Somewhere I belong

I, V, M. Yeah, very long. Much nicer and I'm acutely aware of my under-preparedness right here. Right now, when you say under-preparedness now, usually the script is under-prepared, but now do you mean like foundation?

Oh, like that. No, no, I just meant like I'm wearing shorts and this studio is pretty cool. I just really see the production value. Yeah, this is true.

But yeah, it's nice to me. It's amazing. Yeah, all four of us. It's brilliant.

It's brilliant doing it like brilliant. No, don't worry. We are working on getting the hologram machine up and running so that we can have a ghost of you in the studio here with us. This is probably my one shot at sounding better than Sreeke with his great mic.

Oh, wow. I realized we actually do get a hologram machine and we have Sreeke. We still need to mic him up from Canada because the hologram is not going to produce voice. Hey, man, you don't know what the technology is capable of.

Yeah, but I mean, clearly we all belong here. We can just get him to wait without doing anything. But I had a question for all of you, which is that home is a weird construct as you grow up. But like, has there been any place situation setting where you just felt like, wow, this is new, but I feel like it really belong here.

I went to a metal fest in Belgium and it was a very different atmosphere from the concerts that I'm at. It felt very communal. That was nice. My favorite part was when a bunch of guys came up to us and like, oh, you come all the way from India and they bought us all around the beer.

Like, I was in India, all the beer. That was pretty cool. I felt pretty nice. The communal table is a very different thing.

You are a fan of it. I don't know. Let's go up the constitution. That's amazing.

So, yes, so I mean, of course I have multiple stories about Canada and the two ones I've been here. But I'll actually refer to another story of the time I went to Japan. And in Japan, and this is the weirdest thing where for the first time I experienced the Japanese bidet. And oh man, I felt like it belonged in that toilet.

Oh, man. Oh, my God, that toilet had like 16 settings and I spent half an hour in that bathroom. I will not divulge details of what was in there, but I definitely felt like I belonged. You know, just before this recording for the benefit of the listeners, the IBM social media team was in here, desperately trying to get us to say something that will help us go viral.

And if that clip of Shri Keith saying the words, I sat on the toilet and I felt like I belong, this is taken out of context. I think we'll finally hit. Actually, it's BP profound because home is actually very access. No, very feeling.

Taking a dump without taking questions. I don't know what kind of technology had he had in there, but the plastic became warm. Right? Like the...

It was you. That was amazing. So you're like... If your home is where you can take a good shit, then when you go to somebody's place and say, what a dump you can put.

It's the company's company. It's like a fancy hotel or something. I was in a hostel somewhere in Tokyo and it's just there everywhere. I was like, man, I could get used to this place.

You know the show is growing up. The creature comforts you're looking for is a good comfortable place. No, no, no. But having traveled to Europe three or four years back, Yabam's place, very yada.

Unless you have that stock which is not in part, it's not long ago. I've printed it out of serving people. I'm putting it in here. This is becoming even more fond for me now that I've been in Yada for two months.

This place is horrible. Not in here. Okay. This is going to be a long WhatsApp for already 10.

So far. It's a nice episode. So far. All the social media, instead of a lot of the content.

All apologies for tucking at heartstrings and everything. I've been really long time back. I was newly married. She got to my store.

So I had to go to my store as well. And I mean back in the day, you didn't, you know, you're pretty impoverished. So I took a second class ticket on a train called the Udiyan Express, which left from V.T. and went all the way to Bangalore, reached there after 24 hours.

And those days I had a factory and just started a factory in Versailles. So, you know, so I get in and there's a bunch of fisher folk who was speaking in Marathi. I speak Marathi fluently. And my usual practice, you know, when traveling the train back then was not to eat anything.

So that you don't need to go to the loop. So you just, I don't need, I just, I take an upper berth, I just take an upper berth, carry a stack of books, just read and not eat a done thing, just stop so that you don't need to visit the loop. These guys, they were, you know, on the lower berth, they're nice friendly people, fisher folk. And then I asked them where they were going.

They were going for some kind of a, they're all Christians. So they're going for some kind of a Christian retreat. And so they said there from Versailles. I said, okay, I have a factory there.

So they sort of, you know, they're very excited that somebody had heard of a place called Versailles and they were like, you know, where do you wear your factory water? So there was a little bit of, you know, good camaraderie. And then I sort of vanished into my book. I was reading.

Then around lunch, these people observed that I was meeting them and things. So they asked me, they said, you aren't eating anything. So I told them that I don't, because I don't eat when I'm on train. I just, I'm okay.

I'm fine. And I didn't say anything. And then in the afternoon, you know, people keep coming into the train selling stuff and I didn't eat anything. Then either.

And they noticed that. And the evening was the last straw. So the strain starts from me in the morning. So by dinner time, I was still like in my little cocoon reading.

And this guy comes to me and he refuses to take no for an answer. He says, you haven't eaten all day and we cannot simply cannot allow that to happen. And he said that in such a nice way that I had to eat. I really felt at that moment that I belong to this country.

That's the WhatsApp forwarding. Oh, wow. I genuinely thought the punchline was going to be, don't do intermittent fasting. I thought it was going from cocoon to cocoon to cocoon something.

Oh, no, no. That's, that's your specialty. But I mean, yeah, no, but. We did it with the.

I mean, that's the thing I used to take when I was in college as well from there to all the way to the world. And that train was one. I mean, it was an Indian and state. And microcosm, like, you know, like everything in the universe was there.

Yeah. All kinds of people, all kinds of things. All kinds of organisms. I've seen rats in there.

I've seen many things with more like, yeah, everything is coexisting. Yeah, I mean, you know, I also realized that it's a nice game to play when you're drunk, which would be concoct a story that ends with. That's when I felt I truly belonged in this country. You can approach it from a multitude of emotions.

Be it warm, be it funny or, well, let's say never mind. Let's move. Yeah. Okay.

Yes. Very, very underwhelming, but like, yeah, similar to Chuck actually, I actually had the privilege of watching a World Cup match at MCG. I think it was the first cricket match where, you know, I also got to have beer in a stadium and like just randomly sort of, we were in a row and there was South African fans behind us. Australian fans.

I just felt like a really nice place, just like having, you know, bander real time and stuff like that. And yeah, I think Australia's one place I definitely feel like going back to if given choice. But anyway, that's not happening. But the question for today is slightly different.

I came across this very nice profound quote, which is that the opposite of belonging is fitting in. It seems a little counterintuitive to begin with. So since I saw that quote, I've been thinking about it in a variety of different ways. And I obviously messaged you guys and he said, yeah, okay, let's do the discussion.

Then I'm like, okay, I have to look up where the quote comes from. And it's actually from a fabulous talk by this person called Branny Brown. She has a, it's a Netflix and I mean, it's a very good thing to watch. It's called the call to courage.

And she talks about actually like how vulnerability and courage are the same. I mean, it's not the opposite end of the spectrum, but the same and stuff like that. But anyway, I mean, that's not what we're talking about because there is apparently an older TED talk of her called vulnerability, which when live and stuff like that. And it's funny, right?

Because do any of you have a Star Wars watching order? I haven't seen it either. Oh, this is what we're going to be confessing in. That is, I hate a lot of the, okay.

Srikit, you lot of the rings you hit. No, I tried to order because I didn't, I mean, obviously I was in debt for the first few months. So I've done 456.23. Yeah, nice.

Yeah, so I was watching order, I think it's mandatory sort of learning for anyone who decides UX or stuff like that. Because like the way people discover isn't always linear, right? Because this particular person had a like blowout TEDx talk which went viral like millions and millions of views. But I never heard of her and then her Netflix especially came in and heard of her then either and took me that quote to sort of approach it in that reverse order or whatever.

But so when I think about belonging, the opposite of all, it was like what you were trying to go through the Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of went Harry Potter 4.3.2.1. Oh really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was kind of weird. That is the bigger travis. How did that happen though?

I just got to book first. Yeah, I just got to, yeah, I just got to, yeah, I have a friend said Harry Potter series seems to be doing well here. At that point I just got in, I was reading stuff like Jeffrey Alsar vooda was in stuff where there's no linearity to this. Yeah.

I was like, okay, start from pretty much anywhere. And then like, I was in 11th or 12th, you could piece things together enough. And then it was actually kind of beautiful to actually read backwards and then, you know, and the excitement I had reading the first book. Yeah.

Because, oh, this is where it all starts. It's actually, yeah, it's actually kind of nice to do that. It does sound like a great experience. I've done obviously the classic order.

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. But in that, like, I mean, I did, I mean, my favorite books are 4 and 3. Yeah, 4 and 3. It's not a book.

Yeah, but anyway, so yeah, I went to doing the reverse order. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I could have done that. Yeah, yeah.

Interesting experiment to try. Let's do it. It's that. Yeah, yeah.

Like, we need to pull much actually end up to play it in the reverse. I'm like, don't you go on. Yeah. These are the things that are fitting in.

I just think about the time and energy spend with people and around people these days. And how true that is. And like I think-. I mean, Twarma speaks about it a lot on the spot.

Like, where is home for you? Right? And he sort of describes it as not necessarily a physical space, but mostly on the Internet and around that and stuff like that. But it's an interesting thought, right?

Like, and all of us have been, like, I've been Malu in Andhra Pradesh. You've been in a Middle East, Kerala, Sikithya, you've been, Telugu, boy, growing up in Gujarat and then all over the place. And then you just ask to Bombay, like, No, but that's very interesting. very interesting because when you say that, especially that part about being your home might be online, is what you said.

So I feel like the time I felt like I belong in a place most was weirdly enough, Pargagai in between 2005-20, and people who don't know what this is. Pargagai used to be like an MBA forum from 2002 to about 2010, also it is still around, but those were golden days. And till then I felt like I didn't really belong anywhere because growing up in Bahrain, I mean you're studying for CPC, you don't really have the time to be long anywhere. And then I was a Gulf Kid in 11th and 12th in Kerala, not knowing Marjana very well, not knowing any other culture or whatever over here.

And then in engineering college also, you know, it was like whatever. And then I wanted to write cat and get into Micah and all that. And again, I was like, I had friends and all that, but it was still an outlet and have a real community or anything. And then when I went online and found these bunch of other, not just MBA as well, but folks who were as crazy as I was to get into this particular place, that was like true sense of, I felt like, oh wow, here's like tripe, here's community.

And we had, we were really close and we, yeah, I mean I used to spend hours at Reliance Web World in the Rishur, I was so, I was such a fan of Reliance Web World that we used to have a little band and I actually played with the Reliance Web world teacher, I have a totally playing place. But yeah, it completely hits home. Like, if I were to think like, what are the communities or where were the places I really felt at home, those few months or years that I spent on Pargugai, I feel were like real community like, yeah. Yeah, that's actually a great point to say.

And if I was to think about it similarly, I kind of had a similar experience. Like you said, grew up in a city where I was not from technically, I mean, I don't, I didn't ever like, I never spent any time in Andra ever. So I never fit in with the South Indian so to speak crowd, not really fit in with the Gujira, the Goudh as such, because skin color. So, I mean, no, it was a reality.

So, well, all of that stuff happened. And I mean, the place again, like for me, like, an equivalent to what Chakwaz was Wikipedia. Wikipedia was very, very fitted like with the community over there and working with those guys. And like, it's always been like initiatives where, I mean, rather than a place of home or like just generally like a friends group as such like, I'd say Wikipedia and simplified with the most like, you know, like, I mean, the thing is, and it's also, I also really found that interesting, the point that you made earlier, which is like fitting in is the opposite of belonging, which actually absolutely resonates with me because fitting in requires you to change yourself as belonging is a come as you all type of attitude.

And like, that acceptance of saying that, okay, this is who you are and this is fine. Yeah. We take you as you are. And that aspect is what actually really contributes to belonging.

And I think these are some of the places and online, online communities and like, people have met online. I met all of you guys also, primarily online. I mean, I think I've seen, I've seemed to find like much more of a community and a sense of belonging to the people there rather than most people have met in like physical context. Yeah, I remember reading a piece about somebody who's, I mean, this is in the context of gaming and the avatars that you create online.

I mean, there's a lot of public criticism about people who spend a lot of time playing games and spend a lot of, you know, just get lost in that world completely. But there was a, I remember a very long typical, wired article really, a wired, long read about a person who found so much meaning in her online avatar, creating relationships with people who she really didn't know who they were in real life or where they were, what gender they were or anything like that. They're trying to solve each other's problems with chat. It was really beautiful.

And she was escaping from a lot of abuse in school or marriage or whatever it was like escaping from shitty real life. And this gave her happiness. Somehow all these chats of how it really just goes back to happiness or whatever. But yeah, that in another context is, and that was, I remember reading the article just when this whole hoopla around the meta was starting, right?

And then was still the good old days when we thought that, okay, there was some promise that was there in these online, yeah, I think talking about Hollywood. And additionally, I think also, I mean, if you were to read the book, I'll see the movie Ready Player One, right? It also kind of contributes to that overall thing where, I mean, we are now in a place, you know, in a space in time, I mean, we're in a place in time in such a way where we are in a place in certain places being able to identify, I mean, create and define our own identities for ourselves. They are not thrust upon us and they are not like things that we have to live with.

Right. And when that happens, I think a lot of people who are quite uncomfortable either with social situations or with their own identities in the real world are unable to change them in any which way are finding meaning and finding comfort and finding a lot of happiness by like creating identities for themselves online. And with these identities, and these identities mean a lot to them. I mean, it's trivialized and like pushed away by people who don't really see the meaning of this is a put on, but it's actually, I mean, it's what you choose.

It's like they say it's the family you choose versus the family you have, right? Yeah, I don't consume a lot of culture. So maybe you guys will be better suited to answers, but it seems like it would be a powerful storyline for a lot of fiction, right? Which is disparate people from different worldviews who don't look like they belong together, somehow clicking and coming together.

It seems like maybe the Avengers maybe or maybe... What does it mean? Again, indie music references from Tony, why in the studio? This is the thing last time you were here, you read a Parikramal, but I mean, to some extent maybe even Ted Lasso, but do you feel like, have you come across any examples like that?

Like where people like complete polar opposites or don't feel, I mean, doesn't look like they belong together. Somehow they find meaning together. I don't know, it just seems to me like that should be a thing overcoming your... I have another lens.

Okay, so we are all different. Everyone is necessarily different. That's the human condition. You cannot, like two twins cannot be similar to, like identical to each other.

The thing is, does the universe that you are entering, compel you to change yourself, like make makes you feel that you need to change yourself in order to be in that universe? So I'm referring now to a thing from my wife, Sheila, she's from my sort. And it's certainly a twin. And it's not a...

I went to whenever I showed them myself, I was very charming, at least way back when I got married, everyone knew everyone else. So whenever I went, I was treated like everyone seemed to know who I was. I don't know them from Adam, but they would be chatting me up, they would be offering me taking me to dinner or whatever. I mean, just everyone was super friendly, super nice.

And that was because it was a small place, a small social circle, everyone seemed to know everyone else. And Sheila seemed to resent that she went to Bombay to the exact opposite. Bombay, no one knows you, no one cares. So she found that immensely liberating.

And she's... To this day, she does the biggest thing she loves about Bombay is that nobody cares, nobody cares how you look about the cares. And so she says she belongs to Bombay. I mean, though she's from my sort.

And you've kind of like felt the other way around. And I was, yeah, I mean, I go occasionally and like, I don't need to change anything. But for Sheila, that thing belonging, which meant that she didn't need to, for example, in my sort, she was judged if she wore a particular kind of clothes, or if you wore a hair in a particular way, or if she, you know, all those kinds of things, right? And Bombay, nobody really cares.

I mean, you could... I think I mentioned this before. It was like one of the key reasons why I really stay in Bombay is like I have a daughter and I don't want her to grow up in any other city in India than Bombay, because it's just inclusive. And yeah, relatively, of course, because there are people who find things wrong with Bombay, but yeah, if you ask Sheila, hands down, it's the most sort of inclusive for women.

Yeah, strangely enough, it's inclusive because people don't give a shit about it. And also the lack of space, right? One of the things that I keep saying is Mumbai is the only city where you need to step outside your home to get married. So like, if you have to make out, you have to go to my friend's drive, because I told there are eight people and like one day each.

And I suppose that is a weird sense of belonging by itself, right? Like, you all have to buckle to get a local train together. You all have the same expression. Nobody hates each other on a local train.

You're like, listen, we are all in this shit together. The others coming next to the race. That's exactly how it was. When I just come to Bombay, I used to commute from Banda to church gate and like at peak time.

So, I mean, I used to see the worst of it. And sometimes like I read it without realizing, I used to get it to be that fast. Yeah, yeah. Which used to be another experience altogether.

Like you have an out-of-body experience when you do that. But so the whole thing was, I mean, in that context, and you're very right with that, like there used to be like this huge mass, there's a crush. Like people are legit like we are causing pain to each other at some point of time, right? Like that's like as hard as it gets.

And there is no heat rate because everybody understands the situation and everybody knows that we are here because of our particular reason and this is how it is. And so there is absolute, in fact, there's camaraderie. Like people are trying to pull each other in like kind of hold on to each other. And I was hanging out.

I was hanging out. I was hanging on him and he was ragging him in. And I was like in adversity, that kind of like sense of belonging and sense of like watching out for the other person was quite incredibly Bombay. And also, I mean, just to just to curkle to the Todi's, I mean, I remember the first couple of times I met you, Todi.

Like it was hilarious how your attitude has kind of evolved over the years. Like he first met Todi. I remember it was like, how is Todi how you like it? Oh, it's good for a while.

I think before I leave from here, it'll be nice. Like I hope I can leave food. Like I can't have Todi had it initially. And now to moving to this is where I want my check.

Too much. Yeah. So I wanted to explore on what he said about Pagli. It was also a forum where by design, a lot of people would get vulnerable because everyone was looking for a blackie as it was called back in the day, which for the young ones back when they were like just six I am a blackie was all the I am calls it bang, like now I'm the bad Calcutta, Kody Kody Kody Kody and Indole.

But oftentimes many people took more than one attempt to deal care. And like, did you see that sort of vulnerable people being comfortable with being vulnerable on those forums? I guess because it's interesting that because right now we it's a well known trope that you're online persona and offline thing can be different. And I'm sure all of us can name examples of somebody who we thought was like super crazy dynamic or whatever online you make them in real life and they are inclusive or the other way around it or whatever the case may be.

I think that was the first time I felt that to some extent it was because many people were behind that veil of anonymity. So they could afford to be as vulnerable or they could also be as abusive or whatever as possible, hiding behind an avatar or whatever. But absolutely 100% you're right. Even people with real names and all that did not mind opening up.

I felt myself opening up about many things for the first time, which I wouldn't have spoken to somebody in real life. And maybe it was because I felt like, okay, these guys aren't going to question you back immediately and I have time to frame a response. So I don't know, I get that did feel kind of liberating to some extent and also made me think, hey, what are the other thoughts feelings that I might be suppressing or what the opinions that I might be suppressing, which I don't want to necessarily talk. And you also feel this way when you see other people talk about other topics.

For example, many of, I won't say opinions, but many of the, what do you say, your approach to debate and all that was shaped in a weird way, what do you say online? For example, just a round. We all wrote reading the comments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Like, for example, there was a very, very active rock music discussion forum on Pargill and some of the comments over there and some of the things that people were absolutely vicious. And I was like, okay, you can argue like this also. I mean, like, and there were some parts like, okay, I don't particularly agree with that, but I'll see how he's making his point and all that. And then you think, okay, can I just take transpose that, if not the facts, can I transpose a way of thinking into, say, politics or whatever it is, something else?

So I guess what is, I mean, the answer, that's a long-winded answer. Yes, no, so the reason I was asking was a lot of us like, my Twitter, and then moved into two WhatsApp groups, right? And like where you get to be vulnerable, especially I feel this is that like when you're watching sports together, right? We have a, what the legends group, you all do is a legends cricket group, where practically like you're going through many emotions simultaneously when a team is playing and like you're like looking comments and also getting into debates, right?

And also being vulnerable to a real great degree because it's not like Twitter that it's public, you sort of have arguments and debates, but at the end of the day, like you also feel like, you know, you really belong. So I think it sports, it's much more easy. And I was just thinking like a vulnerability of factor in sort of like the more vulnerable you are, like you can be, you feel like you belong there or the more you feel like you belong there, the more vulnerable. Yeah.

And I think anything that has, anything to do with emotion, like I'm sure like Tony and Shriq, both of you have had several moments like this when it comes to, you know, when it comes to sports, like I can imagine what you must have felt during like the 2005 Champions final, for example. And I have experienced many, many, many times at concerts, like I have seen like fully grown men, like, we, during metal shows and stuff like that. So yeah, I think whenever there is like some, and people understand, like they put hands around each other like, yeah, we get to do it. Like we know what you're doing through.

So yeah, why does metal make you cry? No, I mean, I'm serious question. So that is my test for good music. It should bring tears to your eyes.

Yeah, I mean, that's my test. Yeah. So two things, right? One, it could be catharsis, even though it's heavy, it's not mindless.

It comes from a place of emotion, I suppose. And second, there could just be very, very sharp contrast between, you know, between certain passages, which is a beautifully constructed, it just happens to be heavy and abrasive and all that. Like certain, like Opeth for instance, they have some very, very like deep parts and very emotional parts which are not heavy at all. In fact, one of them reminds me of a certain moment and I was crying at the Opeth show in it, seven, one of my, one of my friends, we shall leave.

Like, I know exactly why you're doing this. Go ahead. And actually it was quite touching because an absolute stranger came up to me and said, happens to all of us, it's fine. Let it go.

And that was beautiful. Not that they launched into something else that was like absolute next-person. I mean, I think it can extend to a lot of other music. I think because music is so strongly.

Yeah, not just music. I'm saying anything that has the emotional, that is why I started with sports, right? Sports music. Pretty much anything else for all, you know, there are tech bros in Silicon Valley who are looking at LinkedIn series, presentation to Greylock and say, ah, read off me.

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Have you felt that? So yeah, it's all a misdered discussion because I stepped up to your phone call. But food maybe? Well, a shared moment around food.

I don't know, maybe I think Narin, you might have experienced the time. But they couldn't choose to be vulnerable to. Yeah, it can be family also. I can't think of hand-walled.

No, you can't. I do need to chip in. Actually, this is like 10 minutes back. We were talking about local train.

So one of my fascinations, there's Yin and Yang in the universe everywhere. So opposite things. So one of the Yin and Yang moments in the local train is all the tall guys. The short guys have to smell the tall guys amped.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But all the tall guys have to smell the short guys' hair oil. So that's the Yin and Yang. Wow, amazing.

I'm not sure if that's the answer. I just, yeah, so I was on a different thread in my mind. So for the listeners, what happened was I got a call from my factory. And I always become a call from the factory.

I don't know what the hell is happening. It could be potentially serious. It wasn't serious. It turned out that they wanted some kind of a part which they're not able to get.

So they wanted me to see if I could order it online or whatever. No, but you brought your vulnerable self to the spot first. Quite a few times. So the thing about being in places where you're vulnerable is strangely vulnerability.

Is, you know, it's one of those Yin and Yang things. So in one way, it's uncomfortable. When you expose, it's like a cat exposing its belly. And you do it to, and yet you oftentimes do it to perfect strangers.

You expose your vulnerability with, for that little moment, you don't really even think of what might happen if somebody took cognizance of that vulnerability and decided to exploit it. And it is deeply satisfying as well. I do believe all of us need to be, we are all vulnerable. We put on show, we put on the perfect.

And go to the extent that it's actually easier to be vulnerable to strangers than with your first to end. So curious at all. For example, there are things that I opened up to my therapist which would take me a long time to. Therapist is okay.

But a relative stranger, let's say me, okay. And as opposed to your loved ones. And you far more likely to say some things to me than to your loved ones. Despite the fact that you really love them deeply, you trust them at a level you don't trust.

You know, when his family or spouses or whatever, you, they trust in a very different level. And yet why is it that we feel comfortable or even satisfying to expose our vulnerabilities to relative stranger? Yeah, I'm sure it goes back to evolution or something. I don't know.

I think once the guard, this is saying in marketing and advertising, whatever happens in the board room is just for sure. The actual meeting point, the actual actionables or whatever happens in the smoking room and everyone lets their guard down. And there's also the other saying that two people who work in advertising will truly bond only when they find a common client to bitch about. And that's when like, okay, you have been there.

You can see the shoulders drooping. I don't know. I don't know. I go back to the point.

You find, I think the thing over there for all these things from football to metal to advertising guys, reaching out to this, you find common ground or you find like, okay, you're not here and I'm not here. We have something, there is something shared. I think that's the common string, common ground. Oh, you see and feel inside.

No, letting our guard down and exposing a facet of your character. The cat analogy is a nice one, by the way. Yeah, Billy. So this reminds me of like mandatory, yes, primary standard.

You should actually, I feel like we should have like a little, you know, audio. So in one of the episodes, so the Prime Minister has a political advisor named Dorothy. So Dorothy, and she has an office and Humphrey is desperate to get the office out of that office. So she, he has this mastery organization plan and she is now shifted to some of the place.

So she comes to Jim Hiker and says, Humphrey told me that, you know, you had an office. Did you? I mean, he came, I thought it was, don't you realize the civil service has been trying to get me out of the office for years. I don't, I don't see what about it.

It's a photocopy. So she says, this is, you know, I, this, she says, he lays out this thing. This is the cabinet room. This is the thing.

And this is the men's gents. I have to be opposite the loom. So have you seen anyone about this? The men's loom.

Why? Because really everyone in the cabinet is a man and I get to listen to everything they say to each other when they pop out for me. And that's, that's how I kept my, your political self, fully informed about what is going on. So that's, that's, that's, that's, like, that's so true.

Yeah. So two, two things that I wanted to explore on this topic, right? One is that, at least me by virtue of never making enough money to buy a house in Bombay. And being in a relatively sort of reasonable position, have an extremely first world problem to think of where I would want to sort of settle down or like, where would my ideal life be kind of thing, right?

As opposed to when you were growing up, a lot of things happened by accident. You got into an engineering college or MBA or, you know, company and you had to fit in or like find cocoons where you belong within that sort of setup. So have you guys thought about it? You know, how do you approach something like that?

Like when in your sort of conception of if you're given the privilege to find a place where you belong? Like, does that, how do you go about that? Wow. That's a loaded question.

And that was quite a leap from profound question. Yeah. No, I don't think it's profound as much as well. That's why you took quite a leap from the, from, from where we were before.

I'll take a stab at that because that's something that actually, you know, the, my wife and I were thinking of recently, we went to a small little island in Thailand recently. So we, we do this thing every time, whenever we go on vacation, right? Like we obviously have a lot of fun wherever we go, Europe, Philippines, Sri Lanka, whatever. And we always ask ourselves, would we want to settle down here?

And the answer has always been no, it's been like, like, no, there's no debate, like from Amsterdam to wherever, like to Andaman, it's always been like, no, and we've found some reason or the other. This little random island in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, Kothau was the first place we actually paused and looked at each other and like, maybe, and I don't know, there was a lot of factors. One of course, the diving was great and we can see it's doing that forever. But also there's just a vibe of the island, again, sense of community belonging and all that.

It just felt like strangers from around the, have you been on many places where people come together to dive? But there was something about this place, the energy of the place, it just felt like nobody cared. I mean, the good parts about Bombay in some sense, nobody cared, you can like bring yourself to be yourself, but it also felt freer, there were lots of things to do. And it also felt like a place where, hey, we could possibly construct a life over here.

We could like work out if we wanted to, the infrastructure was good. I suppose this is what the bridge that you were looking for from, you know, where, like, a place where you belong to, could this be a place that you settle down in? That was the first time that we actually like said, hey, maybe, maybe, not that is going to happen anytime soon anyway. I hope that kind of answers the question because we could see ourselves doing a lot of touristy things, but also I think, and here's the important thing.

I think it's not about the touristy things, the touristy things are great for a week, right? There are some places that are just great, that are amazing to spend a week or a week or two in. But it's about the everyday, can, what does your everyday look like? And going back to Amit's Court, right?

Like you're in your ideal life, what does your everyday look like? Not the outlier day, but the regular boring day. And the regular boring day looked great, it would be cheap, I mean, cheapish, and there was enough to do on a regular basis, you know, yeah, I guess that would. I think I can take a slightly meatier stab at that.

Coming from the only vegetarian group, yeah. I mean, I'll talk about my past two months in Canada as such, and also what was one of the, I mean, it became one of the reasons why I wanted to move here and I've kind of experienced that over here. I mean, since I started stepping out of India and visiting other places, I've kind of been like a little, I've been a bit of a sucker for places that are nicer, you know, like generally like places that have, I mean, where people are nice, where there is no rush to push everyone aside, like there's no rat race actively outside in the world in like the small things everywhere. And additionally, I had like a particular experience.

So Canada has been amazing from that context where, I mean, you're generally like, it was a most hilarious thing. This is one time I was a, so here you have like, obviously there are, I mean, you have like your pedestrian signals and all that stuff, but certain smaller intersections are not like they don't have pedestrian signals at which point the pedestrians have the right of weight. So if the pedestrian is crossing, the car must stop. Right.

Now I was like, it was the middle of the night and I was walking back home or something. And I was just standing at a corner, speaking of checking my phone for like, just trying to find out where I have to go. And I was just standing there for about five minutes. And then I noticed that there was a car standing right there waiting for me to cross and the car stood there for about three minutes.

Whoa. Cross. Just because I was standing at the edge of the road and they said pedestrian is right away. It's just waiting for me to cross the guy.

I didn't even honk or anything. Like it's just we did that. That's like a fault. I was like, oh my God, I felt so guilty.

I quickly crossed that I waved and I said, thank you. Sorry. I went to it. Stuff like that was like, it's just incredible.

But besides that, like another thing that happened, which is the niceness or I'd say the welcoming attitude, right? Like something that I feel is very like making people feel comfortable when they come here. Right. In that sense, I saw that in a very real tangible way when I went to see my first hockey game over here.

Right. So there was a match between an American team, the Buffalo Sabres and the local Toronto Maple Leafs. Right. Which is a tradition in the NHL.

The National Anthem's of both the teams are played. So the American National Anthem as well as the Canadian National Anthem and when they were playing. So when they started, I just heard like a smattering in the crowd just listening to the American National Anthem for a bit. I was like, okay.

I don't understand what was happening. And then the Canadian National Anthem played over the pier. I was like, initially, I was like, that's kind of crappy, like. They didn't play the American National Anthem on the PA, but the American National Anthem was the PA, but the Canadian one.

And then I saw the news later and I found what happened. Like the PA system cut out. Like it had a malfunction. And the people that were singing, well, the Canadians were singing American National Anthem.

Like it was, all the Canadians like go together because the PA cut out. and I really sang the American National Anthem for that. And I really felt like a sense of belonging, because I was like, for me, that's what I feel patriotism is about. It's about being so secure in your own national identity that you are feeling like, you feel like I'm absolutely comfortable in welcoming my guests to this home, to this to my home, without like honoring their traditions without feeling insecure about my own.

That's brilliant. Yeah. Amazing. And so, and I felt, and that was a sense of belonging, because I felt that was something that resonated with my values in my own way.

So I think there is, there are all these micro feelings of belonging where you may not belong to the land, I'm not used to the weather, I'm not used to all of these other factors, but like there's something within the character that resonates very strongly with me. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

You mentioned about hosting and stuff like that, because I sort of wanted to throw this to Narayan because you obviously have found a home and stuff like that, and you really love food, right? And you sort of presenting it to people as well. So do you have a sort of framework for, framework is a bad word, but you understand what I mean? For who you invite home for dinner?

Yeah. So I like to invite people for dinner, for two reasons, right? So one is it's, when you go to restaurants, or when you want to meet people, right? So how do you meet people?

How do you get to know people before the internet? It was, you met people for dinner. And in Bombay, increasingly, restaurants either have loud music. So basically you just sort of nod at each other's mind, and you could be saying like bad things under your breath and no one would be the wiser.

There is, it has its own joy, but that's not what I'm looking for. And the other reason is when you share a meal, then there's a sort of a bond. So you know, it's usually, you can't really shortlist people for that. So you have to, and so I started, I decided much rather get people over, because you could spend a much longer restaurants tend to show you how they just want somebody else to use that table.

So that table is their plankton machinery. So they want to maximize it's too good. So I don't, I've never, almost never made a very bad habit, sometimes, I mean, you get people, you know, for dinner, and then they don't fit in in such a bad way that they actually piss everyone off. That happens very rarely, but it does happen.

No, I think that the question is, who do you invite a second time? Yeah, so you second time obviously, you know, you know. All of this has been to a very successful place. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a safe, good, straight to the best. So I, you know, my, it's been a tradition, even from my father's time. He, my father would just collect people, right? So he's a, so I have a friend, Uda Shankar, some of you know him.

His sort of motor life is, I collect interesting people. That's what he said. So that's a very nice way to look at it. And my dad was like that.

So he had absolutely the most mystifying and, you know, generally interesting people. I mean, people, there was literally anyone, somebody who has a small automotive repair shop was his friend, some big doctor was his friend, some, you know, completely random people. And they were all interesting in their own way. And so he used to just invite everyone over.

My mother used to uncomplaining liquor because we didn't really have domestic servants. And then I just go up something and serve. I don't remember how I started off on this topic, but yeah, it was, how do you decide whom to? You know, you know, and when, so there is also a graciousness among people when they accept an invitation for, for a meal.

It's not that anyone is starving. It's not, if somebody comes to your house, it's basically an honor that person bistro's upon. Agrees to come spend, waste few hours of their time, come all the way and, you know, sort of be there, listen to all your boring shit and go back. And come back another time.

And come back another time. Yeah, I mean, it's really, because meals, I mean, you could have a better meal, like, of swiggy, man, why would it go to anyone who's doing meal? Yeah, unless you really wanted to spend time with them. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah. I think I said the pro-phone conversation. I think I should throw it at you. I can say what dinner invites do you accept it?

LAUGHTER Oh, you're weak. No, no, I'm not going to say it. You can if you want to. If you ever said it.

Hey, there was another thing I remember which I wanted to. When she was talking about how nice Canadians were. So the legendary bad ashes, the opposite side, is a New Yorkers. New Yorkers are totally.

They have little rat faces. Yeah. So I'm walking here. They're familiar, afraid.

And so one of my cousins, who lives in New York, and I went to New York, we stayed with her. She told me that, you know, what is the correct way to ask us a New York at the time? What the time is? So I said, no.

So here's her answer. Say, excuse me, sir. Can you tell me the time or should I just fuck off? LAUGHTER It's so close to Canada, we're just completely opposite.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I think it's against you. No, I belong here. LAUGHTER Take it your say.

Come on, sir. Sir, sir. Good morning. Evening afternoon.

My podcast is titled, says, where no guys, no topic, and no filters say from Father Brochia. That's me, Monday to Friday, Sunday, Sunday, I'm without kids. We chat with servants who will never meet traffic jams on streets and people from all professions. Every one day I go live with the show, ask me anything, AMA, you tell the questions, I know it's better than a Mumbai to chat, I even host a panel discussion called Calk and Bull, where we dive into current affairs and wonder why anyone even cares at all.

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So what happens when someone who's lived her whole life on the court decides to bring those two worlds together? I'm Sanya Mizam, and I'm bringing you a brand new podcast, Serving It Up with Sanya. I've had some incredible conversations with friends, fellow athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs. Each episode starts with the game of Pickleball, and once the rallies are done, the real job begins.

Serving it up with Sanya, watch and listen on YouTube, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Yeah, no, so additionally, I mean, about the whole thing about inviting people home, there's also a very interesting way of how, I think, there's a very distinct difference between how Indians invite people home versus people in other countries. I was just discussing and observing this to how, I mean, here in Canada or in other western civilizations of people invite them home. In India, you invite people home to, and you're a host.

They're a guest. You're expected to entertain. There's a lot of like, in not the same for Canada, especially. Yeah, I'm sitting for a girl.

Then you're sitting on the couch, and your guest is constantly staring at you, and you're constantly you have that responsibility to entertain. Versus here, the thing is, if someone invites you to their home, they'll be like, yeah, there's food. Firstly, there's a bring your own culture. So you bring your own whatever you want, especially.

I went to another friend's place, except for me, everyone else was not, I mean, everyone, I was only vegetarian there. And so they were like, oh, maybe you want to bring your own food. So I was like, oh, cool. So I brought my own food.

Like it was a bring your own booze kind of thing as well. So you bring your own booze. You're in the host, so to speak, come and speak to you for a little bit, and whatever. But then everyone's doing their own thing.

You come in and out, you chill, you watch the television, you go to the fridge and grab a beer if you want to. Like the concept of hosting in North America, in a lot of contexts, unless it's a one to one thing, if someone's hosting a party kind of thing, it's a lot more relaxed. Nobody's required to entertain versus in India. So I think, also, I mean, coming to the belonging part of things, you can be very alone in a party.

Like if you're invited to someone's place, you can still be very alone in that context. Versus in India where someone's inviting you home, you are going to be taken care of. That is a non-negotiable as far as this is concerned. So I mean, even hosting and being a guest, I have very different definitions as you go across cultures.

So yeah, I mean, just as an aside, I mean, when I was hearing and I didn't talk about that, it just came to me and I was like, yeah, I mean, because guests can have very different quantities. It's also a lot more free. You don't have like a, I mean, you don't have guest areas where you have to stick to. You can go anywhere in the house.

So yeah, otherwise, India, you have like, this is very, this is your corner, you stay here, don't go to any other places. So we have traversed quite the terrain from Padu guy to our engineering college days to hosting to and then metal concerts. So you came to this recording Tony with a few questions and thought, so, curious, have you got, like, have you found comments, trans thoughts? No, it's interesting.

Like, I mean, I think back to the times that I've spent fitting in or thinking that I was belonging, especially like, I mean, like a lot of it is autopilot, like, like, when I went to engineering college in anywhere in the world, I automatically hung out with all my lose because like, there was a stated thing, say, you know, careless state, state-wise state, right? And like, it didn't matter that like, a lot of them were not similar to you, et cetera. The biggest sort of draw was that simply the fact that they come from the same state as you do and probably have the same guide and same cultural references. But like, when you double the stage, it's a very interesting sort of question to say, it's almost like, especially for my lose, I mean, who've gone out of the state, you don't fit in anywhere, right?

Like, I have seen people and my life is generally traveling everywhere, like from Gulf to Australia to Ireland to America. And the thing that they do immediately is find like, other Himalayas, right? And that becomes their sort of community and stuff like that. So, but for me, I don't think I can even do that, right?

Because like, I've also seen the other side of what this culture represents and like, there are certain things that I don't identify with, which brings you to a unique conundrum to say like, you know, so like, therefore, okay, fuck you, go, right? Like, it's, yeah, I think it's a good idea. And actually that comes back around to the first question you raised to me about, what is the definition of home? Like, a lot of us, like, I mean, maybe very excluded, like, I have, I mean, if you ask me where is home, right now, I will have a very difficult answer, I will have a very difficult time giving that answer because, I mean, it's constantly been shifting for me for so long and like, even the people in life keep shifting, like, you know, your parents live at a certain point of time and then you have a partner or whatever else, like all of these definitions keep on shifting over a period of time.

And then eventually you're in a place where, you know, I just find like, values and certain people at certain points of time and like certain ideas that you stick with and that's what home is, like the definition of home is like, wherever you feel like you belong the most at any point of time. So I guess, I mean, the biggest concern I'd say for me, like the biggest home that I've had is probably civil rights for the last six years. Oh, you're so good. But actually, like, this is a question of extreme privilege, obviously, that you can't choose what you'll do.

But I think the unclish plus behavioral science slash economics answer is to just buy a damn home because like people rationalize what they're dealt with, like if you suddenly have to do something, then you say, that's a great choice and then you rationalize it. So just buy a damn home and then you'll automatically do it. I want to put a content plug over here. There's a channel that I've been hooked on too recently.

It's pretty popular on YouTube. I might have spoken about on the show before. It's a channel called Yes Theory. It's basically a channel.

Yes Theory. Yes Theory. I mean, it started off on a simple theory on re-schools. Oh, no, no, no.

It started off as one of those, you know, pranked channels, prank or challenges, things, channels where they say yes to, you know, that's basically what it started off as. Initially, it started off as a very Mr. Beast kind of thing. I took a stranger around the world, that kind of thing.

But over the last couple of years, especially, their attackers shifted to slightly this conversation kind of things where they actually put themselves in very uncomfortable situations and fine positives from there. For example, one show that I, one episode that I, the last video that they released and what you said about Malu is in all that state home, where they went, they were curious about the life of Sumo wrestlers and they found a Sumo wrestling training dojo is called in Osaka, I think. And one of the guys actually stayed with the wrestlers over there, not speaking a word of Japanese, but just figuring out stuff along the way and they communicated via Google Translate and stuff like that. It's a beautiful watch part.

It's part hilarious, part super warm and all that. And there are many, many examples like this. They travel to the least traveled country in the world and they put themselves in a lot of the situation. Their entire mantra is seek discomfort, which I think is a beautiful philosophy.

And the- One of the Stoics is to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah, there's a lot of stoic philosophy in there. Yeah, there's a lot of different references.

They, in fact, reference stoicism, a fair bit in the videos. And the end outcome of many of these, apart from a very warm, glowing feeling, is there are common things that bring us all together. So I might be an American coming from here all the way to dojo in Tokyo where the life is completely different, but there are some human values that connect us and we can, home is what you make of it. You know, that sense of belonging or whatever that you're saying.

This, like, I mean, is there in so many different situations? So you may find home or you may find belonging with people who you share, nothing else in common. Whereas with people who are quote unquote like you, your same demographic race or whatever, you may have nothing. In fact, with your own family, you might have less common ground than you might with strangers.

Yeah. Sorry, just, I mean, very random. But have you heard this American life episode called the feather peak? It's a fascinating episode.

Basically, there's this guy who's an actual musician, a very accomplished musician, ended up stealing feathers or birds that Charles Darwin, one of those guys, found from some of those islands. And his buddy was someone, some Vietnamese refugee who stays in Netherlands or something like that. And like, they've just connected over this over a forum and they're basically like involved in one of the biggest heists of national history. Amazing.

But that episode is damn good. It's going to be soon made in Netflix. It's crazy. There's your content plus.

So what do you want? Life lessons, content plus. Too much. Yeah, too much.

Wow. That was a fun episode. It was profound. Thankfully, they put tables between us so we don't just treat out for an awkward hug or something.