone
#
like that, you know, where you, there is a connection based on values, not on anything
#
else, just ways to look at the world.
#
And I like the person, then I don't want to lose them, you know, because it's hard to
#
just find those people organically.
#
And interestingly, all of the friends that I have, then none of them are internet friends.
#
They're like my, I met them in a physical place.
#
You know, I can, they're happy, you can, they just call me up, right?
#
I mean, I really, you know, it's just a, I don't know, I just, I'm a bit old school,
#
but you know, this whole thing about friends sending me a calendar invite for scheduling
#
a call, it is just insane.
#
I just tell them call, I mean, you know, if I'm working, I will just tell you I'm busy.
#
You know, in when I was a kid and we didn't have mobile phones, we had our landline, so
#
at least there is this group of people who can just say, you know, like recently one
#
of these friends, we have been talking a lot and he would just say that, can we talk?
#
I really want to, something is going on and like work is work, but then you, you make
#
time to talk to this person, right?
#
So I'm saying that conversation connection.
#
So few conversations and then ignore connections is the frame that I have now.
#
Yeah, it's a, it's a lovely frame.
#
It's given me a lot to think about, you know, when I was going through all of your work,
#
the common thread that what I seem to notice in that is that you're living what I would
#
call the examined life.
#
Like Socrates once said, the unexamined life is not worth living, right?
#
And what you're doing is you're asking questions all the time, whether they are questions about
#
media, whether they're questions about data, and we'll go into all of those also, or whether
#
they are questions about yourself and what you've sort of brought up here is the subject
#
of intentionality that you decide, ki mujhe yeh friendship pe kaam karna hai.
#
And that's something I've been thinking about in the sense that, you know, earlier you spoke
#
about that natural empathy you discovered within yourself when you were a kid.
#
And we were also speaking about happiness and unhappiness, though I forget the context
#
But there is, it seems to me that in the natural flow of things, to feel empathy or to feel
#
unhappiness can sometimes be an act of self aggrandizement, where you put yourself in
#
the center of the universe.
#
So you are unhappy because bad things have happened to you.
#
And you feel empathy for someone because you are so virtuous and, oh, I am good, I am feeling
#
empathy, mai kuch karunga, right?
#
And what self examination does is firstly, it forces you to see it for what it is, and
#
to say ki nahi, you know, maybe there's a, if there's a practical value to the empathy,
#
then I will help this other person instead of, you know, sort of delving in that empathy
#
or, you know, if the, because unhappiness and happiness, you spoke about how happiness
#
is, can feel so nebulous, that at one point you thought there is nothing called happiness.
#
And I sometimes think about how you are, you can only construct happiness, you know, in
#
a, you'll remember moment, like I'll remember moments in my life as happy moments now, if
#
you ask me, ki happy moment kya tha, I'll say ye tha, wo tha, but in the moment was
#
I truly happy, you know, and for me to be truly happy in the moment, I'm wondering if
#
I would have had to tell myself in that moment that I am happy, therefore taking myself out
#
So this is sort of a kind of a conundrum to me, but what, you know, one of my guests in
#
a previous episode had mentioned how she decided when she was young to be happy, she said when
#
I was in school, I decided I am going to be happy, you know, and that act of intentionality
#
seems important where you also decide ki I want good friends with whom I can have a conversation
#
And when I identify someone like that, I will make sure it happens, you know, that intentionality
#
So is this, you know, and I don't, I don't often see it in myself, like the way I see
#
myself as having lived my life is ki bas mai through circumstances and whatever mai groove
#
mein bad gaya, ussi groove pe chalta gaya, accidents hote gaye, random cheeze hote gaye
#
and I kind of land up and once in a while, I might do some self-reflection and even that
#
can be an act of self-aggrandizement, right, ki arey I'm doing self-reflection and whatever.
#
Whereas in your case, it seems that whether by thinking about it or whether to practices
#
like journaling, where you're forcing yourself to kind of examine yourself, that you worked
#
at it in a more systematic way.
#
So tell me a little bit about this that, you know, can self-awareness also be then an act
#
of intention ki mujhe ye karna hai, so journaling being a part of that or is it part of your
#
basic nature that you're always getting meta and questioning these things or is it something
#
you've tried to cultivate?
#
So I'll tell you, so I think there are two phases to this.
#
One I think it's pre, actually three phases.
#
One is pre-graduation, you know, school IIT and then I think from 2016 to I think 2018-19.
#
So I left my job at the Hindustan Times in January 2019, you know, just before the Republic
#
Day and then I have my third life.
#
I mean, I don't want to say third life, but a third phase, you know, sorry.
#
The where, you know, I was outside, you know, it just changed.
#
I mean, you have gone from being a by yourself, right?
#
Like work is no more the center of what you are.
#
So I had a lot of time to just think.
#
And I, you know, I say that I actually have a very boring life.
#
I just sit, read, write and think.
#
You know, there's nothing happening apart from this.
#
So when you have so much time by yourself, you know, and it also sometimes feels narcissistic
#
that, you know, there's so much to understand in the world, you're analyzing yourself.
#
But what intention, you know, so the intention thing came.
#
I don't know the roots of it.
#
I remember during school, during college, these thoughts have always been with me.
#
The structure came in the recent years, you know, where like, again, to talk about journaling,
#
you know, one of the best things about it.
#
Now I capture every single thought in my head on notebook, you know, I'm walking and I get
#
It could be an observation.
#
So if I'm walking, I'll just quickly dump it on my note taking app on my phone.
#
I don't want because what it does, and I realized this that if things are in my head and I don't
#
capture it, then, you know, it just keeps lingering around.
#
But if it's on paper, then it goes away.
#
Like my brain is clear.
#
So there is, I just want to dump my brain and have it, you know, my brain should be
#
empty, you know, and the more things start appearing on paper, I can do time travel.
#
You know, so whenever, so every year on my birthday, I read all my journals, just to
#
see, okay, you know, what happened, you know, what has changed, what has stayed the same.
#
What are the questions I've been able to answer?
#
What are the questions that remain open?
#
And it just gives me this deep sense of progress.
#
And you know, it's just brilliant.
#
You know, I think I tell everyone that they should journal.
#
So when intentionality comes from there, because you see, okay, what have I written here?
#
You know, if this is constant, this is something I want.
#
You know, so that is where, you know, this intention thing started coming in.
#
And also, parallelly, you know, this absurdity of modern life with technology, right, which
#
has taken over, you know, our, you know, platforms and smartphone, you know, you can't totally
#
escape it, but you have to live with it.
#
And there, actually, even while I was reporting on platforms, you start seeing what they do
#
And then you realize that actually I have to fight this, this whole attention economy
#
That's actually one of my, I describe my work as a fight against the attention economy.
#
And I have to fight it because the attention economy is trying to manipulate me to do things
#
And that sense of, I mean, I don't know if there is a free will or not.
#
I don't have an answer to that question.
#
But you know, to the extent I can say that, you know, I want to do this.
#
Now I have to make it happen.
#
I think that came from journaling.
#
Like last year, I took an eight month sabbatical, okay, I've been thinking for a long time that
#
I want to study stats like a good math undergrad student.
#
Because as a reporter, you know, you are always thinking about story ideas.
#
You know, reporting is a drug.
#
You always want to report.
#
So how did it come out?
#
So I saw in my diary that, you know, how long have I been writing that, you know, I used
#
to say I want to zero story moment where I shouldn't have a story in my mind.
#
I want to eliminate everything.
#
So you start and I took a sabbatical and then two months later, COVID second wave hit, right?
#
And then my mind is like, no, my responsibility as a reporter is to go out and report, you
#
know, that sense of, but I was like, no, I have decided, you know, that I have to study.
#
I have to take the sabbatical.
#
Don't let your whatever impulses, good, bad, doesn't matter.
#
So I think and the more you practice it, you see the effect.
#
So now when I go for my regular walks and I'm like, I'm walking.
#
So I live in the hills now and I'm looking at mountains.
#
It may sound weird, but you know, I have these on a daily basis.
#
I have moments when there is nothing in my head.
#
You know, it's like, you know, the sense of emptiness that I'm not thinking about anything.
#
I'm just standing, looking at a hill and one day I just started smiling, you know, for
#
It is just a feeling that you have to experience that you are standing, there's no one around.
#
You know, you're not even listening to songs.
#
You're just looking at a hill and you can do this every day and you're smiling, right?
#
When I experienced that state, right, it was magical.
#
And then again, I can tell you because it's in my diary, I was like, I don't know what
#
I mean, I have everything.
#
You know, there's nothing that I'm chasing.
#
So when you exit that zone, it's just different because like, you don't know, like there is
#
You know, things are happening, you're sorted.
#
So I tell it to a friend.
#
They said, oh, so you are being less ambitious.
#
I was like, I don't know, boss, you know, my diary is telling me that I have to do this
#
I'm not going to be or I don't want anything else.
#
So I think, does that answer your question about intentionality?
#
That how or did I go into no, it does and it goes off into this delightful direction
#
also because then I wondering is key was that moment a temporary moment?
#
Did you get back to wanting things when you got home, you know, and even though you're
#
saying there's nothing in your head, you are observing yourself.
#
So what lucky so but does that help did going off into the hills, did taking the sabbatical
#
help in terms of coming to terms with not following the conventional route because what
#
what you've done and like, you know, I left the conventional route fine.
#
I decided full time job Nikarunga, but it came from a place of I want to do this instead.
#
Like first I want to write a book and then I played poker for five years, which I think
#
you would be very good at and we can talk about that later.
#
But so there was stuff I was doing that phase of being at peace with oneself and feeling
#
that I'm OK, I'm good with the universe.
#
I never had that and I'm jealous that you had it.
#
So did that change you in a fundamental way?
#
Like, you know, you know how difficult causality is to pin down.
#
So is it the case that when you left HD, when you left that track, it was because you were
#
transitioning into a certain phase of life or do you feel that the person you became
#
later was shaped by the act of leaving?
#
So details possibly later if you're interested, but I think what started happening since college
#
and then at HD and then I worked at India today for two months and all of that and then
#
even my freelance, I started seeing that.
#
OK, I'm not saying this is how it is, but I started feeling that there are these that
#
we are trapped in a matrix in a way that there are these structures, you know, we are told
#
that this is how things are.
#
You know, you go to an IIT and you're said that your goal is to crack that consulting
#
job or, you know, work at Facebook.
#
And what happened with me at IIT and then at newsrooms is that there are moments where
#
It just feels absurd to me that, you know, like I say, I'm a first principles thinker,
#
you know, I mean, whatever is fine, I will think from the first principle, why did you
#
What's the point of that?
#
Why are you doing engineering?
#
If I'm doing journalism, what is the like?
#
What is the point of journalism when it began?
#
And then you start seeing, OK, if you're in Instagram, so what are you doing?
#
So I asked myself that question and then I see what is happening.
#
And in most cases, I find a disconnect.
#
That first principles to carry a sound achieve, but I'm looking around me.
#
So then I get into that zone where I say I need to exit this.
#
So you know, it's absurd because I am part of that ecosystem and in that structure, but
#
I'm like also exiting it and trying to see that structure from the outside.
#
So when you see, so it's you imagine I am like I'm just doing these hand gestures, but
#
I'm here, you know, outside and there is this big giant circle.
#
And I'm also observing myself in that movie.
#
And it feels like this is just a big delusion that you know what?
#
And you know, I feel I don't feel good to say all of this because, you know, this is
#
a very self righteous way of saying that, you know, everyone is trapped and I have exited.
#
That's not I mean, I don't know if that is what I'm implying.
#
But I'm saying that is what I felt.
#
And I said it structures I have to get out, right?
#
So you get out of that structure.
#
It happened with me at IIT.
#
It happened with me at newsrooms, right?
#
And I think there's a point when I started feeling key, though, you know, this whole
#
You know, everything that is happening, like, why are we doing?
#
And when those questions start coming in, there is a phase of deep discontent key.
#
You don't know what is happening.
#
So at that time, I decided, boss, I want I want to just think about these questions
#
and I don't want external influences on my thinking.
#
And or like, that was not the only reason why I moved to the hills.
#
But that was one of the reasons.
#
Now when you do that, right, you have seen up eight traps in color, those traps in color,
#
and you keep thinking, maybe I'm in a delusion.
#
I think that, you know, I have exited these two traps.
#
Maybe there are 100 others.
#
So you want a distance.
#
Now, what the magical thing about hills, which is not just that, you know, mountains are
#
nice, air is clean, what the hey, the biggest thing is that in a city like Delhi, even though
#
I don't want, there is always a status game that is being played.
#
I don't know how that happens, but there is something in this air, right?
#
Like I am at I often work at Bluetooth, guys, you know, here and there, I don't know anyone,
#
but still subconsciously, you know, there is this, you know, maybe there's this girl sitting
#
on the next table and I am reading a book and I would be unconsciously I said, you know,
#
no one is bothered about what I am doing, you know, some meeting friends, but you feel
#
you are being observed.
#
At least I feel that that, you know, people are watching me.
#
So I in a way, that's good because then I'm like, you know, I have to read my book.
#
I can't, you know, be looking at Instagram in between.
#
So in that way, it's, you know, positive force, but I'm saying it's weird in that way.
#
Like I can tell you a story which really irritated me recently.
#
So I came to Delhi, I was visiting and I go to cult, you know, chain of gyms, cult fit.
#
And there is this, I hope this person does not listen to this podcast, but there's this
#
He's like 22 years old.
#
So we, he came, he used to come at the same center where I go for my fitness class.
#
I, you know, after the cult class in Punjabi Bagh, I went to a Bluetooth guy and he saw
#
me and he says, you know, I remember you.
#
I said, yeah, I also remember you.
#
And for some reason he's super nerdy about headphones.
#
So he, you know, and I'm also nerdy about headphones.
#
So he took my headphones, did all of that.
#
And then he started a conversation.
#
He said, okay, so what do you do?
#
Unfortunately, I told him I'm a journalist, so he's like, oh, you're a journalist.
#
So I said, you know, I can, I write about various things.
#
I'm a long form writer.
#
You can, if you want, you know, happy to share my samples of work.
#
So before that happened, he said, you know what?
#
You should write about data privacy.
#
You should write about platforms and social media.
#
You know, do you know what is happening in parliament right now?
#
It is such an important topic.
#
And I was thinking in my head that boss, I covered that for two years.
#
I was a reporter at the Hindustan Times and as a freelancer, I've written across.
#
And now no offense to young people.
#
And I'm also like just 29, but this 22 year old is telling me, this is what you should
#
So it was like, then I said, I know a few things about this.
#
This is an article I've written.
#
You tell me what you think.
#
So he said, oh, you have written such a long article.
#
I think there is a book in you.
#
And before I could say anything, he's like, okay, tell me what is that one thing you feel
#
What is that thing that troubles you?
#
And Amit, I was speechless because like, I did not know what to make of it.
#
You know, I did not want and no offense to that person.
#
He's just, he's just extrovert.
#
So he's just coming and telling me things.
#
But I don't want this external input in my brain.
#
You know, garbage in garbage out, like why should there be garbage in my brain, right?
#
I went to this conference, not conference, it was a book launch and I was visiting and
#
I went and I felt so uncomfortable because there are these, after a long while I met
#
journalists, friends, and others, and everyone is curious.
#
How do you manage your finances?
#
Why are you doing this?
#
So you're always in a sense, constantly explaining now, then you feel like an idiot.
#
That, you know, that you don't have to explain, just ignore.
#
But how do you do it when everyone around you is just asking these questions?
#
And then because they're nice people, right?
#
And they would say something that would stick in your head.
#
In Hills, nothing happens because no one gives a damn about who I am.
#
All people who know me there is like, they have no idea about my background.
#
There's zero status game.
#
And Amit, I cannot tell you, it is just magical when you are not performing at any moment
#
in the day because no one gives a damn, right?
#
And once you see that you don't have to perform, like you can be an idiot one time and you
#
can be reading your book and no one is asking any question, it's just liberating.
#
So that, I think, was one of the biggest things that I realized that started happening.
#
You come back home and then people are commenting on my body.
#
You know, they are, yeah, it happens all the time.
#
You have lost so much weight.
#
So again, you know, they'll start talking about like, I think this is a very late 20s
#
I think every people would relate to it.
#
You know, they start talking about marriage.
#
That's the only thing, you know, a problem that doesn't exist in your life, but people
#
want to solve it for you.
#
Those kinds of things that happens in Delhi.
#
So I'm seeing this aspect of being away and then observing and then, you know, asking
#
So that way, when you're outside the structure, you can actually think about those questions
#
So it's not a temporary moment.
#
When I said that, you know, that thoughtless, I mean, I don't know, but that happens repeatedly
#
when I see my diary four years ago, the questions in it, if they have been answered or like
#
I have at least a framework to think about it, then you are like, you're progressing.
#
So that way, I think a mixture of all of these things is what, yeah, that's where it comes
#
that, you know, you stop wanting because the wants I somehow feel are created by people
#
You know, they influence what you want.
#
But when you're away, like who will influence what you want?
#
I'm feeling very attracted to the hills now because they seem like a physical answer to
#
the existential question of, you know, that fundamental anxiety, human anxiety is the
#
anxiety of what other people will think of you.
#
And it is so hard to let it go.
#
I think when I reached middle age, that at least at an intellectual level, I understood
#
that boss, no one is thinking of you.
#
Everyone has a head up their own ass, you know, and you just, you know, you just have
#
to chill and do whatever the hell you kind of want.
#
And you've spoken about wants a number of times and there is a theme that I have been
#
exploring so much on my podcast ki mujhe lag raha tha ki bahut cliché ho gaya hai, abhi
#
But I feel that you're the right person to talk to about this and you know, this is something
#
that, so I was, you know, I had gone to Greece and Macedonia earlier in the year.
#
And the background of that is even though I retired from poker a few years ago, there's
#
a form of poker, which had come up called match poker, which is very different from
#
regular poker looks and feels the same, completely different.
#
And like you, I love solving things from first principles to one of my friends got in touch
#
with me and he said ki iss cheez ka ek IPL type tournament ho raha hai.
#
And I am going, I am running, he was, he owned a team called Haryana Hawks.
#
He said, come and help me solve this because everybody's going to play it like poker.
#
So I joined the team, do baar hum jeet gaye, Haryana Hawks ke saath, then I, we played
#
for the Indian team and we won the Asian championship.
#
Covid times mein tha online tha, but I was like, I was damn happy ki as and representing
#
India Asian championship jeet gaye.
#
Toh isal kya hua ki hum world championship mein gaye, jo Macedonia mein hua.
#
And side by side, I also scheduled a personal vacation in Greece right after that.
#
Toh Macedonia mein gaye and we were unfortunate in a sense ki three of our regular team members
#
had their visas denied.
#
We had to get new people and it, this particular form of the game, you kind of have to play
#
Everybody's got to be really clued in and we got massacred.
#
Like every team we had beaten at the Asian level destroyed us, right?
#
And I was feeling gutted at the end of it, absolutely gutted.
#
And then I read this great book by Luke Burgess called Wanting or Wanting mein, his framework
#
is that he's influenced by the works of Rene Girard, who was also an influence on Peter
#
And Girard had come up with this concept of mimetic desire, which is that you want something
#
because somebody else wants it.
#
You don't really intrinsically want it.
#
And the frame I got from Burgess there was of thick and thin desires, right?
#
So thick desires are things that you intrinsically want and obviously creature comforts like
#
food and all are not part of it, but thick desires is something that you deeply want
#
and it's not influenced by anything.
#
And thin desires are desires which you have because they are the done thing.
#
Somebody else have them.
#
Like mujhe Mercedes chahiye.
#
Or if you're a young person, you might say, I want to get married and have kids, but
#
you're not really questioning that.
#
Or if you're in IIT and you're stuck in that game, you're saying ki mujhe matlab America
#
jaana hai, software engineer ban nahi hai.
#
All those kind of different games are thin desires, which you've spoken about so much.
#
And that made me reflect on why I was so gutted.
#
And I realized that I was gutted because of a thin desire, right?
#
The thin desire was ki mujhe wo glory chahiye ki mai team India ke saath world championships
#
Me tweet dalunga, 2000 log retweet karenge, which when we won the Asian championship
#
was kind of what happened.
#
And it was an intense desire.
#
I wanted how many people get this, right?
#
But it was a thin desire.
#
It was, you know, premised on that old anxiety of getting the approval of others.
#
And I realized that my thick desire was what?
#
My thick desire was to figure it out, to figure out the game, to go back to first principles.
#
My thick desire was to understand something.
#
And I understood why we lost to usme koi kami nahi thi.
#
I understood why we lost.
#
I understood why the winning team won.
#
I could look at everyone's strategy and figure out ki kya hua, wo understanding thi.
#
But the thing is, the thin desire was intense.
#
And the thick desire was very, you know, unseen and subterranean and all of that.
#
And this then made me introspect beyond that, that life me jo wants hai wo kyu hai.
#
Like I discussed the same thing with Niranjana Roy and we were speaking about the desire
#
And you can have thick and thin desires simultaneously coexisting.
#
Your thin desire is to be known as a writer.
#
Wo branding ho jati hai, mai yeh prize jeetunga, book launch me jaunga, jacket pehnunga,
#
panel me gyaan dunga, all that shit.
#
And that seems to me to be thin.
#
While the thick desire is I want to tell a story.
#
I want to sit down and I want to tell a story or I want to uncover some part of the unseen
#
world or whatever it is.
#
And I've realized that if you chase thin desires, you cannot be happy.
#
That happiness really lies outside of that, of giving them up.
#
Whether or not you find a thick desire, you have to let the thin desires go.
#
Because then you're chasing somebody else's dream, really, or you're chasing something
#
So since you've been speaking so much about desires and wanting and you've clearly figured
#
this out and escaped a lot of these, the thin desires that one might have in either IIT
#
or in journalism and so on.
#
You know, what are your thoughts?
#
Can you kind of go further along this path for me?
#
Just to be clear, I'm not a saint.
#
So it's not a complete escape.
#
I think it's a spectrum on this if we take thin and thick on two ends.
#
And I just feel based on this framework, I'm closer to the thick spectrum.
#
Still, you know, I write a story, like, you know, I started a newsletter earlier this
#
year and I am so happy with, you know, that whole process of what I did there.
#
But you know, every time before I'm pressing that send button, you know, the process of
#
writing that story and reporting is just absolutely thrilling.
#
Like one of the reasons I started my newsletter was that I want to do original reporting
#
and I don't want anyone's permission of what is a story.
#
There are stories that I want to tell, right?
#
And I don't want anyone's permission.
#
So it's it came like every idea came from ye mujhe batana hai.
#
And there's a style of writing I want to try in my own journey as becoming the writer that
#
So bahan se but the moment I'm pressing the send button, I know, okay, this is, you know,
#
it's like, you know, like, what will these subscribers think?
#
What if, you know, all sorts of questions come, so that the moment I press the send
#
button, you know, I just sometimes feel chhobis gante ke le na I should just disappear because
#
that sense remains that, okay, maine apna kaam kar diya because this I wanted to do,
#
but I can't isolate myself from the feedback to the work.
#
Actually, you know, so that part remains.
#
And once I started thinking that a cognitive dissonance hits you because you create an
#
impression that, you know, I am doing this because I want to do this, right?
#
And then once you start getting these thoughts that no, I'm also thinking what will the other
#
person think about my writing?
#
So waha pe aa gaya na aapka about that I am being dictated by the world.
#
So and this I observed Amit more closely.
#
So my Instagram activity has now increased.
#
Not in case it's not that I'm all the time on Instagram, but if someone does the stats,
#
the time I spent has gone up and I enjoy it.
#
Instagram, I think I really love the platform compared to others and there's a way I use
#
But waha pe I felt this that there were moments when I perform on Instagram about, and it
#
just performed like just to be more clear that unconsciously or consciously, I don't
#
But like if I'm posting a meaningless meme on reposting on my Instagram story, right?
#
I don't know why I'm doing it.
#
So then I started thinking, am I doing this?
#
Like, why am I posting this?
#
Do I want to show people that, you know, okay, I have this beautiful Zen of a life, right?
#
So then usme maine pattern dekha, that there are two things happening.
#
One which is pure self-expression, right?
#
I recently watched Dead Poets Society.
#
Favorite film of my childhood.
#
Wo jo last scene aati hai na abhi bhi, mai ro parta hu.
#
And Amit, that was the moment there was in my own, something recently happened where
#
I just told myself that, you know, I want to become a writer, you know, I want to do
#
And ussi time pe maine movie dekhi.
#
So it was so, so uswakt I just took a screenshot of, you know, one of the scenes and I just
#
posted it on Instagram.
#
That was for me to tell, you know, to timestamp that aa jis din mai yeh soch raha tha.
#
And I didn't care about who likes it, who doesn't like it.
#
There are other times when it's not always self-expression, right?
#
So I'm saying that it's a mix and it's a cognitive dissonance because you want to be this person,
#
So I think I don't know anyone or like if you can completely escape it, but I think
#
intentionality and again, I give all the credit to my diary that it just tells you what are
#
your thick desires, you know, aap kya chase kar rahe ho and kyun.
#
Because when you're honest to yourself, I think, I think Neil Postman had this quote
#
that I'm forgetting the specifics, but something like this essence was, you know, there are
#
a lot of bulls**ters in the world, but we like to ourselves, we are the biggest bulls**ters
#
to ourselves about the stories we tell, right?
#
So that way, I think I observed a lot of my overanalyze my Instagram activity.
#
So wahan se yeh sab aaya and then I remembered in my notes, I had this quote from Warren
#
Buffet where he asks, makes a distinction between an inner scorecard and an outer scorecard.
#
So he poses this question, would you be the world's greatest lover, but the world feels
#
you are the world's worst lover or the opposite?
#
So that is his distinction between inner scorecard and outer scorecard.
#
What is the scorecard that works for you?
#
So when I heard that, I was like, that makes so much sense because the outer scorecard
#
Like you talk about our profession, right?
#
It's again, I love all my journalist friends, but sometimes, you know, this whole thing
#
about awards and retweets and all of that, it is not, it's not why I do the work I do.
#
And one thing I can tell, actually, I should say this in public.
#
I think this was 2020 COVID time, yeah.
#
This editor, there's a story I wrote and he told me that, you know, his Ramnath Goenka
#
And I, I thought, and I said, I won't apply.
#
And he was like, why won't you apply?
#
I said, boss, I have thought about it.
#
I don't want to get stuck in this award business.
#
And there's a philosophical reason where I think that awards perpetuate inequality.
#
And you know, the myth of meritocracy that is separate, but there was this thing that
#
I never want to be known as an award-winning journalist.
#
I want to be a journalist because again, it might be stupid, but to me, you know, this
#
If you don't apply to an award, right?
#
So you will just feel happy about everyone winning awards around you.
#
And that just gave me such deep sense of comfort in my head that, you know, okay, I am a journalist,
#
not because I want this award, but you know, just stay true to like why I joined this profession
#
I don't know how long it will last, you know, but I'm saying this is the zone of wants and
#
desires that every time I start seeing that there is an external influence that will affect
#
I try to just get rid of it.
#
Now that happens, it doesn't, it's a different thing, but that's the framing.
#
And I think that has really helped me because now, you know, when I see like, you know,
#
in journalism, one of the things I find, I don't know if it's generic, I don't want
#
to generalize, but somehow I feel that among reporters and journalists, if someone else
#
breaks a story, or someone writes a good piece, you know, an article was published in an international
#
outlet, you know, so you're like, you feel that sense of envy, you know, you know, okay,
#
he got published there.
#
He got like, I remember back in the day when I was at the Hindu, I heard this conversation
#
between a couple of colleagues.
#
They were discussing salary of a columnist whom I really like.
#
And I felt so disgusted.
#
I was like, oh, you know, this guy is making that much money, he is doing very well.
#
And I felt like what are these conversations?
#
You know, I just, you know, I just didn't like it that why are these conversations happening?
#
So the point I'm trying to make here is that, so I'm saying that when I saw that that kind
#
of conversation was happening, when I started seeing that, you know, when someone wins an
#
award, or, you know, someone breaks a story, everyone is not happy about it, in a way.
#
It's like, you know, you just look at Twitter patterns of what stuff you share up, you know,
#
you retweet stuff of your friends from your organization, you know, you just promote stuff
#
that your people, you know, personally, they have done.
#
I don't know, it's my observation, I may be wrong.
#
But that's a sense I got when I was in Delhi, that people are always like, I have some really
#
And those who know that I know these people, they will come and ask me, okay, do you know
#
How are they getting these assignments?
#
Not in the sense of curiosity, but with a sense of envy.
#
I don't know how common it is, but that's what I experienced.
#
So then when I thought about it, it just struck me one over a period of time, not one day,
#
that actually the work that we do as journalists, right, there is no meaning of my work in isolation.
#
This profession matters only as a collective.
#
If tomorrow I stop reporting, it doesn't matter.
#
There's nothing going to happen.
#
If 1,000 people like me exit this profession, it is going to matter a lot because in collective
#
is where the power of reporting really comes in our profession, not in as individuals.
#
So that's why the moment I started saying, you know, it's award race mini Jana, a follower
#
And I remember there's this alumni who came to our campus, Ashish Gupta.
#
He's a very hilly on ventures that he was early invested in Flipkart.
#
And when that exit happened, he's a very, very smart guy.
#
And he gave a talk at campus.
#
So he used this term called anti-matrix, you know, so he was explaining what he says.
#
He had this great talk on risk in thinking about life.
#
And while matrix anti-matrix, he was talking about, so then he explained that, you know,
#
there are some anti-matrix that you should not chase, like your salary, you know, like
#
So this word anti-matrix just stuck in my head.
#
I started now mapping out in my profession in journalism, what are the anti-matrix, right?
#
And you realize, and you're like, get out of it, you know, anti-matrix chain.
#
I will go back and there is a possibility that, you know, my theory about all of these
#
things is that they're always in tension.
#
You know, one part overtakes the other, right?
#
The more I can resist the impulses I do not want, the better.
#
So if you can fundamentally eliminate, if you're sorted because the next time a friend
#
tells you, you know, I won this award, you will feel so happy about the person.
#
They get a fellowship, something happens and the tragedy, but again, the cognitive dissonance
#
summit in all of this is that throughout my career, I keep getting opportunities.
#
So I can never feel like that because I, you know, I just feel the world is rigged to push
#
So on one hand, I will say, you know, I don't want, you know, I will, I'm not chasing this,
#
but then things also come to me, right?
#
So this whole calculus is that, right?
#
If you think, sir, happening to me, then you realize that actually it doesn't have a point.
#
Like in 2017, I quit Twitter.
#
I read this book, deep work by Cal Newport, there was a chapter in it, quit social media.
#
I don't know if any book has led me to a direct impact right after reading.
#
I read that chapter the next day and I deleted my Twitter, not deactivated.
#
At that time, I deleted it, go.
#
And I was away from Twitter for at least eight months, no presence.
#
In that duration, Amit, when eight months, I was not on Twitter.
#
I got the best opportunity in my career.
#
I got selected for this fellowship at the Wall Street Journal and that day I was thinking
#
I am always told that, you know, you have to make your brand, you have to show your
#
work, which is not wrong.
#
I'm saying in that phase, I will, there's a fellowship I got purely out of like, I think
#
it had very little to do with me.
#
It was more about circumstances, not my effort, but I got it right when I was not on Twitter.
#
So when you see these examples that you don't have followers, your story, but you are not
#
Your name is coming that Samarth Bansal wrote the story.
#
So I'm not gaining followers, nothing.
#
I'm just, but I'm looking at Twitter, right?
#
And it's not affecting.
#
Then you start seeing key high anti-metric here.
#
You know, so I'm saying you get that framework and then you try to apply it and it kind of
#
So it's that theory plus you see it in practice and then it just illuminates that, you know,
#
actually that guy was right.
#
This is an anti-metric and then, you know, you, I have my own framework on how I think
#
I think that's where I think I've digressed quite a bit, but that's the, I think the,
#
I'm just giving you a glimpse into how I think about some of these things.
#
No, I love this because I haven't thought of this frame before and I'm actually after
#
the recording, probably going to sit down and think about what are the anti-metrics that
#
Like many of the awards can enter key have as a pillage, but looking back, it's not like
#
it's not something I would do today, but I've done it because you are sort of insecure.
#
There are times you feel underappreciated.
#
I remember, you know, in the 1990s, someone who was a good friend of mine then and is
#
a famous novelist now told me something when we were having dinner and he said that every
#
time a friend of mine does well, a part of me dies.
#
And I appreciate the brutal honesty in that, because I think that in a sense it is true
#
And I've kind of realized that, that wo hai and especially when, you know, and I think
#
it'll probably be more true for a third world country, like, you know, that old apocryphal
#
thing about crabs pulling each other down.
#
And the reason the story is told about India is that we've grown up in the culture of scarcity
#
where, because you are not doing well, we are playing negative sum games or zero sum
#
You want to pull other people down.
#
And hopefully as a cultural mindset that is changing today.
#
And that's sort of something to watch out for.
#
Like another thing that I try to do in my own life is I try to get away from toxicity
#
Like maine ek dekha hai ki there are WhatsApp groups I used to be part of where the whole
#
conversation poora din would just be negative.
#
They would be shitting on someone kisi ka screenshot laga diya.
#
And you know, all of that, and obviously shitting on someone makes you feel good about yourself.
#
And that was a whole damn conversation.
#
This is your friend's group.
#
It is a friend's group.
#
And, and I left many of these groups and I said, I don't want to be around toxicity
#
where you're just shitting on the world all the time.
#
And I'm not saying be mindlessly positive and all of that, but didn't want that.
#
And then, you know, the one group that I take pleasure from being part of is, you know,
#
all my writing students form this online group called the clear writing community and we
#
have our WhatsApp group.
#
And there I realized that it's positivity.
#
I mean, there's no negativity.
#
There's an absence of negativity.
#
And you realize that if anybody does well, everybody else will be happy for that person.
#
You know, yeh koi feeling nahi ho ghi peechhe ki, arey yaar, yeh toh yasah hai, isko kaise
#
And that might be, and I'm just thinking aloud, because we are not playing any one of those
#
competitive games, we are not in the same game, we are not, you know, we happen to be
#
there together because of a shared interest.
#
But you know, I would imagine, for example, a cooking group on Facebook would be something
#
like this, where you would not have that negativity.
#
Because kuch competition nahi hai, you know, you're all engaged in different games.
#
And the only way that any interaction makes sense is if you can learn a nice recipe from
#
someone or if you can say ki yaha kya kanna hai, waha kya kanna hai.
#
And I'm just sort of thinking aloud, you've told me about these anti-metrics, and I think
#
we can all figure out what our anti-metrics are.
#
Okay, so my metrics, let's, I mean, I can tell you about now.
#
So now I am, I'll tell you, so, so, okay, the, where I am right now, I am, I have decided
#
just recently, actually, you know, I had this courage to write in my journal, these words,
#
I want to be a writer, you know, I, you know, I think I've, my whole journey since I started
#
my blog, you know, and became a journalist, I never, you know, could use this word for
#
myself as like, mai reporter hu, mai article likta hu, mai writer nahi hu, you know, there's
#
this whole sense of, like, I don't belong, you know, to like, there's something, you
#
know, I don't know, it's just weird, but because I love reading books and writers, so like,
#
bhai wo, that's not me, you know, so that sense, but somehow I got the courage to tell
#
myself that, you know, ab jo hoga dekhenge, ab apne aapko to bol diya maine, that, you
#
know, I want to be a writer, ab bol diya to karo, you know what I mean?
#
That you have declared to yourself, like, you know, when I declared to myself in grade
#
seven, that I want to be a software engineer and you work towards it, right, ab jo hoga
#
dekhenge, so that happened recently.
#
So I was then thinking that, okay, ab bol diya hai, toh ab iska meaning kya hai, right,
#
So then I started thinking that isme, this whole tension between, that I observed in
#
any creative field, is that it's very hard to have a objective metric, it's, you know,
#
so I dabbled two worlds, I'm a journalist, but I'm still a software, like, I love writing
#
software, it's just that over the period of time, my love for words overtook my love for
#
writing code, okay, so that has happened.
#
But at one point I was thinking, okay, you know, there are comparisons between these
#
two things, fundamentally both are acts of creation, you think something, yaha pe aap
#
code se kar rahe ho, yaha shabdo se kar rahe ho, right, so they are acts of creation,
#
it's just that one overtook the other.
#
In my other world, in the computer science world, you can still see some metrics, right,
#
after you have created something, right, you know, it's just bits and atoms kind of thing,
#
right, you can, chahe apne product banaya ho, you can see users, if it's in a business
#
setting, you can see revenue, all sorts of things.
#
In this world, I said the, it's a tension because I want to be read, but that I don't
#
want the want to be read to take over the fundamental desire of creation, right, so
#
jab mai yeh sab pe I was thinking about it, I got this brilliant frame from Ira Glass,
#
Ira Glass is this master of radio storytelling in the US, he started this podcast in the,
#
not radio at the time, This American Life and then serial, which I think serial just
#
exploded, right, so I've read a lot about Ira's work and how he thinks and I saw this,
#
his two minute clip on YouTube and I think anyone in creative profession should watch
#
I think I know the one you're talking about.
#
So that is the thing, so I'll just describe it.
#
So Ira says that the reason why people start doing creative work is that they have some
#
idea of, you know, the taste that they have about, okay, like for me, what is that piece
#
of writing I want to do, but my talent is not at par to deliver that taste.
#
So it's a journey that you take to bridge that gap between where your talent is and
#
where your taste is, but he says the problem is that the gap is so huge and it takes years
#
to fill that gap that a lot of people just give up because they feel they are not good
#
enough and Ira said this, that I want to tell every creator out there that every single
#
person goes through this journey of filling that gap and the only way to fill that gap
#
is to keep creating, put yourself on a deadline and put out stuff.
#
And honestly, Amit, you have spoken about this multiple times in your podcast and when
#
I think about my newsletter, I took inspiration from you when you said that, you know, don't
#
overthink quality, you know, keep doing stuff, keep doing stuff.
#
But when that frame hit me, it just changed the way I think because I'm saying, huh, you
#
There is this kind of piece that I want to write.
#
I can't write it today, right?
#
And, you know, in this whole process, something brilliant happened in 2018.
#
I have a page in my diary where I described a certain kind of piece I wanted to write
#
and I don't want to get into details.
#
It's very personal, but I wrote something this year that met that bar, you know, and
#
of course, as your own evolution of your own creative process and what you want, you know,
#
that thing keeps changing.
#
So that gave me confidence that if four years later, which I wrote in 2018, that I want
#
to write a piece like this and the world will not recognize this because that is that is
#
like who will know what I wanted to write and I have created, you know, five people
#
may say it's great work, you know, ten may say it's not that great.
#
It's an ordinary piece of writing.
#
But even those appreciation of five cannot, you know, match with the feeling that something
#
I thought four years ago is today in front of me.
#
So I have and because I'm this math nerd and, you know, the world like the world looks like
#
I had to work very hard on myself to get out of that zone and take comfort in abstract
#
where there is no objective metric.
#
But there are metrics and the metric is on a day to day basis.
#
Is my writing better than what I was writing a month ago, right?
#
Is there something, you know, it's very hard to put in words, but there is something intrinsic
#
in that process, you know, like, for example, you read a piece I wrote.
#
Is there a sentence that I wrote which just feels that, wow, I was able to write the sentence
#
If that sentence comes, if the sound of a paragraph to me sounds like, oh, I actually
#
could not write this paragraph a year ago.
#
So I have tuned my, I don't know, feelings in whatever to take comfort in this, though,
#
of course, like, I think I would not deny that it matters that, you know, I recently
#
launched a newsletter with a friend on food and fitness, something different I'm trying
#
And of course, like, you know, I'm observing, like, yesterday, the first issue went out
#
and we are trying to create something unique in our heads, we will know from reader feedback.
#
So I'm looking forward to see how many people are replying to the email, right?
#
I just checked this morning, are people sharing it on Twitter, right?
#
I shared it on my Instagram.
#
What is the feedback, right?
#
And when someone just says, you know, as a writer, there is a, and writer not like I
#
don't write fiction or, you know, any abstract things.
#
I just write, like, informative stuff in a way I want to tell a story.
#
If someone gets the intent that, you know, this is what I was trying to do, like the
#
feeling I wanted someone to take back, if the response comes, that, you know, this part
#
This is what I felt after it.
#
Then I get a deep sense of satisfaction that what I was trying to do with my words has
#
happened, you know, that it's not unclear, like I have, there is an objective with which
#
I went into a piece, either I'm editing it or I'm writing it.
#
And that was delivered.
#
Now those three people speak, but you know, if those three people don't speak, then it
#
And there's a practical example.
#
I wrote my last story of my newsletter after which I discontinued was on polling, forecasting,
#
Amit, on that piece, that's one of the hardest stories I've worked on.
#
I spent a whole month, one full month of effort to write that piece.
#
And I got the least feedback on email on that piece because it was a nerdy piece.
#
And back end, I knew it's a nerdy piece, but I really, you know, my own in my head, I try
#
to do things to make it interesting, whatever, whatever.
#
But there was very little feedback, right?
#
So I got a little feedback, but it was great.
#
But it was only from people who know the subject.
#
I was like, let's go job done means I cracked it for myself, but the each remained that,
#
you know, I just didn't want to write it for people who are interested in forecasting.
#
I wanted to do something else.
#
So now I've parked it in my head that I've done it now.
#
Now I will write a piece on election forecasting after five years.
#
I know the thing, but I want to write it in a way that people who did not respond now,
#
maybe they connect with it, you know, something like that.
#
So this is, I know, I mean, that's a metric.
#
It's like, I can't quantify it, but I feel it.
#
I was also thinking while you were answering, I asked that question to myself, what is my
#
And then I realized that for the things that I want to do, my metric is just getting it
#
You know, and nothing more than that.
#
Like I actually come at it, you know, without using the terms Ira Glass does, I talk about
#
the same kind of thing in my writing course where I talk about process and I come at it
#
from a poker point of view and therefore a probabilistic point of view.
#
So you'll appreciate that, which is that in poker, we know that while it's a game of skill,
#
the quantum of luck is so high that you cannot focus on short-term results, right?
#
You have to put in volume only over large sample sizes as your edge manifest itself.
#
So the first mantra for good poker player always is don't be results oriented.
#
And where is this relevant in writing?
#
This is relevant because what often happens is that you will write something and you will
#
feel like it is shit, right? and a beginning writer will use this as a reason to give up.
#
And my contention always is twofold, right?
#
Number one, and this I feel very, very strongly and passionately about, it has a lot of other
#
things in which a natural talent is needed.
#
Like if you want to be a musician, I mean, you have a natural talent.
#
You want to be a batsman, you need some hand-eye coordination.
#
It doesn't work in writing.
#
You know, anybody can work hard and lift that level.
#
And the other thing, just using different terms and glass, but pretty much the same
#
idea is that when you don't like something that you have written, all it means is that
#
your judgment is better than your ability.
#
You have these two things, your judgment is better than your ability.
#
The question to then ask is how does my ability rise to the level of my judgment or at least
#
Sometimes your judgment will just keep going up, obviously.
#
And there is only one answer to that and that answer is to keep writing, to trust the process
#
and therefore don't be results oriented.
#
Sometimes what happens is you write something you think is shit, you're just being hard
#
But my point is that especially when you're learning writing or anything for that matter,
#
you will suck at the beginning, always, right?
#
So the important thing is to recognize that, yes, I suck.
#
It is good that I know I suck.
#
Now let me work at it and get somewhere.
#
And in that trade off between getting it done and getting it right, the important thing
#
And the only way to get it right is to get it done again and again, like it's almost
#
like quantity having a quality of its own, you know, pahaan jao gaye aap aahaan.
#
I read a short story, fiction hai pata nahi, I don't know, it's a very short story on quantity
#
quality where there was this pottery class and I'm just paraphrasing.
#
There was this divided into two groups, ek ko bola tha quality pe focus karo, ek ko bola
#
And then they saw results and like the quantity group had created like 50 pots and this quality
#
group was thinking about aise banayenge, aise banayenge, noone theorize kiya, you know,
#
they were going all the actions and they came up with one pot.
#
And the 50th pot from the quantity group was significantly better than the quality group
#
because they were just creating, creating, creating, they just created, found their mistake,
#
And in that progression, you know, the 50th one was just better than the one that the
#
So when I read that, I was like, I had this whole anxiety in the beginning, you know,
#
I want a time when I can just write one story in four months, kitna maza aayega, you know,
#
I should have that liberty.
#
I mean, I'm not saying that I don't want it, maybe it would be great.
#
But when I started, I observed that agar main har 2 hafta mein if I'm publishing, you know,
#
on a day to day basis, it's like, you know, it's like being in a gym that if you're lifting
#
weight and you're adding muscle, to agar aap 3 maine ke liye chhor dogue, then you start
#
again, you know, I don't know if the analogy works clearly for a creative process, but
#
at least that's, that's what I saw that it's just like muscle building that you keep doing
#
it and you'll get better.
#
No, and that's where the importance of journaling also comes in, because if you go to a gym,
#
Aasa nahi hai ki aapne annual membership le liye aap chaar din gaye aur phir aapki body
#
And you're saying maine toh paise de diye, body kyu nahi bani, right?
#
You got to build a habit and go every day and get the job done and writing is exactly
#
And a habit of journaling is a good way of doing that because then you don't have to,
#
you're not in a position where you don't have anything to write about and you're saying
#
If you're doing a daily journal, you always have something to write about because you
#
And the advice I give my writing students is ki aap target mat banao ki din mein 1000
#
word likhne hai, 2000 word.
#
You know, the target you should set yourself is 200 words, 200 words.
#
And because 200 words is something we speak in a minute, right, ek minute ki baat hai.
#
So even if you're, you know, going, going to the airport, you have two flights to catch
#
in a day, you can type 200 words on your smartphone, kuch hai nahi.
#
Mainne toh columns sholums bhi likhe hai apne phone pe, perhaps not to good effect, but
#
you can, 200 word to smartphone pe bhi kar satte hai.
#
And the important thing is number one, if you fall off the wagon, you know, you can
#
Kya hodah nahi, if people set themselves target of 1000 words a day, right, likhte hai, 3-4
#
din likhte hai, then they fall off the wagon, then they find it hard to get on.
#
And then it becomes a vicious circle where they tell themselves ki yeh toh mere se nahi
#
You know, being a writer is not in me.
#
And it becomes a vicious circle where their failure to maintain a habit affects their
#
self-image and it's just a race to the bottom and they never end up doing it.
#
While 200 words is nothing.
#
And obviously, you will not write only 200 words, if the 200 word is and you are not
#
going to say ki aaj ka kota khatam, right, you continue.
#
And very often you'll write more.
#
But the important thing is number one, 200 words a day for a year is about 75,000 words.
#
And number two, aapki writing muscle kya se kya ho jayegi.
#
You know, so at the end of a year, and I've told many of my students this and some of
#
them have, you know, carried it out, I'm proud to say and at the end of a year, you look
#
back on what you wrote on day one and you're like, you realize how powerful the force of
#
Can I ask you a question?
#
So you know, I have this big circle who have like no connection in the world of journalism
#
That's the world I come from.
#
So they asked me for advice that how do you get published?
#
They want to like, you know, I think so many people want to write.
#
One of the things that irritates me is that when they know, to aap kitab likho kya kya?
#
And I was like, no, boss, I don't write because I want to be a book writer.
#
I just write because of other reasons.
#
So people ask me, I have this viewpoint, me koi akbar mein chhapaana hai, kaise karte
#
Like how do you get published in a newspaper?
#
Because aapka naam aata hai akbar mein.
#
So then, like I want to know what advice would you give them?
#
I'll tell you what I tell them.
#
So I try to tell them that write as if, abhi aap likho, don't think about getting published
#
in a, you know, a Hindustan Times or The Print, kyunki ye aata ki news laundry mein chal jayega,
#
So I'm like, aapko likhna chalu karna hai na.
#
So start a blog and in your head think 10 people will read it.
#
8, like paanch bar tum khud padogue, 3 tumare dos padenge and 2 random people.
#
Medium mein kisi ne dhun liya, whatever.
#
And just start writing and putting out stuff.
#
Don't think of, ki whether, like don't let, if a publication is not responding, don't
#
stop writing because of that, because it works the other way round.
#
And Amit, you know what I've observed, koi karta hi nahi, they don't, if they are not
#
get hearing back from a publication, they just stop writing.
#
And I observed similarly in, like I really love to help anyone who wants to get started
#
Like it's one of my deep desires to, you know, teach people writing Python code.
#
Mai second year se likhna hu apne college mein, I love the language.
#
It's just, you can do anything on the internet with that.
#
So I can't tell you the number of people who say, you know, we want to learn this language.
#
And then I write them emails, ki aap kuch ma socho, go to this source, then you do this
#
and aapko kahin atak jao na, I am, I'll come on a call and help you, okay.
#
I don't think that programming is some, you know, this thing that you need a degree nahi
#
It's like agar aap Angrezi bol sakte ho, toh aap Python bhi likh sakte ho, kuch bhi nahi
#
It's just, if else statements, that's what's happening.
#
That step doesn't happen, like it's just weird in the last 10 years, I have told so many
#
people about code and this starter blog, not a single person has come back.
#
So I often wonder, am I giving the wrong advice or like, like what is behind it?
#
So do you have any suggestions on, is my approach wrong?
#
Because I want to help and you know, that they become better writers, they can able
#
to write code, but step one doesn't happen because no one comes back to me.
#
So what, what would you suggest I do?
#
Couple of things here, one, it might be their thin desire and they don't want it badly enough,
#
in which case it doesn't matter what advice you give, wo hoga nahi, because it's driven
#
But two, maybe they really want it.
#
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
#
Maybe they really want it ho nahi rai.
#
I don't think the problem is your advice.
#
I think your advice is great.
#
I agree with your advice, but I want to elaborate a bit on the whys of the advice.
#
Like I would give people exactly the same advice as you just gave, but I want to elaborate
#
Ab kya tha ki 90s mein when I was starting out, obviously as a writer, what you want
#
to do is you want to, you want your byline.
#
Toh then what you think in those days is ki TOI mein bhejo, express mein bhejo, koi lega,
#
koi nahi lega, all of that.
#
Today I think there's, it's a bad idea for a number of reasons and I want to elaborate
#
why, even for a young writer, it's, you know, obviously it's easy for someone like people
#
like you and me to have newsletters because kuch toh brand hai, kuch toh log jaante hai.
#
What is a beginner to do?
#
I would say even a beginner should start a newsletter or a blog and I'll explain why.
#
Number one, what happens when you are sending your work out to these platforms is you're
#
going through gatekeepers.
#
Those gatekeepers have specific tastes of their own, specific biases of their own.
#
They are often looking for only what is newsworthy or in the news cycle and all of those are
#
They are looking for only a particular form, like artso word mein likhna hai, that much
#
space they have and all of those are restrictions, a form, the necessity to be part of the news
#
cycle, the house style that they might have, their particular biases and tastes, all those
#
kind of get in the way and you want to avoid those.
#
The second thing is that if you go down that circle that I will send op-ed idea, koi achha
#
bolega, phir mein publish karunga, then the point is that you won't be writing enough.
#
You'll be writing once in a while.
#
You know, TOI aaj lega toh aisa nahi ki agli hafte aur ek piece aapko denge or you'll
#
have enough of a network ki kahin na kahin aapka har week aara hai, you know, very established
#
people can build that but otherwise you won't be writing enough and the key to writing good
#
as we were discussing is write a lot.
#
You have to write a lot, you have to go to the writing gym, you got to work out, work
#
out, work out, work out, itse wo nahi hoga and also if you're writing sporadically only
#
when an op-ed editor says ki theek hai kuch likho, then you won't even be able to write
#
a good piece kyunki aapki wo habit nahi hai, aapki sirf desire hai, likin wo habit nahi
#
hai ki aap regularly lik rahe ho and this becomes an impediment.
#
The third thing is that you are missing out on what I think is a unique opportunity for
#
creators in the modern age of building communities of their readers.
#
Pehle kya ho raha hai, aapka TOI main piece aara hai, koi dek raha hai aur bol raha hai
#
ki yaar ye Samarth Bansal toh bahut achha likha hai, changed my mind about data and
#
but they forget about you, that's where it is.
#
You know, a month later they look at you in the Indian Express and they'll be like, ha
#
matlab naam suna suna lag raha hai, achha piece hai and then they forget about you but what
#
happens is if somebody comes across a link to your newsletter, they click, they read
#
the link and they're saying yeah, this guy is a good guy and they put their email and
#
everything else you write now goes to them, right?
#
It goes into their email box and that email database belongs to you, it doesn't belong
#
to a sub stack or whoever the host is, email database belongs to you and what you have
#
done through this is you formed a community of Samarth Bansal fans and you are always
#
Abhi toh aap newsletter lik rahe ho, parsu supposing you have some interesting project,
#
you can crowd source funds, you can write to these guys, aapne agar YouTube channel
#
shuru ki, you can, you know, write to these guys and say, subscribe to this, you've built
#
that community, that network of people.
#
So for that reason, if there is a young person listening to this and they want to write,
#
I will say first of all, have a bias for action, don't let yourself hold back by what will
#
Right now, nobody's thinking of you and it'll take a lot of iteration for you to achieve
#
excellence and the important thing is you can achieve excellence, you will achieve excellence
#
if you stick at it long enough, so my advice would be go out and write and initially aap
#
newsletter is, I would recommend it over a blog because people don't go to destination
#
websites anymore, clicking a youindiancut.com, kaun karta hai, toh have a newsletter so that
#
every time you're hooking those people in, your work goes to their mailbox, you're forming
#
a community of fans and write as regularly as you can, don't overthink ki log kya sochenge,
#
just keep writing and experiment with form, don't put yourself in a box and say ki you
#
know op-ed toh maine dekha hai, 800 word hota hai or I think creators think in terms of
#
boxes of the past, that kitab hai toh 100,000 word, yeh article hai toh this much and so
#
on and I think one of the things about blogging that I loved and that freed me up is that
#
you can think beyond form, earlier conventions of forms were because of physical restrictions,
#
in music as well, in films, in everything, those restrictions don't exist anymore, so
#
just embrace a world where you have the freedom, you can do anything you want, so in a nutshell,
#
so in a nutshell I would give them exactly the same advice you're giving, you are giving
#
them but these would be my whys, yeh these would be my whys, that makes so much sense
#
and now I mean we have spoken for a while so I'll just tell you one, anxiety, like I
#
had this dream, I'm recording in December 2020, I know these dates because, diary, so
#
you know Amit, there's some publication which was commissioning me a story and I absolutely
#
loved, we discussed the idea but then one day I had this dream, it was a long story
#
that I had to write, 4000-5000 word, some narrative piece and I had this dream that
#
the editors of this publication called me and they say you know Samarth, we got a, we
#
connected with the person who edited you at the Hindu Sunday magazine, my first job was
#
at the Hindu and I wrote one you know magazine story and that Amit, that magazine story was
#
almost entirely rewritten, her sentence, for good because my writing was shit, you know,
#
I did this unfortunate thing of looking at my first drafts that I wrote 7 years ago and
#
I was like how did the Hindu hire me, I mean why did they, like how could they do it with
#
this, right, that's the sense you get and like you feel a bit good that okay progress
#
has been done but I'm saying that thing never went away in my head that I have a byline
#
on it but I don't have words, you know every sentence, so you know it just, you know what
#
I mean right, it just, it's painful that you know, I wrote it completely, my name is mine
#
but the article is not mine, but people are saying that you have written it, all of that,
#
so the dream was that these editors, they got a call from or somehow they connected
#
and they said someone, we heard that you can't write magazine pieces, you know, we have seen
#
your other work, now how do we have not spoken to other people, so we think you are not capable
#
to write for us, interesting dream, yeah and I don't know what happened after that and
#
no, no, I tell you, one thing happened, then I started giving them explanations that no,
#
no, no, no, actually you know that was like 2016, I was new but you know I have worked
#
so hard, I have done this, now you should read my other pieces, I went from there to
#
now my pieces are published, you know with 10% editing in the best of Indian newspapers,
#
so you should, they said no, no, no, something was happening, so I don't know what happened
#
in that dream, but the reason I was telling this is that even when you know that things
#
are on track, you know with the whole framework I gave you, if that dream is coming, it means
#
you know there is something there right, I can't describe it, but you know like I am,
#
the only reason I mentioned this is that now I feel relatively, slightly bit more confident
#
to put my work out in the public, because you know when you work on the technicalities
#
of language, all of those things right, you know that it's not, it's not maybe the best
#
piece of writing or whatever, you know like a very smart, like if Amit Varma reads my
#
piece, then he will see that it's good, you know, like I had written a piece, then you
#
know this, someone was really helping me with my editing, and the piece was not edited,
#
so the next day I asked on the phone what I had done, they said boss you made a mess
#
in the end, I said damn, she caught it, because I knew I fucked up, and she because she knew
#
my writing, she could just point out that here you made a mess, I said yes I did, you
#
know and it just pained me, I said if she saw it, so others will also see it right,
#
so I am saying that people who know, who think about the craft of writing, they can catch,
#
but still it is beyond something that's, that it's okay, I don't feel embarrassed to put
#
things out in the world, you know that's what I am saying, you know that's like threshold
#
wise, it just crossed that, even after that, if this dream is coming, that means that there
#
is some anxiety, there is something, so that's, I am just sharing that this was a dream I
#
got, even though I feel a bit more comfortable in putting out my work.
#
When I was in college, I did my BA from Ferguson College, Pune, and the reason I chose to
#
do a BA in English Literature is that I won't have to go to class, so I didn't go to class
#
only, I mean I would have gone once or twice just to check out who is there, what is happening,
#
but I didn't go to class only and I would study on the day before the exam and I kind
#
of sailed through and that was my blasé attitude, right, but for 10 years after that, I would
#
have this recurring nightmare that I have failed at final exam and I have absolutely
#
no idea why, but you didn't fail in your final exam, I didn't, I didn't, because the conscious
#
me didn't give a damn, couldn't care less, you know took pride in being mediocre as far
#
as that anti-metric of Marx was concerned, right, the conscious me never gave a shit,
#
lekin o sapna aata tha, so I don't know whether the sapna came because of something ingrained
#
from parental expectation or whatever, so that's kind of sort of interesting there,
#
so your dreams are fascinating, you know, yeah, dreams are sort of, dreams are so fascinating
#
and what you were saying about, you know, sending a piece to your friend and realizing
#
and knowing you made a mistake in the craft and then she catches it and says, end me kya
#
kya, and sometimes and what's happened with this podcast iski ye genre thora naya hai,
#
chaar gante ki conversation, paanch gante ki conversation kaun karta hai, now as you
#
would expect, there's a lot of intentionality behind what I do and I have figured out guidelines
#
of craft for myself and the whole thing is a moving thing, it keeps changing and there's
#
nothing like it outside because nobody does it, it's almost like a new form, how do you
#
do a 5 hour conversation and I will often look back on older episodes I've done and
#
I'll think of mistakes I made in terms of craft, in terms of the directions I went down
#
or the way I structured it and I know that literally nobody else will see those, I mean
#
they might have an effect on the listener but they won't see it as a mistake of craft
#
because matlab, it's, you know, there is no guideline that ye craft hai, while writing
#
in journalism have textbooks on craft and all of that, but my principle iski you just
#
barrel on, you do episode after episode, just barrel on, so I never look back, you just
#
barrel on and that's again, in a sense as far as at least my podcasting is concerned,
#
I think I'm embodying the advice I give others, kar te rau, just keep doing, you know, unfortunately
#
I haven't been able to follow that advice enough in my own writing because I would like
#
to write much more and I've had issues with process and discipline and all of that but
#
at least in this it has worked for me, that you keep doing it, you will get better over
#
time, you will realise you've gotten better over time, in retrospect you will see that
#
I went from A to B to C or whatever but in the moment sometimes you can't and there's
#
a danger in paralysing yourself by being too self-critical.
#
Yeah and I remember, you know, in my coaching, in my 12th class, so in the coaching centre
#
and again, I mean, you know, when I read narratives in the press about coaching, it's just like,
#
I can't relate, it's like, hai bichare bache, bachpan chin liya, you know, that's a narrative,
#
you know, and I'm like, I don't know, I'm not commenting on it as a reporter but I'm
#
like, this is not me, yaar, mera toh, we had a blast at coaching, we had a great time,
#
so anyway, that was, so our chemistry teacher, unon ek cheez bata, I think then, you know,
#
he was just trying to motivate us, he says, you know, success is boring, I'm like, what
#
He says, think about Sachin Tendulkar, he said, what does this guy do?
#
This guy, every day, goes to the field, you know, takes a bat and hits the ball, right,
#
that is all this guy does, day in, day out, and that's why he's Sachin, toh I'm like,
#
baat toh sahi gaya hai, kyu kar kya raha hai, ball hi toh hit kar raha hai, so he was just
#
trying to tell us that, like, you know, study, you know, focus on the process, don't think
#
about, you know, have a goal, but like, solve your problems, and don't, like, you know,
#
because everyone around us, kind of, is telling, nahi, these nerds, bache, you know, parthe
#
rete hain, all of those things, right, so like, ignore, ignore, you know, just, you
#
have a goal, you want to, you know, want to get to that institute, so just study, and
#
like, if you think it's boring, it's because boring is the norm, I mean, that's how he
#
was trying to tell us about exams, we didn't find our math, physics, chemistry problems
#
boring, we loved it, that's why we were doing it, the same thing still happens, that, you
#
know, aise kuch pada nahi chal raha hai, that, you know, what's happening here and there,
#
but it's just that, if someone thinks that the outcome is not getting it, so I just remember
#
that story ki, you know, Sachin bhi, you know, ground pe jake bas, he's just hitting the
#
ball, toh aap bhi, you know, computer pe baithke, likhte raho, whatever happens is.
#
That's a lovely way to put it, that Sachin is boring, and the other point, I'll sometimes
#
make, I mean, that's the importance of hard work, and also the importance of humility,
#
like, I'll tell people that, you know, you think that Virat Kohli is an arrogant brat
#
and all that, jaisa uska image hai, but when it comes to his craft, I guarantee you that
#
he is a humblest person around, because the only way you get that good is by playing thousands
#
of balls in the nets, focusing only on what you're doing wrong, focusing only, like, why
#
am I missing that swinging ball outside the off stump, you examine, your coaches will
#
tell you, your fellow batsmen will tell you, you focus on your mistakes, so people might
#
be arrogant outside of their domain where they've achieved excellence, but my belief
#
is that to achieve excellence, you have to be incredibly humble in that domain, because
#
nahi toh nahi hone wala hai, you know, you have to, and at the same level of the same
#
time, you perhaps also need a level of, you know, self-delusion helps, like, when I think
#
of myself as a young person, my ability and my judgment were both bad, so I would write
#
shit and I would think it's great.
#
India cut time or before?
#
So I would write shit and I would think it's great, but self-delusion helps hai, no?
#
You fake it till you make it.
#
So yeah, absolutely, you know, when I was a blogger in college, toh uswakt mujhe kuch
#
It's just that I wanted to express.
#
Aur mera, you know, archives mere paas hain, and like, like forget quality of ideas, ideas
#
They were grammatical mistakes.
#
So once, you know, we had a college fest aur hum Daleway Session gaye be thei, and this
#
friend of mine, in I think the third semester or something, he comes and tells me that,
#
do you know what people in the English Literary Society say about your blog?
#
I was like, what do they say?
#
He says like, that, you know, it's like written like this, it's written like that.
#
You know, that one person was telling me, you know, samarth ka block toh matlab, what
#
Toh uswakt mujhe, I was like, those arrogant people, unko kya bata, main toh likhunga,
#
I didn't realize it until very late that technically they were right.
#
Matlab it was objectively bad piece of writing in sense of grammar.
#
But uswakt mein kare jaara tha, because, you know, for me, the blog was just a, do you
#
know what the name of my blog was?
#
And you will know when I say it's self-expression.
#
Don't tell me it's random musings or something, that was a cliché of those days.
#
It's embarrassing, but my name of my blog's name was Crazy Sam, okay, with the crazy ka
#
spelling tha, K-R-A-Z-Z-Y, because I just love Dhrithik Roshan's dance, and this movie
#
Toh, you know, when I started my blog after my coaching, toh I was like, Crazy Sam.
#
Toh, at 17, you know, aap 13 saal ki umar mein aapko samajh aata, you know, e-mail addresses,
#
Toh mujhe kabhi samajhi nahi aaya, and even when it hit me, till I became a journalist,
#
I didn't change the name of the blog, because mukhe laga, haan, it was some madness, jisme
#
o blog aaya tha, and the blog will reflect that madness, so I am not going to change
#
Right, so, but over time I saw that at least I was true to self-expression, agar maine
#
blog ka naam mein hi change kara, right, I knew like what, like I knew it was funny,
#
you know, but tha ki no, this is for self-expression, language can go to hell, malab wo, but pata
#
bhi nahi tha ki language kharab ho rahi hai, right, and one day, like I recently, you know,
#
you will say, you know, kitna narcissistic banda hai, but I don't have my journal from
#
college, so you know, what's the best archive?
#
Because uswakt, I used to have these long like, aap kaun hi Facebook use karta hai, and
#
even on Instagram I don't text, uswakt to, you know, over in college aap heart to heart
#
kare ja rahe ho apne doston ke sath, right, so I have snapshots of what I was writing
#
to my friends, like, so it's just brilliant, like for me to time travel, so yeah, that's
#
why I am saying you could feel that, what narcissistic, you know, apne baare mein sohsta
#
raha tha, but whatever is the case, I enjoy doing that, I, you know, want to travel in
#
It's the opposite of narcissistic, because when you look at all the, like when I look
#
at all the shit I wrote once upon a time, it lends itself to humility, you know, because
#
then you realize ki yaar main toh samajhta tha main itna top hoon, and then you look
#
at your embarrassing rubbish, and you're like, it theek hai yaar, I mean, just chill, don't
#
That's why, yeah, usme I saw that how people are very generous, because there's this post
#
I put up, which had some reference to my friend, and this friend's girlfriend, who was not
#
from our college, and we were not even Facebook friends, okay, she read my blog, and she sent
#
me this long message, saying that, you know, Samar, you wrote this, I, you know, as a something
#
about festival that I wrote, something, something, as a girl, I relate with what you wrote, but
#
I think that, you know, you could work on your language, it feels like you are translating
#
your thought in Hindi to just English.
#
And mainne abhi padaya hai, do hafta pehle, and I was like, she was damn right, she was
#
damn right, because I was just thinking, and in IIT, at least Kanpur, the culture is not
#
to speak in English, you know, it's a very Hindi focused, like in our hostels, etc, Hindi
#
mein baat karte hain, toh pura tha, it's now, I don't know how that happened, but now I
#
think in English, uswakt mein Hindi mein sotsa tha, toh whatever used to come in my head,
#
I used to just, she, I don't know how, but she picked it, she said, it looks like you
#
are just translating your raw thought in Hindi on your blog, which is admirable because I
#
get your sentiment, but on that process, you know, you can work on your language, you know,
#
your grammar is going off, you know, and I read it and I was so thankful to her that,
#
you know, she took the time to read and give, like, kaun itna acha feedback deta hai, aaj
#
It's beautiful, but how did you react at the time?
#
Haan, so I was listening, so I honestly don't remember the specifics of what I felt, but
#
I just thanked her, uswakt, that, you know, thank you so much for reading, I will think
#
about it, you're right, but I don't think that I had that appreciation of what that
#
message meant until now, because in retrospection, now that I can see that, that she caught it,
#
that you know, and why I, unfortunately, I didn't know it, like I was in Bombay in May
#
and you know, this couple lives in Bombay and I was there and I met her after 8 years,
#
I first met, you know, when they just started dating and I was in Bombay for my work, for
#
So we were meeting after 8 years and we just had this chat, uske baad ja ke maine, and
#
you know, I remember in that, you know, we were in that restaurant and talking and she
#
just said, I'm hearing that, you know, now you're getting published in places, very glad
#
But when I saw that message, I just felt that, you know, if I knew at that time, you know,
#
I would have thanked her, that, you know, like people like, and like we don't, we haven't
#
spoken at all, but you know what I'm trying to say, it's just beautiful that, that's what
#
I'm saying, generosity, that, you know, people, and that's, you know, some of, one of my faiths
#
that even that, you know, if I fuck up, if I put out a bad piece of writing, but the
#
intent is visible to people, you know, they will, they will support you.
#
And I'm just thinking aloud that such generosity from someone at that age is likely to come
#
more from women because men get so competitive.
#
Do you, do you feel that that's something that you've sort of noticed?
#
I know that now that you mentioned it, I'm just trying to think about the feedback that
#
I've received from women, right?
#
But actually I can give you one more story on this when, so I've, I've been in this
#
I've been fascinated by newsletter since early 2018, okay, 2018, like when no one knew Substack,
#
I was trying to do something while having a job at HD.
#
I started something again, let's not get into okay, I'll always say it's bad, but whatever.
#
So one day I, what I did, I wrote a newsletter and I tried to be funny and I'm not funny
#
I'm not, you know, wit and you know, funny.
#
I was never that person, you know, but I tried to be smart, you know, then I was recommended
#
actually I was, that was post where I was recommending a list of podcasts, okay, k aaj
#
me ba kuch nahi hai, Diwali ki chutti hai, something like that.
#
All the intro tha na, I was pretending to be smart that, you know, witty.
#
And then this someone I knew from college, she was a postgraduate student.
#
She wrote me a long email.
#
She said, look, summer, I'll be honest with you.
#
I have seen what you, so I was the editor of the, like my, my favorite memory from college
#
is that I revamped my campus newspaper and I wrote, she said, I know what you did there.
#
What something, something that I'm not, I'm forgetting the specifics, but her and see,
#
I've seen what you're doing in other newsletters.
#
And usse pehle she has responded saying that great piece.
#
Yeh kya likha hai tumne?
#
You're trying to be someone who you're not and it's visible.
#
And it was, and I was like, I could not say anything because she was right.
#
But I would not have realized this because in my head I was trying to be, you know, this
#
smart guy, witty person, but jab usme ho hai nahi.
#
So I'm saying that someone would be like, someone can say na, haan chalo, bad piece
#
The fact that someone takes the effort and in today's age, you can always be doubtful
#
na ki maa criticize karunga to how will the other person take it?
#
Like you've, she, I don't know, but I just loved it that people do this.
#
And you're an outlier boss because I have gotten burnt more than once giving honest
#
feedback to people I thought were friends and who would be receptive towards it because
#
and this is something I am at pains to tell anyone who participates in my writing course
#
about that if there is one thing that you should not do, you should not react with anger
#
to criticism, you know, even if you feel criticism is coming from a bad place, never ever react
#
and reacting with anger is actually reflexive and understandable because often we put so
#
much emotional energy into what we write that it becomes tied up with our sense of self.
#
To kisi ne mere peace ko criticize kiya to personal attack lagta hai.
#
So that's a natural instinct, but you got to fight the natural instinct and take a step
#
back and not react with anger and then think about it.
#
And very few people do that.
#
So, you know, and perhaps she knew you were that kind of person.
#
So she felt emboldened to sort of send you that like, you know, before this episode started,
#
you gifted me this book by Robert Sapolsky behave.
#
And I think one of the point which I'm really looking forward to digging into and one of
#
the point Sapolsky has made in this, if I remember correctly in his episode with Sam
#
Harris is about, you know, how the reason there is so much violence among young males
#
is that the male brain really develops fully only by the age of 25.
#
I think it's a frontal cortex, which is responsible for that socializing part of behavior and
#
And that really develops only by, you know, 25, which is why you have so much violence
#
among, you know, teenage males and the bulk of violence in society really comes from young
#
And that's interesting.
#
And that may also speak to, you know, the observation, which otherwise seems to be a
#
stereotype and I avoid them.
#
But the fact is that young women are just more mature than young men.
#
Do you think it's also goes otherwise in terms of receiving feedback?
#
Yeah, I think men would be worse at receiving feedback.
#
But having said that, women already have, you know, what is known as a confidence gap.
#
The imposter syndrome is so much more likely in women.
#
So they could actually react the other way and not think independently about feedback
#
and let it get them down, you know, even if the feedback is unwarranted.
#
So I think that is a danger the other way.
#
I was recently listening to this podcast by Michael Lewis is one of my favorite writers,
#
my writing inspiration, actually.
#
So a season three of his podcast against the rules is on experts.
#
So he had one episode on mansplaining, you know, that he was going into history.
#
So I, you know, that what I think was the writer, Rebecca Solnit, Rebecca Solnit wrote
#
Many explain things to me.
#
So she was like, she was explaining what happened, the origins that she was in this party and
#
this guy, you know, this dude is telling her about the book about, you know, like she said,
#
you know, my writer and makes nasty comments and ends up talking about a book that she
#
And it was, she, and he clearly hadn't read the book.
#
So they were describing that.
#
And then Lewis goes into, he starts a story that this was the origin of mansplaining and
#
ends with some research on exactly this point that this whole business of mansplaining comes
#
from, you know, the sense of men feeling superior in a group about bullshitting that they know
#
and women not adequately responding to it.
#
And the point he was trying to make actually his core point was that after you have done
#
this, you don't realize what you have done.
#
So you become the gap increases.
#
It's not that you feel embarrassed that, oh, you know, you don't feel embarrassed about
#
And when you double down on it, your habit keeps on perpetuating.
#
So there was some research that he was quoting, which I found pretty interesting because he
#
said that doesn't go back the other way that once in that research, I think I'm, maybe
#
you can link it in the show notes, but that's, he was saying that it doesn't happen the other
#
way that when that woman realizes that what this guy is doing that it's not that the guy
#
is doubling down on his overconfidence, right?
#
But that's the same thing is not happening on the side of women.
#
So the gap kind of increases and man spinning keeps becoming a thing.
#
There's this lovely cartoon.
#
I like where this man is at dinner with a woman and he's telling her across the table.
#
Let me interrupt your expertise with my confidence, you know, and that kind of says everything
#
that women don't have enough faith in their expertise and men have too much unwarranted
#
But Amit, can I ask a tough question here?
#
And maybe politically incorrect, but I'm talking, so why don't we bring it up to Iskana?
#
This is the other effect that happens with me and I want to know what, so I'll again
#
I, you know, I hope this person is not listening to it because I'm describing a scenario.
#
I think by so many times you've said, I hope so and so is not listening to it that I think
#
you have the impression.
#
No one listens to the podcast.
#
So anyway, so there was this time in the newsroom when there was this, I think it was seven
#
o'clock in the evening and there was a story.
#
I'll not go into details because details don't matter.
#
And there was this, my colleague at HD, she was supposed to report the story.
#
Some development had happened and I also used to cover similar things.
#
And so, you know, the 7 p.m. news had broken something, something, something.
#
We had to write a story and there was a confusion, ki story kya hai, what is happening.
#
So then she said that, you know, aisa aisa hai, you know, this is the story.
#
And because it was something related to tech, which is something I have deeply thought about
#
So I was like, yeh toh galat hai, malab aisa nahi hai, right?
#
And she was like, nahi ye hi hai.
#
So there was almost this debate.
#
And I regret that I think, I don't remember, but I think I, my voice, you know, I think
#
it was not like I shouted is not, I raised my voice a bit that, you know, I was just
#
frustrated ki aapko samajh kyu nahi aara hai that, like, you are wrong, that, you know,
#
wo story nahi hai, this is the story and I am telling you.
#
Then for some reason, you know, I think my thing prevailed.
#
Fortunately, next day I was right, that, you know, I was, I was hitting the right story.
#
But that incident stuck with me because I always felt that, chalo iss waqt ho gaya,
#
that, you know, I was right.
#
But I somehow, like, I don't know this tension between, how do I isolate that, whether I'm
#
just being, you know, this overconfident man in a setting or, you know, it's just like,
#
you know, right, like, this is the story.
#
Like, I, you know, something like, I actually know more than you on this, you know, and
#
this is the, so I don't know where the tension goes, but sometimes you just feel.
#
And that, which is why I'm saying it's politically incorrect because I know when you are in,
#
in a structure of privilege in a larger scheme of things, right?
#
How do you isolate whether you are acting as the, quote unquote, oppressor or, you know,
#
the powerful in the dynamics, or you are outside that structure on the fundamentals.
#
I think, you know, you can take it about religion, like, I'll give you another example.
#
Someone wrote a column saying that you can't upper cast Hindu man, can't criticize a Muslim
#
I read that and I read the book of, I don't want to take names here.
#
And I, in my notes, I have criticism of the specific person.
#
And I went into this deep thought, I am in my head, not thinking in terms of identity.
#
I am, again, I, as I said, I try to think that I'm a first principles thinker, this
#
So what I want to ask you is that, have you ever faced this tension between identity and
#
like, that I'm not behaving, my identity is not overpowering me in this situation.
#
It's independent of that.
#
So I don't know, I've not figured out a way because, you know, I just feel that, you know,
#
I am on the other side.
#
So like, I just know, want to know what you think of it.
#
So yeah, worth thinking about, there are three sort of thoughts which come to mind.
#
And one thought is that in the instance of the discussion you had with your colleague
#
about the tech thing, you actually knew more than her, or, you know, at least it wasn't
#
as if it was her expertise and you were mansplaining to her.
#
Mansplaining typically is when the man knows nothing and the woman is the expert and he's
#
telling her something that she knows more about.
#
So you know, those are the bare facts.
#
I think every time you explain something to somebody, it's not an act of splaining necessarily.
#
So just to apply that hammer to every nail may not always be fair, but we need to watch
#
out for ourselves doing that and make sure that we don't kind of do that.
#
The other thing is that there is this, like I tell everyone who interacts with me that
#
take me at face value, that mere kuch, you know, beyond what I say, there is no, you
#
know, don't read subtext into it, don't think that I intend something I didn't say, take
#
me at face value, don't add a layer to it, right?
#
Don't, we should not take you at face value.
#
No, take me at face value.
#
Take me at face value and always assume goodwill, assume that what I am saying is what I mean.
#
Don't think that there is a layer of intent or there is an agenda or whatever, right?
#
So I like to have a conversation without layers.
#
Like now when we are speaking to each other, I don't think we are thinking things like
#
why did Amit ask this, you know, what does this mean?
#
And so there is, it's just face value and that's the kind of conversation I like to
#
However, the thing is that sometimes there are other layers, even if you don't want
#
So for example, if you are, you know, like I remember once I was driving with a couple
#
of friends to a mall in Bombay and I was weaving my way through traffic, I'm a typical
#
In fact, I think I'm the best driver in the world in Bombay.
#
So I'm a typical Bombay driver, lane change, car work, and we reached a mall and as we
#
got into the mall, these two women got into the lift with us and one of them started shouting
#
at me that you only overtook me because I'm a woman or because I didn't look inside the
#
I was just doing my thing.
#
And so I was just about to respond that no, ma'am, it's not like that.
#
Then the friend who was with me, he kind of just tapped me on the shoulder and said, you
#
know, don't argue back.
#
And then later he told me that you have to understand where she's coming from.
#
She's coming from a place where she is at the receiving end of a lot of shit from men.
#
Literally all women are, right?
#
So it is natural for her on a bad traffic day to feel, oh shit, there's another man
#
just going past me, right?
#
There's no point in, you know, have some sympathy and some empathy for where she is from.
#
And I thought that was an important lesson for me, that face value doesn't work there.
#
You have to realize that there is a layer and maybe you have to step back and realize
#
However, obviously in a case of an argument in a newsroom, you can't step back from the
#
You know, when you're arguing something like what you're arguing, I would say you have
#
But perhaps you have to watch out for your tone.
#
That's what I'm saying.
#
Because once your voice is raised, so to another guy, it's okay.
#
To a girl, you know, she would just shrink back.
#
So I think recognizing those layers are important.
#
And as far and my third thought on this is that when you talk about, you know, somebody
#
saying that you don't have a right to criticize somebody because of your identity of birth,
#
I feel that if it's a particular person, you know, it's okay to be aware of that context
#
and tailor your tone and conversation accordingly.
#
But if a third person is giving that criticism, I feel it's bullshit and it's bullshit because
#
I feel the problem with a lot of modern identity politics is people get reduced to identities
#
Whereas we contain multitudes, we are deeply complex.
#
I find it offensive if someone reduces me to an identity over which I had no control.
#
And I also find it not helpful when someone less privileged than me is also pigeonholed
#
and imprisoned in an identity trap and given a narrative of victimhood when they are also
#
So I just feel that this kind of politics is toxic to the discourse that we have to
#
be aware of privileges.
#
Obviously, we have to be aware of all of that and mindful of that.
#
But to reduce all interactions to just being an interaction between identities of birth,
#
I think can be really toxic and it is offensive to everybody involved because we are not just
#
So these are my sort of thinking aloud kind of responses.
#
Have you ever been, has there ever been a phase where you felt guilty about your privilege?
#
Has that ever happened?
#
I haven't felt guilty about my privilege because it is what it is.
#
But I have been guilty of the blindness that my privilege has given me in certain contexts.
#
Like in this specific context where, you know, my friend Salil told me that, no, you know,
#
there are times you just got to sit back and listen.
#
So I might have felt, I felt guilty not of my privilege itself, but ways in which it
#
Like looking back today, much the same way that you look back through your journaling.
#
Looking back to my childhood, I can see that, you know, because of family background and
#
because of all of that, I had both a social arrogance and an intellectual arrogance.
#
And both of them were unwarranted.
#
And I would assume that, of course, they might have made me behave in ways which are absolutely
#
You know, and I think that, hey, I won't want to know that person today.
#
And it is possible I behave today in ways that I might find obnoxious 10 years later,
#
But not my privilege itself, because that is luck.
#
I don't understand probability well enough to know that mostly everything is luck.
#
You know, it's not like I did something to be guilty about it.
#
But the question is, how do I behave now, which is because you've got to judge people
#
I think this happened, you know, because I asked this because there was a phase when
#
it hit me, you know, like, you know, there's a time when just it hits you that was your
#
There is no need to fly in the air, because you tend to give yourself too much credit.
#
But then I saw other things started happening, that if I start attributing everything to
#
privilege, then I feel like I have no agency, you know, so it's a tension, right?
#
In one you are saying that I have done everything.
#
In other you are saying that I haven't done anything.
#
So then, like, who you are, like, does that mean that I don't have any agency?
#
So you mentioned free will earlier, and my take on free will is I don't believe it exists.
#
It cannot possibly exist, but we must behave as if it does.
#
Because then how will we live?
#
That's actually a good frame.
#
But yeah, so then one day I said, okay, now it's there, so what am I going to do?
#
Guilt is, I think, the worst feeling, you know, in guilt and jealousy.
#
I think these two are like very bad human emotions.
#
So then I said, acknowledge it, you know, be conscious.
#
And then Amit, one thing that I still struggle with is that, in fact, we have been talking
#
about how I think, et cetera, et cetera, now in the starting, we should have given a caveat
#
that one of the reasons that the fact that, you know, whatever decisions you take, right,
#
there is so much like a risk taking, right?
#
I mean, if you talk about probability, right, you know, sometimes when, you know, my friends
#
from college, they say, you know, we are leaving the job and starting up, we have taken a risk.
#
You know, I was like, I'm happy for you, but boss, if you think objectively about what
#
is risk, you have to think about the worst case scenario, right?
#
That if you have done this, what is your worst case, right?
#
And when you start giving in that frame, right, in distribution, worst case, et cetera, tail
#
events, et cetera, then that hit me that that is what the privilege does, that your worst
#
case scenario becomes very safe.
#
So when I wrote a blog on my freelancing journey, you know, which I, because people kept asking
#
me and I wanted to explain my model, so I started that piece with a long, you know,
#
description of the boss.
#
Because I used to see on Twitter that everyone has a bad experience, freelancing, you know,
#
no one is giving money, no assignments are coming, the opposite was happening to me.
#
People were paying me money on time.
#
I was getting assignments.
#
Yes, everything is happening.
#
And I was like, what is happening?
#
So if I write, you know, freelancing is very good, you know, everything is great.
#
That is also misleading.
#
So I wrote, I think I wrote 300 words in the starting to explain that boss, this is a privilege,
#
So please don't generalize.
#
This is what works for me because this, but I will not write after every sentence that,
#
you know, I have network, I have this, whatever, whatever, so I put it.
#
The feedback I got was very interesting because then people said the fact that some of my
#
friends, they said that those 300 words kind of, you know, it, it didn't feel like I am
#
describing some sort of ideal scenario that anybody can do, but this guy did it, you know,
#
because of that context, that look, this is there.
#
So that actually makes me more comfortable that once you acknowledge, then talk freely
#
because you know, you're sorted, you're saying that I acknowledge, but not to get into that
#
loop because now if you start tracing back about everything, then it's a, it's a never
#
ending cycle that so I don't know how many places it can be, that's a context I control,
#
but sometimes I feel that, you know, even when I hear conversations, people are having
#
this, I did this, especially on LinkedIn, which is kind of a very, I don't know, toxic
#
positivity, toxic motivation, everyone has their own journey, all of that, which is like
#
on one hand, I appreciate that, you know, people have struggles, but sometimes it just
#
feels that what is your context and you know, in the writing, you could see that is this
#
like, is something shining or not?
#
I recently saw a post, this person was, listen, I hope he listens to your podcast and listens
#
to it, but this guy was some rank 35 in ITJ, you know, like topper, he had a complex that
#
his rank is 35, because there were 34 kids above him in IT Bombay, I was reading that
#
and Amit I became so angry, after that he wrote, look, I was so complex, but then I
#
did this in IT Bombay, then I started a company, this, that, that, I didn't know what I just
#
angry message, one of my friends, you know, this is why I hate LinkedIn, what is this?
#
So after seeing that, I thought, at least there is some understanding, but I'm saying
#
that, you know, you know, like, what would that make you feel, I mean, if you are inferiority
#
this means that these people are becoming anti-metric slaves, so it's, it's like this,
#
I mean, I'm sorry, I'm judging this person, but he started up, right?
#
All of those things he did, and his surname is an uppercast Hindu surname, I'm happy,
#
you know, you build this company, your exit is done, whatever, and he's happy in life,
#
married, married, whatever, he's like, lights his post, but it just was so, I don't know
#
the word, maybe disgust that, like, what is this platform?
#
Because I tell you why disgust, I feel the same way, because this is one category, there
#
are three categories of wrong people, and I'm just thinking aloud, right, first category
#
of wrong people, and this is from a perspective of probability, right, first category of wrong
#
people is people to whom good things have happened, and they don't realize this 99%
#
luck, and they let it go to their heads, and they get arrogant, and whatever, that's category
#
one, category two is people to whom bad things have happened, and they don't realize that
#
is 99% luck, and they let it get them down, and they whatever, the third category, the
#
kind of person you're mentioning, is a person to whom good things have happened, it is
#
perhaps 100% luck, this thing, and they are moaning and whining, and these are people,
#
you know, I mean, I don't believe in violence, and I'm saying this in a metaphorical way,
#
but the one tight slap thing that comes, that feeling comes with them.
#
Okay, so I just want to end with, I mean, we've talked a lot about this, but one thought
#
which I learnt very recently on this whole luck thing, have you read The Blind Watchmaker
#
Brilliant book, I've read.
#
So that frame, I was connecting to this whole, because, you know, once you get into a probabilistic
#
mindset, you see randomness everywhere, right, so one thing he says, right, in the book that
#
in evolution, creationists who don't believe in the science of evolution, they think natural
#
selection is random, right, randomly, so how is it possible that randomness can create
#
complex species like humans?
#
So Dawkins says in the book, that is wrong, natural selection is not random, it's opposite
#
of random, because what is happening, every step of a mutation, that is random.
#
But when you cumulatively collect everything together, that is far from random, because
#
after every mutation, what stays, what dies, what propagates, that is operating on principles
#
of natural selection, which is not random, right, so there is randomness at every step,
#
but in the larger collective, like what ultimately becomes, that is not random.
#
Events versus systems, as you might put it.
#
But no, even there is difference here, that if you think about careers, right, like my
#
theory is clear, my entire career is built on some random events, okay, but then in retrospect
#
I feel that randomness is there, but there is some, if you take that frame, at what point
#
so many random things are happening, and then in those random things you pick one, and in
#
retrospect you attribute everything, and I have done it, to that one random incident,
#
but I'm saying that if you take one layer above it, that in cumulative, right, random
#
plus that, you know, like you chose something, you didn't choose something, so everything
#
is not just happening by itself, there is some layer to it, just like evolution.
#
So if you, as a person, say if everything goes right, I lift a letter T, right, and
#
whatever I become, so it's luck, a lot of things, like it's happening right from birth,
#
but then there's also a design.
#
What do you think about that?
#
Do you think that framework of evolution and natural selection applies to our lives?
#
Two things, I mean, one, of course, and I'm not an expert on either of these, but, you
#
know, when Dawkins is talking about that larger process that is playing out, it is a particular
#
process that mutations are random, but whether those mutations, you know, help you propagate
#
your genes is not random, whatever is more suited to the environment will help you, and
#
in that sense that there is, you know, that process playing itself out.
#
In human affairs, I think the danger is of looking back in hindsight and ascribing narratives,
#
and I think that's, and you know that danger better than anybody else, obviously.
#
That's not true, but I mean, you know, with all your writings about journalism and data
#
journalism and yeah, and I think we need to kind of watch out for that, like at one level
#
there is no free will, and all our talk of probabilities are just because we don't, we
#
are not omniscient, otherwise we would not talk of them.
#
But anyway, leaving that self-indulgent aside, you know, we are the way we are, so maybe,
#
so it's again, you know, you could say that there are particular events which are completely
#
accidental and they take us in directions we won't have gone in otherwise, but you could
#
also say that we are who we are, maybe some other way, bhule bhatke yahi pe pahant jaate
#
Pata nahi, aapko counterfactual toh, aap toh matlab kya boli hai, you know, it's like,
#
you know, there are a million parallel universes with a million uss's and who knows where we
#
are, and this is perhaps the only one where you and I are sitting and talking right now.
#
Yeah, and you know, this is why I absolutely love the book, but I'm like yeh Dawkins ne
#
galat kaam kardiya, mera hai, sab clear tha, sab random hai, you know, hoi jaa raha hai,
#
and when I read this, I was like, come on man, yeh another frame di diya hai, so now when
#
you create these narratives, random, random, random, aap uss mein kuch natural selection
#
ka kuch toh nahi hai, so abhi main uss pe socha nahi hai, but that's why, you know, I think
#
it's just interesting to, you know, link that the way biological evolution works, if that
#
has parallels to, so I'm still thinking about it, I think it's an interesting layer to add
#
over everything is random.
#
So many layers, so many frames and it's time to take a break, so we'll come back after
#
the break and continue this conversation.
#
Long before I was a podcaster, I was a writer.
#
In fact, chances are that many of you first heard of me because of my blog India Uncut,
#
which was active between 2003 and 2009 and became somewhat popular at the time.
#
I loved the freedom the form gave me and I feel I was shaped by it in many ways.
#
I exercise my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things.
#
Well, that phase in my life ended for various reasons and now it is time to revive it.
#
Only now I'm doing it through a newsletter.
#
I have started the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write
#
regularly about whatever catches my fancy.
#
I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe.
#
Once you sign up, each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox.
#
You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free.
#
The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com Thank you.
#
Welcome back to The Scene In The Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Samarth Bansal about his life and we I think spoke for two and a half
#
hours and we just barely, you know, reached your school years.
#
But you did mention while you were briefly mentioning your college years as well.
#
You mentioned that IIT shaped you.
#
So tell me a little bit about that, that how did it shape you in the sense that what was
#
your conception of yourself before that and what you want to do in your life and so on
#
And how did IIT sharpen that and how did the sort of the wider social world that you were
#
suddenly in, how did how did that change?
#
That's such a broad question.
#
So I'll start but please you direct as it goes because I have like so fond and conflicted
#
memories of that brilliant institute that it can go for forever.
#
But anyway, so I'll so IIT happened.
#
Before I was going to IIT, I saw this actually when I was preparing for JEE, there was this
#
show on CBS 60 minutes.
#
I think Leslie Stahl was the anchor and it opened by something, you know, something like
#
I'm forgetting the exact words, but you know, the X country exports something, Y country
#
exports something, India exports engineers and not just any engineers, engineers from
#
the Indian Institute of Technology, right?
#
And then she made the comparison between Princeton, Harvard, basically that whole segment on that
#
show was something like these folks at IIT and it was set up at IIT Bombay are like best
#
These guys are different and then Vinod Khosla comes in, all of these people are talking
#
about and I saw it as a 16 year old kid and that impression left, you know, the impression
#
in my head was that, oh boy, you know, what world you are going to enter, right?
#
And you work hard, you hate everything.
#
So I had this image in my head and I told you like my dream to become a software engineer
#
was back when I was in seventh grade, when I started creating websites, you know, do
#
you remember geocities?
#
So I had all those pages, flash and I was doing all of those things.
#
So I had this impression that I will go to IIT and everyone in dorm rooms will be writing
#
code, you know, something must be happening there and like, it was going to be this massive
#
burst of scientific exploration, technological innovation and the other thing happened in
#
and giving context because of what I expected.
#
I heard the speech, you know, the Steve Jobs, 2005 convocation at Stanford, have you, do
#
Incredible, stay hungry, stay foolish.
#
15 minutes, I have heard it repeatedly during college also, every six months I used to listen
#
once, just to, so that I had heard in 11th grade, so in 12th grade, I was like, okay,
#
I had this conviction that I was destined to become the next Steve Jobs, I mean, that's
#
I find that guy a bit obnoxious, but that was who I was.
#
Every 17 year old should dream, should dream, right?
#
So I was like, we will do code, we will make a company, we will become an entrepreneur,
#
all of those dreams were there and I, so that is what I went in and I go and there's nothing
#
Although it's, you know, you get a culture shock because you don't, you're not finding
#
like first, you know, you're ragging, you know, all kinds of things are happening.
#
You don't find this energy that I was expecting.
#
So it was a, for whatever reason, misleading expectation to start, I just had to accept
#
the fact that that is not what this Institute is, but I had despite that.
#
So after that shock, you adjust, I also, because that was the first time I left home, like
#
a lot of my friends had been to Kota and other places, so many different people, like we
#
had this hostel wing, 13 rooms, three people each, all from different backgrounds.
#
In fact, interestingly, people talk about, like one of the best things about IIT Kanpur
#
is that our hostel allocation is random.
#
So you know, the cast, class, all of that is mixed.
#
You don't pick that way, right?
#
So I settled in, made comfort with what was happening and you know, starting, everyone
#
My first semester was great.
#
I did excellent at exams.
#
I was participating in extra, extracurricular activities, dance, you know, played guitar
#
at my, you know, hostel day, all of those things are happening.
#
I'm having the best of my time.
#
And I'm also just adjusting, you know, we have come, so things are going fine.
#
I think second semester onwards, things started changing.
#
I started realizing that, you know, for some reason, not actually for some reason, there
#
I went, I would go to classes and I could not get the big picture that why I am studying
#
So that was not happening and I started feeling a bit disoriented, but still that was in the
#
So I was very active in student politics for elections, you know, in our student community,
#
all of those things are happening, things are going fine.
#
So fast forward, I think then third semester onwards, you know, things started making much
#
more sense where I see that look, okay, but still it's a wonderful place because ample
#
If you look at the infrastructure of IIT, you know, the kind of people you meet, you
#
know, starting, if you have a little ego about that we were kings of our school, you know,
#
that bubble is burst because you see, everyone around you is great.
#
You are doing the problem of physics, that other person, your friend, he'll do it faster
#
So, you know, IIT makes you humble in many ways because you always know that you were
#
So that was first year, nice.
#
But third semester onwards, I think my frame started changing.
#
One big thing that happened was that I read an essay by Paul Graham, Paul Graham, right?
#
One of his essays where he says that if you want to be an entrepreneur, don't work at
#
Google because Google is so good, it's such a great company that you would never want
#
I read that line and it touched me and Amit in my third semester, I decided I will not
#
sit for campus placements, okay?
#
And that was so liberating because once you decide placement, so everything that is happening
#
around you, which is optimized for that big job, it's gone.
#
So you're not thinking about your resume.
#
You're not thinking about grades.
#
You have to have fun, right?
#
Do what you want to do.
#
The other thing that happened around that time, I think it happened in the second semester,
#
Coursera came to this world, Coursera in Udacity, right?
#
Massive online open course.
#
So I started, I was like, I'm not enjoying what I'm studying in class, but it's also
#
not, I'm interested in engineering, but I don't want to study what I'm teaching in class.
#
So I started spending most of my time in online courses.
#
I was just not studying what my profs were teaching me, you know?
#
So my grades stuck, it's like, you know, like my first semester performance was great.
#
In fact, I used to joke, huh, bringing it below grade B in IIT is such a tough job, right?
#
You have to work so hard not to study, you know?
#
And then, you know, C started coming, D started coming.
#
And I was disoriented because on one hand, I said, you know, I came here with this passion
#
of being like the best engineer.
#
And this, I was told this is the institute, but it's not happening here.
#
So I started finding communities where people felt like me and I did a lot of work in campus
#
And after the third semester, again, my grades fell, like even, it was the worst.
#
And I was in such a demotivated state that I wanted to leave the campus, that boss, I
#
This is not the right place for me.
#
So I was in Bombay for an internship after my third semester.
#
I, my grades, since then, I, I just could not believe that, that is not me.
#
Like these grades do not reflect who I felt I was.
#
And while sitting in the cafe, I wrote a long rant email to my dean of academic affairs
#
who had taught, who had taught and I really respected him for his ethics, you know, ethics
#
has something been very close to me.
#
And this professor still, I just met him few months ago, was so central to even an IIT
#
to shape my thinking around ethics.
#
So I, I had something that, you know, this guy may understand.
#
I don't know, but who writes email to Dean?
#
I wrote that email to him in such a big rant, that, you know, boss, what is this place?
#
These grades don't reflect me.
#
I read, whenever I read it, I am like, how did I get the courage to write this email?
#
What happened in 30 minutes?
#
The dean of academic affairs responded.
#
He wrote me a long email where he mentioned one thing.
#
He said, look, don't worry.
#
He said, you sit down and define what success means to you.
#
It's not getting a nine point GPA.
#
He said, you say, I want a seven pointer and I want to do something else at campus.
#
Forget everything else.
#
And then he told me other things.
#
His email ended by saying, when you come to campus, come and meet me, we'll chat.
#
And Amit, that mail just changed me because I was like, this person gets me.
#
And when I met him, so I think that just made me, okay, now it's done.
#
I don't even want to sit in placement.
#
The dean also told me to do my own thing.
#
So I think that zone came in.
#
But in fourth semester, I had to drop.
#
I had to go back home because of some family thing.
#
So that gave me this whole space where I'm not at college.
#
I was anyway frustrated, what is happening, what is not happening.
#
But I was working with a startup, you know, in my December internship was with a company.
#
I was the first software developer at that company.
#
I was like, what, 19 year old working with like, I was the first employee in that company,
#
I was having a ball, you know, to write code, real, you know, things are happening.
#
But that semester drop, right, like I was, I was telling you, right, I was going through
#
I think that gave me a lot of time to introspect, and then when I went back, I had a different
#
I realized that I can compare IIT to MIT and I always feel, but when I used to talk to
#
my friends from other engineering colleges, I was like, boss, do you even realize that
#
where you are sitting, it's a privilege that you are getting to study at this institute
#
with such great infrastructure, with such great people.
#
So if you utilize it properly and think you can do wonders.
#
So I think then I did whatever I want to do.
#
I was extremely active in campus affairs.
#
I was building this company and I was doing my online courses to scare on my learning
#
I was still not reading, which is the only thing I regret possibly in retrospect I could
#
have done, but I was doing a lot of online courses from humanities to computer science
#
Everything was happening.
#
My grades were kept going on, you know, they were not anywhere.
#
That was, you know, intellectually what was happening on the academic side and my participation
#
After that, after one point, you know, I got my first F grade in fifth semester.
#
It was such a funny thing because I never, I mean, the person who said that it's so difficult
#
And then, you know, you get disorientated that how can someone like me get an F grade
#
like me, F failure on my grade sheet.
#
So I went to the prof and I said, sir, I mean, you know, I mean, can we talk?
#
So first they give me a lecture, you know, students like you, there was a time when people
#
used to get D, they used to come and tell me, sir, please give me an F because how can I
#
I learn a subject if I have a D grade?
#
And now I have students like you who have an F and they want a D. So he said, okay,
#
You look at your paper.
#
I turned the pages and I turned the pages and I could not see anything because there
#
was nothing in my paper where I even had the courage to ask him to do something.
#
So after that, I thought that I actually fucked up.
#
And I realized that there is some indiscipline going on here because it shouldn't be so bad.
#
So disorientation entered that I didn't understand what was happening, but my other part was
#
going really well where I was campus community.
#
So things are going great.
#
Few things that really impacted me in this whole process was my, I was telling you about
#
in this IIT campus is not just about people getting jobs and you know, there are actually
#
some really smart people doing great things, you know, that's like the 10% of the campus.
#
So you take inspiration from them.
#
Other people are doing.
#
It's not completely disillusioned, but largely it is, you see that this is a vehicle of India's
#
aspiration that, you know, people come, they want to get great lives.
#
That is what this institute is nothing else, but there is something else that was happening,
#
which was that campus had a lot of issues, socio-political issues, which is what something
#
that really caught my attention that things are not right here, you know, and that is
#
what started troubling me that we will do something for this.
#
And the thing about IIT Kanpur is that you are in Kanpur, but your world, you do not
#
know what is happening outside the four walls of her campus.
#
So I'll give you an example.
#
In 2013, Muzaffarnagar riots happened.
#
I had no clue those riots happened or I'm Kanpur myth, like I am just giving an example.
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I was so disconnected at the startup.
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There was a time when I had a fight, not fight, like a disagreement with my colleagues that
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there was a module I had to write, which would be, you know, it would be like I felt that
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it's invading people's privacy, you know, to make these data points a profile.
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I was like, this is my code.
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You know, you feel an ownership that it's my software, I can't do all of those things.
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And at the same time, Snowden revelations were happening in the US and I had no clue.
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So I'm saying that my world was limited to the four walls of the campus.
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But the things that were troubling me were, you know, you know what I'm trying to say.
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It was just rooted in the campus.
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There was no sense of news, nothing or I think we know a lot.
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So, you know, we'll talk about the elections, very ignorant, we don't know anything.
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Now you're reading even humanities courses.
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We have to compulsorily take humanities courses, which I don't think a lot of people know that
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in from the inception of IIT Kanpur, humanities is a core part of your engineering curriculum.
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Because our founder, P.K. Kilker, he said that engineers work in a society, so they need
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So that too, like, you know, you're studying sociology, you're studying economics, all
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of those things, social psychology, but you don't know outside.
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But the advantage was that I was so, I knew my campus in and out.
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So there I started to have a sense that boss, there are no discussions happening here.
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Everyone is so involved in day to day.
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So where will the student's voice come from?
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Where is the forum for the problems in our campus?
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And there, the student newspaper, the magazine, which was called Vox Populi, which started
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sometime in mid 2000s, that during my, I think, second year, third year, it kind of died out.
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It used to be a print magazine.
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Someone tried to revamp it, nothing happened.
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So all of these things, while they were happening, in my fourth year, when I was getting, I
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was like, I'll restart this.
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You know, this campus needs journalism, and I was anyway a blogger, I was, I told you,
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So I wanted to write about campus affairs, because there was this thing I believed at
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the time that words matter, and if we raise the issues, then something will happen.
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And I wanted to bridge the gap between students and faculty.
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So there were a lot of ideas to bring change to campus, no one is doing it, and English,
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I was telling you, language was weak.
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But thankfully, our friends at the Lit Society, they were not, I don't know what happened,
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but they dominated kind of the Vox populi of earlier, it was not in our time.
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So we didn't know anything, we didn't know how to write, we just had that, the campus
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So me and a friend of mine, one batch junior, said, okay, we'll make it.
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And that, Amit, was something that really was brilliant, like, you know, that year,
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when I built, like, we used to go and tell people that, you know, write for us, I was
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giving these talks that, you know, why campus needs journalism, and we don't know anything
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about journalism, right?
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It's just that instinctive desire that issues need to be discussed.
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And then I started seeing, we launched our website on August 3, 2014, you know, our website
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And then I saw, you know, our starting sabbaths, you felt like an entrepreneur, solving a problem
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So that was my bug, right?
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That I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
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So at one point, I thought, entrepreneur, we'll see the world later, at least do something
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Things started happening.
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And then I started seeing impact.
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I would go to a professor to interview for, like, we've read your article, right?
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So these things are happening, and that gave me, you know, it just, I felt so good, you
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know, that something is happening, a conversation is being triggered.
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And in all this process, there's one specific incident that, like, really stood with me,
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which was in my final year.
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I was going to the campus gate to book a train ticket to Delhi.
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And waha pe main gaya, and I saw there was this bunch of 60 mess workers who were sitting
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on a hunger strike, okay?
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And my first reaction was that, why is no one around me?
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Itne bhi log nahi the, which was at the end of the gate.
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No one was stopping, Amit.
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These 60 guys are sitting, aur log, they're just passing, like, main 5 min toh khade hoke
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dekha ki, does no one want to know, ki kyu baitha hai yaha pe?
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Toh I felt that apathy that I saw in some students, pehle toh mujhe bada gussa aaya.
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I was very self-righteous, I think, in a way, back then.
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At least that is what I think, so uss waqt tha, so main gaya, and I had my platform.
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I called two of my friends, humne unka video bana ke, apne platform pe chalaaya.
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That triggered a conversation, ki boss, there is something else going on in this campus,
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And that opened my eyes to the fact that IIT community is not about students and faculty
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and alumni who do great things in the world, quote unquote great things in the world.
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The community is also about our workers.
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When you say campus community, you have to talk about everyone.
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And when I heard their story, and then uske baith maine baoth history badaaya, I realized
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that boss, right from the genesis of this institute, we have fucked this up.
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We have not thought about this community at all.
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Similar things have happened in the past, but students were relatively more active at
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So jab wo hua na Amit, maine pehli story toh kari, where I did the video, uske baad, because
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I felt so connected to the issue that I tried ki maa isko solve karunga, right?
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And I became the, I spoke so much to these guys, unka problem samjha, I went to talk
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to the faculty, unka perspective samjha, and I thought this political debate can be solved
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if two parties sit next to each other, baat karenge na toh solution nikal jayega.
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So I tried with three or four friends, I think they were post-graduate students, ki hum ye
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We were sitting, I remember being, I became the moderator, I had these, my faculty here
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on the right, my mess workers on the left.
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It was a one-hour discussion, Amit, and it went nowhere.
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Nothing happened, because no one was budging from their position.
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At one point, I felt ki you know, thoda sa bhi agar dono upar niche kar le, maybe something
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So that was my first hit of reality that, boss, you know, these political things, jo
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aapko lagta hai na ki baat karo, aise nahi hota hai.
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Second, I realised ki I was so ignorant about campus, wala merko uswak toh my, hota hai
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nahi dil pigal gaya aapka, ki people are sitting, toh kuch kar lete hain.
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But you don't know the complete story, you don't know their history.
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So how complex the issue was, I had to go to professors to understand, and still I could
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The thing I regret is ki yeh sa maine kar liye, I didn't write about it.
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Because I was so involved in solving the problem, that I lost the fact that as the, like I was
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also a reporter, right, me ne story nahi likhi uspe kabhi, because, and that left a deep
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regret in me till date, ki uswak kya hua tha.
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And I went to campus in 2019, you know, the thing I, still happens is that those people
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Unko jaise hi I asked my friend to book a room for me in a hostel, jaise hi unha naam
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dekha, and they were like, you know, this guy will help us.
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So they had the expectations, and again bolaya hai, they said, aap humar sa diye problem
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ho rahi hai, aap humari help karo.
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They got all the documents photocopied kara ke liye hai.
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And so I am saying that, that lens when I got, which continues till date, it showed
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me that, you know, maybe I am not looking at the world, like there are so many other
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things that are happening, and we are not looking at it.
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Like maine aap chaar saal nikal diye, and I never thought about those things, right.
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Then I also saw ek baar Jaadavpur University mein, I think 14 mein hua tha ye, there was
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a protest, there was this girl who had filed a complaint of molestation, and the administration
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did not respond properly, and students staged a protest, and police was called, and students
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To support, to show solidarity in campus across India, there were candle march protests were
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Toh maine pada, maine gaha, hum bhi karenge, I went to my friend who was in the student
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government, I said, you know, boss, karana hai, usne mana kar diya, he said no, and he
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is one of the politically conscious, very smart guy, he said, nahi, as the student
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Jim Khanna of IIT Kanpur, we don't engage in outside politics.
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I was so angry, ki kal koi humare saath bhi hoga na, like I have this thing about administration,
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I have written about it.
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Toh maine gaha, theek hai, so that, you know, maha se, it was another sense of rebellion,
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who are these to tell me ki hum Jadavpur University ke students ko support nahi karenge.
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Toh maine gaha, jo karna hai karo, I have met a bunch of PG students, because they are more,
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unlike undergraduates, post graduate students are more, they think beyond, they are more
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Toh humne kara, and humne posters, posters sabaya karwaya, and on the day it was planned,
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100 students gathered at the open air theatre, and humne gaha, you know, agar ek baar kathay
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ho gaye, toh yeh log kya karenge, right, I didn't take any permissions, we were there,
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and gaha chalo now, because the only thing was those, like why are you not allowing me
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in my campus to express support for students in another campus, who are you, why can the
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dean stop me, toh humne wo march kiya, and in fact, jab bache aage toh the security could
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So, you know, then you started feeling that, you know, challenge authority, because hum
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we are not even slogans, we just wanted to peacefully march to support fellow students
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at another campus, right, how can you say that we don't engage in outside politics,
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right, so I think wo build up hota gaya, that you know, it's not just about, main waha
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se start hua, campus hai, but campus mein aur log hain, sir humara hi campus nahi hai,
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there are other students, there are also us, so that consciousness started building up,
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and parallelly, you know, I mean, I'm saying this is the political part of it, right, and
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other things are happening, so, you know, all this journey, I think my, I developed
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more empathy, when, like, politically conscious toh mein hua hai, but empathy, because I reported
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a story about the struggles of Hindi medium students in campus, it blew me away, because
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when I spoke to this guy, the junior, he told me ki boss, main apne wing mein, compared
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to everyone else, main sari class jaat hum, I attend all classes, I worked triple hard
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to take notes, right, when everyone is playing, you know, cricket and watching movies, I study,
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and still I get less grades, and still I know when I'll be at the job market, you know,
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no one is going to hire me because I can't speak English, and again, I thought that,
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I am talking to him now as a reporter, like, you know, as a journalist who wants to write
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a story in the campus, but there would be people like him in my batch, and I was blind
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to it, you know, so, I am saying, you know what I am trying to say, that these ideas
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started coming in, and I think that's what I meant when I said, you know, it shaped me,
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that the shaping was happening in two parts, one was, theke bahar ka kuch nahi bata hai,
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but campus toh mujhe samajh aala tha, that there are things that I was not seeing, and
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parallelly, you know, I was meeting and reading about all our illustrious alumni, right, someone
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is making films, someone has built a unicorn company, you know, someone has done this brilliant
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research in the US, you know, the fortune 500 CEOs, you know, these people would come
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to campus, and you just feel, boss, ki, if you think, you are inspired by them, right,
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ki agar inhone kar hai, and they would come, they would have chai with you, right, these
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big people, look, and they tell you stories from the campus, which you feel ki yaar, humara
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bhi toh yeh story hai, so I think you get that confidence, ki, like, they were also
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idiots like we are, right, unka bhi aise tha, toh, you know, kuch bhi kar sakte hain, so
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these things were happening that gave me a lot of confidence, and that's how IIT shaped
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me, I mean, woi mai kairam, I mean, I have spoken a lot, but I'll stop here, but I'm
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saying at multiple levels, both from political consciousness to inspiration, to seeing the
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traps that I told you about, right, in the beginning, ki, I started seeing traps where
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we were stuck, so all of those together, I think, at least got me thinking that the
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world is not what it is, there are layers, and if you look at them deeply, you will really
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understand what is happening.
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And what strikes me in all this is that we live in a world which is full of bubbles,
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which is full of preset tracks which go a particular way and don't go anywhere else,
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and traps, as you said, so a lot of these people who are in IIT, IIT karke shayad koi
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IIM jayega, consultant banega, shayad koi abroad jayega, research karega, brilliant
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kaam karega, shayad koi software engineer karega, Facebook mein jayega, and these are
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different tracks, and you're all in your bubble and you're not looking out, and you
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said that, and they're not looking out, and you said that, one, of course, you avoided
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these tracks by saying things like, ki theek hai, mein placement mein nahi jaunga, mein
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wo game nahi khe lunga, mein apna kaam karunga, and you're also looking outside the bubble
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and looking kind of beyond these layers, and I realized while growing up also, when I kind
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of mapped my own sort of journey, it's very clear that there are all these layers which
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make you blind to different aspects of the world, and then at different point these layers
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kind of start falling away.
#
So my first question arising from this is that, do you think that it's not just a question
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of IIT changing you, it is also a question of you being the kind of person inherently
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who would be changed by IIT, kyunki the experiences you went through would be common to everyone,
#
campus toh same hai, jo ho raha hai same hai, but your nazariya is different, you're pursuing
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different things, and from that different chains of events happen which lead you to
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change in the ways that you say.
#
So what I'm trying to say is that, it's a two-way process, it's not just that the right
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things happened, but you were also the right person for them to happen too, while for somebody
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else, for them whatever track they took was the right track that they went down on.
#
So when you look at yourself, earlier before we started recording, you were speaking about
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how you developed this ethical sense right from the time that you were in school.
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So do you think there was something there, something fundamental about you that made
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you open to this change?
#
And if so, where did it come from, this sense of injustice or this sense of trying to be
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a change agent, did it also, and can you elaborate on what you had meant earlier while talking
#
about the ethical aspect of it, and you've kind of spoken about that a little bit here
#
I want to understand the sense of how you were shaped and where you were coming from.
#
Yeah, I'll tell you, but I just want to add something.
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I just get so passionate about my institute because I'm like one of the worst critics
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of IIT, but also one of the champions because I really think that institute has potential.
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And one of the things that I'm hating at the moment as I talk, I'm just speaking out loud,
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is that I just feel if I'm painting my institute in some broad brushstrokes as if I am different
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and everyone is this, but everyone has multitudes.
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I think sometimes deep criticism can come out of deep love, that's where the frustration
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I think I heard this quote from, what's the last lecture, who was the professor you seen?
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Yeah, something like that.
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He said something like that, if the exact words are not right, but something like that,
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if you're doing something wrong and no one is telling you, that means they've given
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up on you, something like that.
#
So I would never give up on my institute and I still, I think we are going on a very downward
#
trajectory given the political environment of the country is affecting us.
#
I was in the center when the CA NRC protests were happening, something had happened at
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IIT Kanpur and it just blew my mind about how propaganda works.
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So I could see what is happening at my campus, but I still, my friends, some of my deepest
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friendships are from IIT and I'll always be grateful, but I'm just saying that I just
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feel a bit, because I'm speaking, I'm not writing a piece where I could have all sorts
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It's just one-on-one conversation.
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So I just wanted to put that out that, yeah, I don't want to make, and I also feel honestly
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uncomfortable when I talk about my experience and if it sounds like, oh, I am different,
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because that, it just makes me uncomfortable for reasons I don't know.
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No, and I'll tell you something, just thinking aloud, that what you're saying about IIT,
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I feel the same way about India.
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You know, I will criticize, I will keep criticizing, I will dissent, I will protest, but I'm doing
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it because bloody hell, I love this country and I want it to change, right?
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That's where we're coming from.
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And the funny thing I'm with is that, I used to be in IIT, I used to sit in campus, I mean,
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I'm saying, I'm in IIT, we're abusing each other, this and that, but when someone outside,
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you know, the campus criticizes, you're very quiet, right?
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It used to happen at that time, how are you saying this, right?
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So I've never, now I think I don't think it that way, but at that time, you know, when
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you're inside the system, because like, we'll say, who are you going to say?
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Because it happened with me in Hindu, I'll talk about how I got there, when I had my internship,
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I still had a semester left, someone at the Hindu said, I went to this person to ask for
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some advice and then they say that it was something about Kashmir that I wanted, I said, I don't
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know anything, I'm this ignorant person who has no idea, can you tell me, I want to read,
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I want to understand because I don't know, so he told me something and then he made snarky
#
comments saying, you don't do this in IIT, so I was like, man, you teach so much in IIT,
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that I mean, ask the question, I mean, my profs have taught me so much that I'm asking you
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now, okay, man, I don't know enough about politics, I don't know, there was no consciousness
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at that time, so that, you know, it happens, you know, when, which is why I was telling,
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you know, you talk a lot about gentleman amnesia, right?
#
The fact that you read something in the papers and it doesn't hit, so I have a lot with IIT,
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you have reduced most IIT people, you know, one story comes every year, one crore package
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And then you say that these are the kids, you know, people take jobs in banks and you
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say that these are greedy people, you know, why are you going to the bank after doing
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I'm like, boss, do you know how placement happens?
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What like if someone comes, you know, a reporter should spend 10 days at IIT campus when placements
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are happening and then they will know like what actually happens inside the campus, don't
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make these blanket narratives around career choices people make, right?
#
So I'm saying that I just told you that as is the, I think the theme of your show, people
#
have multitudes, but I am just describing, you know, as a one person observer, so not
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to be generalized, that's the thing.
#
So ethics pe amit, when I was a, in grade two, I remember, like this is vivid memory
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in my head, I don't know why they stuck, where, see grade two mein toh kya tha, I just wanted
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to be the class topper.
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And there was this girl who, chaar saal se, you know, she would come first, I would come
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Toh mein lage, yaar mein aise kya gaya hai, why can't I come first?
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So one day I was in an English exam and the spelling the something like, you know, there
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and there were, toh mein kuch confuse ho gaya tha and I did not know the right answer.
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Kalti se I just saw the person sitting in front of me, what they had written and I knew
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they would get it right and mera ulta spelling tha.
#
And I felt so guilty that how could I look at this person's answer sheet aur mera galat
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bhi hai and I also wanted to be first in the class, right.
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Mere answer change nahi gaya, okay.
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And I missed getting on, it sounds so stupid in retrospect, but I missed getting the top
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position in the class by that one mark.
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But nah, ussaal I felt mujhe kuch bura nahi laga, because you know, it's like I did the
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In fourth grade, my class teacher is a GK ke exam tha and I think there was a change
#
So I knew the old guy, I think kuch Jaswant Singh, 2000, pata nahi kap ki baat hai, I
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think kuch change hua tha.
#
So I knew the old guy, my class teacher calls me and very quietly tells me, who is the,
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what have you written in your answer sheet?
#
Who is the defense minister?
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He said, no, the defense minister changed yesterday, write this answer, okay.
#
And Amit, I felt so uncomfortable that in the class of 40, why am I being favored?
#
You know, madlab, like mujhe kyun aap answer bata rahe ho?
#
And I also could not disrespect her by not changing the answer, right?
#
I think there was a Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha swap in those years.
#
Something, kuch hoga, I don't know, defense minister, merko answer bata diya mera teacher
#
And I felt so bad because like, why are you, you know, so this whole, that's what I'm saying
#
that this sense of right and wrong, especially when I am involved, right?
#
That I am being favored, that just felt so deeply wrong, ki you know, cheeze hain, don't
#
give me the explicit privilege.
#
Aur ye hota gaya, I can like, I can keep telling you stories that happened in school.
#
And IIT mein jaake bhi ye hua.
#
And ki, you know, aap, you know, like cheating hori hai, you know, things are happening,
#
people are, people, you know, it's a very standard technique across the globe, where
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you, aap apne resume mein, you know, the resume you create, it's never a true reflection
#
You, if you know X, you will show 10X.
#
And I was like, aap jhoot bol rahe ho, you know, you're lying.
#
I didn't, see again, these are very moralistic judgments, like who am I to tell anyone what
#
But I'm saying this is what I was feeling.
#
Toh mera toh, I had this resume, which was, you know, orange color, green color, you know,
#
the font was some, you know, maroon, something, something.
#
And it, maine finally ritek change hi nahi kar raha hai, maine gaya, okay, tum banao
#
yaar, you make these nice resumes.
#
I hated the idea of a resume because I said, you know, this document is a lie.
#
You know, you are selling, marketing kar rahe hoa.
#
Un dinon ka Instagram hai.
#
Ha, yeah, abhi bhi I think karthe hai, right?
#
So like resume, so I just felt that, uske baad main help kar tha toh loguki, you know,
#
I'm like, you know, you are in this position where, because these are friends, you know,
#
matlab they are, they are my friends and the people I care about.
#
Toh merao discomfort bhi chal raha hai, kaisa hai, but I also know ki, yaar, you know, this
#
guy needs to usko loan karna hai, usko nokri chahiye, toh iske bhi help karenge, uske bhi
#
help karenge, toh wo bhi chal raha hai.
#
So I'm saying, all of these things are happening.
#
And this professor, I was telling you about, he was my, like, okay, if people like him exist
#
in this campus, toh sab theek hai.
#
Because when he taught us programming, unhone ek din aake class me bol diya, that, you know,
#
for after like six programming assignments, chis-chisne cheating kariye hai, you know,
#
come and tell me, I'll give you one grade less.
#
If you don't tell me, and I catch you, you get an F grade, toh unhone ethical problem,
#
Aachi si game theory wali situation ho gayi hai.
#
That's why I love him, yaar, ki, you know, he played this game after and it was such a
#
scandal at campus, people are afraid, kyunki maximum people had done it, aap kya kare hain?
#
So people started hating him, kaisa prof hai, yeh wo yeh wo.
#
And I used to have long private chats with him.
#
So many things happened.
#
Sir, aap iske barayon batahein.
#
And he used to give me unfiltered access to inside story of the administration, kya aisa
#
And it was super critical.
#
He is one of those people, jo main aapko bataya na ki, he felt for the institute, he
#
Ab wo, he has kind of given up.
#
But wo tha, toh he was my moral compass, ki, you know, aisa hai, and he then took a job
#
Mane malar, sir, aap kyu ja rahe hoon?
#
Toh une reasons batahein, he said, one factor to pick a job was, I will head the ethics
#
committee of any institute I go.
#
Agar tu mujhe wo nahi doge, I don't want to come to your institute.
#
So I was, I was so inspired that, you know, log, you know, because at that age, aapko
#
hi bataya jata hai, ab idealist hoon, you know, aise thodi duniya chalti hai, you are
#
So I was like, you know, look at this guy, right?
#
He has all the accomplishments.
#
He studied at this college, went for a US PhD, is teaching here.
#
And if he can stand for ethics, toh like, who, like, you should stand for ethics.
#
So I'm saying, wo tha, so I was so glad ki you had some, you had some compass about kind
#
of things that are happening.
#
And that, that is what about, I think, ethics, and at that state with me, the current thing
#
is that I'm now in a different phase where I started questioning, ki wo ethics kahan
#
se aaye, which is why one of my current personal projects is to go deep into moral psychology
#
and moral philosophy, because, you know, then you start understanding, like, why am I like
#
Like, why do I believe this is right?
#
Toh yeh toh ek rabbit hole hai.
#
But I'm saying that time I was living it.
#
Now I'm just thinking about it.
#
Earlier, you'd mentioned Dawkins and Pinker, and I remember when I went into the rabbit
#
hole of evolutionary psychology and so on.
#
One book that I enjoyed reading was A Moral Animal by Robert Wright, where he talks about
#
the evolution of morality from an evolutionary psychology perspective, which was super interesting
#
But what, you know, but one of the things you kind of realize is that we are hardwired
#
in different contradictory ways through different processes for different reasons.
#
So we are hardwired, of course, to be selfish, but we are also hardwired for altruism.
#
And all these things exist together.
#
And I love this phrase of Pinker, where he's talking about nature and nurture, how the
#
And he says, nature gives you knobs, nurture turns them.
#
And I found that very resonant, right?
#
That there might be some knobs which are huge in you, but nurture doesn't turn and then
#
there might be some knobs which are like medium knobs and nurture turns them or not.
#
And that's kind of amplified.
#
So just on that question, I kind of wonder because, you know, and that's a question I
#
often ask myself as well that, you know, how do we live our lives?
#
It's a central question, ki meri kya hai, you know, initially, you can, you know, get
#
your sense of morality from whatever the conventional way of thinking might be in your family or
#
your small community or whatever, you know, and later on, you can modify it as you read
#
You can rely on your instincts, as you did when you saw that wrong spelling and you didn't
#
change your spelling, right?
#
You know, where you're relying on an instinct and rights argument would be you're hardwired
#
You are also hardwired to want to be first, right?
#
But you know, this one, one over and then somebody else, something else may kind of
#
So that's something I think about because it is very clear that some people have a greater
#
urge to be changemakers and some people have a greater urge to fight for fairness.
#
And I think there are two sides of that coin also, because you know, a lot of the moralizing
#
that people do can sometimes be driven by self-aggrandizement.
#
They are posturing to themselves, they're performing, as you would say.
#
But at the same time, in many cases, it's genuine.
#
Like I'm thinking of that incident when you didn't change the spelling, you were not performing
#
There's nobody, there's nothing.
#
You know, you could just have changed it and you didn't.
#
And that's also sort of there.
#
And I would imagine at some level, like, do you feel that at some level, that ethical
#
sense alone, forget the intellectual understanding of the different games that are being played
#
at IIT or journalism or all those different professions, but did that ethical compass
#
also have something to do with your being willing to turn your back on the conventional
#
way of doing things and say, I'll go to the hills?
#
So I've thought about it, Amit, and I don't know the answer, because again, I was telling
#
you when I was saying this, because see, ultimately, when you say convention, non-convention,
#
I want to say two things.
#
First of all, this whole idea of convention, that just feels a bit weird.
#
So I was listening to Noam Chomsky in a podcast, and he gave this frame that, you know, when
#
you go to a school, college, right?
#
He says, like, this is Chomsky's theory, I don't know.
#
I've not read apart from what he said.
#
He says that the fundamental human desire, you know, like our instinct is freedom, okay?
#
That's our ultimate quest.
#
But the society is structured in a way to suck that willingness of freedom out of you.
#
And your education, universities, your workplaces, they school you into believing that you can't,
#
like, they, you know, take out the idea of freedom from you.
#
Now, then you can ask, what is freedom?
#
I think there is no freedom in my head.
#
It's, you know, it's freedom is freedom.
#
Now, you think you are free, but you know, as I say, there's some trap in which you are.
#
So you can see it or not.
#
So it's a very complicated philosophical rabbit hole in itself.
#
But I'm saying that Chomsky, when he gave this framework that we are, you know, we want
#
to be free, but society structures school us not to be free.
#
And then he says that, and then you think about the notion of a career, he says that
#
I think something a hundred year old or two hundred year old idea, it didn't exist 500
#
So all I'm trying to say is that if you, when I think about human society, not at a five
#
year scale or a 10 year scale, but you expand your, you know, you talk in centuries or stuff
#
in that frame, you think what is normal.
#
Then I just see like, what, like, what is the meaning of convention?
#
You know what I'm trying to say?
#
Everything feels different.
#
Everything, everything feels different, okay, now I'm not looking at, okay, what happened
#
post liberalization in India.
#
You're not talking about India.
#
You're talking about human society.
#
So I'm saying when I see that frame and anyone tells me that like this question about convention,
#
non-convention, that's why I'm saying it just feels weird to me that I don't know that how
#
to even approach this question because I was telling recently to a friend, I met her after
#
a long while and she said, you know, you have done things differently and I told her that,
#
This just irritates me in a way.
#
I can't explain because yeah, like, like why I just feel that you're just an ordinary
#
human being trying to do things then, you know, it's just that tension.
#
The only thing I would say is that the element of risk taking, despite, I think I have a
#
solid cushion, like sometimes I feel that, you know, my worst case scenario would be
#
the dream for most Indians.
#
Like, if I fail as a writer, I fail as a journalist, then what will happen?
#
I have to go to Bangalore and do a very big tech company, you know, hyping job.
#
Hyping job that, you know, could not.
#
So I'm saying it's, it's not risky.
#
So you know, that's what I'm trying to say, what convention did you break when you have
#
But that element of that thing, I can take a risk, it goes back, like when I was sitting
#
in the IIT exam, and this I forgot, junior of mine reminded me, so in our time, in 2011,
#
you had IIT, you had AIEEE exam and you had to fill in the BITS, you had to give three.
#
I Amit only sat for one exam, I said AIEEE, I won't fill in the BITS.
#
If I don't get into IIT, I won't do engineering.
#
Now in retrospect, with now my frame of probability theory, it was a stupid decision.
#
Like you don't have to study anything extra, but that thing was, you know, I will, like
#
if what happens if those in six hours, I fuck up.
#
So I was like, it doesn't matter, we'll just play the, that one game, which is when, you
#
know, placements came, let's leave it, it's not that, fill your own, you know, if a good
#
company comes, sit down, no, it will not apply.
#
So I think that ability to, you know, just think that, I told you right now in the segment
#
that I'm not witty, I'm not funny as a person, after knowing that about myself, I participated
#
We have this event called Mridaksha at IIT, it's a festival thing, I went in the second
#
It's like, you know, to give an idea to other people, you go on stage to embarrass yourself.
#
It's like, it feels like roadies, you know, the audience gets their fun when people are
#
embarrassed on stage and they have to outwit the host.
#
You dance, you know, talent question.
#
I have zero talent in all of that, in front of like this packed auditorium, I embarrass
#
myself because, you know, that is not, that's not my strength.
#
I'm a speck swearing nerd, not that I can entertain people on stage.
#
My friends had a ball because they had a lot of fun, they were having fun, right?
#
I went and what I did, I was very embarrassed, I wrote a blog on it, you know, I was fine.
#
But that thing stated, how can I be embarrassed, you know, then in the fourth year I did that
#
I was like, I was embarrassed, but I will do it again.
#
And this time I didn't tell any of my friends, I applied and the date was closed, I was like,
#
you know, this time they have shortlisted me.
#
So my brother-in-law is very happy that now it will be fun this time too.
#
And Amit, you know what, this time I actually, so there were multiple rounds, one is the
#
campus round and then you compete with other colleges.
#
For the first time, I got embarrassed in stage one.
#
This time I got through the first round here, even when I'm saying that that's not me.
#
So this sense of that embarrassment, gambling, that has been a thread.
#
I have no, now there's no worst case scenario, right?
#
Worst case scenario is, the next day when you go to class, people will laugh.
#
I was so glad, I didn't know anyone else in my campus who would have been on that stage
#
Once before, then in the final you have to do it three times, you know, whatever, whatever.
#
I went, I qualified my campus round, then there's another prelims at the college level,
#
I mean other colleges, that also I qualified.
#
After that, in the final, no, six, there's a six, six, that I didn't, one of my friends
#
who's like damn funny and like Bobby is doing screenwriting, I think, so he won, he was
#
Even after losing, I felt good that yes, you deserve it.
#
But I just wanted that stage, you know, that in the second year, how did that happen?
#
So that's what I'm saying, that this gambling, you know, when you said convention, I don't
#
I just feel that this thing of, ki gamble karenge, that has been a constant.
#
Now I don't know where that comes from.
#
Let me contextualize what I, let me take that forward and contextualize it in terms of journalism.
#
That kya hai ki in pretty much all professions and in pretty much life, most people get into
#
these grooves and they go along these grooves and that's a game that is being played.
#
And in journalism also, I see that there are different kinds of frames that you can bring
#
You can become a journalist and say that yeh career hai, thek hai mai career karunga, career
#
mein yeh skills chahiye, either I am good at it or I like it or both and all of that and
#
you say ki thek hai mai career mein perform karunga, excel karunga and you enter that
#
groove and that is what animates you and those are the incentives at play and they are conventional
#
That's one, as an individual that is one sort of path you can take.
#
And the other path is to say that, is to go in there with a different kind of set of values
#
and a different kind of fire and say ki badal nahi hai, ki journalism is about you know
#
all the cliches, truth to power, comfort the afflicted, afflict the comforted so on and
#
so forth ki mujhe waisa kaam karna hai, I want to write great stories, I want to do great
#
investigative journalism, you are burning with that, you go in with that and that's
#
you know one set of motivations and the incentives are slightly different and the way it plays
#
out is if I look at it at the institutional level, at the institutional level for pretty
#
much every big media house, you have to stay within a particular groove and not challenge
#
those in power too much, ki thek hai aap media house ho, you are running a big newspaper
#
but you also have a chemical factory and that is an incentive ki kal waha pe raid lag jayega
#
right aur ek bandhe pe government ne raid laga li toh it's like you know a warning
#
to everyone else, it has a chilling effect.
#
So the incentive, the institutional incentive for these big institutions is toe the line,
#
don't mess around right.
#
But there is another kind of set of values in play where people are animated by something
#
higher, they are saying ki journalism, you know I might be running a company or an enterprise,
#
journalism is not about a profit and loss statement, ki kuch aur hai, there is a calling,
#
there is a higher purpose, wo karna hai, kuch bhi ho jay karna hai you know and what I increasingly
#
see is that in India for very rational reasons anybody who has more than a certain amount
#
to lose is you know toeing the line but there are of course exceptions who are sort of fighting
#
you know your alt news and news minute and all those guys, you know they are standing
#
up there and they are fighting and they are clearly animated by principle, aisa nahi hai
#
ki isme market bara hai or they are occupying some niche or whatever no, they are animated
#
by principle and they are doing what they are doing.
#
So the individuals are animated by principle there you know and Dhanya Rajendran has a
#
higher purpose and Rahul Kanwal does not right, simple as that and equally an institution
#
like a news minute will take those risks and will take those stories because they feel
#
that what they are doing is not just about supply and demand, you know there is a sort
#
of story you want to do and you are hoping it shapes a demand but you are going to do
#
it anyway and you know a bigger media house may not be like that.
#
So what do you feel about this game because I feel you know uncomfortable standing in
#
judgment over the bigger media houses or the journalists doing conventional things, jinkha
#
career track chal raha hai, they have families, they have children to send to school, I don't
#
want to stand in judgment over them, even though as an individual what I would be drawn
#
to is being the independent guy who is doing what he is doing in spite of everything and
#
you are in the same sort of thinking as me as far as I can make out.
#
So what is your thinking when you sort of look at this landscape and does it make you
#
feel lonely, did you ever feel lonely in IIT for example when you were fighting the fight
#
strategy you were fighting, you know that sense of frustration that why aren't enough
#
people, why don't enough people see things the same way as I do, even though it is rational
#
for them and it is understandable.
#
Yeah again I think thank you for bringing it up that there is no I mean I am describing
#
it but not from a place of judgment it is more descriptive in what you are feeling,
#
I think there is a difference if people can appreciate that but I don't I just remember
#
one incident where I deeply felt lonely at IIT and that was towards like, I am telling
#
you about placement, I say that IIT placement office is the place where engineers are killed
#
So there was one incident when placement was happening and you know Amit I was helping
#
my friends, I was not sitting, I was making them prepare, interviews prep, so that moment
#
of placement is full of emotions, if you want to study human emotions, go to IIT during
#
placement for 10 days, you will see everything there, from jealousy to ambition to fear,
#
There was one I won't get into details, I mean then I can keep talking about IIT for
#
next 5 hours but one incident was which it happened and I just gave up, I mean at that
#
time Tamasha movie was released, you know Imtiaz Ali, and we went to our hall, I mean
#
I didn't see the movie, I was like what is the drama here, the drama is going on in my
#
campus, that's it and that day I went, it was late in the night, late evening and I went
#
to the campus CCD and I went there and sat alone, I said like I could not see what was
#
happening in my hostel, you know I saw the smartest kid I knew running around for a job
#
and I was like how is this possible man, this person is significantly smarter, why is he
#
behaving like this, you know, so like I am just saying, I am just describing my state
#
of mind, so I went, I sat there and I opened Facebook, there is a senior of mine whom I
#
met, she is 6-7 years older than me but I had a heart to heart with her, so I messaged
#
her and I was like explain a little man, what was like in your time, what was this, that,
#
that, so all that discussions happened, so that just gave me comfort that you know I
#
am not an idiot, there are others who have thought about it, so at some point there was
#
this friend of mine, he is a very hardcore lefty, he is an anarchist, he has principles,
#
so his perspective is different, but when I didn't understand, I would just hang out
#
with him that what is it, he used to tell me 10 more things which I didn't even see,
#
so I was like no there are people, it's just that you will roam in the campus, you will
#
see in the community, I am not the only person, there are other people thinking about these
#
questions, it's about finding them, talking to them, so at that time I think in that way
#
at least at the campus level, I won't say, I mean again I don't know if the picture is
#
emerging that I was always in distress at IIT, I was very happy, it's just that things
#
are happening in parallel and questions are coming, so not strictly lonely apart from
#
that one moment when my batches were being placed, that was a very low time for me.
#
And journalism, what's your, you know, to kind of extend the question?
#
So journalism, I can tell you instances, again so let's say the context, now we have spoken,
#
so I think you have the frame where I am coming from, the frame is clear, again I had no idea
#
that how mainstream journalism happens, I didn't know any journalist before I became
#
a journalist, I entered into journalism by pure chance, even now someone asks me that
#
how a young kid becomes a journalist, I am like I don't know, you know, I was not supposed
#
to be a journalist, I became a journalist by total accident, so I didn't know what are
#
the norms, but the first principles, you know, truth-seeking, something something, so my
#
time at the Hindu was great, so I started my job at the Hindu as a reporter, data reporter
#
and then I went to HD and then I did a six-month fellowship at the Wall Street Journal in New
#
York in the investigative reporting team and by the HD was two years and after that I left,
#
I did two months at India Today and then I've been freelance, so in this HD, Hindu was great,
#
I was learning the basics of, you know, ABC of reporting, trying to understand, in HD
#
there was one incident that I was what 24, I think 24, yeah, I think 24 and Amit, it
#
first shock, so I don't know why still people acknowledge, do you know the Bobby Ghosh incident?
#
Yeah, I know the Bobby Ghosh incident where he had to leave, so just to put in clearly
#
because you know people talk in abstract, so I know a lot about it, I can't say in because
#
people have told me, but to one line description for who don't know, Bobby Ghosh was the editor
#
in chief of HD and he, in theory, he resigned, in reality, he was asked to leave, okay, because
#
the PM of this country, Mr. Modi, didn't want him to stay, itna I can say with authority
#
without disrespecting what people have told me in private and a similar thing happened
#
a few years before this with Chidambaram, who was an FM, I think, and Raju Nari said
#
to it, right, so that's the, so I'm saying, let's just keep it as a fact because somehow,
#
you know, people still do, he said, she said on this incident, so that's, now, you know,
#
the day this happened in the newsroom, I, so I have this habit, I write long emails
#
to people, like I write to you, right, before the show, I love writing emails, so I wrote
#
an email to TN Nainan at Business Standard, I read his book and I loved it and I said,
#
sir, I want to meet you, I wrote him an email, he called me to the office, I went, had a
#
great chat with him, I was coming back, exited the Barakamba Metro and my friend called me
#
and she said, did Nainan offer you a job, I was like, why would Nainan offer me a job,
#
I don't even want to work at Business Standard, he said, no, maybe you should look out because
#
Bobby is going, and I was, what do you mean, he said, come to office, I will tell you,
#
I go to office and that mail comes from Madam Shobana Bhartiya that he designed and then
#
I was in shock and then people know what has happened, I was still trying to process, there
#
were a couple of colleagues, we were looking at each other and again, Amit, just to know,
#
I am 18 years, 18 months old in journalism, okay, and at that time, you don't know anything,
#
bigger things, now I have thought so much about the media, so at that time, you are
#
just in a different zone, you know what affected me the most that day in that newsroom, I have
#
that vivid memory, everything that day in the newsroom was normal, you know, I would
#
expect like what was the signal, the signal was, at least for me, that the government
#
is saying, we can take your editor-in-chief's job, who are you as a reporter, you know,
#
that was the sense I got, that brother, your boss lost his job, who are you, stay in line,
#
it's not an explicit message, but don't you think people would imagine that?
#
I think in fact, that question is a very basis of the job, right, and I was like, there should
#
be like a newsroom gathering, where people discuss, okay, what has happened, this like,
#
what could be the most direct attack on free press in this country, so now, you know, when
#
I go out and talk to my friends and they talk about press freedom, so brother, you know,
#
I want to engage, okay, and I do engage with everyone on these issues, but when someone
#
crosses the line about press freedom, I was like, boss, I've been inside, okay, don't
#
lecture me, that there is free press in this country, it is being printed, critical articles
#
are being published, how can you say that the government is not censoring, I was like,
#
boss, that is not the story, you don't know how things work, don't tell me, I have seen
#
what happens, and the chilling effect for me was that that day, the newsroom was functioning
#
as if nothing has happened, people are laughing, story file, edit, people are roaming around
#
graphics, and thankfully, like I've been fortunate, I was not a daily news reporter, so I didn't
#
have such work, but Amit, I'm just saying that shouldn't there be something like, like,
#
is it too idealistic to expect that for 15 minutes, the newsroom gathers and discusses
#
like what has happened, that day I thought, again, you can say it's coming from a sense
#
of judgment, and I know, when I hear about the kind of salaries, people make in journalism,
#
the exploitation that happens, you know, someone told me this friend that, you know, when you
#
think about morals, even having thinking morally is a privilege, you know, what I'm saying,
#
I just felt here, I didn't come to this profession to become immune to these things, you know,
#
I mean, I'm saying that everything is going on in the groove, and which is rational, they
#
got families to support, they have jobs, everything is going on in the groove, everything is fine,
#
and they're not thinking of press freedom, or they're not thinking that, oh, you know,
#
what is the great meaning of journalism and blah, blah, blah, but you are, so it's almost
#
like there are two games being played at the same time, and but it shapes, you know, in
#
a way, like, and there were other people, at least, it's not like everyone, and I don't
#
know what people were talking about in private, I'm just seeing what is happening around me,
#
then two or three of us, we went down, you know, had tea, thinking what does it mean,
#
what does it mean for us, what does it mean for the country, all of those discussions
#
At that time, the next day, I'm going from here, I'm resigning, that's a thought, like,
#
how can I be in a place where so and so things are happening, you know, idealism is wrong,
#
the right and wrong thing is coming, so anyway, I stuck around, but I was frustrated that
#
what is happening, and fortunately, because of my next boss, I got a fellowship at the
#
journal, so instead of leaving, you know, I got an escape, and then Amit, what happens?
#
Now think, now imagine me, okay, I am coming from this place where I'm feeling discomforted,
#
and now I land in New York, in Wall Street Journal, culture shock, big culture shock,
#
because there, these discussions are not happening.
#
I was in the investigative reporting team, at the same time, if you have read the book
#
Bad Blood, or if you have heard about Theranos, John Carrereau, John Carrereau was my colleague,
#
the team I was working with, they were a Pulitzer for their, you know, computational data reporting
#
on Obamacare, oh no, I'm forgetting, some Medicare, in 2011-12, they were telling me
#
how they work, I saw firsthand, like, when you talk about, you know, we used to see New
#
York Times Journal breaking the story, big story, I was seeing, okay, how that is done,
#
you know, it was happening, and I could see the resources they had, the conversations
#
they were happening, it was about story, storytelling, you know, I was with my boss, immediate boss,
#
one of the finest, like, he was just brilliant, he was good at math, good at programming,
#
good at storytelling, good at investigative reporting, so I was like, you know, and he
#
was not boxed, you know, which is my other rant about how people perceive data journalists,
#
he was like a solid person, I'll see how he worked, they thought about their families,
#
and they come to the office, they're having, chilling, and then they'll work, you know,
#
how big projects are being taken up, I was blown away that, boss, like, what was I being,
#
like, where, like, what was happening in HD and what was happening in Wall Street Journal,
#
right, so, now once you see it, you can't unsee it, I mean, you've seen it, that, first
#
principles are here, and I'll tell you an interesting incident in John Carreiro's book,
#
so Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, okay, and the Theranos story for listeners
#
is Elizabeth Holmes, I think, so she built this giant company, you know, around, you
#
know, these diagnostic texts, and big, you know, I think it became a $9 million company,
#
but the whole company was a fraud, and the journal, over three years, exposed it, and
#
now, you know, trial, everything is happening, right, Rupert Murdoch had, I think, put in,
#
I'm forgetting the exact numbers, but maybe $100 million in the company, he was an investor,
#
and when the first email went from John Carreiro, you know, the journal to Elizabeth Holmes,
#
you know, we are doing a story, she came to New York, and fifth floor where we had the
#
newsroom, it's in his book, she didn't go to the fifth floor, she went to the seventh
#
floor, where Murdoch sometimes comes and says, she goes and says, aapki company aapka kabar,
#
you know, it's your company and it's your paper, so you should handle it, Rupert Murdoch
#
of all people, okay, of like, what we know about him, he says, go talk to people at the
#
fifth floor, right, I am like, not the right person, when I read that anecdote, I'm like,
#
I said, Rupert Murdoch also has multitudes, you know, whatever, so that, and then I saw
#
Jeff Bezos had owned, you know, like he had bought Washington Post, and I read a story
#
in the front, you know, on the homepage of Washington Post, where it was about how Amazon
#
Alexa is surveilling on users, okay, it was the, I think, big story on WAPO, and I'm like,
#
okay, Bezos owns Amazon, Bezos owns Washington Post, so this is first principles.
#
And this is also a set of values embedded in these institutions, institutions, right,
#
or yahaan kuch nahi hai, yahaan kuch nahi hai, right, so again, I still feel I had, later
#
I realized that this comparison is not fair, you know, it's a political economy of India
#
is different, but what I'm saying is you see that, jo aap imagine karte ho, right, ki
#
how media institution should be, I saw it, I also saw the flaws, right, but I'm saying
#
I saw, I come back to HD, day one, I am listening, story nahi chhapegi hai, waha pe aaye journal
#
mai I would pitch an idea and discussing, people are like, aise kar sakte hain, you
#
know, we'll do it that way, yaha pe, oh no, no, no, no, not like, who will, like, yeh
#
toh story hoegi nahi, you're walking around, this is day one, someone is coming and telling
#
me wo story nahi hoi, aise nahi hua, so I was so confused, ki, and usige, you know,
#
just around the time, I'm mentioning this because this is a contrast, I just returned
#
from the US, and Hindustan Times leadership summit was supposed to happen in a month,
#
and I was just placed in the political bureau, and they're talking about ministers ko invite,
#
you have to invite ministers, you have to invite bureaucrats, and again, I was thinking
#
ki boss, what is happening, if a reporter has to go and invite a politician, and a bureau,
#
oh, they didn't have a separate team for all this, no, report, because you are meeting
#
them, na, day to day, toh wo hi jaa ke bureaucrat ko, if you're giving the secretary, toh I
#
was like, like, how will reporting work, sometimes I get, you know, some friends tell me that
#
if you have to build sources, you can't offend them on a daily basis, that's different,
#
like, there is, it's complicated, but I'm saying it's, yah toh you're inviting them
#
to your conference, so again, I was like, what is happening, on the other hand, I was
#
conflicted because largely, I think, HD was doing news fine, story bhi break hori hai,
#
HD broke a big story on Rafal, ab aise main kisi ko bata toh, they don't believe it, there
#
was a big story on Rafal, which Hindustan Times broke, my, I think there's colleagues
#
when things happened in Kashmir, front page stories in HD challenging the government,
#
so I, there was a big cognitive dissonance, I could not understand, on one hand, the way,
#
you know, the editor-in-chief at the time, he would handle meetings, and I felt like,
#
what a smart guy is commissioning these stories, you know, which will challenge critical, and
#
on the other hand, I'm seeing all of this, so I'm saying, yeh sab, you see all of these
#
things and, you know, questions come in about what is, but ek din something happened at
#
HD and mera give up ho gaya, I went back to my home, again, thankfully, I had my diary,
#
I wrote it down, I slept, stayed on that for a week, and I typed my resignation letter
#
that I'm done, I'm done, and main resign kar diya, thankfully, my boss was kind enough,
#
do hafte mein I was out of HD, this is around January 19, toh that day, you know, malab,
#
I had this, I still have this whole page in my diary, where I've exactly written what
#
I felt, ki why I left, and you know, anytime, and like, my boss was so generous, at the
#
time that, I don't know if there are 25 year old reporters, who get like, my boss gave
#
me freedom ki boss, don't forget daily, you take one month to write one story, I'll give
#
you one page in the paper, right, that was the promise he made, and he used to do that,
#
so main usut hai yaar, main pagal hoon kya hai, like, who, the HD real estate, in your
#
head, you know, it's like, itni million copies jati hai, you know, people read, toh I sometimes
#
felt ki yaar, befkoof toh nahi tha, like, you left that opportunity, but I had that page
#
in my diary, you know, which is why, wo moral compass ki jo baad hoti hai na, I think that
#
my journal holds me accountable, when you talk more about that, or you're not comfortable
#
about that incident, okay, I won't go into specific concrete, there's another story I
#
can tell you in another institution, but isme tha there's a story I wrote, which had something
#
to do with the prime minister, but it was not, honestly, I mean, it's not a story, ki
#
I'll say, ki maine, you know, like, I broke this story, it was, I thought it's a normal
#
story, my editor just sat on it, okay, my problem was not sometimes, you know, see,
#
I'm not an idiot that I don't know the pressures that editors face, you know, and I think one
#
of the most inspiring things inside newsrooms is to see editors who, despite knowing all
#
the pressures, fight their way out to get a story in the paper, I hope that if readers
#
could see, you know, the daily fights that journalists fight inside the newsroom to get
#
things in the paper, despite the pressures, you know, the model of, you know, this, so
#
I don't like this phrasing of Godi media, you know, I like Ravish, but this whole Godi
#
media framing makes me, it's a very simplistic narrative, because individuals fight within
#
And see, agar kuchhap gaya, toh you won't know na ki uske piche kya hua hai, if something
#
is not published, then aur aapko pata chaliye, like I'm telling you now, then aapko lagega,
#
you know, there is a problem.
#
So I'm saying when things are normal, you don't know that there's something more that
#
has happened to see what you're reading that way, you know.
#
So and that goes up to the level of proprietors, because you know, now I try to talk to a lot
#
of senior people in my profession rather than people in twenties, because I want to know
#
from them, you know, what has changed?
#
And I'm fortunate that a lot of senior people in this profession have given me time, one
#
to one, telling me like detailed stories about their interactions with proprietors, you know,
#
challenges they have faced.
#
And that really inspires me that they have stuck to this profession.
#
They know, and they are in the top positions, you know, so anyway, so the point I was trying
#
to make that in HD, this is my editor sat on a story, my problem was not you sat on
#
a story, the problem was you ignored it, you come and tell me boss, there's a problem,
#
you just behaved as if nothing happened, you know, that there's no story, you just pretend
#
as if and that, you know, it's just, I don't know, like, how can I, like, how will I find
#
the motivation to work on my next story?
#
I used to write for a major newspaper, and I won't take names, but I mean, it's guessable.
#
And my thing with them was that even if they change a word in my column, they have to send
#
a playback and approve it and all that and they knew I was very particular about that.
#
So one day, my editor kind of called me just when the playback was due when she was almost
#
And she said that Amit, I wanted to call you and speak to you because if I just send you
#
a mail, I know you'll get very angry that in your column, and it was, of course, very
#
critical of the government.
#
And even in the past, this newspaper had carried many columns by me very critical of the government,
#
including when I had blasted demonetization, a piece that was, you know, retweeted by Rahul
#
Gandhi and Kejriwal and everyone.
#
And she said that I know you'll get angry, but there is one sentence I have to cut.
#
And I am sort of, I have to cut it.
#
And it's because we have been, there's been a lot of pressure from above and about two
#
people in particular, you know, me and somebody else I won't name, but a person who's been
#
a guest on my show and all this is easy to guess.
#
And there have been complaints about the two of you and there's a lot of pressure.
#
So I'll just cut this one sentence and I let the rest of it stay.
#
And what do you want to do?
#
And the rest of the column was very critical.
#
So I said, okay, keep it, you know, if it's just that one line, it's fine.
#
The rest of it, it's basically saying what I want to say.
#
And if you kind of go to indianca.com and you go to the original piece, you can make
#
out what the line is, but whatever, it doesn't really matter.
#
And then I started thinking about, okay, what is the correct course of action for me now?
#
And this other person in the same boat as me chose not to write for them anymore.
#
And my question was, okay, what do I do?
#
If I give up this space, and it's an important space in a big newspaper, then the space might
#
be taken by somebody who is more client to the government, right?
#
So should I continue to fight in small ways in whatever way I can, or should I give it
#
So I made a choice to keep writing.
#
I think I wrote one or two more pieces for them and then I gave it up anyway, because
#
of the sort of logic I went into earlier, that if I write, I'll write my own platform.
#
Now there's no point writing for anybody else.
#
But and I want to underscore that point that these are, you know, editors in all of these
#
places at an individual level have had to face very difficult choices and they have
#
You know, these people carried countless critical pieces by me of this particular government
#
in the harshest possible terms.
#
But it's just the incentives of the game.
#
It's not that the people are craven, that they are bad, nothing, it's just the incentives.
#
Exactly, and I think that is what makes, you know, which is why I keep saying to my friends,
#
like I really love to talk to people outside the press about how the media works.
#
Like, you know, I have what I saw in the seven years and this is a point that we should not
#
We, you know, my model is that like there is a, like you can't disassociate the press
#
from the politics of the country.
#
You are an idiot if you are ignoring, you know, key.
#
That we should not become complacent.
#
That normal that, you know, when you start feeling it, the normal hair that.
#
So my only thing was that did the editor not trust me enough to say he was.
#
The fact that you ignore it.
#
You tell me now with that, how will I get the motivation to work on my next story?
#
I mean, I just think that it's an ethic that I've developed now.
#
I don't, I can't go back in the past and think about whether I would have reacted this way
#
But I think today would be if I am in that position of being an editor, I am going to
#
be totally straightforward with everyone I work with.
#
You tell and you just tell me that's what I'm saying.
#
You just be upfront that boss, this is the situation.
#
We're going to do it right and so so that's what and you know, one of my frames for thinking
#
about this is that, you know, it's easy to stick to your principles 100% of the time
#
rather than 90% of the time.
#
One of my friends, you know, we were discussing, he told us that's easy because cognitively
#
You know, wow, let's be this beautiful.
#
You know, yes, that's the way it is.
#
So and again, you know, I, I just told you this whole story, you know, I never, thankfully
#
it's the later part of the episode, but you know, at when I left HDI, only two or three
#
friends knew why this happened.
#
I made excuses, you know, I am done with journalism, you know, like I want to break.
#
I want to write long form because, you know, you feel that I don't want to be a martyr
#
because I'm not, you know, sometimes this whole resignation stories feel like again,
#
hi, you know, so I'm saying it's, that's not the, I mean, we've already established
#
that no one listens to this podcast, so it's fine, but yeah, I'll tell you one thing,
#
which, and I, do you want to hear my India Today experience?
#
I want to hear every story, boss.
#
So I'll tell you the India Today story without taking names, but yeah.
#
So I went to India Today, they approached me because I just wanted to see exit polling.
#
I love stats and I heard that, you know, this access thing, I wanted to see behind the scenes
#
like, you know, how they work and how does TV work?
#
So that was my curiosity.
#
This is before the 2019 election.
#
I worked there for two months as a consultant, as a reporter, but I was on a consulting two
#
month arrangement and I will not get into details about election forecasting, but just
#
so the people know, they're brilliant at it.
#
Even, you know, when access had put out this forecast, I saw all the nasty Twitter debate,
#
even from people I respected, you know, India Today, the numbers are playing from the back.
#
I was like, boss, there's nothing, I mean, they are doing solid, there's guy Pradeep
#
Gupta at access, doing solid work because I interviewed him about the methodology.
#
I saw his sheets, great.
#
So there is this whole narrative, you know, because India Today is like this, their forecast
#
You know, that's the term.
#
So and I saw all the conspiracy theories people created.
#
So it just feels weird that you are so smart, man, why are you not thinking about it here?
#
So anyway, so keep that part aside.
#
I am not talking about it now.
#
Let's talk about my experience.
#
So I'll just tell you one story when it's going to go.
#
There's this thing that I know, it's, you know, one day in the newsroom, I didn't have
#
But, you know, I didn't feel good that I was sitting empty for two months.
#
And they were paying me well.
#
So I didn't feel that I was sitting empty, I should do some story.
#
So in the room where a couple of people were sitting and I just told them, do you know
#
that Mr. Modi and Mr. Gandhi, if you look at the Twitter metrics, Mr. Gandhi gets more
#
retweets, average retweets per tweet are higher than Mr. Modi.
#
And they were like, wow, is it?
#
I said, I tried to tell them, it's not like newsbreak.
#
And they're like, interesting things that people have done on Twitter.
#
This is just like, you know, banal thing, but they're like, no, that's interesting.
#
And I was working on a separate project at the time with a couple of friends where we
#
had collected this database of all Indian parliamentarians on Twitter handles.
#
So I had this giant Twitter, you know, I could do anything with all of these accounts, because
#
this Modi Gandhi, you know, it will be the lead, I did that story, it was not a big deal.
#
It gets shared on Twitter, it gets abused, India Today is running propaganda, because
#
you know, and one thing I'll tell you, the same thing happened at HD, actually for very
#
I mean, I just feel that, you know, our Indian politicians, like retweet numbers, even the
#
prime minister, like, they're so attached to it, anti-metrics, sometimes I was like,
#
you know, if Mr. Modi meets me in a party, you know, I would like to tell him boss, don't
#
behave like a 22 year old reporter, you're a prime minister, anyway, so, but it irritates
#
Okay, so I go to the, I knew it because something happened at HD on similar lines.
#
So I go and this person calls me the editor and he says, did you look at other metrics
#
You know, while doing your analysis, average retweets per tweet and all, I said yes, I
#
Then he shows me his phone, WhatsApp screenshot, he tells me that, you know, this person who
#
manages social media for Mr. Modi, you know, you have used the wrong metrics, okay.
#
So at first point, I was like, who is this person to tell me?
#
How can you say I'm wrong?
#
Like, you know, it's almost, you tell me, Samarth, you're the shittiest reporter, you're
#
Don't question my integrity, you know, because I don't care about who wins, who doesn't win.
#
That's now my frame where like I'm single-handedly focused on my story.
#
What happens after the story?
#
So I was like, so I kept it inside me, but I was like, okay, go on.
#
So they said that, you know, other metrics should be seen, so I was like, did you see
#
I was like, I saw, but I chose these ones.
#
So I said, why don't you do another story with these other metrics?
#
I said, okay, I'll consider.
#
So I did something and then I came back and I asked, I can do a story with some other
#
And they said, does that show that Mr. Modi is better?
#
That is not the point why I would write my story if the data was telling me that.
#
And it was in some cases, but I'm seeing the question was inappropriate.
#
How can you ask me that question was my thing.
#
So anyway, they said, you know, you do a second story, I said, okay, I'll do another story
#
and there are two threads, so I'll just tell one story and another one.
#
So I said, okay, I went and I did a, okay, so let me put it this way, I took four metrics
#
in which two, I think, Rahul was better and two Mr. Modi was better, Mr. Rahul and Mr.
#
And you know, Amit, what happens next?
#
I tried to write something that, you know, because I was not lying, this is what the
#
And I was like, readers can interpret.
#
And anyway, in my head, I knew this is so banal, like it does not tell me anything about
#
There's nothing meaningful.
#
There's nothing meaningful, right?
#
It's just that one day I was sitting empty and I was, you know, that's it.
#
Nothing more than that.
#
So what they do in a story file and I see the story on the internet, you know, my lead
#
which was like balance, balance, balance, okay, they just didn't even edit the story.
#
The charts, the rearrangement, which was the two charts that showed Mr. Modi, Mr. Gandhi
#
and I was like, what nonsense is this?
#
Like you don't even tell the reporter what you're doing.
#
And my byline was there.
#
I emailed, remove my byline.
#
So the person at the desk, he could not understand, like, like who are you?
#
So the person at the desk, he could not understand, like, like who asks, when I can't explain,
#
I said, yeah, remove it.
#
Because I'm with my philosophy is clear.
#
I still have disagreements with editors, you know, all of us, headline angle, once a story
#
is published under your name, then I am responsible, right?
#
Fight has to be done before the story is published.
#
You do the fight with the editor, but if stories out and there are stories on the internet,
#
which I feel uncomfortable about in retrospect, and good stories, I'm not talking in independent
#
Where I felt, no, I am embarrassed, not with the writing, but my story, but just take responsibility.
#
But this is not my consent.
#
It's like, did I come here for this?
#
It was, I saw what happened.
#
It was just disaster management.
#
The whole show is about how Mr. Gandhi was a late comer to Twitter.
#
Mr. Modi was old, but he's like the star.
#
And this discussion is going on and I am on TV, on the show, and I was not told what is
#
I'm just listening it live.
#
And I was shocked because it's, and they're saying analysis by Mr. Samarth Mansal.
#
And it's just discomforting that I am in a TV show where like there is some disaster
#
And of course, when the Twitter thing happened, right?
#
TV is the biggest platform.
#
So there is disaster management going on and there was one line, however, Mr. Gandhi is
#
better on this one metric.
#
And I then I realized that, you know, that like how these things happen, like if you're
#
on the outside, how would you know this is something I'm observing from the inside.
#
You would think how Samarth is doing the story, what happened to him?
#
You could just think that the numbers are telling something.
#
More followers, more tweets, whatever, whatever.
#
Again, I was just want to keep re-emphasizing for such a banal thing as metrics.
#
There's like, there's nothing policy, there is nothing government, nothing.
#
Some stupid social media numbers, like you're being slave to Jack Dorsey, right?
#
Doesn't affect the country in any way, a fight over GDP.
#
So I'm seeing this whole tamasha happening, okay?
#
And I was Amit, and you know, the day this was happening, that was the press freedom
#
I think it was 3rd May, 2019.
#
I'm remembering from memory, I think press freedom day.
#
So I was like, now I understand, you know, how TV works.
#
And it's not that people in India today were not smart, damn smart people, you know, they
#
knew stuff, but this happens.
#
So I said, come on, now this thing is over.
#
Then they asked me to do another story that, you know, MPs have gone too far, we should
#
look at political leaders.
#
So why don't pick 10 leaders across the country, one from every party, okay?
#
And have diversity and do a similar thing.
#
I was like, I don't even have to put in effort, but I didn't want to take any responsibility.
#
I said, like, how do you choose the 10?
#
So I just had a list, you take one, one, and one party, one person.
#
I took the list, went and said, this is a list, please, if this is fine, I don't mind,
#
If this list is fine, go ahead.
#
I am told next day that, you know, this list, they were 10, Amit Shah.
#
And I was like, no, but the rule was that one politician per party, Mr. Modi is in the
#
So where, like, why should Amit Shah be on the list, right?
#
And they were like, no, you know, but Modi is PM.
#
So I was like, come on, let's add Amit Shah, where am I going?
#
I added Amit Shah on the list.
#
Then again, they do a TV show, et cetera, et cetera, it's done.
#
Maybe Amit Shah was happy that, you know, he is not being left out with Mr. Modi.
#
Now next day, now this is a weekend.
#
I am from Pitampura, I was going, you know, for my dance class, I was taking dance classes
#
So I was behaving like that weird guy, you know, in the metro, I was earphones plugged
#
and I'm practicing my moves because I was single-handedly focused on dance.
#
I get out of my metro and I get a call from India Today.
#
They said, Samarth, what have you done?
#
I'm like, what have I done?
#
They're saying, you know what, election time is going on and Akhilesh Yadav is angry.
#
We have four women star anchors of India Today in Lucknow.
#
They are standing on the bus, okay.
#
You know, they have to go around Lucknow to interview Mr. Yadav.
#
But Mr. Yadav has refused to come on the bus because he is not in your list.
#
And I was like, like what?
#
And he was not in the list because I had Mayawati on the list and I just, like, you know, there
#
are not 10 states in the country.
#
So, and this was just what the editor approved ki yeh theek hai, right?
#
So I was so mad at Akhilesh because I had to miss my dance class, go back home and,
#
you know, I had to give stats for Akhilesh.
#
And then, of course, he came on the bus.
#
Now, you're thinking that that day and next day, Tejashwi Yadav gets angry because like
#
you India Today's cast is because I am not in the list.
#
And I was like, because Nitesh Kumar is on the list.
#
So usdin, and again, you can now say ki yaar, what was this list?
#
You know, one can say ki tumne darska kyu kiya.
#
But the point is, Amit, the point I'm trying to say, I learned from this that the story
#
is absolutely bullshit, tells nothing about Indian politics.
#
But what happened behind the scenes, that was telling me more that what like how thin
#
skinned these people are, like, you know, how much like I don't I was speechless.
#
And the fact that newsrooms were complying on idiotic things like this, you know, aap
#
malap kya hi baat karoge, and of course, then I had other observations at India Today where
#
I saw my TV toh dekhta hi nahi, but because the TV was in front of me, then I saw what
#
was going on TV kind of things that were happening.
#
So I'll just give you so that was my India Today experience.
#
And it just left me thinking about that, you know, if you are in that organization and
#
you just do your work, you will and you will see everything is normal, right?
#
But it is in these day to day interactions when you see, right, a picture starts emerging,
#
like ek story ke liye mujhe bola hai and they said, you know, you partner with this political
#
reporter and I've seen her work on TV.
#
She comes to me and says, ki story karna hai, tumhe bataya hai kya what the story should
#
And I was like, like, this is not how reporting works.
#
Like, we will find out, tumhe bataya hai kya?
#
So then I felt again the same, you know, this again, I mean, how can you call it idealism?
#
I'm just saying this just defies first principles, right?
#
This is not how things happen.
#
And then, you know, at the time I was reading this book by Yanis Varoufakis called Adults
#
in the Room, he was the Greek finance minister.
#
And you know, that book is like one of my favorite books on politics, because it's
#
a tell all memoir from his days as a six month finance minister in Greece, when the debt
#
So it's a beautiful book.
#
And in that he gave a frame, which I think explained to me what India today was.
#
So you know, Larry Summers, yeah, of course, Larry Summers, so he asked Yanis in a private
#
And I think he also asked this to Elizabeth Warren in the US, that are you an insider
#
So that's the frame that Larry Summers poses.
#
So and then he describes what insider so this question is asked to Yanis.
#
I'm like, I don't have the exact phrasing, but his sense was this.
#
He says in a political system, insiders are those, you know, where you don't tell the
#
outside world, you know what insiders do, okay, you keep it to yourself, you have this
#
privilege of information.
#
And the reward you get in exchange is you get privilege access to information and possibility
#
An outsider is the one who does not respect these principles, right, and goes out and
#
tells the world what is happening.
#
But the cost is you will then be ignored.
#
You know, I you know, the phrasing is not like if you read his exact word is beautiful.
#
But I'm you get the sense, right, insider, outsider, that's a distinction.
#
And that day, Amit, when I read that book, and so I just felt that in the circle in the
#
mainstream media, it's not that again, maybe I'm being much empathetic to them, but I didn't
#
There's no conspiracy going on.
#
It's just that they're co-opted insiders, you know, who feel that by not picking battles,
#
by having access to inside government machinery and all of that, something nice is happening
#
that access, you know, we've talked about.
#
And I don't know what I give up.
#
I'm fundamentally an outsider, and I'm fine with it, right.
#
So that is the distinction, there's no conspiracy.
#
Then Yanis describes it further.
#
He says that, you know, when you are in the structure, in this political economy structure,
#
then you have three options, either you are in that system and you see that, okay, you
#
know, you have some say access to some privilege information.
#
Now you have two options either comply or just exit, right.
#
But you see exit kind of say, so what you do that one person who has some privilege
#
information, he goes to a second person who has some privilege information, right.
#
And then they talk together.
#
And then that cycle keeps repeating.
#
So within the insider network, more networks start appearing.
#
And it's happening organically because you just think, I know something, maybe I should
#
tell it to someone else.
#
And that privilege networks keep on building up.
#
There's a second person who doesn't do this, but they're too outside in the inside there
#
in the periphery that they can't even see, you know, what kind of things that are happening
#
in this black box, right.
#
These are what I felt like a lot of good reporters at India today, perhaps maybe they know, maybe
#
they don't know, but they're like, they're too insignificant to have any say in that
#
And the third who just get out and then they become irrelevant.
#
Even Yanis says there are a few like Larry Summers who actually recognize that this is
#
a structure in which they're operating so they can at least place themselves.
#
But most people don't even know that this power structure operates where without any
#
grand conspiracy, where people in power sitting together to think about, you know, like what
#
to do organically, things are happening.
#
And that for me was such a good, at least for me that, you know, talked about incentives.
#
The incentive is just that we have to run this organization, but you know, these small
#
actions on a day to day basis, you know, there's a compounding effect where the privilege networks
#
keeps on increasing and your co-option just, then you're so seeped in, you're so inside
#
that you don't even know that you're trapped in that structure.
#
So I think that when I saw that just explained mainstream media to me that this is happening,
#
not my game, not my game, happily an outsider and stage of the internet.
#
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
#
And these, I think these structures apply everywhere.
#
Like I, you know, I think about, and this used to be a lament that in every field that
#
I have been a part of, even peripherally, I'm not an insider, of course, and I am sort
#
of, and I'm on the outside, you know, so I'm not mainstream, the elites don't want me.
#
And I realized after a point in time that there is no point in trying to fit in, but instead
#
it's better to find other misfits and, you know, have good conversations, which appears
#
So, and by the way, speaking of lists, very funny list that I was part of in 2009, Business
#
Week magazine decided to do a list for the 50 most powerful people in India, right, Business
#
Week magazine, 50 most powerful in India.
#
So I was on that list and they had organized that list by alphabetical order of last name.
#
So before me was Sachin Tendulkar and after me was Lalu Prasad Yadav.
#
And I'm thinking that Sachin and Lalu must be looking at the list and thinking, who is
#
Where did he come from?
#
See, it fulfilled every thin desire, you know, and a shitty book I had written had just come
#
My publishers were super happy.
#
They wanted to put it on the poster, one of India's 50 most powerful people.
#
I said, there is no meaning to this, it's as meaningless as those, you know, those social
#
It has no meaning, which is why also these, you know, Forbes 30 under 30 and all of these
#
And I think people, like there's a friend of mine who got into this list.
#
And he was telling me, this is meaningless and you know, you have to apply for, I don't
#
know if application process or business from the blue for me and I think, I think once
#
you see from the inside, how these lists are created, you know, I think this whole thing
#
about being on the cover of a magazine, et cetera, we'll just realize that these decisions
#
They're not any reflection of anything.
#
So I want to, you mentioned first principles sinking and I want to apply that thinking
#
to journalism itself and how newsrooms work, which you've written about eloquently.
#
I'll link all your posts from the show notes.
#
And one of the sort of, there are a couple of revelations there and one is in something
#
you describe about a newsroom and the other is in a question that you ask.
#
And you describe a newsroom as essentially being in the content game, producing content
#
It's a content factory.
#
And these days, as we see taking ideas from Twitter, Twitter get trending and it becomes
#
those become self-fulfilling prophecies and stories.
#
And the other is a question you asked at the start of the episode that you said you asked
#
And I think you might have written about it in one of your posts as well.
#
That what does journalism write about, what is news, you know, what is worth covering,
#
which is a great question to ask because there is a scarcity of space and a scarcity of attention.
#
You can't take it for granted that these are the things we will cover and there'll be one
#
page on this, one page on this, one page on that.
#
These are the specific stories we will cover.
#
It's very facile once people are in that groove to go in those kinds of directions.
#
But I'll ask you to step back because you've obviously thought about these first principles
#
What should a newsroom cover?
#
If it was just supply and demand, you would always have like Prince falls into a well,
#
army is there to rescue him and you know, it's a man bites dog all the time.
#
There's more than supply and demand and even supply and demand is so often guesswork and
#
thinking along predictable lines.
#
So give me a sense of this fundamental basic and I understand it's a very large question,
#
but what should a newsroom cover?
#
You know, and at one level that big meta question and at the other level, give me a sense of
#
the state of the modern newsroom in India because the whole system just seems to be
#
You know, in India today, of course you've described a particular set of incentives in
#
a particular kind of political context, but give me a sense of, you know, these two diametrically
#
different things, you know, sort of how do you ask that philosophical question to begin
#
with and what are things like now?
#
So let me just try to see how to articulate.
#
So I think let's just describe the problem more clearly.
#
So this is sense of right news worthiness, this is newsworthy.
#
I don't think any editor in this country, new media, old media, can they write a one
#
page 10 point description, this is our mental model.
#
I don't think anyone can write it.
#
Do you think that there are criteria?
#
What doesn't make news?
#
At best, you can come up with subjective criteria that for me as an editor, this is what I feel
#
our publication should cover, but it's subjective and it's limited and also like a very subjective
#
also like you can talk about, like you say, we want to cover education, but the education
#
we're like, that's not, that's a topic I'm talking at the story level.
#
You know, this news, what is newsworthy is a very arbitrary construct, right?
#
And I think the whole point, when the idea of the mainstream existed and you have talked
#
about in the show that there's no mainstream as such, if you think about it.
#
I mean, they have the power of amplification, but in the larger scheme of things, right?
#
Like the literal meaning of the word, you know, so I'm saying that is the issue that
#
newsworthiness I think is just a fundamentally arbitrary construct and it's on the whims
#
and fancies of editors and what you expect in an ideal world is you expect that you respect
#
the judgment of the editor that, you know, that the reason this person is leading a publication
#
is because they have some sense of what is important, what is not important and that
#
drives what is being covered.
#
Now the challenge here is I think there's a framework called the theory of interlocking
#
Have you heard of this term?
#
So the big picture of this frame is that, see, you talk about any particular issues
#
and you talk about citizens, everyone is not going to be interested in every issue.
#
Some people are interested in something and they are completely ignorant about something
#
else and then the thing will change in another context, right?
#
So the way I think about our lot of mainstream publications is that they cater to the narrow
#
elite about what is interesting, what is relevant.
#
So when even you talk about political news, you know, one of the things that again I never
#
understood the logic, you know, reporters take so much pride in quote unquote breaking
#
a story that the government is anyway going to tell you two days later and you say there's
#
nothing that they're hiding.
#
It's just that you read this first in X to I never understood that.
#
Agar apne mujhe do din pehle bata diya, right?
#
Like insignificant thing.
#
It's not enhancing my understanding, but that is what the newsroom incentivizes.
#
You know, when they say we want exclusive, you want scoops.
#
So what I like is that information that will anyway come out in the public sphere.
#
Everyone will get it, but you, so I'm saying this, but this is a metric of newsworthiness
#
that we have it first incentives.
#
So this journalism professor, I think Jay Rosen in the U S he gave this very good statement.
#
He said the modern media ecosystem is not designed to enhance public understanding.
#
It is enhanced to manufacture new content and he included the big publications.
#
So that way, that's a description of the problem that I would want as a reader that I just,
#
I want to understand India better.
#
I want to understand this government better, but you get into, and now, and you can't even
#
say that the stories that are being reported are irrelevant, but I think that what has
#
happened is that at least now that I'm outside and I read, you feel so alienated that you
#
know, okay, like, you know, and the conflicting part here is that, you know, sometimes there's
#
a friend of mine, very good journalist, he said, sometimes we write the story because
#
we just want that person in the RBI to know that, you know, we have written this so that
#
You know, they have this in the head that the story is written for certain people, right?
#
So the answer that what a newspaper ought to do, I have never been able to crack this
#
answer that like, if I am, I'm asked to write guidelines, like, remember the conference
#
we were talking about CRISPR, right?
#
So CRISPR, like just for context for those who don't know, revolutionary technology in
#
People should read about it and understand that something big is happening that can change
#
how human evolution happens, right?
#
It's not like it's tax policy changes, you know, once in a while, you know, this you're
#
talking about something big.
#
I had an episode on it with Shambhavi Naik, I'll link that from the show notes.
#
But on a day to day basis, most people would be unaware, right?
#
So I'm saying if there is a theory of importance, what matters, what does not matter, right?
#
So I'm saying this is a way that I pose a question, right?
#
That okay, what is happening?
#
And in the theory of interlocking public, that was the point that how do you even come
#
up with a list of topics that cater to the masses because there is no one public.
#
The public is so disaggregated, they have so much disaggregated interests.
#
So I don't know the answer to the question that what a newsroom should cover.
#
I think of it as a different way that you, when I say first principles, it's more about
#
that when you have a story, you know, at least that's how I think about my work.
#
You think about, okay, why does it matter, story, you know, how does it matter?
#
And you report it vigorously and make it relevant.
#
It's not that every story you read has to have some actionable, like, do you know what
#
was his name, Aaron Schwartz?
#
You know, the internet's own boy, that's a great documentary, which like really moved
#
But he was this young hacker in the US, very politically active, but also I think he co-founded
#
So he committed suicide because of this whole JSTOR thing about academic papers.
#
So he had a great blog, it's still online.
#
And he wrote a piece about why he doesn't read the news.
#
He's a guy who got prosecuted, I think, for putting up JSTOR papers online for free.
#
So I was reading his blog and I thought, boss, this guy, if you look at his politics, like
#
day in day out, this guy is making political change.
#
He's thinking about politics and he has a post on his website, I don't read the news
#
because news is irrelevant to what I do.
#
He says, I open the page and I said, this is happening, that is happening.
#
But he says, I don't know where I fit in.
#
You know, I can't relate.
#
He says, okay, you know, something bad is happening at that place.
#
So like, so he felt that I don't feel the agency that these bad things are happening,
#
So I'm saying that is one frame of reference where someone can say, so what I'm so I can,
#
it's going in, I'm meandering.
#
But the point I'm trying to make is that everything that largely we are seeing, you can poke holes
#
on why the way we currently think has big issues.
#
And there is no solution that you can say, you know, if Samarth Mansell is tomorrow,
#
the editor of a paper, right?
#
I am not saying that I have an answer that I am going to fix it, right?
#
Because the fundamental assumption is that something deserves to be news and something
#
does not deserve to be news.
#
I don't think that distinction is relevant.
#
But on a day to day basis, whatever you're covering, right?
#
And how you report and how you tell a story, I think that is where I feel you can list
#
down rules and what are the things that have no meaning where you say key and this experiment
#
and you tell better stories.
#
I don't know if that answers your question.
#
But I'm saying for me, what matters is what stories I choose.
#
Yeah, I don't think the show is really about answering questions, but more just finding
#
questions, finding better questions to ask and kind of understanding those questions
#
And you know, for something like this, I think that there's no definitive answer to what
#
And the ideal way is let a thousand flowers bloom.
#
Let you know, multitudes of people get in there, do their own kind of reporting and
#
each thing will find its own audience.
#
That's what you kind of want.
#
But you are right that there's a need to think about processes and to avoid certain traps.
#
Like one trap that you pointed out was, you know, the distinction between events and systems.
#
And you pointed out that a lot of news reporting, if not pretty much all of it is focused around
#
And all of it is like that and they don't really contribute to public understanding
#
to use J. Rosen's words, like you said, you know, but so just elaborate a little bit on,
#
you know, thinking in systems and thinking in just in terms of events.
#
So again, I think rather than talking in abstract, let's be concrete.
#
In 2018, there was a story which made a lot of headlines, which was that this current
#
government has got powers for surveillance, which are significant, you know, now data
#
from your phone will be with the government, all of those kinds of things, because there
#
was one circular that came out in the home ministry.
#
The Hindu carried something small in the inside page, but next day that view on the internet,
#
oh my God, what is this government doing?
#
Modi's coming after your phones.
#
Again, I don't know what happened with the Hindu, but it was probably some notification
#
came and some reporter wrote a copy without deep context and people misinterpreted what
#
All of these things are happening, right?
#
Then because I was covering tech policy at the time, I made phone calls, okay, what is
#
So this is an event which triggered a conversation around privacy and surveillance, which is
#
an important topic, right?
#
But the problem was everyone was talking about, and this is my understanding, about a non-existing
#
issue because nothing had changed, okay?
#
There was no new power, the power, it was the existing system.
#
It was just that circular, which was some formality.
#
How I knew, because I made phone calls, I called experts who covered that.
#
I said, look, this thing has come, you have written about it.
#
Can you please help me understand what has changed?
#
I called three people, a lawyer, someone at a think tank.
#
That was a unanimous answer.
#
So I, and then, you know, colleague of mine who had connections in the MHA, he got like
#
an inside person, and I think that is the way to do a story.
#
So I went and explained, key boss, there is no, like, there's nothing here, like there's
#
The story is that it's just, so this event was the point of coverage, but in the larger
#
level, nothing had changed.
#
So what, and I'll tell you how it connects to processes.
#
In the press, this issue was reported as Congress versus BJP, okay?
#
That opposition is saying how bad, BJP is doing this.
#
Then you get some context, when 2008 or nine, when the IT Act was passed, okay?
#
Congress was in power, right?
#
And they passed what people were, you know, gargling on the internet.
#
And this law, I think IT Act passed in 10 minutes in the parliament, there was no debate
#
Surveillance is about power.
#
It is not about party A versus party B. Everyone in power wants to, does not want your life
#
That's how this power works.
#
Now Congress, who was in power at that time, is now taking the moral authority that they
#
are doing wrong, when nothing has changed.
#
Which Congress has done.
#
Congress has done, right?
#
And the others were, everyone wants this, because everyone benefits in a way.
#
But you look at the news coverage, that was the story.
#
Congress said this, BJP said this.
#
This is this what I am describing.
#
And you know, I was so sad because my story was on the inside page.
#
It was on the front page, Congress says this, BJP says this.
#
So that day I could not understand when, how can my paper publish a story saying, nothing
#
But on the front page, you are amplifying Congress, BJP.
#
So this is the problem with event-based reporting, where you don't know at a system level, you
#
know what is happening.
#
At a, when you look at a system on a day-to-day basis, for example, there's a stock market
#
crash, you know, an oil price rises, you know, cryptocurrency, something is happening, or
#
So you report on the event.
#
But the question about why was there a flood in Bihar, right?
#
What are the day-to-day things that have happened in the past five years that led to that flood?
#
And it unfolds on a day-to-day basis.
#
You need to really understand, you need to connect the dots.
#
You need to look at multiple perspectives.
#
The story is not, in fact, P. Sainath in his book, Everybody Loves a Good Trout, he talks
#
about this distinction in back, like I think he wrote his book in the nineties, sometime
#
Yeah, sometime around that time.
#
He describes this, this exact in, I don't know if he used these words, exactly that
#
how we look at incidents in isolation.
#
And that to us feels something wrong is happening, but we have not looked at the deeper reasons
#
And to get to this whole process, you can use systems thinking approach, which is just
#
one way of looking at things.
#
And the core idea there is that even when you're looking at the media, right, I talk
#
to so many people who says, you know, you know, there's this idea that if only good
#
people come together, you know, Amit Verma, Samarth Mansal, and 20 of us come together
#
and we are given some money, okay, and we will start an organization, we will fix things.
#
No, because we are not operating in isolation.
#
Okay, you can say the problem is the proprietor, the owner is the problem.
#
So you will say, okay, change the owner, right?
#
What about other incentives that drive news coverage?
#
What, you know, the reporter wants to win awards.
#
The reporter wants his colleagues to say, you know, you're a good reporter, you know,
#
all of those things, right?
#
I'm saying in every action, there is no, that this is one piece of the system that is broken.
#
Once you look at the big picture and instead of looking at incidents in isolation, you
#
say, okay, how is the system interacting with each other, right?
#
And how a small change in incident X makes a big change in Y, then you see the complexity
#
of the system and you realize that the problem is much more complicated.
#
You can't just fix one part and think that, you know, in isolation, the system will, does
#
In a way that about the process that it's not just one event, because if you just look
#
at event in that whole system, you're looking at X, you've forgotten how we got to X.
#
And that is the story, not X, because that will always give you a very limited picture.
#
And Amit, you open a paper any day, you will find it, event, event, event, event, event.
#
So event, you know, you go to a party, you will sound smart because you know, but the
#
question is, do you understand things better?
#
Has your understanding about Indian politics policy has that enhanced as a reader?
#
I have a lot of friends who don't, maybe they're people who are, but I don't think that knowing
#
tidbits and trivia, you can know a lot of them and you can keep throwing that at people,
#
but base level pay, what, like, what have you understood?
#
So that, that's a common problem.
#
And it's not an India problem.
#
That's a global problem about the idea of news itself.
#
So my, and again, if you talk at the centuries level, right, like news is not like, it didn't
#
It's like what 400 years old or something, right?
#
We're living in a different information environment, right?
#
A lot of things are happening.
#
I am at that zone where I understand why newspapers exist, why the idea of news exists.
#
But you also have to think that, you know, the, like my reference frame now is that boss,
#
I care a lot about journalism, which is why we are even having this conversation.
#
So think about the first principles of journalism.
#
Like if newspapers die, let them die.
#
You know, I'll feel bad because all of our institutions, you know, they have history,
#
They have something to this country.
#
But in the longer, larger scheme of things, you want journalism to stay, not an entity
#
called a newspaper, right?
#
And I think we are at a time where no one knows the answer to what is going to happen
#
And everyone is trying to figure it out.
#
And we should take solace in the fact that we don't know the answer, but we should work
#
So at least now, after giving all this, you know, big theory, what matters is what I do.
#
And that is a frame in which I operate, I don't know what others are doing, but not news,
#
not newspapers, journalism.
#
And there's a difference.
#
Journalism and news are not the same.
#
News is a sub-component of journalism.
#
And I think if you make that distinction, it just gives a better frame to think about
#
And you mentioned reading newspapers and going to parties and I don't either.
#
So you know, I don't take a newspaper and no one calls me to parties.
#
So just elaborate on the last thing you said there, that there is more to journalism than
#
So news is something that's decent, right?
#
News is something that happened today.
#
But what is like, again, I can keep, I have such an irritation with, you know, this whole
#
thing about newsworthiness, what it is, it's an, like, it does not give you the full picture
#
It's just some non-random sample of collection of events that have happened and given to
#
you with a very deep bias about, you know, there is negativity, there is some outrage.
#
It's important, some civic role, all of those things.
#
That is, and it's important, I've written in my, you know, in my writing that as a collective,
#
if all of this goes away, we will lose an important part of our information sphere.
#
But journalism is more than that.
#
For me, honestly, Amit, again, journalism for me is no more about making an impact or
#
I only think journalism is a vehicle for truth seeking to understand.
#
That's it, when you talk about, you know, when we say deep reportage.
#
What is deep reportage?
#
There where you don't settle for easy answers, you keep, you know, as I think, who was that
#
I've said, keep peeling the onion, keep peeling the onion, you know, and I'm not even saying
#
investigative reporting.
#
I'm not even saying that I'm saying journalism news is about what happened yesterday and
#
we want to report so that you are informed about current events.
#
Journalism is about truth seeking, journalism is about understanding, you know, and there
#
are so many ways to understand the world.
#
You can be, you can become a scientist, but I think that there's a power in the profession
#
of journalism, which others, other, like you can be at a think tank, you could be a scientist,
#
the things that a journalist can do that you can't, right?
#
For example, like I was at this conference and people were telling me about the problems
#
with Indian think tanks, that, you know, how, you know, they've been co-op, like they're
#
not free anymore in a way, like there's some decline.
#
So when I asked this person, this is so important, can you talk about it in public?
#
And they said, no, it's too risky, I can't, so Amit, I am not doing anything right now,
#
I'm like, okay, that's a story, but this is one person telling me this in the back of
#
I don't know if I'll write it, but in my ideas, it's a story that this person can't say this
#
because, you know, society may alienate this person, right, whatever, but it's a process
#
about how knowledge production in India has been affected, okay?
#
No, because this one person told me, but someone I trust has told me this in private, so can
#
I use a journalistic method to find out and connect the dots and talk to 10 people?
#
And I take the risk in the sense of to be the person who brings this to the information
#
The journalists take the risk, we name people about this organization, we, you know, academics
#
generally talk in broad brushstrokes, you know, this happens, that happens.
#
I think journalism, we talk in specifics, we name people, we are not saying, you know,
#
X person is doing something with their taxes, we say this person did this, right?
#
Now, you can say it's biased, etc., etc., no, but I'm saying the mechanism of accountability,
#
the mechanism of that, you know, like we take risk, and we have the right to offend, you
#
know, and then we write and report.
#
And then I think the society should give us like, if we are taking that risk, they should
#
So I think that's a social contract.
#
That's one example where I say that, you know, this is not news, because it's not something
#
that today something happened, like someone will be fired at a think tank, it will become
#
an event, but wo news aaya chala gaya, in one week, it dies.
#
But what did you learn about the country?
#
So that's where I think journalism in that way, I'm saying, that's the difference.
#
I think it's much bigger than news rather than.
#
And what I find resonant in what you're saying is the distinction that you're making, though
#
not in so many words, but this is me thinking aloud, between the essence of an act and the
#
packaging of it, right?
#
For example, I often tell, you know, people will object to e-readers, for example, let's
#
say, read, no, the book should be physical, the smell of the paper will come.
#
And my point is, a book is a words and authorites, that, you know, your paperback and your hard
#
covers are forms of packaging, your Kindle is a form of packaging, you know, those are
#
all different forms of packaging.
#
Similarly, if you strip down the essence of journalism to the pursuit of truth, to making
#
sense of the world, then we have some antiquated forms of packaging, which kind of linger on
#
like newspapers and TV channels and whatever, and some of them will become artifacts and
#
some of them will morph into other things.
#
But those are not important.
#
What is important is the thing itself, the pursuit of truth, the desire to understand
#
And a long form podcast can contribute to that as much as, you know, a pamphlet can,
#
for example, from the past.
#
So I think that's an important sort of distinction.
#
I mean, for example, when people talk of tech monopolies, Facebook has no competition, Twitter
#
Actually, if you think about it, they all do.
#
You know, in a narrow sense, they are monopolies of whatever specific domain they operate in,
#
but in a broader sense, they're all competing for our time.
#
They're all competing for our attention.
#
And if you, so it's, I think at some level, sometimes when we think about all of these
#
things, just as it helps to embody the abstract and give it concrete shape, it also helps,
#
I think, to step back and look at the bigger picture, you know, you might do it in terms
#
of time, look at something over 500 years instead of the last 30 years, or you might
#
do it in terms of asking what is a need this thing is, you know, fulfilling and a need
#
that today, you know, an HD or an India today was fulfilling say in 1990.
#
Those needs are not being fulfilled by those institutions today.
#
Those needs, if you think about it, have been completely taken over.
#
You could argue that they are, you know, in some cases, they have become event management
#
firms, like, you know, political journalists asked to invite politicians to events.
#
In other cases, they have become sources of entertainment, where, you know, all of these
#
events are what they're entertaining, they're not necessarily casting light on the world.
#
So I agree with you that I'm hopeful that in a future of unknown unknowns, different
#
kinds of solutions will emerge.
#
But another thing I want to focus on is that so far in our conversation, I've been, you
#
know, critical, or maybe critical in an understanding way of a mainstream media, which almost cows
#
down before, you know, the powers that be.
#
And and I almost seem to be valorizing independent media, which is standing up and saying we
#
But the interesting thing is in modern times, a lot of what passes for journalism is really
#
Absolutely, and even within, you know, the so called independent media, what journalists
#
and editors need to watch out for is they need to introspect and think about whether
#
they themselves have agendas, whether there's a danger of politics kind of getting in the
#
way of that, you know, you wrote a long and lovely critical essay of a story broken by
#
the wire a while back, where they perhaps, you know, allowed their desire to break a
#
particular kind of story to cloud their better judgment about whether the story warranted
#
to be published, you've also, you know, criticize a caravan in the past, and I have deep critiques
#
of them, I appreciate their courage.
#
But I feel that a lot of what they do, I wouldn't call it journalism, you know, a lot of their
#
profiles are really hit pieces where they have decided the conclusion in advance that
#
we're going to take person X down.
#
And you know, and everything is sort of mediated towards that.
#
So what are your thoughts on this?
#
Yeah, I have, okay, I'll tell you.
#
But just I just want to add a note to everything I've said, I mean, I think I mostly have questions
#
at this time, you know, I don't have answers.
#
I mean, I hope I mean, I mean, this is a kind of a conversation where all sorts of meandering
#
But I hope you can see that I think it's a freewheeling conversation, which listeners
#
on the show of the show, at least will take in the right spirit.
#
Yeah, because this is like, you know, I, I say, I'm the most qualified expert
#
But it's just that I think, but it's important to ask these questions, you know, that's it.
#
And I think all my thought process is in that frame.
#
So yeah, so on this independent media thing, that's why I think the wire piece that I wrote.
#
So let me put it this way, you know, I donate to the wire, I donate to the caravan, okay,
#
I have a subscription, but I don't read either, because I think they need to exist.
#
And I support them because they are among the few who are fighting the good fight.
#
So you know, you, so I'm making this distinction that I am critical.
#
But I'm not saying that they don't need to exist.
#
You know, some people make a comparison between OpIndia and wire.
#
I think that's a ludicrous comparison.
#
Like you're saying, oh, no, but so they will tell me, you know, you said wire hasn't done,
#
you know, this was a wrong article.
#
I said, yes, I'm saying I'm critical of the wire, I'm critical of the caravan.
#
But that's such an unfair comparison.
#
You should say that how unfortunate it is for the, I mean, from my vantage point, for
#
the larger Indian right wing to not have a publication that they can be proud of, that,
#
you know, that does journalism, not.
#
So I'm saying that's a distinction that these, you know, these are messy things where again,
#
when you start bucketing propaganda, journalism, I remember again, despite like I left HD,
#
someone comes and tells me HD is a propaganda, I was like, you're an idiot.
#
Because you are doing this because your thinking is lazy.
#
You don't want to think deep enough.
#
So you say that the paper has problems, don't say it's propaganda.
#
So I'm saying that is the frame.
#
Now in that, what started happening, I think in the independent media, like this editor
#
once gave me this brilliant statement.
#
He said, you know, Samarth, we are living in a time when the BJP will give us certificate
#
The communist party will give us a certificate of secularism and the caravan will give us
#
a certificate for journalism.
#
And I think again, I say all of this conversation is from the vantage point of a reporter.
#
I just want to write stories and I report.
#
If you go down to the concrete again, concrete abstract, right, forget like in the abstract,
#
I think what has started happening is that I believe that journalism should be about
#
truth seeking and truth seeking is hard because you know, all sorts of human motivations come
#
in that take you away from not human motivations, human nature comes in that takes you away
#
It happens with scientists, happens with journalists, anyone who says that, you know, my only commitment
#
I don't care about anyone else.
#
They're probably lying.
#
I want to believe that.
#
So you know, I am there, but there could be, you know, forces that will take me away from
#
So let's, but in principle, you agree.
#
Now, the second thing is what I think has started happening is that you think that there
#
is much more than truth seeking that journalism achieves, which is a social change, impact
#
Now there is no direct correlation between truth seeking and these ends.
#
And I think that is the conflict that we need to address and understand.
#
Do you know Jill Lepore, this American historian?
#
She loves beautiful stuff in the New Yorker.
#
She in one of our panel discussions, she made this point.
#
She said that, who has said that in a battlefield between truth and lies, truth will win if
#
there's a boxing match.
#
We see that truth will always, truth triumphs.
#
Ask someone who has been led down by the justice system, go and tell them in the face that
#
This idea that truth seeking will lead to a better world.
#
It's a lovely idea to have in your head to comfort yourself.
#
But I don't think that's a neat translation.
#
So what I feel is happening in the independent media is that we want to believe we are doing
#
If for my vantage point, my critique of the wire came from that point, that if you say
#
truth seeking is your job, you failed at it.
#
You injected something in the public sphere and I've written in great detail about my
#
I'll link it from the show notes.
#
Which is like, you spent whatever years in this investigation to put out something that
#
does not stand any journalistic scrutiny.
#
It's a very bad piece of journalism.
#
You have good intentions, but good intentions don't make for good journalism.
#
You can be very courageous, but courage does not lead to good journalism.
#
Good journalism is about process.
#
And I think that clarity about what is journalism for in a time when, and you can clearly say,
#
in a time when press freedom is clearly under attack, where people who speak truth to power
#
outs and not just newsroom anyone, there being all sorts of things that are happening, democratic
#
backsliding, we are in that ecosystem.
#
So does that change the role of journalism?
#
I think individual journalists perhaps and news organizations are struggling with it.
#
And maybe the answer that they have settled on is that there is more to our work than
#
Maybe we are part of the change.
#
And I think once you take that frame, the way you look at the world changes, maybe that
#
What makes journalism different from everything else fundamentally is the editorial layer.
#
It matters a lot because as a reporter, I'm always attached to my material.
#
It's my editor who will come and tell me, boss, you fucked up here.
#
You brought two sources, I want four.
#
This thing is not adding up.
#
That's what good editors do.
#
It's not that they are copy editing your story.
#
They help you get to what do we call journalistic standards.
#
You meet the journalistic standards publishable.
#
Maybe in this framing about our reconception of what our role is, at least the way I think
#
journalistic standards should be, I just feel some of, and I can name the wire and the caravan,
#
they have diluted this.
#
And Amit, this is such, I have observed, I have these private conversations with my friends.
#
There is, I can tell you, a lot of discomfort among liberal leaning journalists about what
#
You can't, you struggle to say it in public because you feel that will me saying this,
#
will that delegitimize the work that these guys are doing because, and that's a tricky
#
bit because in today's time, anyone who wants to discredit the media, they just want one
#
thing and they will come after you to not to, they don't want to attack a story.
#
They want to delegitimize institutions so that you become irrelevant.
#
So which is why there is, I feel at least in my private conversations that there is
#
a conflict where on one hand you see, but we don't know how to battle with it.
#
And then you go and talk to your readers.
#
There's this friend of mine, I think she's 32, 33, once I was having and very passionate
#
So she, once we were on a video call and she tells me someone has, I think as I'm aging,
#
I'm moving towards the right.
#
He said, because now I read the wire and I'm not able to relate.
#
So I think, but the wire is a great institution.
#
So maybe my values have changed.
#
Then I asked her that, please don't think like that because she was like, no, she took
#
the responsibility on her because she said, I cannot relate anymore.
#
This is becoming too much for me.
#
So I am saying that there is a shift happening at least from my vantage point.
#
I don't, there's no easy answer, but I'm saying if we don't acknowledge that from the perspective
#
of truth-seeking our idea that democracy needs to be saved and there's some bigger problems
#
happening in this country and journalists need to stand up for it and how that skews
#
incentives, then we are deluding ourselves if we don't acknowledge this.
#
And you know, we talk about pressures, you know, there's also a subscriber pressure.
#
If you have built an audience which wants you to speak critical about the government,
#
then that is a pressure that you also have because you will get, and this is, I'm not
#
just saying it theoretically, I think it was Andrew Potter.
#
He was the editor of a Canadian newspaper.
#
He is written about in his blog that how, you know, sometimes let's say there's a story
#
that someone covers and lead story, they put it, you know, it's not the lead story.
#
People become angry because you feel, no, this should be the lead story.
#
Why is it not amplified?
#
Not that information is being censored.
#
It's that you feel, this is Potter's words, that the institution I love, they have let
#
And when you're a subscriber, you have these expectations that you subscribe because in
#
a way it reinforces your identity as a political citizen, standing up for something.
#
You don't buy a newspaper because you want to read.
#
Oh, I want to know the truth, so I want to read the paper.
#
There are other reasons why people subscribe or, you know, our loyalties, you know, so
#
I'm saying this whole idea that, you know, if readers will pay, it's independent.
#
So you need to question, right, like what is independence?
#
You will always have the pressure of what your subscriber wants.
#
So it works all the way.
#
So again, there's no neat distinction just because you're independent in the sense you're
#
not mainstream, that your incentives are totally aligned.
#
And that's where I think my primary critique comes in.
#
And I don't actually see this going in the right direction from my vantage point, but
#
still, yeah, I think they need to exist and I'll continue to support them.
#
Yeah, and I just want to give a message to your 32 year old friend who told you that
#
You know, the best years of your life are ahead of you.
#
And also, I don't think one should think in like that whole frame of left and right exasperates
#
My frame is freedom versus non-freedom and everybody's against freedom in India.
#
And the other part of what you said that resonated with me was when you said that you have liberal
#
friends who agree with you, but don't want to speak up because solidarity for the cause.
#
And similarly, I remember two or three years back, I had a trans friend who told me that
#
she was deeply uncomfortable about JK Rowling being hounded over what she said.
#
And her point was that, listen, that debate on whether biological sex is real or not has
#
nothing to do with how trans people are treated.
#
Those are separate issues.
#
But she wouldn't say that in public.
#
And she said that, no, in public, I have to kind of show solidarity with the cause, the
#
same kind of thing, not in so many words.
#
And I feel that there is also a danger in this kind of tribal thinking, that this is
#
my tribe, good or bad, kuch bhi ho jaye, I'm going to stand by my tribe.
#
And I understand that at one level, you, of course, don't want to be mobbed or cancelled
#
by your own people, which can happen so much.
#
But it's a danger to watch out for because I think there are many, many, many people,
#
perhaps even a silent majority, which is not part of any tribe.
#
And you lose credibility when you do this.
#
So on the one hand, of course, the wire is journalism, even if there are flaws.
#
And OpIndia is propaganda.
#
There's no journalism there.
#
I don't think they even pretend.
#
They don't even pretend.
#
But in the eyes of a lot of people, these are competing narrative battles.
#
And this is one reason I really respect Alt News and Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair,
#
because they don't only fact check the right.
#
They fact check everybody.
#
You see it and know what they're doing.
#
Equal opportunity offender, as one editor used to say.
#
The work speaks for itself.
#
Now, let's address a larger question about Indian journalism, where everything we have
#
said at one level seems pessimistic, right?
#
But then you have this lovely quote by Raj Kamal Jha in one of the pieces you wrote where
#
you quote him as saying, quote, quote, good journalism is not dying, it is getting better
#
It's just bad journalism makes a lot more noise than it used to do five years ago.
#
And you've elaborated on that.
#
And it's a fantastic argument.
#
And, you know, in a piece where you also talk about is Indian media thriving or decaying
#
and you give the standard reasons for why we would say it is decaying.
#
But then you say that, no, you know, actually, it is thriving also, you can make that argument.
#
I mean, the piece is there.
#
So I hope people will read it.
#
I will give you a story.
#
Again, you know, I love your abstract and concrete framework.
#
And I don't think the story is here.
#
So when I was reporting on covid, I spoke to a journalist in Odisha, OK, he's a senior
#
guy to cover a district.
#
And I was trying to do something with covid deaths.
#
The project didn't go anywhere.
#
But I spoke to him and for information.
#
I was and this person, who in that district was going and from inside the government,
#
He was getting out the death figures that the government was hiding.
#
And every day he would publish on his Facebook page.
#
And he had a WhatsApp kind of a newsletter, which and just focus on one district.
#
And he would send it to everyone.
#
So on a day to day basis, the district administration was confused, ki yeh kya ho raha hai, hum number
#
dal rahe hain, isko kahan se mil raha hai, right?
#
No one will know who this person is.
#
They will not like, you know, when we say courageous journalist on Twitter, nahi aayega.
#
His name will not be there.
#
Goaing ka award nahi milega.
#
But this person is doing journalism in a Odisha district, which local people and the administration
#
I didn't dream up of, maine toh nahi dhun da aise, there's a person I was talking to
#
and he told me to talk to this journalist because they know the district better.
#
So he explained how to get the information.
#
He said, you know, I have a newsletter on WhatsApp.
#
In that, he said, you know, I'm going around and I see a problem, that you know, some project
#
He said, I clicked the photo, right?
#
I first send it to the officials.
#
I send it to the district office.
#
So what they do sometimes is they tell him, wait, we're actually fixing this.
#
So give me two days, don't tell me now, so he stops.
#
Because he said, you know, I just want to solve the problem and he said, if they do it
#
in two days, then I'll do the story.
#
This problem was solved.
#
If they don't, then I tell them that the administration is doing this problem.
#
They are not doing anything.
#
I say, which files are stuck.
#
Then I see sometimes good.
#
I talk to the state office.
#
So if I find out that a problem that was a district problem, files are stuck in it,
#
so I'll send it and broadcast it.
#
And then, you know, the government moves.
#
Amit, when I heard that story, I was so inspired because we have this notion that everything
#
in this country has to be about one man.
#
Mr. Modi, no, isn't this journalism?
#
And that's what I'm saying that, you know, there are, if you start going beyond this
#
world of Twitter, you know, beyond this English language journalism and you start seeing,
#
okay, what are people doing, right?
#
And this, I think, I mean, I don't have a lot of answers, but I think one of the things
#
you can imagine about the future is that accountability will be decentralized, right?
#
That you don't need a Hindustan Times to go and talk about every district and government.
#
Ultimately, it's about, you know, the state and the citizens in a way, if you think about
#
political journalism, but the state is not just the center, it's happening at all these
#
So I'm saying that is one example where you gives me hope that, you know, people are thinking,
#
doing stuff outside the limelight.
#
Then I told you this example, I have seen firsthand examples inside newsrooms, the kind
#
of battles people fight to get a story in the paper.
#
When you see that, when you talk to your colleagues, it gives me a lot of hope that despite living
#
in those moral conundrums, right, they are sticking around to make sure that critical
#
And I'm not saying that critical thing is the whole point of journalism, but I'm saying
#
that that's an important part.
#
People stick around, right?
#
And in the piece that I wrote, this is the example I said, look at just Denning-Bhaskar,
#
then this was Denning-Bhaskar, right?
#
The paper that covered the COVID deaths in Ganges, right?
#
I'm forgetting if that was someone, you look at it.
#
I mean, in general, you would not imagine that paper to be so critical of the government.
#
But you know, when there was no scope for propaganda in the sense that it's hard to
#
lie that there is no tragedy, right?
#
How do you cover it up?
#
At that time, this paper sent 30 reporters across Ganges to just go and see, and they
#
had photographs, they told the story.
#
And you know, when you get that story in a big paper, it makes an impact because it makes
#
people think that what is happening about death count.
#
That's a story that the dead bodies in the river are unaccounted for, right?
#
So the paper did it, right?
#
What happens after that?
#
I saw I wrote this piece for this journalism conference.
#
They asked me, you know, the day I filed the piece, a week after that, there were reads
#
in Bhaskar's office, read in Bhaskar's office, right?
#
Now it's a pattern, right?
#
So what you see is that, you know, when people say journalists are sold out, they're not
#
There are problems, but I'm saying that time and again, time and again, you see someone
#
somewhere pushing the bar to make sure that the information goes out.
#
Amit, I know from private experience, journalists having access to information, which for some
#
reason their newsroom is not publishing, they just give their story to someone else where
#
And I don't think it's a new thing.
#
It has been, I think I remember Shikhar Gupta talking something about something at the Indian
#
Express and the Hindu, you know, it may like they were competitors, but they also change
#
information back in the day.
#
So but these things are not visible outside.
#
So I'm saying this is what gives me hope that on a day to day basis, you see these efforts.
#
But a systemic level, while everything kind of seems broken, when you start connecting
#
these dots, I mean, that's what gives me hope.
#
And one thing I really want to plug here is that forget just newsrooms, the civil society,
#
And they also contribute a lot in journalism.
#
I'll give you an example that was personal to me.
#
So in my newsletter, which I started, I wrote that polling story on forecasting where I
#
created this index to rank forecasters.
#
One of those forecasters sent me a legal notice because they didn't look good in my ranking.
#
So it's a defamation notice and I'm running this newsletter as a one person.
#
There's no institution.
#
So the day I got the notice on my email, you know, it was 7.30 PM in the evening.
#
I was writing some code or something else and I didn't know what to do.
#
Like you have this legal notice, reply in 48 hours.
#
I spoke to a couple of journalist friends and they said, you know, why don't you message
#
Apar Gupta from Internet Freedom Foundation?
#
And I had spoken to Apar a couple of times as a reporter, I text him that was, he instantly
#
And he said, don't worry, we will help you.
#
And do you like, you know, that day I felt that evening that these bullies, right?
#
They can bully, but I have a support system, right, which comes from organizations like
#
the Internet Freedom Foundation.
#
And then I asked, okay, what is it told me?
#
They have a thing called digital Patra car clinic.
#
So what they have done to support independent journalists who can't afford, who don't have,
#
you know, newsrooms have lawyers, someone doing reporting in a newsletter does not have
#
So they help people like us so that if someone tries to bully us, they help you end to end.
#
So he told me that first of all, don't worry, this 48 hour thing is bullshit.
#
We will help you file a response.
#
If it goes to court, we will help you with the court proceedings.
#
And everything is pro bono.
#
I had a comfortable sleep because I know that, you know, there are people who will support
#
They filed the response, their lawyers spoke to me and nothing like they didn't ask for
#
And I, like I was off Twitter at the time, et cetera.
#
So I haven't even publicly written about it.
#
So they don't even get like credit in any way.
#
Like, and like, who cares?
#
Like it's just, this is help fund reporter, but you know how it helps.
#
It gives me confidence at key higher tomorrow.
#
If I do a story, which I want to tell and someone gets offended, there are people out
#
there who will come and stand with you.
#
People like, you know, isn't that brilliant that you have the support system.
#
So this gives me hope that her problem here.
#
But again, this is not a, that's why I say it's not a, in my head, fight of one journalist
#
Point is the powerful people want to control the flow of information.
#
That is the problem at a macro level.
#
And as someone who believes in freedom, not a particular political party would be just
#
freedom of speech, freedom of the press.
#
It's a fight that people who are not in power have to collectively fight to make sure that
#
those information flows are broken.
#
Like information should not be suppressed.
#
Amplification is, you know, so that's if you take all of that in consideration, right?
#
I don't like on a day to day basis, you know, I care about the press.
#
And you talk to young reporters, you know, they are like, they're doing good work.
#
You see, I mean, on a day to day basis, don't you see great stories being broken on an everyday
#
You know, someone, there are stories I won't read because I'm not interested.
#
But across the board, so much good journalism is happening.
#
So you say there is Godi media, there are journalists, and then you see all of that.
#
So I think that's my long answer to what makes me very hopeful about future of Indian
#
journalism that despite all the problems, if people are sticking around, that really
#
Yeah, I love reading your essay on this.
#
And what was also a great point you made in that was how we need to think of information
#
production as a collective.
#
And the point that you basically made in short is that, you know, thought experiment that
#
all journalism ceases to exist tomorrow, the void in our lives will be incredible.
#
We won't know what the hell is going on.
#
It's like a fish swimming in water, and suddenly all the water is gone and you're like gasping
#
and like what the fuck happened.
#
And it's exactly like that.
#
And the thing is, we bemoan, you know, 99% news aara hai, lekin wo 1% kyu nahi aara hai.
#
But sometimes, as you've pointed out in the real world, to get that 99% out, some people
#
choose to compromise on the 1%.
#
And sometimes wo 1% aayega, kahi aur se aayega, kahi aur se aayega, civil society hai.
#
That gives me great hope also that civil society is there, like I believe in people, the reason
#
I believe in economic freedom is markets are one mechanism for people to express themselves,
#
but there are other ways.
#
And you know, technology is empowering individuals and there will always be voices, there will
#
You can't shut everything down.
#
You can't shut anything.
#
In fact, you know, thank you for, I forgot almost this point, but you know, this, so
#
you know, sometimes when I have a lot of times wonder kiyaar, ye truth seeking, ye journalism,
#
So my answer to that is agar answer nahi mil raha hai, you know, it's a math problem, go
#
for the counterfactual, there's nothing.
#
Then you realize, you know, this we want.
#
I think anyone who says, nah, that mainstream media ka problem hai, I ask them this question,
#
sab bant karwa de to, will things be better?
#
So on that note, there's this book I just want to recommend, heard of this book, Martin
#
Goury, Revolt of the Public.
#
So the frame one, like it's a, that book is filled with arguments, but one thing that
#
really struck me, he said that the relationship between power and information is not linear.
#
You know, you say these online bloggers are dissenters and they will curb, he says, no,
#
the powerful just want to control TV.
#
He says that this is, you don't know how these two things intersect.
#
What is exactly the relationship between information flow and power?
#
What we know is that the powerful want to control.
#
What they're not realizing is that you can control a TV channel.
#
You can control a newspaper.
#
You can put a blogger, a Mohammed Zubair in jail.
#
You can't shut down the information sphere.
#
Because we are at a time when, you know, that's a revolt of the public where he says that
#
there was time when everything was authority.
#
So a newspaper was in the game of authority that, you know, it was information flow.
#
Now we are out of that game.
#
So I think they, people in power, they also don't know, how much can you control?
#
So you do your, you know, you flood the information with shit so that people are confused.
#
But I don't think in today's time, if you want to do a story, truth or reporting, you
#
can't stop it being published.
#
That I think is something, a gift that technology has given us and people are exploiting it
#
So you know, we've spoken for almost five hours and we haven't mentioned data journalism
#
yet, which is, of course, a pigeonholing term that slightly irritates me.
#
Like even when I, you know, recorded with Rukmini, for example, or, you know, Pramit,
#
I said, I don't want to use this term because these guys are just proper journalists as
#
And you know, data is one tool that you have among many to tell a story.
#
So tell me a little bit about how you, what is wrong with the way people think of data
#
journalism and what are the appropriate ways to think of data, both for journalists and
#
Because when the term was new, we used to see the graphics of Hans Rosling.
#
You know, and for us in our heads, data journalism was all these funky moving graphics and you
#
know, but that's not it.
#
That's just one way of packaging it as it were.
#
But there's a lot more to that.
#
So tell me a little bit about this.
#
I feel you have a lot of haras that you're happy to let out.
#
First of all, I think Rukmini and Pramit are both, you know, way friends and mentors.
#
Like, you know, Rukmini hired me in journalism.
#
And Pramit, when I was at Hindustan Times, he was at Mint.
#
So we, you know, yeah, we used to have these, you know, Friday evening chats.
#
And he was also active in campus politics.
#
How unusual people are.
#
Rukmini used to sing in rock bands.
#
I heard these episodes and it was very fascinating, you know, to hear.
#
So I mean, you have had the pros of the profession on your podcast.
#
I mean, I learned from them, but still, I'll just tell you what.
#
So I think, I think when I came, when I got my first job as a data journalist, I used
#
to probably tell that, you know, I use data to tell stories.
#
But then you realize that what a limited way to think about a story, why the, I think the
#
frustrating part is not just graphics or whatever.
#
It's just that you want to answer a question, right?
#
You want to tell a story and data is a very powerful way to answer a question.
#
So if it's a scientific question, it could be a day to day question.
#
It could be a fitness question.
#
It just, we were talking about glucose monitors the other day.
#
So you're saying it's a one way, but it's not the only way.
#
So I now think that you do journalism where you try to answer a question.
#
And there are so many different ways you can interview people, you can find documents,
#
and you can also do data.
#
So when you isolate and say, I do data journalism, right.
#
You do journalism, like all journalism should be data-backed when it can be.
#
And there will be situations and there like tons of questions where you don't have data
#
So you use your other toolkit.
#
So my short answer is this, that the framing is fundamentally bizarre because like, are
#
we making a distinction that some things are data journalism, the other journalism doesn't
#
No, data is good way to get evidence.
#
So that I think, and it hit me very early in my career.
#
So I don't even like to introduce myself as a, so if you see my profiles, I just say reporter,
#
no data reporter, no data journalist, nothing, but it remains central to my work and how
#
And I think data should be sort of central to all our worlds, whether we're journalists
#
or not, just in terms of understanding the world, understanding ourselves.
#
So there are a ton of journalism and stats related questions I still have noted down
#
here, which I was planning to ask you, but I think we've sat here for a long time.
#
So I'll sort of link all your posts from the show notes and let people get to them.
#
I want to go back to the personal domain.
#
And when we had our first conversation in Udaipur, we were, I was telling you about
#
how my CGM continuous glucose monitor kind of changed my life.
#
The long and the short story of it is that I have come to realize that people like us,
#
journalists, intellectuals, whatever, people like us are trying to understand the world.
#
We are proud of the efforts we make in trying to understand the world, understand processes,
#
understand systems, all of that, but we don't adequately understand our own bodies.
#
And my realization of this came recently when my good friend Ajay Shah recommended that
#
I use a continuous glucose monitor to see what is happening in my own body.
#
And the result shook me so much that I changed my entire lifestyle to great benefit.
#
And, and I realized that this, you know, what we earlier spoke about the examined life and
#
unexamined life is not worth living.
#
And I think a key part of that is understanding our own bodies.
#
And over the next few months, I intend to make more efforts to kind of figure this out,
#
because I think I have been incredibly sloppy when it comes to health and my own body and
#
And I think those are key to happiness and in producing the best version of myself.
#
And I noticed that this is something that you have also worked on intensively over the
#
last few years in terms of how you have thought about fitness, how you've thought about pretty
#
much every aspect of your life.
#
So tell me a little bit more about this, because I feel there's a lot for me and my listeners
#
to learn from your journey.
#
Do you specifically about fitness in the role of combining with knowing about your body
#
Like I'm not asking you for prescriptive advice, what I did, but just, yeah.
#
Like what was your thinking?
#
And you know, how did you build the habits that you built around fitness?
#
So I mean, now it's such a integral part of my life that I, last week we launched a food
#
and fitness newsletter.
#
It's called Truths We Told, doing with this friend who has a food startup and we just
#
So yeah, yesterday we had, I mean, what is the date today?
#
We put out our first like story about, we're defining what health even means, because if
#
you don't know what it means, like how do you even improve it?
#
That was the point of the, so we are doing long reads, you know, long in-depth narratives
#
around food and fitness.
#
So I'm just trying to say that, you know, we had this giant discussion about journalism,
#
but for me, you know, it doesn't matter.
#
It's a political story or, you know, otherwise you say, oh, fitness is lifestyle.
#
No, of course, fitness matters.
#
And I want to use the same rigor that I use in my political investigations to fitness
#
So that's what I'm doing.
#
And all of this came through because I think this is during COVID, again, random things
#
happen, et cetera, et cetera.
#
And I got into this whole like fitness journey.
#
And so I grew up as an overweight adults in teenage, right?
#
And all through my early adulthood, that was the case.
#
And I think like many people, you feel that, you know, you need to lose weight, you want
#
to exercise, but nothing happens.
#
You know, at least for me, you try to do something and then it falls apart and you don't know
#
You consult someone and it's just so bizarre, it's just so confusing.
#
And you start feeling that what happened in 2020, there was a month like I'm a nerd.
#
So I just read fitness literature in and out, whatever I could.
#
And weirdly, for me, it just felt like this is actually just a math problem, you know,
#
that I just have to monitor.
#
I have to build good habits.
#
I have to watch my food intake.
#
I need to eat better and I need to exercise.
#
So I'm not going into details of what I did, but I'm saying the thinking and then conceptually
#
I understood that what it like what fitness means and how I can approach in a structured
#
way where I know doing X can lead to Y and I saw that impact in a month.
#
Then you know, there's a bulb that lit in my head that, okay, this is it, man.
#
It's not that difficult.
#
And the good thing was that I was at home, it was locked down.
#
So you don't have to go out, right?
#
All you need to be was super disciplined.
#
This is how I want to eat.
#
I need to do this exercise and just stick to it.
#
So it took me, it was a seven month time where I lost 20 kilos, right?
#
The point is not that I lost this weight.
#
The point is that in the seven months, I completely changed my relationship with food and exercise
#
because sometimes people ask me, I said, I can't give you a two minute answer.
#
The point is I've worked hard on building habits, right?
#
That for example, I realized that workouts and now I just love exercise.
#
You know, this endorphin rush that I get, I just want it like I just got COVID and like
#
So I can't, but I'm like looking forward to, you know, earlier it used to be a core
#
that, oh my God, I have to go to the gym, right?
#
Now it's something I look forward to because I saw what it does to my body.
#
But I also realized that life happens.
#
So if I, there's a great framework from Sendhil Mulayanathan, this is an economist whom I
#
He said that going to the gym every day is easier than going to the gym three days a
#
week because it removes the most problematic part in this whole, you know, being consistent,
#
So you do it every day.
#
You can do it for 10 minutes if you can't do it for an hour, but do it.
#
And I was like, this makes sense.
#
So let's do it every day.
#
Then it was that what happened?
#
That do it first thing in the morning because, you know, I think I'll do it at 6.30 in the
#
I just want to watch a movie.
#
I just want to go for a walk.
#
You know, and I can't, you know, lift weights or can't do exercise.
#
So do it first thing in the morning.
#
Again, it's intentionality, right?
#
Where it all began that you decide that this matters to me.
#
And then what started happening once I got into the zone, when I changed my eating habits
#
I think that was one of the best things I did that I started going into the kitchen
#
and understanding ingredients and understanding, you know, what is going inside my food.
#
I started understanding packaged food.
#
I understood the science of all of it.
#
And then, you know, this picture emerges that actually, you know, the world makes food fitness
#
so complicated, but it isn't.
#
It serves few five or six first principles.
#
If you just follow it, you'll be great.
#
And on a day to day basis, when you feel so alive because your energy levels are great,
#
If you, if you're not, if I'm anxious and I go for a run and I emerge out of it, anxiety
#
So I'm saying it's you experience it and you realize that, oh my God, it's a gift, right?
#
This is like, if you want to live a good life, it is not something like, at least now I don't
#
see it as something as an option.
#
It's something that I really enjoy.
#
I would never say that, you know, it is something that I experienced.
#
And in that experience, habits started building up and then it stuck.
#
So again, there's no advice here.
#
I'm just saying this is what my journey was.
#
And now I, anyone who is interested, my friends, I just try to help them to say that boss,
#
And, but I have to point out one thing, which I'm like, you know, we hear about fat shaming,
#
So interestingly, I was never fat shamed.
#
Have you heard of this term?
#
It's like somehow, I don't know.
#
I think you go and like, you know, when, you know, I told you, you come to Delhi and people
#
start commenting on your body that, Oh my God, you're losing weight.
#
Or like it, Oh, you go to the gym and you know, that's snarky expression about going
#
I'm like, boss, like, like what the hell, man, like, like, you know what I'm trying
#
I mean, there's a certain kind of mindset which says, Oh, if you're going to the gym,
#
And you want to patao, you want sculpted thing and all of that nonsense.
#
So I'm saying that that's real because you see those attitudes that, you know, but then
#
I think I read somewhere that, you know, a lot of times people are projecting their
#
own anxieties on you, right?
#
But I'm saying this happens.
#
It's, and, but then you look at, I, when I read biographies of so many people, I really
#
I don't know the fitness.
#
It's like in my, one of the blogs I wrote on fitness, like Barack Obama, right?
#
When he was like the president of the U S he used to spend one hour in the gym four days
#
a week, you know, with Michelle and his chef and his trainer.
#
And he described in his lovely memoir.
#
He describes this that, you know, and I was like, yeah, this guy is at that point was
#
one of the most powerful man in the world and he's taking time out to work out in the
#
So what excuse do I have, you know, you see all across and, you know, I think when you
#
get into private discussions with people, they tell you, so then I think your whole
#
point of the silent majority that you keep me, so I'm like, you know, deep down, everyone
#
knows this matters, right?
#
One of the things I started at one point felt uncomfortable about was talking about it in
#
public because again, these things, but now, you know, I make sure that like I do, because
#
I think this needs to be made more normalized.
#
It's not that, oh, fitness is for, you know, these actors and people who won't know.
#
Because one day a friend asked me if you have to choose between your body and your mind,
#
I was like, idiot, this is such a terrible question.
#
These things are connected and I see because when my body like my body supports how I think,
#
how I work on a day to day basis.
#
So that way I'm saying that it changed my life.
#
It became such a central fulcrum of everything that I do.
#
And yeah, I think everyone should really think about it.
#
And I think there is this flawed impression that if you shift to a healthier lifestyle,
#
that there is some pain involved, that it is not enjoyable.
#
And that's absolute nonsense.
#
Like I went through this really nice phase three years back till I lost discipline and
#
I came out of it and COVID made me sedentary and lose my habits.
#
But I was, I lost 20 kgs in a similar period of time as you did, I was on keto plus intermittent
#
fasting and I loved that food, I was running every day.
#
And I remember that initially it was difficult to discipline myself that 5.30 in the morning
#
But then I read a quote, which was so, so true.
#
And this quote was all about that every time you feel like not going out to run, just remind
#
yourself that once you go out, you will never regret having run after you come back.
#
And I have found that to be true every single time I have done exercise of any kind, every
#
single time that I've never regretted it.
#
You know, and so once you get into the habit, once you sort of own it, you know, it becomes
#
Like I often tell my writing students that if you want to read, the dangerous way to
#
become a better reader is to say that, okay, to set yourself a goal to do something that
#
every evening I'll read between six and seven.
#
And you might do it for two, three days, but you fall off the wagon and vicious circle
#
sets in, it affects your self image.
#
And then you say, I'm a Netflix kind of person.
#
But if you take the approach of saying that, if you think of the best version of yourself
#
and you tell yourself that, you know, when I'm bored, I reach for a book, I don't reach
#
If you internalize that self image, the habit comes from there.
#
And I feel that the same can work with fitness, that if you just internalize that self image,
#
you know, it can come from there and there is no punishment involved.
#
The exercise is not punishment.
#
The food is not punishment.
#
You know, that's my sort of great discovery.
#
And I'm sort of hitting myself over the head, keep, you know, all my life, I live a healthy
#
People always want to know the perfect thing.
#
There's no perfect thing.
#
It's like what works for you.
#
You don't have to figure out all the perfect workout.
#
No, you just figure out because all of us have complicated lives.
#
Sometimes we'll fall off the track.
#
You know, I very consciously also do emotional eating because once I realize emotional eating
#
what happens when I'm stressed, I want to eat.
#
So now I have a framework that when I'm stressed, I know, you know, Samarth, you are stressed
#
and you are going to emotionally eat.
#
You know, it's just my voice telling me, okay, go and eat Jalebi today.
#
And I go have a Jalebi.
#
And I'm like, I feel good because I'm not going to beat myself for having a Gulab Jamun
#
and a Jalebi when I want to.
#
You know, it's not some purist stand that I've taken good food, bad food.
#
That's a very unhealthy distinction to make.
#
So I think you take, you build habits, you build an attitude and then also realize that,
#
you know, we are humans, we fall apart and you try.
#
But I think that what you said, right, that internalizing that identity, that this matters
#
to me more than anything else, that I think just does wonders.
#
And I have to keep suppressing the half Bengali in myself.
#
You know, the other day I said, let's do pushups and I laid down on the ground to do pushups.
#
But then once I'm flat on the ground, the Bengali half of me is saying, boss, this is
#
Why do I have to get up now?
#
You know, this is a good place.
#
This is perfect, right?
#
That's why we do everything.
#
So, you know, my penultimate question, though I wish we had another five hours, but my penultimate
#
question is that one of the things I really, that interested me about all the reading up
#
I was doing of your newsletter and so on, and even what you spoke earlier, was a desire
#
You took a sabbatical at one point where you said that I sat for six months, eight months
#
I just want to learn, you know, you you've written a great piece on acquiring new skills
#
in the gig economy, which I think is a great way to think about oneself as a constantly
#
evolving person with multitudes rather than a person trained in a thing.
#
And equally, you said when you were in IIT, you went to Coursera, you went to Udemy,
#
you were always doing courses and not just in your specific subject like in humanities.
#
What is your attitude towards learning and how central is it to you?
#
Because I think to me, the key quality, and I think this is again something that you don't
#
need any inborn talent in.
#
I think all of us can learn to learn.
#
And I think if we do that, then we are future proof.
#
So tell me a little bit about your experiences with this in terms of is it something that's
#
a regular part of your life that you're always trying to learn something and what advice
#
would you give others that should they learn things for instrumental reasons, ki yeh karke
#
hume yeh skill milega, iski employability yeh hai or is it okay to just sit down and
#
learn something because you want to learn it and then maybe nothing comes out of it.
#
So I take the second approach and see again, so again, see, I don't know some, you said
#
how important is learning.
#
I think learning is everything.
#
Like I told, I do journalism because I want to understand the world, you know, and it
#
just gives, I've tried to ask why I don't have an answer, uska answer nahi hai ki kyun.
#
All I know is this is what I want to do.
#
Like as we are talking, you know, I am studying biology.
#
Last year it was for statistics.
#
This year I am doing rigorous courses on fundamentals of biology because I'm like, if I don't understand
#
the fundamentals of biology, how will I make sense of CRISPR?
#
I just don't want to read someone.
#
I want to go back first principles biology so that I can think about it.
#
And then I'm doing neuroscience, which is something that has been in my head, but I
#
want to rigorously study it from the ground up.
#
I don't have a story, like as a journalist, I don't have a story that I want to report.
#
It's just that in my framework, this is something I feel is important for my growth as a person
#
who just wants to figure out things.
#
And I think once that hits in, you know, this will enhance my understanding for me that
#
in most cases gives me the push to start it up again.
#
I don't actually, you know, now we started the discussion with my mom, right?
#
So let's end with that.
#
Also, my mom told me back when I was in school, she said that, you know, don't think too
#
much about what will happen if you do this extra thing.
#
Don't ask that question.
#
If you're learning, just learn something will happen.
#
And that I think is kind of brilliant, and then what happens over the period of time,
#
you keep doing this and you see your, you know, you mentioned this point about high
#
definition picture as dots connect.
#
Like I'll give you a practical example, which you'll see how organically things happen.
#
So I live in the hills and you know, what is the biggest problem in my life?
#
You'll see how privileged this dude is.
#
My biggest problem in my life are monkeys because they are in my veranda all the time
#
and you know, they're creating a mess.
#
And I have to always be active.
#
How to one day I was thinking that why can't I recognize who are the good guys and who
#
are the bad guys, you know, who creates this ruckus because I can't like make any distinction
#
Maybe I knew interestingly, just a week after I had this question in my head, I was doing
#
this neuroscience course, which is the question that the theme of that course is how the brain
#
gives rise to the mind.
#
Then Nancy can wish her was an instructor.
#
These all, by the way, this course is on YouTube.
#
Her introductory lecture has 10 million views, just FII.
#
She's such a brilliant teacher.
#
So she was describing about how humans recognize faces, right?
#
And there she said about this thing called, I'm forgetting the exact term, but the other
#
You know, sometimes you say when we make, I mean, this politically incorrect, when we
#
say something about people in China, that all of them look the same and that we say
#
it's a racist comment, but she explained that there is biology to it, that, you know, how
#
our brain is structured to recognize faces in the communities we grow up, the features
#
That becomes our model, which is why when we see someone from another race, we are not
#
able to make those distinctions.
#
So as she described studies, it just hit me.
#
And then I realized that is exactly what is happening.
#
Why I can't identify these monkeys, right?
#
It's not that all monkeys look the same.
#
It's that I can't identify.
#
So it's a small thing, right?
#
But it just gave me some deep joy because something I was thinking about, I was for
#
my day to day life and this, I'm doing this course out of this curiosity and, you know,
#
So what starts happening, I think when you are in that process, at least for me that
#
out of the blue, you know, things start connecting, the dots join, your high definition picture
#
But I don't start by saying I want a high definition picture of X.
#
You gather dots for the love of it.
#
And I think that is just pure joy.
#
And I think that's why I told you at the conference also that, you know, my, again, journaling
#
allows you time travel.
#
So in my sessions when I'm writing, whenever I'm frustrated about being in a newsroom,
#
whatever, I just want to understand that why did I come to this profession?
#
I didn't never sign up to save democracy.
#
You know, there are people who come with that, I just thought journalism, like which other
#
job pays you to learn about the world and tell it to other people, right?
#
That's what journalism is in a way.
#
So when you start saying, yes, I have an understanding, then you break off your identity, journalism
#
But if I have the privilege, if my finances are sorted and I can take out time to learn
#
about things and do it.
#
So yeah, that's, that's my approach.
#
And it just gives me very deep meaning.
#
But did you solve the monkey problem?
#
I mean, monkey problem.
#
Now the biology has told me that I can't distinguish between the faces.
#
By the way, you know, monkeys, can I rant about them for a, you know, this is my favorite
#
walk where I go every day recently, you know, three weeks ago, like there was this bunch
#
of 15 monkeys who chased me, because I was alone.
#
I was walking up the hill.
#
And I sprinted the fastest 200 meter ever in my life because I felt like they are going
#
to kill me because they were growling and they were chasing and I don't know why I
#
So monkey problem can't be solved.
#
It is something, you know, when I went to the hills, I was like, you know, some earth
#
humans need to coexist with animals.
#
You know, then the monkeys chase me and I'm like, I don't know, man, I can think about
#
whatever ecology and human relationships, but I also want to be alive.
#
So monkeys have really complicated my life in that way.
#
So, well, you know, perhaps the biggest problem of them all, certainly the biggest problem
#
of them, of them all, when you at the time you are being chased by monkeys.
#
I love your mother's advice, by the way, you know, just read everything, you know, and
#
So I'll end this episode by asking you for recommendations for me and my listeners about
#
books, films, music, whatever you feel like any category that you really love and you
#
want to share with others.
#
So I think the book is a no brainer.
#
I try to plug it at every possible event is Neil Postman written a book called Amusing
#
I haven't read it, but it's been in my show notes and I have bought the Kindle version
#
and I've intended to read it, but it's one of those things, not all the books that pile
#
That book, when I read it in a friend of mine at the Hindu, he recommended, you know, I
#
think that was the point when I started asking these questions about the press and the media
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So he said, start with this.
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And it just changed the way I like it for me that I don't think anyone has read it,
#
but it's a beautiful book.
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And I think all of us who at some point are struggling to understand social media because
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that's absurdity of modern life, like what is happening?
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This book was written in 1985 when there was no internet.
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The thing was TV and you read it.
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The book has stood the test of time.
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So I think that book is brilliant.
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The second book I will say is, again, I love, you know, old books, which Future Shock, Elvin
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Toffler, brilliant book.
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You read it and you say, I think 1970 that was published, I'm recalling from memory,
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sometime around that and like what deep thinker, what deep thinking about the future and how
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The books is about that how in modern society, the pace of change has exponentially increased
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and as humans, we are not designed to cope with that change.
#
So he talks about all sorts of, you know, from where we live to our human relationships,
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all of those things and talks about how we will adopt in the future.
#
And I think it's such a, I think the genre is, I think is a futurist, but it almost feels
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like sociological work, right?
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It gives you so many ideas about thinking about the future.
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So I think that's the second book that I strongly recommend.
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So I'll stop at, I mean, books, you know, are never ending recommendations, but these
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two movies, I'll tell you one of my favorite movies is a new one.
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You've seen The Trial of Chicago 7?
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You know, that's a, yeah, I just love the movie because it's a very political movie,
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but it really had a deep impact on me.
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So I encourage people to watch it.
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And of course, Dead Poets Society, which we have already mentioned.
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So yeah, I think I'll stop here.
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Samat, thank you so much for, you know, spending so much time with me today.
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I think we've actually, I mean, I think the recording will be something over five hours,
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but we've been in the studio together for six hours, 40 minutes already.
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Thank you for having me.
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I think it's from being a listener for, I don't know, you don't know, we have met at
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the media rumble in Delhi in 2018 or 19, I'm forgetting.
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I don't even, I'm saying that like I've been a listener for that long.
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So it's an, it was an absolute pleasure to have this conversation.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, share it with anyone you think might be interested.
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In fact, do that with older episodes as well.
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Check out the show notes, enter Abit Holes at will.
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You can follow Samarth on Twitter at PySamarth.
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I'll link it from the show notes as well.
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And you can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
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You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in.
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Thank you for listening.
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