Ep 401: Finding Love in Modern India

For most of human history, there has been no such thing as dating. Men and women functioned almost as different species, playing different roles in different societies, with different kinds of uneasy ways of relating to each other. For more than 99% of human existence, your possible choice of a partner was constrained by geography and by all kinds of constricting social norms. Men and women were tied down to specific roles, bound to stereotypes, and self-actualization was impossible. Love, if it existed, could often be a rationalization. Well, in the last few decades, things have opened up. More and more people can live lives of agency and autonomy and have a much wider pool of partners to choose from. Relationships are no longer constrained to certain set forms. There are even apps for this. Now, this freedom is awesome, but it is also so confusing. The pace of changes high, the tech might be cutting edge, but mindsets are often primitive, and well-meaning men and women everywhere are bewildered. Is so much choice a feature or a bug? We know the old social norms, but what are the new ones? How do we shape ourselves in this brave new world? And perhaps the most important question of all. If there is such a thing as love, how do we find it? Welcome to the scene and the unseen. Our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science. Please welcome your host Amit Varma. My guest today are Sanjana Ramchandra and Samarth Bansal, and this episode contains multitudes. Now, here's how this episode took shape. Samarth, one of my favorite thinkers, and my guest in episode 299, had moved to Mumbai recently. We met up for coffee, and while shooting the breeze and talking about his many adventures, a thought occurred to me. Why don't I do an episode on modern dating with Samarth? Samarth had written a cult essay on dating last year called the romantic idiot and followed it up with another piece called "Hurtie & Thriving". He knew this landscape well. Samarth jumped at the idea and I asked him to suggest a third guest to complete the picture. Ideally, I said a single woman in her early 30s would also be in through the dating ring. A few days later, Samarth suggested Sanjana Ramchandra known on Twitter as Sanjubhavi George, and I looked at her work and said, "Oh, yes, perfect." Sanjana is a marketing person by day, but otherwise a fantastic writer who's written some great essays for a bunch of publications, such as 52 in the Indian Express. She has a book coming out next year, and all her writing is insightful and provocative. Samarth's suggestion proved to be amazing. The three of us recorded in my home studio in Mumbai for around six and a half hours. My initial plan was that we chat with Sanjana, and wait and get to know her. We already know Samarth from episode 299. After that, we would talk about dating. But the first three hours and 45 minutes were a delightful meandering conversations through many subjects. A notions of morality, success, art, patriarchy, the creator economy, her upma is sinful, and much, much more. It's almost like the freewheeling chats I've had with Krishishok in Larend Shanoi, all the one with Jair Jinsingh and Subrith Mahanti, all the one with Roshan Abhashan Vikram Satya. You have so much fun, you don't know where the time went. At about the three hours 45 minutes mark, we got to our intended subject. We spoke about dating, but more than dating, about finding love, about female desire, male desire, the confusing cacophony of social expectations, and so on. Basically, what the title of this episode indicates. This is one of my favorite conversations on the show, so do listen in. But before we get started, two announcements. One, I'm planning to turn the scene on the unseen from a weekly show into a fortnightly show. So it will now come out every two weeks. Doing both scene and scene and my YouTube show, everything is everything is taken a lot out of me and I want to make time for other things. One of them, which I'm starting and here's my second announcement, is life lessons. This is an online course I'm going to teach with Ajay Shah, in which we cover subjects like learning how to learn, learning how to think, mental models, communication, writing, personal finance, personal health, quantitative intuition, probabilistic thinking, the foundations of economics, a history of thought and more. Please go to lifelessons.co.in for more information and to sign up, we launched it a week ago and without even announcing it on Twitter, we've already got in 30 signups and we'll close registration soon. So sign up first at lifelessons.co.in. And now before we talk to Sanjana and Samarth, let's take a quick commercial break. If I had to define my life in one word, it would be this. Procrastination. I have a dozen unwritten books in my head, multiple YouTube shows, even a podcast or two, and I have so much problem with this plan. If you are like me, allow me to offer you a solution. Do dear friends of mine, Deepak Gopala Krishna and also known as Chag Gopal and Utsav Mamoria have started something called the 6% Club. If you have a project you want to get off the ground, then join the 6% Club and Chak and Utsav will help you go from idea to launch in just 45 days. There will be life sessions over weekends, one-on-one personalised mentoring sessions, guest master classes, including by me and Krisheshwap. So that you aren't just sitting there dreaming about a project, but actually bringing it to life. Now let me tell you something. I watch for these guys. Chak and Utsav have both been on the scene and they are outstanding creators. I have learnt a lot from them and this is so exciting. You will get a 10% discount if you use the sign up code unseen. In fact, all you have to do is code the following URL and sign up there. The 6% dot club slash unseen. That's a 6% dot club slash unseen and you'll get 10% off and your project will come to life. Don't wait. You have waited enough. Make it happen. Sanjana and Samarth, welcome to the scene on the unseen. Thanks Amit. I can't believe I'm here. I'm really happy to have both of you here. We are of course going to talk about how young people today navigate the complexities of the world of figuring out what love is, figuring out what they are and dating kind of a hook into the show and experience that you guys haven't common and I haven't for the longest time. But I want to begin by asking you Sanjana about your intriguing statement that you have sometimes wondered if you're a sociopath because I have wondered the same thing and our friend Samarth here insists that he is not a sociopath. Definitely not. He kind of looks like one. Cool look. And he told us his story where he pretended to be someone called Sartak Singhania and tried to scam and art gallery but leave that aside. I didn't scam Amit. I was putting on a show. It was a great show. In fact, it was an art show at an art show. Exactly. The only audience was you. But I was story to tell. As it tends to be with most art pieces, I think. But I think a degree of sociopath is baked into everyday life, especially in modern society. And this is a somewhat substantiated theory I have. But if you have a conscience to actually act and live by that conscience requires a great deal of sacrifice that not everybody has the model fiber or the character or the willingness, whatever it takes to make. So and then you just compartmentalize those thoughts and just go on living a comfortable life. And I think that takes a degree of like disregard for suffering. Maybe the system true, maybe you can make peace with your existence being a natural part of like the carnivorous nature of existence itself. So I mean, I have to extract if I am to give. And so if you're able to like it depends on your equation with that fact of reality. Do I make sense? What is carnivorous nature of existence? That's a beautiful phrase. Yeah. Yeah. Because like I mean, and you're both vegetarians. Yeah. Yeah. And I do have an argument for why non-vegetarians should stop defending non-vegetarianism for we can go there later. Maybe. But the carnivorous nature of existence meaning there's no way you can exist without harm to someone or something that has any living being. And you can start with where life begins. But your base and why do monks sort of default to consuming as little as possible so that they can minimize their harm on the planet and their you know, on a journey to liberating themselves from existence itself because existence that's where a lot of religion stems from existence is sin. The origin of sin being birth itself. So we're complicit by our very act of living. And whether you choose to minimize harm and how far you go is the choice we all make. So I don't know if it's sociopathy, but it's your I think morality is actually deeply private as opposed to how we perform it on social media today that if I share x, y, z, things, I'm like this virtuous person and because I have these political ideas that conform to well the current identity politics, you know, these are the marginalized identities. These are and actually morality is a deeply private thing that gets decided just based on how you live your life on the day to day. And so maybe there's a degree of social literacy in everybody's lives, even in the so-called most moral people, the writers, the artists of the world, the people who are telling people what's right and wrong and the people who are just going about doing their thing, getting richer, well, they are. I'll both double click and digress at the same time, which is kind of a first, first. I'm actually double clicking into the sociopathy with the question, I'm eventually coming to, but I'm digressing into the non-vege-vege question. Yeah. Where I keep telling my veg friends is that listen, eating a chicken is far more moral than eating a plate of upma because the plate of upma comes out of a process of agriculture and agriculture is basically a large genocide of many different species but are under the earth and over it and all of that, which is, you know, classically unseen. So my sort of tongue-in-cheek and provocative mantra is that if you want to cause a least damage to animals through your eating, then you should eat the biggest possible animal because your per capita consumption of lives is lowest if you're eating a really large buffalo, for example, rather than a plate of upma because it didn't But that's resulted from the deaths of many sort of millions of little critters as it were at the very least. I'm always impressed by the lens to which non-vegetarians go to defend non-vegetarianism. For example, that. But it's true, it's actually inarguable. No, I think if at heart you just keep non-vegetarianism to harming another human being, harming another being, sorry. And there's a theory about the complexity of consciousness dictating how much pain something feels. So yes, plants are conscious and therefore vegetarians are all. No, I don't mean plants. I mean actual creatures like insects and over and under insect, rodents, whatever, the natural habitat which would have played out doesn't and just agriculture involves your consciously murdering many of them and they're unseen by us. Many of them are small and yes, they are not perhaps evolved consciousnesses like say bigger animals or cute like them, but in terms of actual lives, so not. I'm not talking about plant consciousness at all, I don't care. Yeah. I'm so glad I'm vegetating by habit. So didn't have to. You won't have to argue. I don't have to argue. No, I mean kind of provocative, which is a bit more of a very early time. But the time for secrets is here, which is that I did have a period of non-vegetarianism for three years. I was part of my. I'm going to rebel against anything that was handed down to me and verify the need and the truth of it myself. And I was. It was very teenage attitude, I think. And three years into it, I was like. Firstly, I never really got into fish and I just didn't. The taste didn't appeal to me. The smell of it was always off-putting. But I was a heavy chicken eater because I was all protein and gym. I was 22 or something. And then I just one fine march evening, I was like, "Why am I doing this? I don't even care that much about verifying whether this is okay or not anymore. I just never want to eat animals and I stopped." But I just. The reason I was making the point about levels of consciousness is that the degree of pain, something feels as proportional to its consciousness. So even if I were to say that your mathematics of plant harm is greater than big animal harm, I would say that if you multiply it by the level of consciousness of plants, it might still be lesser than the level of consciousness. No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about plants at all. I don't care about plants. I'm seeing little animals. Because agriculture kills thousands of millions of people. Yeah, if so say you might do the math there. But I just. I think from a more principled point of view, do you want to cause harm to anything? And if you can minimize that harm, I think just vegetables on the face of it. No, because you're giving many more small creatures and a few fewer big creatures. Like if I eat a buffalo, I could eat a buffalo for three days. If you eat a plate of okma, you're killing already thousands of little insects and other creatures. Sure. But let's not belabor that. I'm not trying to be. Yeah, I'm not. So how does. Is there a. Yeah, so which is why I think that everybody should be free to make the choice. Yes, that's correct. As long as you don't feel guilt about it, because your own guilt is then negative energy, right? Correct. So then when you started the conversation by saying the way non-vigitarian's defend, non-vigitarianism. I would just like them to admit that it's morally questionable. No, no, I will argue with that and agree with that. No, I am non-vigitarianism. I'm a non-vigitarian. And I believe I have the right to be for XYZ reasons. But because I have this view, I can see that everybody gets to make up their views about these things. And so I cannot judge a sanghi for example as how she is I do. No, I mean, sanghi is a very entirely different matter and I have no defense of them. I defend all of us that we are making food choices. But I would say that I don't think non-vigitarians have to feel guilty because no matter what you eat, you're killing animals and vegetarians are killing more animal, more living beings. So including animals, including. So agriculture is a large scale genocide. I don't mean of plants at all. I'm not going into an argument about plants' field pain and more that. You know, that's not the right thing. It's a good thing that the large scale genocide of multiple species. So I think we're arriving at the original point that I don't know. It's a great t-shirt line somewhere. I can't believe I just heard this statement. Agriculture is a large scale genocide. I think genocide, well, not technically because you're not killing a people, not technically in the sense that we use the term. It's large scale murder. It's slaughter of millions. I have to use the line somewhere. And I'm sure actually being vegan comes with its own nature of violence because it's more on the hyper-consumer spectrum of things and the amount of. I don't know, machinery takes to produce something vegan probably causes its own damage to the systems. But let's get back to sociopathy, which is much more fun and very. Yeah. where I love your phrase, the carnivorous nature of existence and. I often feel that we are all fundamentally sociopathic in the sense that. You know, we are all in that main character syndrome. We are the main character in our heads and everyone else is playing a role. And of course, we will. And I ask this of myself, is it the case that is my default condition? And that actually everyone is instrumental to me. And I might think I love so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so. But push comes to shove who knows? Like a thought experiment I like to throw on people is that if you're trapped in a deserted island with another person. And you don't know when you're going to get rescued, but obviously the longer you live, the better the chances. And food eventually runs out. You know, if the only way to survive is to kill and eat the other person, will you do it? This is a movie based on the thought experiment because the idea of the snow. I explain crashes, it was on Netflix and I think some award nominated. What would you do? I would rather die. Not because my life isn't precious to me, but the idea of eating. It's just I can't imagine being sated or neutrified in any way by that. But if we've gotten back to food now. And to be so desperate to be alive, I think like a lot of conversations in society's big problems like solve climate change and like. You know, make the world a better place. I'm like, why should we propagate our existence anymore? Let us naturally select ourselves to death. Why is the human race so important? Also the premise of that question comes to the assumption that. Like lot of behaviors that we talk about ourselves. Like are we just following what evolution wants us to do? That keep living, reproducing. Like survival and life around which a lot of human behavior is based. So I have this increasing feeling, especially growing up, that knowledge, reason, life experiences. Kind of like get you to. You know, exert control on these fundamental urges and not just follow them blindly. So in a situation like this. I can't imagine myself just for the sake of survival, like eating a person. If that is what you mean, right? Like it's something. Like it's not even an option that comes to mind. I do not know how I will behave in that situation. Yeah. But just the idea of it. It reminds you. Yeah. Yeah, of course, I thought experiments are meant to be extreme. But like, how was this linked to Sashopathy? Like that complete disregard of. No, my. the exploration sort of is that deep down are we, or perhaps is there a part of us? Yeah. Which really doesn't care. Which is effectively sociopathic though I would say that in the medical sense, about 5% to people are sociopaths because Amidala, the frontal amygdala or whatever is affected so they don't feel empathy for others. And that's what the technical term means. And people have found that convicts and prisons, bankers and lawyers are overrepresented. And CEOs, I'm sure. And possibly quite likely. And politicians are my theory there. But what I'm. I completely agree with you that we are hardwired in many different ways and in many contradictory ways. And the whole project of civilization is that we fight the hardwired. Yes. And we apply cultural norms on it because only humans can do that. We can reprogram ourselves. Yes. The question is when does it break down? Like, you know, when Hannah R.R.N. came up with the phrase "Banality of Evil" for everything that the German state. The point is that we can get complacent by sitting down and thinking that that was those people in this time and by and large we aren't like that. My sense is that no, that by and large every society can drift into that kind of state given circumstances. And therefore my question is that, you know, what is this human condition that fine? You know, we have that veneer of social choices and personal morality as you put it that we make and we say, "No, I can never eat another person." And of course, the moral. Yeah. But of course, once you are in that, you know, you never know where circumstances take you and that veneer breaks down. I mean, my instinctive answer is no, but my rational answer when I think about it is that I got a killed at person on day one. Because if he is a high functioning sociopath, he is going to want to get me before I get him. So it has to be before the food runs out, not when the food runs out. And if he assumes that I might be like him, I have to get him before he gets me and he has to get me before I get him before he gets me. And so basically it's one of my favorite areas of game theoretic prisoners dilemma of. decision making. But I frequently wondered about this question in related context, which is, "Do I need to be a sociopath to be a successful and ambitious as I was in my late 20s?" And like I mentioned the transition from being. I mean, I call about my career to being a little more humane about myself, like not seeing myself as an object set out to achieve whatever the ego wants. But there's drives within you that you have to honor whether or not your ego likes it. But yeah, I was like. And I've asked this of my niche online audience, like do you believe success and morality are fundamentally opposed? Because to be that ruthless. You have to have a kind of disregard of. Probably even yourself, right? I think sociopath also comes with the self-loading, self-denial. But also, but it's such an idea of what is success. Yeah, shapes it so much. I like. Like are we talking about extremes? I'm talking about. I'm talking about conventionally upheld ideas of achievement, which is money. same. They're right there degrees to it. Like my sense is that if you want that traditional idea of success, you have no option but to kind of submerge yourself and do what it takes. But my idea of success currently entirely relies upon my following my own value system and living my own life and not caring about other's conceptions of success. So I guess that's probably how. And therefore I don't think that's sociopathy. Then if you're following an internally organized set of drives and ideas about what you want to do, that's coming from within you and you've done some investigation of those sources of that. But I think for a when you like until you do that investigation, you're very driven by the culture's idea of success, which in the 90s was you know, do the engineering MBA get like this great corporate job and climb the ladder. And now it's changed to fame and you know, having like a huge brand of your own and until you question why I need to be successful in the way I've received it, I think you are on a path to narcissism and sociopathy in modern society. My the only thing I want to say here is that I have examples of people around me whom I think are both successful from an internal compass plus external compass, right? Like internal perception as well as how the world looks at them. And they have chosen consciously to not be as old. Right? And not go like and also like the moment you get power, what you do with that power defines lot of who you could be like if you're a manager, you have 10 people reporting to you, 100 people reporting to you. What will you do? Like you can make their lives miserable, you can make their lives excellent. And how do you equate that like you know, classic short term long term thing like in the short term you get more work done from someone which can lead to the sociopathic behaviors. I don't care about what's happening in your life at all. I just want to get the work done kind of asshole or saying that maybe if I am this person, the companies, you know, profits can be 10x but I'm happy with say 8x or whatever without with some empathy. So is 8x being less successful and 10x being more successful? What is success? For a moment, I'll kind of dissenting this entangles here I couldn't even this entangle my own word. I'll dissent angle two sort of I think related concepts here. And one is the concept of excellence where you become really good at something and that will naturally get you respected. And the other is success has defined traditionally but especially in a corporate context, it can happen without excellence and often will happen without excellent. Or unless it's excellence at certain people's skills like sucking up and etc etc. All the political maneuvering. All the things which made me decide 15 years ago, I will never work in a company again. I haven't. And I think what happens is that in that first category, excellence, I think a necessary condition for two excellence is humility. Yes. Because you have to examine yourself be really hard on yourself, learn from your mistakes and that I think always comes from humility. And then if that humility is an astral characteristic that you're nurturing to become good at something, then it plays into everything else. Like all the high achievers I know who are genuinely deeply respect, they are so freaking humble. And all the assholes I know are actually they haven't they've reached positions in whatever but not really excelled. And obviously there's an overlap. They can be people who are excellence at something and are complete assholes and you play all the games that you play. But in a certain sense like at least for the kind of people you and I aspire to be in the kind of people we respect the summer, they're just will be in that category of people who just want to excel for the sake of excelling and not necessarily to get somewhere. I also want to add one more layer to it that again, there's again a lot of notion here even about success like especially in the group that we are sitting right that excellence in something. But like I lived in the mountains for three years. I met one of the like things that hit me for the first time when you move from Delhi to living in the mountains is that like there's a cafe and they were shot on Sundays right and Sundays is when you get most tourists. So the first reaction you will say, you are an idiot, you don't know how to run a business like what Sunday go cafe went. But they're like no that there was a Christian community there on Sunday they have the service a community matters more to us our relationships matter more to us. So who is anyone to say you know what is success what is not success. So when I saw these patterns and again even in the city like Bombay I would go talk to people with you will not see any norm of conventional ideas of success but the level of fulfillment that they have about a day to day or what to do or like they might make a great chai but the passion that they have in telling about what to do. That for me so inspiring and just changes so much context in terms of the you know the professional world that I roam around and this that consistently I also have to ask myself that okay what kind of ideas of like why have we tied the idea of success to excellence it's really comes down to internal sense of where you place like how you see yourself and place yourself in the world. You see where I'm trying to go there's so many loaded notions about success is about dedication to craft and no no I think success is it depends on how you define it like for me success could be like let's say that I decided I will be successful when I'm happy my happiness brings my success what makes me happy maybe what makes me happy is withdrawing from the treadmill out there and just sitting in my mountain home and just chilling and living a frugal life and not really caring about stuff or you know and until I die and we'll all die. So and I think that's a kind of success by itself and it depends on how you sort of define it and this is where we are going to double click on you Sanjana because I've done a long episode with our man Samarthe episode 299 I often tell people is kind of ironic that two of my favorite episodes are 299 and 301 around 300 301 was Natasha Badwa. Yes Samarthe was 299 and I thought it was just a lovely magical episode almost so so we're not going to talk much about Samarthe in these particular episodes I'm sure he'll be back here soon but so Sanjana and can I call you Sanju what do people call you? Friends call me Sanju so yeah friends yeah. Oh yeah friends. Actually a lot of the internet has felt free to call me Sanju ever since I put in that piece of mine about the origin of my name that Sanju as a gender neutral nickname but also like tell about it to 10 handles. Yeah it's Sanju Bobby George. Yeah. I've actually someone has genuinely thought Anju Bobby George is now into investigative journalism after one of my pieces on Twitter got traction and I haven't I think it's a great confusion to stir I enjoy being a trickster. Yeah. So wherever you born where did you grow up tell me a bit about you. I was born in Chennai in this area called Mandavali and my grandma still lives in that house at the road ends in a temple and I think now as I've grown up and examined my identity and my origins it's a very symbolic Brahman street Brahman neighborhood. So I'm a Tamil Brahman born in Chennai we lived there till I was six years old moved to Bombay when my father got a job in advertising and marketing which is what I do now. Live there till I was about 18 and it was very consciously drilled into me that I have to be the Brahman ideal which is really good at studies and all the definition of good at studies. So good at maths, good at the you know like spoken well I was put in like churned through the system in a way like I was put in kinetic music classes I was put in drawing classes I was putting skating classes there wasn't a thing that they didn't want me to learn and yeah I mean in hindsight I think it was an expression of them wanting the best for me but it was also a lot of pressure and yeah I studied at bits around the age of 18 bits Goa which was magical. There was no attendance in bits which I think is there's sometimes tends to be this Twitter discourse about why are Bitsian's good entrepreneurs and at first I thought there was this very typical credentialism like you're identifying a behavior and giving it some you know attributing it to something and it's like I think we have this fetish in Indian culture about engineering colleges anyway so is it even true but then I think on second thought it's a degree of true because I think Bitsians have gone through like in India not getting into ii it is actually a failure I know it's like first world problem but it's like deeply internalized thing that I think for a long time stays with you depending on I some of this in ii it in here and he has a wide grin on his face to the listener. I never imagined this as a like that says like a failed experience like does that shape. No I mean it doesn't like I'm not I'm by I don't feel like a failure but I just they didn't feel like in your first year was that all. But what I meant to where I was going with that is that sense of like being second that something really gives you a little bit of personality and like you're okay with sort of failing again and like trying things and the fact that there's no attendance means I really got to explore myself through those four years I was I mean I knew I didn't want to be an electronics engineer when I got into Bits but I wasn't done with engineering I still like science and tech a lot so I taught myself programming again that was the ideal of intelligence and achievement at the time so I was like can't say goodbye to it right. But yeah I was also heavily involved in you know theater and literary and debate pursuits and I knew I wanted to be a writer because I already had a very strange life by then so I felt like the only way to justify my existence was to make a story out of it. But yeah after Bits yeah like I said worked in software for two years very typical 90s journey if you think about it. According to I am Cal again because you don't not give the cat if you've registered for it all my friends keep it luckily I did well then I decided that I wasn't having such a great time at the company that I was at then which is Amazon. I think can't be secretive for me. about the culture there. Again, MBA was like, I was, you know, it was just a much more herd mentality compared to, at least in the people who are following the herd and doing engineering, are still unformed at that time. So they're becoming people and forming their personalities. But by 23, 24, 25, everyone who is at a B school has probably been told that this is it, you know, if you are here, then this is it. And so they have this, they're almost giving to the image of like, I am from an I, I am and therefore, I have a certain sort of behavior and standard to uphold. And they have in question, that you only hear because your parents sort of push this on you. And I had that sort of dissonance at the time that if I was, what would I really be doing if I wasn't following the herd? I mean, I did well though there. And like it seemed at the time that being excellent and being career driven was was the point of life. So my marketing career began right after. I've sold by now everything from detergent to 99% of the country to journalism and B2B SaaS to like the top few percent. I'd like to think it's like people's generally think of science and marketing and writing is three very different pursuits. But I think it's all about people and all about problem solving and like structure and finding out the root of things. And so like I think my marketing career really shaped my journalistic career in some ways because I spoke to like, probably spoke to like, at least less than 100 women who are buying detergent and them telling me like, you know, it's only when I really get the stain off my husband's clothes that you know, he feel like he just like her respect in the household is earned by how well she manages the chores and everything and I sort of also even from the cushy comfort of like a unhitty East home, I was exposed to a tear to lifestyle through my work there. And interviewing people and getting them to talk about their lives it all draws from there. And yeah, so the pandemic hit in 2019 end, right? When we realized that, okay, the world is about to change is when I started having my longest existential crisis to date. I think I had a big one this summer, but that was the main so long as because I was like, I do know the world is going to end. I have not done the few things that really matter to me, which is of being a writer, being funny and doing my own thing entrepreneurily. And so I started making some moves over that time. I wrote a bunch of screenplays. One of them went a little far with Roy Capur films, but I was very pulled towards the visual medium at first because I think it's like another dimension of comedy and storytelling that the page and prose is a little more intellectual, right? I think you need to be reader-reader to appreciate prose but everyone can enjoy a story on screen. Yeah, I also tried a bunch like pitch to a bunch of places. John Lismow already had an internship at the caravan before PNG, because I knew I wanted to segue into creative career at some point and help them sort of pivot from advertising to subscriptions, got a piece there. Yeah, after the pandemic joined the Ken briefly, got a bunch of bylines there, did some marketing for them, continued to find consulting gigs that actually pay most of my bills to and continued to write. 52 was, I really loved that there was a place where young writers could do really in-depth writing. And there still isn't a place where long form feature writing really shines in India, compared to the kind of brain diet that I'm going to presume the three of us have been exposed to. A lot of American journalism has influenced our ideas of what is possible. And most of those gaps remain today. I think you still have a lot of writing that's not been done, that needs to be done. 52 was one of those magazines that filled a big void and I wrote a few pieces for them that got a bunch of traction. I got into this fellowship that liked my book idea and secured an agent, secured a publisher. And I have a book coming out in six months about the story of my life, my very big detail that I somehow seem to have missed is that my parents are divorced. And it's sort of like, I've always had a problem with this binary of privilege and oppression and like how identity politics sort of frames social issues because I've been perceived to be a very privileged person my whole life. And I've found out that I have had material privilege. I've never been poor. But I have had financial distress. My dad was unemployed for most of his life. And he didn't want my mother to work. And he was very insistent on her, even when she was working that she come back home at a certain time. And I've seen her banging her head against the wall, begging for her own freedom. She wasn't allowed to wear makeup and lipstick while stepping out. And he would say things like, you know, you probably want to get reaped if you're leaving the house like that. So I've actually grown up with, I've had to fight a lot of battles to feel like I'm entitled to a career. I'm entitled to dressing the way I want, and standing up to him. And she never had the courage to leave the marriage. And she thought like she would jeopardize the rest of the family, right? All of that. I mean, would you rather be miserable and suffering for your entire life or live happily? And it actually seemed like she would rather suffer because that was what, as a woman born in 1960, South India, she didn't analyze what her life was supposed to be. But she's evolved now. I mean, there was a time when even after going through that, she was really insistent on me getting married by the age of 30. And I was actually poised to, I was in great relationship as great as my mental health would allow then. But with a stable kind man that I also went to college with, but I just wasn't sure, you know, that came to the point like two-year mark in the relationship where we had to evolve. And it seemed that I had a new dimension to me and locked. I was working on the book. I was questioning everything. I was like, am I non-binary? Am I like, you know, am I she-her? What is going on? And like, do I like multiple people? Am I polyamorous? Do I even want a relationship? I feel like I want to be single forever. Obviously, that's not the frame of mind in which you get married. So we ended up splitting up. And yeah, I mean, since then, I have just been-- I've started to think that my craving for solitude and multiple relationships may not necessarily have been polyamorousness or even a love of solitude. It was just plain self-sabotouch coming from the kind of life I had. I've sort of meditated more and gotten more in touch with the layers in which trauma seeps in. And it's almost like the popular analogy for healing is that it's like a spiral. So you go around and you think you've gone through it, but then there's a point in which you encounter it again. And I feel like doons the relationship with my father. I mean, it's a meme at this point to be a fatherless girl, when some woman on this provocative online sort of sexually-forward woman is commonly insulted as fatherless, especially if you're exposed to the androotate Jordan Peterson kind of crowd. It's a meme-ish kind of insult. But I think I have had that kind of life. And I can tell you that we need better fathers than I guess. We need better mothers for people to feel like they can securely attach to adults, as adults, to other adults. But there seems to be a pattern where my father wouldn't attract people with a similar mother wound. And then those dynamics just sort of I've been working through those in the last few months. So I don't even remember what your question was at this point, but I think we've arrived at the crux of my issues somehow. I just wanted to know about your life and get to know you a little better, which-- And there's so much else I want to ask from this beautiful potted history of yourself that you've given-- I'll start by double-clicking on your relationship with your mom. Tell me about your mom, because I think what often happens is that there are many different kinds of groups we get into, and one of the groups we get into, especially if you're fortunate enough to have completely normal families as a group in which our mother is one thing, our father is one thing. They are like that. For ever, we never see them as real people, perhaps. Sometimes we never do. Sometimes when we are 30, 40, 50, then we begin to see them as real people. But otherwise, they are one fixed thing, and that is what they are in our heads. But then when there is a tear in this fabric in some different way, and that forces you to relate to them differently over time, I wonder how that changes in shapes the relationship. Like partly, I can easily imagine that you could have had a narrow vision of both your mom and your dad. And the vision of your dad could have been layered with anger and the way he treated your mom and all of that. And a vision of your mom could have been both sympathy, but also anger and why she putting up with the shit and all of that. And gradually, I'm guessing those deeper than you begin to see them as actual human beings. So did that happen? What was that process like? What's a relationship like now? I think the flip side is also true. I think parents also see their kids as a very narrow. They have a vision for their child. I mean, they're completely-- I think parenting is one of the hardest things to do in anyone's lifetime because you're doing it for the first time. So my parents became mother and father as I was born. They had no idea what they were doing. And with my brothers, I have two younger brothers, and the divorce, and the family roles completely affect them very differently. And I thought I was the one who suffered the most against simply by nature of being alive and seeing all of it for longer. But they were younger when it all happened, when it got to a head. And I think it's completely affected them differently. So I think-- yeah, I mean, I love reading and watching dramas about dysfunctional families and how it devolves, sometimes into psychopolitical thrillers and stuff, because a wound, kind of-- like I said, the layers keep unraveling over time and what used to be an issue in one way in the past is now an issue in another way in the present. And I don't want to say it never gets better because it's irrevocably. I mean, my life is so good right now. Thank you. Fortunately, I'm here right now, right? But yeah, I mean, layers of it, the strands of it continue to lay out. But to answer your question about my relationship and so I think you're bang on about father lots of anger, lots of disbelief at how someone could not even recognize how wrong their behavior is and not even feel called to like introspect, apologize. And sort of the Indian parent phenomena that is now again, a meme, a hashtag like they see parents, you know, you see a lot of content about it. But there is a narcissism that's associated with what Indian parents were in, in, you know, when my generation, I don't think we're young, young anymore today. Now, Gen Z is the main character and where millennials, late millennials to be sure, like I'm two years ahead of the Gen Z bracket and I have a lot of traits being unhinged and unsevious was the thing before the Gen Zs were born. I'm sorry to say to the younger listeners. I'm pro Gen Z by the pro Gen Z. Whatever. What is pro Gen Z? Yeah. Well, if there are millennials like to hate on Gen Zs. And Gen Zs like Gen Zs. You date Gen Zs. No, you hate you don't hate and you date Gen Zs. No, he just said he doesn't date. I don't know. I mean, we'll get there. Okay. Oh my god. You know, Sartak Singh Ganesh Blush. Sartak Singh Ganesh Blush. So for the longest time, they were like, yeah, unaware of, unable to see how their lives are affecting mine because they were just like what you deal with it, right? Like I would close the two fed you, cleaned your shit for a number of years, sent you to school, spent money on you. And what do you mean you didn't listen to me and you don't really get me. Like those are, I can see now that that point makes sense. But at the time, I was just, and also like our generation grew up with some Western ideas of what a relationship with your parents should be. Like non-Hard article, you see people, you know, in TV shows like, no, you know, parents are knocking on their doors before entering and there's respect and autonomy in that relationship. And I sort of was like, why don't you offer that to me? Like, why do I have to defer to you so much? Like, why can't I have a conversation with you as an equal? Because you know, like you need to know what the damage you've done to me is I can't like just respect you and hide my life from you. And that confrontation played out many times. Like I, it wasn't always received well. But I think it was when they saw me have a nervous breakdown at home from not being able to like, because of everything at home, I always sort of taken care of myself. And I don't mean this in our, I'm self-made kind of way. I've had a great ecosystem of friends. My education has served me really well. And I always have my friends to fall back on and stuff. But there was a point when I was turning to them to and they were not equipped to help me at the time. I had like a health issue, you know, this crisis at work and I went from one place to another and they were going through their own shit and it just compounded. And I was like, I need to go home and I went home and I was just regarded and I was just like, you know what? And I sat my parents down and they were not listening to me. So I created a WhatsApp group with the two of them. And I was just like, you just listen, they do not respond to anything. And I just told them everything that had happened between them and how it had affected me. And like the fact that I was literally having a nervous breakdown is what made my father listen. Because otherwise he would have just been like, you're disrespecting me and like, you don't even know anything and like the usual stuff. And I think going on, Vipassana sort of made them realize, me, made them see me as someone who has suffered a lot and like, you know, she's not just being arrogant as they may have wanted to see it all these years. And my relationship with him remains strained. I don't think I think he's more apologetic and he sort of realized that it's not as it's him, but it's not sufficient, you know, at some point I just, I'm so draining to, to talk to him at times. And with my mom, like she's a real friend now because she's seen me go through that and she really, she knows I stood up for her and gave her the courage to do things that were in her interest that maybe she wouldn't have followed through on. And she, like I told her, I mean, you know, you even after all of that, you're giving me like these gold bracelets for my 20th birthday, she sent me this gold bracelet and she's like, see, it's now time for you to get married. And I lost my shit. I was like, you expect me to be grateful for this dude. Like, look at your, you need to concede, give up your right on my life. I would not oppose to marriage, but I'm opposed to it being shaped by you anymore. Like, I don't think the decision, every time I would call my grandmother, for example, one is like, for three minutes of conversation, small talk and she's like, when you're getting married, I'm like, if you keep doing this, I'm going to stop calling you because then she would be like, but don't I'm going to die soon. Don't I get to see my granddaughter get married before I die? And I was like, you die. That's all grandmother's, all grandmother's. You die. I live with your decision. Is that what you want? And then she was like, you know, she, she just gave it was. And I said, if you keep doing this, I can't talk to you. You know, I don't want to have this kind of relationship where you don't even see my life. I'm showing her like the rest of my apartment. Look, I've set this up. I made this painting. Look at my books. I'm a writer now. I get published in magazine. You don't give a shit about any of that. You want me to just get married. And she, she also, she's like 86. Okay. So it's big, bigger for her to listen and, and to come around. But she also used to have a worse relationship with my mother as her mother-in-law. When my mother first got married, the mother-in-law, you know, typical kind of do the work at home, be a good, good, good thing. But after all these years, she sort of softened. She knows that, "Jesery, my mom has been through a lot." And I think women sort of coming into their womanhood and realizing how they've been ponds in the system is necessary and it needs to happen. And hopefully some of what I write has to do with that too. But my relationship with my mother-in-law, she's not asking me to get married. She hopes I find someone because she wants to see me happy. Of course, I want to find like a great partner should, should, should I find one? I'm not a both-star either. I think it's a healthy kind of desire for me now and not a controlling and toxic desire as it may have once been. My mom was also called 'Jesery.' You know, one common element I find with many of my guests is not that their mothers were also called 'Jesery.' But that, you know, many of the parents lived in times where they're constrained into a particular kind of role and they don't really have a choice and they played at role. Another of other players are provider, the mother plays a housewife, etc., etc., they play those roles and then it can get very poignant when they then think of their children as the sites from which their desires will express themselves or, you know, it's like the arcades will have better lives and arson, etc., etc. And I wonder at what point sort of really interesting that your mother first sends you gold bangles but now then she changes a pair of, you know, as you mentioned, it doesn't ask you about marriage anymore or that often and etc., etc. And I wonder how it is for her because just sinking of her as an individual. It must be so chaotic and turbulent to have to completely upend the way you look at the world because in that kind of way of looking at the world like marriages, the thing, like I can look at your grandmother and, you know, we met at Joke about all grandmothers but what choice did they have? That is the world. It must be so bizarre for her to know. And it's how they organize their lives. So I think it, and I'm going through that right now, right? I crave having like, I've been freelancing, I've been doing my own thing and part of me also longs for structure and that identity gives you and the life that your prescribed identity and role gives you. And I know that because you've seen the perils of gender roles when you flip to the opposite side, I think there is some point to the hyper feminist sort of shunning her own femininity in the process of, you know, rejecting the patriarchy. Like there is an inherent, what I'm about to say, I've been told is very controversial but I'm happy to explain why I think so. There is an inherent masculinity and a femininity or like the way energy, these energies manifest like what is a masculine energy, what's a feminine energy? And I think it is also up for one person to shape it for themselves. But yeah, incompletely shunning it, you also realize then how far from your center you are and you kind of then also realize the value of these things that your parents were telling you and subscribing to their whole lives. A format that I think you said about kids being influenced by their parents. So there's a wonderful call young quote that I'm using in my writing that says, the greatest burden that the child has to bear is the unlived life of the parents because when you are born like literally genetically, where they were in their psychological development is where your begins and what the charter is for you. So I think there was a lot of stuff that my dad had repressed obviously from the kind of life he led in the choices he made and for my mom too. And she's evolved from like putting those pressures on me to now sometimes saying like you're a free bird, I envy your life. And so yeah, I mean you are living out either one flip side of their lives, either under their thumb and doing what they would do or like the opposite what they couldn't do. Have you read Philip Larkin's poem this to us? Yes, they fuck you up your mom and dad. They fuck you up your mom and dad. And you know what you just said is exactly that phrase man hands on misery to man it deepens like a coastal shelf. And you know sometimes you need to kind of just see that and let the sedimentary layers of their misery be washed away by whatever I don't want to take this metaphor to. Which is also like whole existence is sin thing and why I think religion was birthed by like having to contend with the fact that you're alive and so you need some structure and framework because there was that nervous breakdown point was when I realized that in questioning everything that was handed down to me, I was now left unmoored. I had no scripts to follow. I was not following my parents scripts or like Hindu society, so the scripts that they gave me. And the scripts that I had chosen, you're seemingly quite difficult, like unhealthy, right? Like mean, I call ambition, career is everything, total freedom and archism in the psyche almost. And what then, I mean, because I got there via meditation and the instructions in the past now, we're coming to me again and again, I felt like I had almost converted to Buddhism, you know, through these experiences. I haven't done it like officially and I would like to, I don't know how to go about it and seems like a lot of work. But you've got to apply and replicate to the Grand Buddhist Council. Were you ever in Titi? I was, yeah, I mean, I was like, there's a personal God and that God is guiding you, but there isn't the sort of religious idol, idolatry. But were you like a Richard Dawkins at East and you were? Yeah, I think I approached it because I felt like very early on, I just had like a lot of this thing about the contradictions that if God was real, it doesn't make sense because I would like, as a kid, I was told that if you lie then Ganesha, I will poke you at night. So I did a summer and purposely lied. And I was not poked at night. So I was like, you guys are full of shit. You were also like, you know, you should take off your, God is everywhere. That's an axiom, right? God is everywhere. But also take off your chappers outside the temple. And I was like, if God is everywhere, the nation wear chappers anywhere, right? So what is this? Like in the temple became like the sun, you're just giving money so that he's, you know, does you favors? Like that's seemed very transactional and not godly behavior to me. And only age. So I was like, yeah, these guys. And also the fact that the people who are religious did not behave very virtuously. Like my dad, for example, was a conservative self-proclaimed religious kind of guy. But he was not virtuous in his behavior. So I had a lot of dissonance from what was handed down to me. That's my question. The only reason I asked is that like, I am still proudly atheist. But I've seen people, friends of mine, early 20s saying there's no God not believing in religion. But in this time, like I'm 31, late 20s or 30s switching because maybe the kind of reason Sunshan Shri, you mentioned that just feeling that, what is this? Like not having a belief system. Not that life is improving the need some direction. And without saying becoming religious, so to say in the day to day, but just believing in the idea that, okay, there is an order that we can follow. Or like someone telling them, "Kuchto Saktar hai, SH alta hai, you know that framework, then becomes their guidance principle." Yeah, it is good for life. Like it becomes very complicated once you are done with the 20s. Like what to do and like some of them have explicitly told me, "Koi, fai dha niya to bi en atheist, so I'd rather be a believer." So I was wondering if that is what your experience is. Yes, different psychologists who have talked about this era of basically it's becoming an adult, late 20s. There's a psychologist who's written a book called The Quarter Life. Basically, this meaning crisis that occurs in your late 20s where you're sort of forming your own, done with what society has given you, you've encountered a few systems of your own. Now, what do you really live by? So there is this void that around this age, late 20s, you need to feel, because if you have to navigate life without any prescription on what to do when, and how do you guide your decisions? What is right? What is wrong? Actually, I think moralism is the function of the psyche. You need answers so that you know how to live. I think the way that I think about atheism is like there are two ways in which you can look at it. This is great letter. I remember this letter writer to the economist once wrote because somewhere the economist in a previous piece said, "Koi, did someone is talking about her atheism as a belief system?" And this letter writer had that atheism is no more the belief system than not collecting stances or hobby. Now, that's how I define my atheism that it's an absence of belief. There's nothing I can do. I can't believe that it's not there. It's a default kind of position. I'm not evangelical about it. You want to believe you believe. I understand that the world is deeply complex and it is deeply sad because we all going to die in there's no intrinsic meaning. And therefore you have to choose your delusions. If someone else is choosing a delusion that has a and a God with a beard in it, you know, more part of them. In fact, I envy them. I wish I could do that. Because, you know, I remember when my mom died, my mom called Jaishri died. I wrote this column about 15, 16 years ago saying what's consolation for an atheist because if you are a believer, you can find one little sliver of consolation there. But if you're not, you're not. And I think what a lot of young people do and what a lot of militant sort of atheists have find to, is that for them it is like collecting stams. It is like a belief system in a sense that they have built this package of positions. And one of those positions is not believing in God and another could be whatever. Yeah. Different positions. And it is so it becomes part of the self identity. And I think that's always going to break down at some point. But for someone like me, I think like I felt that lack of structure and a personal morality. But then I figured that the only ways to arrive at it through an act of intention. Yes. And say, Radook, this is how I live my life. And I don't need to pin it on the existence of anything. And I don't need to have a larger narrative. If I like to meditate, I'll meditate. I won't pin it to something else. But equally, it is okay for everyone to choose a delusion because in a manner of speaking, I'm also choosing one. Choose your own. No, Netflix is next interactive. Interactive. No, but life. Oh my god. I mean, this is existentialism, right? Which I have like spoken about existentialism. Yeah, existentialism, right? You create your there is no inherent meaning. You create your own meaning. But it's just creating meaning by yourself from first principles. It's just very exciting to sing. If you can get through it, then great. It's very liberating. So you have to like, I went through this phase of deep anxiety. Actually, I'm exaggerating, not deep anxiety anxiety. But once you get through it, it's like super liberating because but you know, isn't I feel like just just a couple of things that use both said that I want to I don't know. So what you're saying is seems like a very correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like a very intellectual approach to meaning, which is I am free agent and none of the scripts that I see in culture necessarily fit me. So I'm free to make up my own rules. But I think the frustration that I got as a rationalist and like a very intellectually driven science, there's a frameworks and frameworks and frameworks. You can hold all of them together and realize none of them fit. Yeah. So then it needs to be a deeper source of truth. And that's what I found meditation giving me like a system of truth arising from within my body. And then that made me realize that actually I'm not free at all. There's there's a thing within me that's asking me as an agent almost so the ego is not in control. You are like the analogy that Jungian analyst for this is basically people think that you know, the ego is a center and everything revolves around it. But actually the ego is one of the planets and the self is the guiding force around which you revolve. So you are meant to serve like a divine principle. And I wouldn't have called this boor or what is this even if it weren't for the experiences I had, but I've seen this play out in like the things that like for example, why did I have a nervous breakdown if I'm a free agent? I can just like you know, things live in the body, things are stored in the body. You've read molecules of emotion. I haven't. You shared it on your Instagram stories or the campus be put book. I haven't. So what you shared a book you didn't read. I haven't. I didn't actually be called calling you out. I think summer is a sociopath. The second life we have called into I haven't read molecules of emotion. This is then objective fact. I will find I mean we'll come to that later. We'll be sure I saw that on your stories. And I was like, here's another person getting initiated into I haven't. In fact, she agreed to come on the show just because she thought I'll be going there with a person who's read molecule of emotion. Now we are questioning the premise. I think that's how to sing on your story has totally changed. No, it's true actually you are so out of sing on your. I'm so. Yeah. My journalistic credentials are now being questioned. I think already her you know her screenwriting cap is like you know showing signs of having that could be a great. You know my Starbucks name is Rocky. Your Starbucks name is Rocky. Why? Because you know like it started in Rajuri Garden in West city. You know like because Rocky Rocky money came out and I always wanted a Starbucks name like it has changed. But now I've settled with Rocky and I've got compliments in Bombay from the film Rocky and Ronnie from film Rocky money is just like the character. So Sanjana, I have a scene for you. I wanted to put it in a film. She goes to a Starbucks and he gives his name and he sits down and then another girl comes and she looks pretty and she goes, you come. Oh no, you come to you. It has to be another girl comes goes there and gives her name and then she goes back to her table. Yeah. And then both the coffees are ready together and this guy says coffees for Rocky and Ronnie. And her name is Sasha. Sasha is what you're saying. Because Sasha is my dating old name. Not to bring this conversation to what the podcast was meant to be about because I love that we have a guy. He's going what will happen my date about name is Sasha. So what happens between Rocky and Ronnie or Samaritan Sasha? I am also curious. The joke is that you say. Not to cancel sure. Usartha can Sasha. Okay. What happens? The joke is that you say coffee to Rocky or Ronnie. And she's like my name is Sasha and you're like, what if I was Sarthuck with that work? Sarthuck and Sasha. I'll treat it like Rocky and Ronnie. I'm 100% sure that all your screenplays are better than this. I can confirm this won't work. It depends on how low her standards are. Let's get back to your life. Yeah. So when you were talking about your time in college, I love this phrase. that you use about other people around you, that they were becoming people. And such a lovely phrase becoming people and most of us don't even realize that and some of us don't become people. In fact, many of us don't become people. And I want to sort of double click on that because one danger when we are young is that we can get stuck on various grooves and then we become wherever the groove takes us and we don't actually, you know, to use a woo phrase as it were since you're using the word woo, we don't actually find ourselves right. And I'm thinking whether in your case, it played a part that because you had sort of a turbulent home situation and all that, you were already out of one groove, one particular way of thinking about the world. And this opened you up to questioning more things over you always a questioning kit. Like I don't want to overthink it, but I think I was always a questioning kit. I actually don't think the turbulence of home life, I thought I was unaffected by it until 20, 29 when like I hit certain roadblocks and I was like, why is it happening to me? And then it turned out that the body had truth revealed to me. But yeah, like I said, I was put in acting classes. I was, you know, always on stage in school, education, events and stuff, scientific kind of bent of mind. I don't think, yeah, and I was also like, I was given my first book at the age of five by my mom, who was desperate for me to become a reader and good at English because again, I'm in a good light use of cosmopolitan Indian traditional yet modern kind of shaping that I had. So yeah, I think it was the far question was. And what was the story you told yourself about yourself and how did that evolve? Like, what did you think you were at 18 and how did that change by 28? What is it now? So this is going to be a little embarrassing because I think the point that I was going to act was the whole bit about how the smartest people that you guys like are also humble. I think humility is overrated, especially for women. You know, I had to prove my intelligence at what my father would insult my mother for. She was a lawyer, a state topper in her chosen field. And every day he would just be like, you know, I'm so good at math and you don't even know like basic thing. And then I think that carried forward into how like my like the first time I wanted to kill myself was after my 10th board exams. And I got because I got 88 in math, which was less for me because I should have easily gotten like a full score. And I just like I had a bulb moment. I remember the moment in the exam, I was like, shit, this is not the three set of questions. It's something about like the tax shit. I was just like, this is not, I'm not going to get this. And then it turned out I got 88 and like she didn't speak to me for three days then. I carried over her inferiority, instilled in the reality in regards to her own intelligence and that subject made it like a complex. I have to prove myself to be amazing. And that's why I so didn't easily let go of science, not just because I genuinely loved it, but I had to be good at it. And also carried over to my brother because he as a boy should be good at it. And I don't think he that pressure to do well can really go either way. And either like your ego can be so disturbed that you definitely prove yourself right or it can be so jarred by a version that you just like can't or don't want to. Yeah. So I think that humility is totally overrated. I don't enjoy not just because I'm a woman. And therefore I don't I don't feel like it's great. That but I also think it's like it panders to that whole image right? I'm like I'm so smart, but I'm humble and I'm just like going to let other people discover it. So there's a charm to self aggrandizing humor and there's as being a little brash and bratty about it is is also funny to me with the right audience. And I think it's refreshing when someone's open about their strengths and not coy about their gifts. Like I'm going to tell you I'm really good at three different things in unique ways. Instead of being like, well, I'm just like I just got your accidentally. I didn't get your accidentally. I had to claw my way up. And though it doesn't sound like a privileged woman from like what top 5% of economic households would have a lot of struggle with, but I'm telling you that even uppercast Brahmin women have so much to go through their sexuality is not their own. Their intelligence is not their own. They're not given a scope of freedom beyond what the man has dictated is your role in their life. There is a lot for us to prove. In fact, there was some guy who tweeted. I wanted to like quote, tweet and get into a whole discourse and debate about it. But sometimes I find that my anger is not enough even for that. But he was just like truly smart people don't care about proving themselves as smart. And I was like, only a man would say this. Only a man would play this game of non-shelons where you know, you have been whenever you have tried to prove your intelligence, you have been given the stage and you've been given the complete sort of belief that yeah, if you're saying it, it must be true. But when I was in Amazon and whenever I was in like the STEM field, especially like, I think just being confident is seen as arrogance at times. And I was like, I'm not being arrogant. I think I have a healthy degree of self belief. And then because it was seen as arrogance, I would then like have to overcompensate so much just to deserve my own confidence. So a lot of my overachievement is I think a drama response and as overachievement as a woman, like not being believed, not being taken seriously at home, not being taken seriously at the workplace sort of needing me to just like know everything better than the opponent so that if you can prove yourself wrong, then they don't have a case kind of thinking about it. It's one thing. I think humility, I think in context summit, Josef Rinto, I think it's more about intellectual honesty to yourself. I think it was a real flip side to that. I do want to be like, I don't want, I don't think that your intelligence, I mean, so this actually started to answer to your question about what's my story been about myself. And I don't know how much of it was sort of the conditioning and I don't know how much of it was innate. But my story about myself is that I'm a genius. I have like the only thing I have wanted to be is to be like a consummate genius. And that's not enough. Like you grow up and you're that's where the social party kind of outgrows it because I was like so laser geared on doing whatever the capital, the smartest person of all time would do that. I would ignore my own humanity, my own limits sort of wouldn't care about myself unless I was getting XYZ achievement or output that I set out to. But yeah, you're not just that. You're not just your intelligence, you're a whole other person, you're how you treat, you know, everybody who encounters your thing is just like I sometimes I still think that I have this trap when I meet people, I'm kind of like assessing, are you smart? Are you funny? Are you intelligent in the way that I have been conditioned to define intelligence? Not conditioned or like I've come to define it for myself now. But I think some of it is also valid because you do want enriching stimulating conversation, nothing wrong with that. But there's a lot more to a person and there's many dimensions of intelligence which is what my resentment with Brahminism really is that it's not about math, it's not about you know a catamacumac achievement and excellence. It's about many things intelligence can take many forms and shapes and like I like Harvard, there's seven frames of intelligence, it can be kinesthetic, it can be verbal, it can be mathematical, spatial, interpersonal, interpersonal, which is also where like how you manage relationships, how you manage yourself comes in and I think that is actually one of the biggest forms of intelligence because if you as an adult are taking good care of yourself, you've got your own life managed, you're not like trying to be a moral righteous savior. I think that's your head of the culture already. Does being good at taking care of yourself? Yeah, no, and I completely agree with what you said about, I mean it's a sobering point that women should be like someone like, I think the, some, some, some, some, some of it and I were talking about it in a different context but the point is a reason that we only thought of that context as because we are men. Yeah. You know every single woman who's ever come on the show has shown this in post-recent room and why are you calling me? What have I done? Mahima's episode I remember we had a long conversation about and there is no man who has ever said, men are always like, how are you? So I find it funny and refreshing to be that way. I am like a lot of my friends would describe my humorous cocky. I'm just like in a room when I'm introduced to someone I'm like, do I even even be new with my presence? Like, do I give you attention? Like what have you done? Like, because I've been like, you know, it's almost ironic in the way I'm playing out that traumatic bit like if I had to do so many things to be respected at home and in society then what have you done to? Is this a fair thing to say question for both of you, right? Men should show more humility and women should show less? Yeah, I think at this point also like the culture is very sick of men. We're very sick of whatever masculinity has been told is masculine. So a man being overconfident is no longer interesting. Like if I'm here at Tech Bro and he's like, I'm working on like this AI thing and I'm like, do it. Like firstly, I think a lot of men assume that I don't know the things they're talking about. But then three times more than you on that. I'm sorry, but like it's true. Like I frequently find this to be true. So I'm not going to lie. But like you start with explaining, whereas I think there are some men and many women start with curiosity. Like have you heard of this thing? It's an interesting concept. Like why don't you just start the conversation like that? Right? Because then it makes me less petty about it. Because if you start by, you know this, I'm just going to explain it to you. I feel like being petty and returned and being like, actually, you know what? I don't want to be that version of myself. I want to have intellectual humility. But not when it's coming at a disservice to my gifts and what I do know, I just feel like that tradeoff is very easy for me to make. I rather be brash and bratty and uncouth about these things. Can I say something? Salina, like I'm learning so many new things about you. Despite like we've spoken for a while. But I have to say at this point that when we first spoke, I think that was your Sanjana story, right? Like for 52. Yeah. You actually helped me get some data. Yeah. years ago when I've actually seen her grow so much. Like as a, like, we are not like talking on the phone like every two months, but occasionally, but your journey, like, actually, I hope you're like super proud of yourself. Like when you say that I walk into a room like, why not? Like, you're seeing like so many anxiety shared gone through, you know, in this time in age, building a culture as a freelance writer. I mean, all of us know what it takes. Yeah. And this navigating so much. Yeah. So yeah. Thank you. I mean, I feel like this whole journey has been one of individuation. I think I told you about the term, like, just no choice but to be your authentic self because you get headaches and like, you'd like, my body will not allow me to be anything but myself. Like I got that coated destinies coated within me and I've become in tune with it. And I keep like the pitfall of it. I'm always trying to guess my destiny instead of letting go and doing and finding out. But I really appreciate it. Do thank you for noticing. I want to go on with some instances of these markers, not necessarily external markers of food. So on that note, let's take a quick commercial break because our food just rang the bell by itself. There is no one carrying it. And after we kind of take care of the food, we shall continue. Hey, the music started and this sounds like a commercial, but it isn't. It's a plea from me to check out my latest labor of love. A YouTube show I am co-hosting with my good friend, the brilliant Ajay Shah. We've called it everything is everything. Every week we'll speak for about an hour on things we care about from the profound to the profane from the exalted to the everyday. We range widely across subjects and we bring multiple frames with which we try to understand the world. Please join us on our journey and please support us by subscribing to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/amithwarmaamitvarrame. The show is called everything is everything. Please to check it out. Welcome back from the break. I'm chatting with Sanjana, Aka Sanju and Samarth Aka Sarthak. And there also Aka Rocky and Rani Apparenta. Or Sasha and Sarthak. Or Sasha and Sarthak and the permutations and combinations, thens forth. And Sanjana, I'm still going to keep the spotlight on you as it were because we were talking about your life and how the story you told yourself about yourself changed over time. And you've written this lovely piece for the Indian Express and dating as well where you spoke about the personal aspect of the changes that you went through at around 28-29 but you were also saying earlier that it wasn't just personal even in terms of how you looked at your career or defined success or whatever. You started just looking at the world differently. So let's talk a little bit about that because was it that from the time that you were at Bits Goal, when you were at IMKal? Looking back on hindsight, you could possibly now say that I wasn't really like the others there. But at the time, how did you feel? At the time, how did you view your evolving life and career if one may use that word? And what other things that made that change over time? I think I always felt like I was different from other people and I think I still feel that and I'm trying to, I don't know if it's something to be outgrown or something to like everybody's unique in their own way so everybody feels like they're different from other people. We all feel like misfits. For me, it also coexisted with this need that was instilled subcon, I think to be popular and like the main character syndrome did exist in me so I felt at once like I was an outsider but as that only has value of your insider, I feel so when you're in with the people which I think if you're part of an elite population which all three of us, certain like upper class of society and you see it as an outsider, you get even more status in that group because you're the one commenting and observing on it. So I felt yeah, I always wanted to be a writer like I think I was a writer in a past life very like unironically because I don't like when stories started coming to me it, I didn't understand why because I haven't studied it, I just read a lot so that's one explanation but this whole performance art aspect to my own life which is I think I've subconsciously also almost put myself in dangerous situations because then I'd have more to write about and more conflict and more drama and chaos so there's that whole that whole thing that maybe needs to be interrogated so I did feel different from other people I think I do still you know in a way that most artists do do you not also feel this summer? That I'm different yeah from other people. I think I used to feel it more when I was younger you know that classic thing no one understands me I am like my context is different etc but I think one of the greatest things my journalism career has done to me is that the more stories I heard like hair, report, be with people and open myself to it I think that whole sense of specialness for me at least like significantly reduced and I at least right now in the position where like I do realize about like my own individuality and non-conformity like freedom is one of my concerns of person philosophy and what's the notion of a good life but the same time just recognizing you know like going you know like classic depth versus breadth spending more time with few people I think that just really really opened up me to feeling less special as unique not the world being surrounded on me while at the same time being able to own my individuality so like that's where I am right now if like you see what I'm saying. I do I think a de-coupling notions of feeling different from any kind of hubris or that comes with it like I feel everybody is deeply individual in their own ways if they spend time acknowledging and nurturing it like that tension between collectivism and community and who you are uniquely like I think this in India varies also by the kind of social group you're coming from so if for example like who gets to fully express themselves like who gets to self-actualize and be totally individual and who gets to like who has to sort of confirm collectively one example that comes to mind is like how you know like the Dalit artists are always called Dalit artists and others are just artists you know so they're the collective identities kind of and even I think from within the community a lot of their art is about anti-casts they're not talking about caste you know their response to their lives you know their individuality is actually constrained around that collectivism so yeah that question that tension remains something you navigate. Another aspect that I'm kind of interested in you know from your careers and you know is that you are a marketing person you seem to love it from the little bits that you've from the little nuggets that you've given us you know you're passionate about it and at the same time you're a writer right and what would happen when I was much younger is that the moment I began to self-identify as a writer and storyteller I had complete disdain for marketing corporate nonsense and all of that like even today my main ethic is that a good product is the best marketing which is a rationalization for my Bengali laziness and not doing anything in that regard you know how did you like at one level it would seem it's okay you went a bit you went to I am Cal and then marketing is like one of the natural things you can do but tell me about like what are the things you were interested in what are the kind of rabbit holes you would enter was it a natural place for you to end up anyway like at one level a marketing person can be someone who does the theory and then goes in there and goes through the motions and rises up till they are VP marketing in some big company and at another level you could just be I think fascinated by people and a society in tune and marketing is always about understanding this shit like that thing you said earlier again is you know about detergent is something that I think a woman is more likely to notice on a man the where you spoke about your customers talking about the centrality of detergent in their happiness because if you get a good detergent you remove the stains and your husband is happy with you yeah and it's both heartbreaking and so revelatory you know so and consequently otherwise also like if it if it's not well removed everybody notices because she's the one who's like looking at all of that but I think you asked many questions and if I had to sort of break it down the first one was it's something I deal with like the dissonance between identifying because I think it's it is at that point a choice that you identify as a writer the way you identify as a man or a woman like it's gender at this point but if you identify as a literary creative writer what what is a writer it's someone who's observing and I think there's a level of criticality or criticism that is baked into especially like non-fiction on journalism if you're just like there is explainer kind of writing where you're just picking things up walks does that and like Tim urban is really good at that writers of our flavor what some earth writes and I think what you write there's a lot of criticism in world where you're there's almost a stance of this is what this is what it is and this is what things should be like or have you questioned this and then there's of course fiction there's many types of writing so I think a lot of writing that people do doesn't necessarily conflict with having one foot in the establishment which I do I have one foot in the establishment as a marketer as a white collar professional I have one foot outside the establishment that's strongly anti establishment and that streak has actually sort of got solid form as I started writing in 2019 but I think mentally that's where it comes you know because you're in the establishment and you notice all these things that are wrong with it how women are taken less seriously what these binaries about intelligence are how men also of her from the patriarchy. And why on more men writing about that, right? Like when men I feel like sorry, that's another digression, but basically having one foot in the establishment and one outside of it, I think it brings you like and as I started, so I think context setting is having done my own marketing consulting firm. It's mostly a 1% marketing agency called Storified, where I worked with a number of clients beyond detergent journalism, SaaS that I mentioned to now considering full-time jobs again and again having a book coming out which is anti-establishment, considering being in the establishment. This dissonance has not left me and I have had some amount of shame admitting that I want to make money because the only way I can create art is if I if I'm because I don't I just I'm not seeing this out of self-pity, but I don't really have a home to turn to where if I my career isn't going well, I can just go back home and have a room to myself and continue to do my work. I don't have that space. I don't have a room to myself in the house that I was born in. It comes with a lot of conflict like when I go home, there's all these triggers that we're all in a dysfunctional family, I think like you know a mind sweeper game waiting to you know implode. So I don't have a safe space. So I have to have a career outside of it. And if I also have to if I also have a vision about how I want my career to be where it's actually fulfilling then there's certain arrangement that I need to make it happen for myself so that then getting too mild in the ethics of being anti-establishment and establishment start to matter less and you realize like I said the carnivorous nature of existence it leads me to that because I think we're all you know in this position where we have to compartmentalize our ideals with you know the nature of reality itself. So as I was navigating this question how I've made peace with it is that if it's going to let me write more if it's going to let me be my best self and by best self I don't mean achieve yourself or conventionally successful self. I just mean like I want to thrive in life I don't want to suffer I don't want to have a guilty conscience about leading a good life which I think a lot of privileged people take guilt or awareness to be there free pass like if I'm sure that I'm aware of the problems and I show that we should all be thinking about this feeling guilty about this my Instagram is littered in Israel Palestine posts and I'm about boycotting the brands like I don't think that's super I don't find that meaningful I don't find like of course I mean everybody has to find their way of responding to society's big problems but mine has been arranging a life where I can thrive and I don't think that's selfish I don't think that's narcissistic I think we're all like you know that in that carnivorous nature what can what will enable me to do my best the way I treat the people around me how equitable I am in my dealings with people I hire for example my maid is an employee if I'm able to give her like a stable job and pay her well and like all of that I think that's a big win for me so because I've arranged my life for that to happen so that's how I've been dealing with this dissonance I don't know if it's satisfactory I don't know if it's moral but I think it's true I think I have you guys you must have navigated this question I mean I don't see a way I mean I don't see my morality would come into it I think you make your choices according to the way you want to live your life and I realized at some point that I want to wake up every morning looking forward to the work I'm going to do that day and therefore I chose the life that I did and I'm going to work in a company and I'm going to do my own thing and while it's a source of frustration that many of the things I really wanted to do I haven't yet been able to do but I wake up every day doing work I love like this podcast and that's a privilege and that was a second part of my question that you clearly also love market I do you know so tell me a bit more about that because I would imagine and forgive me if this is a caricature from the past or maybe only I got scarred in the corporate world but my sense is that in companies in the corporate world in the big companies you're surrounded by people who are going through the motions and who are fundamentally mediocre and in your case it would be even more frustrating because you're fundamentally mediocre men who think they're awesome. What has that sort of journey been like like once motivated you to just like offline you've just been mentioning one book after another you just dropped it so you clearly like passionate about this shit you're reading up on it you really know this shit. I'll tell you so a few things that have driven me in whatever I've picked up is is it new and challenging so if there's a lot for me to learn and I feel that flow state happening like where I don't realize time passing this is absorbing to me then I'm invested and the things that that has not happened for me for example I just knew intuitively I never wanted to be a doctor blood does not appeal to me I don't like when I was dissecting a frog at some lab experiment in a that's like this you know skip it to science the other part of science keep it to like so I've been led by curiosity and a need for intellectual absorption and that happened with stem until I felt like I'd explored it I understand it I think you know a field when you know your strengths and you know your weaknesses and you know what you don't know and I got to that point with coding and I was like do I see myself being the best at it probably you know I'm not bad at all but I'm not going to be like the guy who invented this game do my forget his name John Carmack my Carmack yeah I'm not going to be the very best so why bother forever also the culture like the nature of those environments maybe there's more out there and I'm super creative I haven't channeled that yet I have always been fascinated by because I think the world runs on brands right like every person in setback I've had I've only been able to correct myself in on respect again by being affiliated with the right brands so at home it's about tier one bits and tier one I am gal and then they're like oh she's smart I'm not smart unless I have those brands so I think brands are actually part of how you form your identity and self-hood in in a world where religion is not the defining order but work is so we've all got a CV and a resume to show that we're reputable people we belong to a certain class because the brands were associated with so I'm deeply interested in the relationship between you know the self and brands and how do you captivate and like the attachment like I even becoming aware of the mechanisms of marketing and how it ensnairs you I am so vulnerable to it like this myself esteem is attached to my iPhone I lost it in June and I got one like immediately even though like I was like next three years I was like damn that's how fragile this this foundation is because getting one had become such a milestone for me like I didn't get one until because I had this phone breaking screen losing kind of scene I was like I'm only going to get one when I'm assorted adult and I became assorted adult and I lost it so I was like I can't I can't let this happen I have to claw my fight back and got an iPhone immediately right so I think the weight and also if you if you also are aware of like the changing nature of people and relationships that right it's much easier to have a relationship with the product and a brand because it's much easier to let you can completely control it right so objects become part of your aesthetic they become part of how you define and see the world so I think brands are like hugely central to how you navigate life I sound almost religious right now I feel I am more curious like you feel you are assorted adult yeah how does what like how does it happen like one of the things I would tell you what I define by thought it like you got your house finances in order you know like you know you're some whether you're able to weather difficult situations you're resilient you're not like your emotional regulation is there so if something bad happens you're not spiraling and you know taking it out on other people that is what I mean by being an adult you know something I tell my younger friends and I think summer you'll agree with me is that this adulthood nonsense no it's a scam it is a total scam kids we think you adult one thing everything will be sorted out but then you realize at some point that everybody's winging it yes and you you also have to wing it and so there's like this emotional self-regulation like who gets it right do I get it right I don't do you get it right some words you don't but she does she I think I do you do I'm surprised I I'm aware of emotions as they arise I ask myself if I want to express something what's the value of it is this a battle I want to fight do I gain anything by being honest emotionally am I am I as a friend should I be honest here and tell this person that I think what he's like and call them out is like these are questions I asked myself before I act on my impulses here's a question for both of you and I might have asked some of this but still is that like is there a point in time where you became more self aware or have you always been self aware in the sense that you clearly are now because I just looking back on my own journey I think for a significant part of my life I had no freaking self awareness I was just going through the motions and playing the game and then at some point you start reflecting and you start you know learning about yourself as it were so is there a point in time when that gradually happened and can you look back on that younger person and say here yeah yeah what the fuck was I doing wasn't thinking you know and that's part one and part two is that is it a blessing or a curse like because I think it can also come with cons there is a certain amount of comfort in not looking too hard at yourself I'm smiling because the phrase that I think I've been sickeningly self aware for far too long why is it sickeningly it's a look as awareness is a burden sometimes it you just want and I think a lot of substance abuse which I've some you know it's part of my life gone through and come out of I can see is it desire for escape from your own thoughts and your own like the weight unbearable weight of them at times like how much you can think and feel but I would say I've always been aware of my train of thought like I can I remember my journalist from my when I was 13, 16, that's when I first diagnosed my parents' marriages failing. And I was like, you guys clearly have issues. And I remember thinking back to what I must have been to have written that then, like I don't have a flattering objective in mind at all. But like, you know, it's a lot of awareness. And I think it's definitely useful. Like you definitely need to have self-knowledge. Because again, it's that whole, you know, in the sea of reality, in the ocean, you're swimming, you need some guiding principles and self-knowledge can be one of those anchors that this is who I want. This is what I feel drawn to and you navigate the current by being true to yourself. I also think like, self-aware can seem a burden, but I would rather be that way rather than the other one because again, I have like, like we talked about in the previous episodes, so not going to details. But for me, what like us better understanding of the self, I think it makes you, I at least hope it makes you better person for other people also. Because the more attuned you are to your own emotions, your own insecurities, your fears, your anxieties, what gives you joy, etc. Absolutely. That like depending on where it takes you, I think it makes me more empathetic to other people. And one like one of my favorite directors is Ingmar Bergman and Bergman has, you know, in his fascinating TV series, "Scenes from a Marriage". There is an episode and his talked about it also about this idea of humans being emotionally illiterate. Okay, and there's an episode called, like I think, "Emotional illiterate something", where again, like I can't quote him directly, like his words, but his point was that, you know, we talk about geography or you know, these facts about history or science, but how many of us like really are attuned with our own emotions. And because we don't understand ourselves, we just completely fail as human beings to understand people around us. And that emotional illiteracy is, you know, becomes a cause of unhappiness. It keeps going down the rabbit hole. So of course, knowing more about yourself, and like there are so many times when I feel like, "Damn it, like I'm such a shallow person, I had this image of myself, but this is not who I am. It's uncomfortable." But that's also liberating, because the moment I feel that, "Okay, I'm going to wake up and work on myself because I'm finding 10 flaws in myself." That just makes me, you know, like more human, like enjoying the imperfections of people around me. So I think that is something that's self-awareness, like level one is, you know, but level two is that it just makes you appreciate people around you much more better. So that's what I mean, that I would rather be this way and live with this discomfort than, you know, accepting notions about and not really questioning. But I'm sure there are, but do you both think that there are people who are self-aware and people who are not? And I think this also treads along that main character/NBC kind of thing, where of course, I feel like everybody has a degree of complexity, right? So our self-aware people more complex or I mean, is that, you know, like are there people who are totally unaware of themselves? I think they must be like, I think yes or off, to our extent, and I think, and again, based on the few things you said about your dad, I don't want to extrapolate, but it would sound to me that a person like that must have a certain lack of self-awareness. But here's the, in moments, he's, like his humor will indicate to me that he knows what's happening, like he's cracked jokes about himself, whereas like, "Oh, so you know what's going on?" You know, you know. That's interesting. But I have seen people who are like, which leads me to think that the problem is about emotional regulation. And even though you know what you are, like you don't have the prefrontal cortex strength of which, which takes me to like, disorder's personality disorders. And like, you know, do you, maybe there's like an illness that's not diagnosed at times? Yeah, but you know, there's a thing that I'll bring up a couple of points here, and you can tell me what you think about them. And one of them is that we often look at someone who's got some kind of mental illness, and we'll say that, you know, that have some sympathy for the guy. It's that mental illness, which makes him that way, right? What I'm saying is it's not a dichotomy. It's a, you know, there's a continuum there. And I think everyone to that extent, to some extent, underestimate a level to which they are not really in control. Yeah. Thank you for saying this. And underestimates a level to which like if you read Robert Sapolsky's great behavior, you know, you realize that you think that you're autonomous and you're making all your old decisions. Yeah. But at various different levels, you are not. And one level is a immediate level that you've been breakfast khayakini, maybe you're hungry. That's why you're behaving like that. Then another level, it is a chemical composition of your brain, Chris Connell killed himself because he was on some drugs that had that as a side effect. Right? So he thinks he's feeling low and that's an authentic feeling, but it's caused by a chemical imbalance within him. Or it goes back all the weight of your genes and so on and so forth. And there's an interplay of so many layers of causality that you know, like Sapolsky's book after that is called it, which is about how there's no free will which I agree with at an intellectual level. Yeah. Though I always say that even if there's no free will, we must be as a society as if there is. Otherwise, you can just say that he does nothing about his mistake. But at a deeper level, that's kind of true. I think you need to have awareness of both these levels because it's what's and I'm going to say, like it's what's helped me develop forgiveness and compassion for my father and for anyone who's hurt me, it's not just my like I've attracted like I said, no, because the wound is actually at some level in you now and then you are psychologically vulnerable to a certain kind of experience thereafter. And so you need to heal. You need to be able to forgive and accept that that psychic scar tissue exists and then grow around it. And that can only happen. I think with this degree of acceptance, right? Like sometimes people are not in control and sometimes they have been conditioned in horrible ways and sometimes they don't have the emotional regulation is all these and maybe they don't even have free will, maybe I don't have free will and just to add like I mean, I have as a consequence of the nature of my family dynamic treated my brother like shit because he sided with my father on the whole thing and that to me, I thought, yeah, he's a kid. He's like 10 years younger than me, which is now quite old, but I don't know, viscerally, I feel like there's a energy that's coming that I'm not, I can't control when I'm, you know, like I feel so violent and I feel so angry that I mean, I I behaved in ways that I wouldn't endorse and condone later. And I would like to think that's not who I am. So being in touch with your darkness and your own dark side, I think will make you more empathetic to other people because if you're capable of it and you've seen other people capable of it, the only way out is to forgive yourself and other people. So yeah, I think we need to have that second level awareness as well. Like yes, you don't have a free pass on reality. So try not to be an asshole, but then when someone is that there's just so much going on. I also like have this uncomfortably feeling right like the moment we get into this path about let's say biological determinism or like, yeah, I hormones, or I feel like or you can. Everything is nature. Everything is nature, but the most society you grow up like that. I think it's it's helps to make sense of the situation, but the point at which I feel uncomfortable is that when it starts becoming the justification. I think it's useful as explanation, not exculpation. Yeah, right. Like you were talking about like, let's say men if you talk about masculinity today, right? Like of course, like again, again, growing up, you realize that yes, like men are also, I face the burden of patriarchy. We behave in ways that actually hurts us. Yes. Right? Until you unlearn patterns of patriarchy and we're a third of us in you, right? Like you, it's about yourself, but the moment you realize patriarchy also hurt me, that's when you actually understand why patriarchy is problematic in general and more for women. By the way, aside here, my two most popular episodes of the show are called Guess what? Oh, yeah, Shriana's and Nichols. Yeah, so loneliness of the Indian woman and loneliness of the Indian man, which you know, so I think this episode should be quite popular because you bring these two loneliness together. But my episode with Nichol was about exactly what you were talking about. No, what I'm asking you is that now you when you experience this like with men in corporate set up relationships, right? Like if you know and like for like at one point, once you're aware, like that is not enough, like you have to act on it. Because you're dead, right? Like I, yeah, I don't know if somebody is an asshole, you have to treat him like an asshole. Yeah, yeah, you can't excuse that. You can't excuse that. Just going back to a next point, which is that you need to understand the deeper layer of the question mark reality and just so that you can understand it and navigate it. But then when you're treating people treated by the conventional moors and dictates, which is someone is behaved badly with you treat it as a law would, right? Like he deserves to be punished for it. He deserves to be called out for it. And sort of she, if in this, consider how do you like do you have a story like how do you deal with this? Well, I've called the cops on my dad and yeah, I've gone that far. And he is the he I did think that I mean, he was a danger to he was a danger. There was an instance of physical and it's interesting in touching because actually it happened when I was not at home. I was in Bangalore, my brothers and family. They were in Bombay and something happened at home in San Deep, the brother that I'm not actually where don't see I to I on anything. But he called me then for help and I told him what to do. And now eight years later, he's got a completely different view of things and he thinks that big I don't know, there's a lot of resentment between the two of us maybe because growing up they were they were always compared to me because I was the older one, the kid who had academically done the things that they were then pushed into and to different degrees of, you know, unwillingness, we all had. So I mean, these dynamics then, this is take on such multi-layered issues. So I think the way to, and you know, like speaking of those psychological vulnerabilities, one of the people I dated was a super self-aware, the funniest sort of kind of a maverick kind of guy, but who kept making the same mistake over and over again. And I, because I've been conditioned to think that's what love is, conditioned, isn't not by the culture necessarily, but psychologically imprinted based on the dynamics that I've seen and internalized at home. Because he's so great and intellectually fulfilling, instillating in so many other ways, and he's been through, you know, the worst and he's seen me through the divorce and I can put up with his bad behavior and everybody's got their flaws. What love is perfect. Yeah. Until you give up until you just like sure, like I, I, I seven eight times, I've been really stupid and I can't even say stupid. Like it's almost like having a limp. Is that stupid? Like it's just, it's just a deformity in some ways. But did it take like an external, like someone else had to, like whatever patterns were happening that came up with your friends told you about it. My friends had by that point recognized that it's a self-sabotage kind of thing, but they also knew that I'm an adult and she needs to make her mistakes, like, you know, telling someone what not to do and what to do really ever had. So they were there for me even in the aftermath of it. So it was that Kushra Kapila reels come to mind, those who are at flagged, like, they were not patronizing and paternalizing about it. They were aware and empathetic. The reason I ask is because of things like it's also very gendered in the sense, I'm making some observations. So I were like, I've a lot of very close friends and who are married or in relationships and one of the patterns that I see is that when they say that you know, like my boyfriend or to my husband, like I have to, like, I have to teach them how to be with me. Right? Like there's some behaviors that they have not learned. Like then if this person is left alone to live by themselves, they can't. So but before they come and live with me, you know, they need to learn and be an adult. So I see the dichotomy where on one end, this achy, it's not my job to teach you. Like you should have learned, but they also like because of the love and affection, they're like, maybe I need to give them a chance. But it's, I've really heard a man talking about it. So I was wondering in this context again, you know, we started by talking about key over your shape by this, and you know, this whole India may, you're right. In that, like, how do you think about what you're saying? So how did I become, how did I deal with it? It was by re-traumatizing myself in some ways. Like those patterns happening often enough for me to realize that it's a pattern and not what love is. Like it's a psychological issue where you're seeking kind of love that feels familiar, but it was always inherently unstable, not healthy for you. So deep prioritized, what you think is important about love, like intellectual chemistry and search for a good partner instead. So that's, that's something I'm still working through, which is why like I'm single, like I haven't worked through it. So that's one thing. I think how I became aware of it is not because nobody else is clued into my life's context the way I am except you do now starting today. But that was one thing. And the second thing being what you're saying, the point you were making later about women feeling like they need to educate the man into the emotional shape of the relationship she wants to have. There's a French feminist called Mona Shaloo. I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name. She's written this book called re-inventing love. How how the patriarchy ruined heterosexual relations. And basically about how these gender roles that men and women have learned that they need to occupy, men being a little aloof and emotionally unaware and that's their allure and that's what they've been conditioned to think is what it means to be an attractive man. And meanwhile the woman being the emotional glue and teaching and he's a man child, I'm going to tall date him and grow him into my partner. You've seen that trope even in friends when Monica and Chandler started dating, Chandler's kind of a boy child. He doesn't know how to make a serious relationship work and you know they work it out and they have a happy relationship but it is on screen. So all these ideas that I think they do more damage than like what the culture has told us about what love is. It's so deeply irreversible I think. Irreversible. Yeah because if we, generations will continue to grow up with these notions of what you're self, who get society. I think that me and a few other very evolved creative, psychologically mature, spiritual women kind of this, there's an archetype I have a few other friends like this. We struggle with this like dichotomy between what we've been told of is so we kind of crave the oh I'm just a girl there's going to be a guy who comes and takes care of me and makes me feel like I can just be, I can switch off my masculine side and come home and I'll be baby and taking care of and the protector provider and I'm the feminine that that after that we want but then when we get into those those kind of equations it feels off because some the the other side the flip side of it is like the if someone is the protector and provider or the controlling part of it like don't maybe stay out late with your guy friends maybe why are you like talking to 10 other I have a lot of male friends so I and I will be sort of fairly open you know sometimes crash at their place and stuff someone has a problem with that then I start to bristle at the protectiveness part of it so I feel like we crave this cultural ideal of love but when we get it it feels off and there needs to be a more egalitarian individual where both people are masculine and feminine and they've integrated that for themselves so I mean every man has a woman inside every woman has a man inside in the psyches and roginess right like you may lean towards one gender but like you have both within you and when those are in balance I think I hope to encounter people who are integrated in their own because you can tell I like speaking of people oneself where you can tell when a man is insecure about his masculinity yeah very easily very easily and unless a man comes to terms with this femininity he will be insecure about his masculinity because true masculinity is actually integrated both sides of you and I think the same applies for the other gender too so I'm not double click on something you said earlier but first I'll just make the observation that and I'm thinking aloud heard that you know one of the curses of self-reflection is or self-awareness is when you're self-aware of something that you're doing wrong but you can't help it you do it right and that's that's such a curse and example I'm thinking of in my own context is the amount of online chess I play which is really not healthy and I know it's wrong and I curse myself but I do it anyway but there are many broader deeper more harmful ways in which that plays out in all our lives what I'm going to double click on is something you said near the start of the episode and you know where you said that there is an inherent masculinity and inherent you know so double click on that because I'll tell you what my thoughts on it are and they sort of dovetail with something that someone was talking earlier about how we are all trying to fight our hardwiring right and the thing is that what one learns where you study evolutionary biology enough and evolutionary psychology is that we are that men and women are wired fundamentally different in a certain ways there's not just that our bodies have evolved differently so have our brains and that is a curse that we have to continue to deal with now the way the androotates of the world would deal with that is that they would just embrace the hardwiring and they would amplify those aspects of our nature and you know for example you know women are hardwired to one's stability you're going to have one baby it's going to take nine months you want a man with status men are hardwired to want to be promiscuous because you want to spread your seed etc etc these are biological facts now unfortunately we live in a world where many of these biological facts were hard coded into the toxic patriarchy that we speak about and luckily over the last three four hundred years we've begun to fight this and some of it with self awareness and some of it with just you know writing more about it spreading the word etc etc right so in that sense I think that number one it is true that there is an essential that men and women in an essential fundamental way are different number two I think that they're not as different as you think that like you pointed out many men can have you know be caught unquote feminine in certain ways and vice versa and number three we all have to fight this fucking shit and be self aware about it so that we can be better with each other right so these are the thoughts that were sparked off when you said that what did you mean and what I think you've sort of laid out my trajectory of like thought on this as well but just double click what I meant when I said that so why why at some point in feminism even arises because the roles that women were in and the roles that men were in they weren't equitable at some point and if it did happen say for example that men as the providers go get us the outside the home work they were it was safer women to embrace their inside the home role maybe there wouldn't have been a need for feminism but at some point there was abuse there was violence there was domestic there was self-actualization like there was multiple levels of you know oppression there there was like survival at question if there was domestic violence and there was the question of whether I get to intellectually explore all the things that I as a woman have been told I can't do and similarly the flip side for men can men cook can men be in fashion and all of that right those are restrictive and therefore there has been the feminist response where I think you know the challenge rises if you completely shun those biological roots also so for example I think this dry for overachievement I mean, this complete disregard of my feminine nature as opposed to what the culture told me my femininity was because from the outside, you know, I have been discovering my femininity as it appears to me through my, you know, work and stuff. And I was like, shit, I have not been in touch with my feminins. I've just been out there, out and about seeing the world in a very quote unquote masculine way. And what I mean by that is if I had to be very loose and broad about a subject that's actually very nuanced and prone to being misunderstood and controversial. But Jung Kalyung, who's shaped a lot of my thoughts on this, he says that like the masculine energy is like a spiritual drive to perfection. It's all about like that end goal goal oriented seeking, taking something large and cutting it up into problems, which I therefore get why people think math is masculine in the sense it is, because by nature of it, not that men are only masculine and math is only accessible to the masculine. But it's about that principle that are organizing more of the psyche that's about cutting things up and splitting it and giving it order and like seeking goal orientation lean on us. I think even literary criticism as the linear storytelling is masculine and so on. Whereas the feminine mode of consciousness is is receptive. You know, it's it's whole it takes things as a whole. It's not about cutting it up. It's about it's not got a goal. It's about diffuse orientation. It's like it's ideation. It's way of generating creativity is not so structured. And what I thought was me being feminine was you know me looking good and dressing up and looking like a woman. But actually it's about not having trying to cut everything up in my life into projects, which I was doing at the time. I was my sort of scientific like STEM career was a project. My MBA career was a project. My love life had become a project that if I meet someone by the age of 27, I'll date him for two years. By the time at 29.5, we'll get married and boom. That's when I had the rebellion coming from inside saying that this is all in inauthentic to you. You don't even know what's inside you yet. So that's I think feminine conscious is also about letting go. It's about letting us sort of working with the universe to co-create your reality in sort of insisting, you know, and imposing your will on it all the time. It's actually truly growing up if you've integrated your feminine side. So what I mean by inherent masculinity and femininity is this like your approach to the way your consciousness is dealing with reality and that method of interfacing with it. And when they are in balance, I think so Jung also says that the psyche is endrogynous. So it's also not like everyone is, you know, 50% in a young age. For some people, their true expression is maybe a lot of femininity and less masculinity and a lot of masculinity and less femininity, which is where the queer identities come in. So they're he said that, you know, that was their expression of endrogyny, the way their gender balance. So what is stone endrogyny? Androgyny. What does that mean? Equally masculine and feminine? For neither masculine and feminine. I guess. Yeah, can you look it up actually? I don't know if it's equally or neither, but problem. Let's do it right now. Is the state of having both masculine and feminine characteristics? The term comes from the Greek words and Ross meaning men and giant meaning women, which is when I was first encountering these ideas. I was like, am I actually non-binary? Am I going to start saying they, them all the time? But no, I kind of grew up thinking I was a girl and like I had, I actually had this teenage era where my cousin and I discussed what it means to be a girl. Like in hindsight, I now have get the political import of what she was saying, but she was like, you need to wear a hairband and you need to wear stop wearing such loose clothes and dress like a girl and like my socialization into femininity happened through. You learn how to be a woman from other women and other women are looking at women on screen and like I had the whole be one of the chapters in my book is about the eating disorder that my generation was in the alternated intro. Thanks to Karina Kapoor in the movie Tushan because that's when she came. We were all like 13, 14, 15 when the side of the kidney became a thing and we were all like, we want to be a popular girl. That's how you need to look and like I only grew out of it in the last three, four years. So our question one aspect of this is like really interesting to me is that at one level you speak about how you were looking at your life in terms of projects as your right maintain to do. And at another level at the moment you broke out of that is you know you were in you left aside that quote unquote masculine way of looking in the world and just kind of embrace what you call your femininity, but that appears to be the precise moment where you actually broke away from the life plan that the world lays out for women. That you know, okay, you had your career, you've done your thing, you had your fun, now it's time to get married. And that's a precise moment where you decided not to follow that traditional stereotypical path that a woman would be expected of, but it came out of a place where you stopped thinking like a man and just you know, allow yourself to be you. Yeah, I think to go back to the point is that femininity is not just being pretty, it's not about liking pinkness. It could be just that, right? Like I think the feminine principle is caught in this bind where because certain things were imposed on it and that principle itself was abused, it was devalued in society, it's always been considered inferior, everything that was associated with this now suspect. So if I like pink, then I'm too girly, if I'm good at maths, then I'm like a man, there's always like this double bind where you know, damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of see. And the bizarre thing is that if you know, the stereotypes are so ingrained that if you start feeling in particular ways that seem masculine, you then start going off into other, looking for other terminology like non-binary. Exactly. Where you did not, you are, who you are. Exactly. Which is why I let go of that strain of thought because I was like actually a woman who does non-binary. As a being, when you're being a woman also, there's no definition of like if you're this, then you're a woman. So I mean, I stuck to she, her and I don't think I'm non-binary. I think I'm very much a woman who's in touch with her masculine side. And to your point about like, I think femininity is your own thing. Like you have to discover what it is for you with a spiritual journey and it's an inner journey that you want to take that of course influences everything you do outside of it. Like I'm getting more tattoos. I'm dressing differently. It has affect your aesthetic and your self-presentation too, but it's not just that. It's not. I have a question for you. Like, isn't that the thing that we talked like 90s kids grow up and we realize that labels don't matter. Because even like what is masculine, what is feminine, these are all ultimately labels. And you grow up to realize that actually labels is very simplistic way to look at ourselves. And we start fitting ourselves into it. So one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is you know this whole idea that language shapes thought. Yeah. Like once I verbalize, this means this. Then suddenly then you get your framework to say this how people are or I am rather than being fluid about it. And like the cliche goes like being yourself. So even in these distinctions, like you know, you've been talking about what is feminine, what is masculine, how it shaped yourself. I'm curious like do you think like it really matters? Like I absolutely love pink. Like my wardrobe is full of like a pink shirt, pink shorts, like I want more pink. Then there are aspects of it that you know in terms of how I'm at work, you can call it masculine, all of it. After one point, it just started feeling so meaningless because the moment any kind of classification comes in, it feels like I am restricting myself in some ways. Even it comes in like context of dating or what you do is like like you know all of those things. And then like but Mirko to yehi, like I feel this the right way to be. So does it create a conflict for you because I think it matters to the point where you can get to where it doesn't matter. So if you've gone through the journey and you integrated it, then it doesn't matter. You're an agender free autonomous self taking self-aware individual agent. And I mean you are a man, but your masculinity and femininity are both so understood and integrated within you that it doesn't matter like you said, like it doesn't matter that it's so pink or whatever, right? Like it doesn't have to be a radical choice. But I think you do need to go through that journey where it does matter. But I think to make it visible to yourself, is that? Yeah, you have a relationship, a conscious relationship with both. But it also, like I get that it can stop mattering to you, but it can't completely stop mattering simply because of society. For example, I cry really easily, right? I cry randomly. They might not even be something sad, the beautiful sentence and tears will come to my mind. And whenever I'm in public and that happens, I feel like super conscious about it because man, right? You're not supposed to do that. And that friction and that my feeling super conscious about it would not happen if I would happen less if I was a woman and would happen, would not happen if I had completely managed to internalize it. But it still matters how you know, I can't help I still feel the context of society. Yeah, these things matter. I think it will, like it may not matter to you individually. And I think that's that's a level you want to get to, but to just like connect this back to that trajectory of that evolution of this thought, right? There is an inherent masculinity and femininity that has been weaponized by conservatism, two conservatisms, and not the individual's ends. So, you know, use it for your own ends and your own self enrichment and thriving. But then what after that, what do we make of this? So I find that shunning the idea of inherent, let's not even call it masculinity and femininity, like it's called it A and B because there are two modes of the psyche and how energy flows through the world. Everybody has an A and B and it's in their proportion, they don't think to discover, but just the complete rejection of like, for example, that they don't even exist, you know, like hormones don't exist. Women like, for example, don't create stability. Whatever those correlations are with the NB, shining them. I think. doesn't help because you need to be in tune with what this is to you, what level of A and Bs in you. And I think I, you know, slightly half-form thoughts, but when someone is transitioning, for example, they are born with gender, dysmorphia, and they feel like they belong to the other gender. What are they defaulting to? Like those inherent idea of A and B, right? So it does exist. And so I think a lot of the movement that Shunsit is also the one that in many ways believes in it, which I don't think, like, for example, like, I don't even know what J.K. Rowling has said. I don't even know. I just know that everybody hates her because she's a trans-exclusionary radical feminist turf. But if you, if so, it's probably not something I endorse what I'm about to say because I don't, I haven't studied it fully. But if she's saying that there is something that's total womanhood, that is what Transmena then aspiring to in their conversion, then she's not wrong about that. So I have kind of looked deeply into it and have arguments with it. And I'll often do anyone who is missing Rowling, I will often tell them that, you know, show me what she has written, not from what others have said about her, but what she has written, which is transphobic because my reading of it is that she is a perfect liberal in the sense that she believes, like I'm sure, all three of us do, that every individual should be free to live their lives exactly as they want, as long as they are not infringing anyone else's rights. If you want to identify as whatever you identify as rat and it is good etiquette to respect that and no one should at all get in your way. What she objected to was something that became ridiculously dogmatic, you know, within the movement, which said that biological sex is not real. Now we can say that, okay, gender is a continuum and you can identify yourself wherever on that thing, but biological sex is real, right? And even if you disagree that it is real, it is a reasonable argument to have. No where is Rowling saying that in the context of, you know, that you should not, men should not be allowed to transition or we call themselves women or whatever. The context of it was that there had become an increasing number of cases and it's restricted to three contexts that there had become an increasing number of cases where men are saying I identify as a woman at no point doing transitioning or anything, but just saying I identify as a woman and therefore going into women's toilets, women's jails and women's ports. Exactly these three and no others. And in these particular contexts, her point was that feminists fought a battle for decades to build these safe spaces for ourselves. And now all a man has to do to get in is say that I identify as a woman, which is not to say that all trans people will necessarily commit violence or anything ridiculous, like that those strongman accusations were thrown, but the whole point was that preserve those safe spaces at least. You know, my position on it is if you transition then that's fine. But you can't just do it with a beard, can't just say that hey, I identify as whatever. I mean male rapists have male rapists with functioning penises have been housed and women's prisons and have gone on to commit rape in those prisons. This is just crazy and this is a dogma carried too far. This was Rowling's whole kind of point, but unfortunately within that particular ideological movement, this has become a bit like blasphemy is in Pakistan. If you know the blasphemy law there, if you are accused of blasphemy in Pakistan, like if you summer the accused of blasphemy in Pakistan, I am it cannot come and say that summer did not commit blasphemy. I will automatically be assumed to have blasphemed. And therefore if you defend Rowling like Chimamanda Adici did, you are assumed to be transphobic and if you defend Chimamanda Adici, you are also assumed to be transphobic and this is just insane, but sorry, what is the core mechanism of Rowling? What is the argument? There's no argument. There is a slur that she is transphobic and they've identified something called trans exclusive radical feminist, which is only a slur word no one self identifies like that because it would be ridiculous. To me, every reasonable person is a feminist because what you are saying is that everyone should be treated equally and therefore you can't be trans exclusionary. The term itself is incoherent and doesn't make sense and is used as a pejorative. And my point is that you look at what she is saying which is normative and if she was normatively saying that you treat trans people differently, that would be terrible. But that is absolutely not the case. She made a narrow point like a friend of hers, Maya for starter first made the point and then they jumped on Maya and then Rowling defended Maya and then they jumped on her and that's where the whole controversy blew up. And the only point Maya for starter was making is that look everyone should be treated equally but let's not pretend that there's no such thing as biological sex and I'll link to an excellent piece by Colin Wright on this and so on and so forth. But yeah, but this is super clever. Like I love that you just provided this context because I think it makes the point that we're talking about well, right? Like in saying that there is an A and a B and there is it originates around biological sex, you should not then be bucketed with very, very like and then that leads to a discussion about the brokenness of modern discourse. Like why can't you say these things without being called the worst exploits? I'm sure you know this what she's making is a reasonable and one's point which you can disagree with for sure, but it can be made. So I'll come at a question for you guys, both of you, but before I had a quick observation, which is that you know we we mentioned the the conservatives on the right and I think the fundamental mistake they make when they take this essential masculinity and actually endorse it and amplify it. The fundamental mistake they make is what is called the naturalistic fallacy, right? Which is basically to mistake to derive an odd from an is something is this way therefore it ought to be this way. So if you listen to even someone with the fundamental problem with Jordan Peterson in my mind is he does exactly this that he says that this is how society was ordered and this is intrinsic to us. So this is how it should be that men should be like this and women should be like this and etc etc. And to me I cavalered that I think that it's a huge fallacy to jump to that odd from that is that no way man just because something is a particular way doesn't mean that you make it normative. Now I am fascinated now by something that you said earlier, Sangeen, about your process of arriving at your personal morality, the phase that you used and I'd like to ask both of you because it's been a struggle for me also to commit it and to define it and I've kind of managed to do it in some kind of way after all these years but there are always it's always a work in progress. So I want to ask you guys about how you arrived at your personal morality's first. So I'll try to find a brief video to tell it because that's a constant you think you think so also I think first is clearly being recognizing myself as an atheist that like a lot of these ideas about even like atheism is very different than the spirituality people confuse the two. There's no order, there's nothing so when you recognize that that happened very firmly then second from there to recognizing that actually no meaning to anything and making peace with it it's so hard to do that but once you reach these two stages and like now you call myself an existentialist atheist you know there's a combined term and then you like those like the sketchboard is open for you like Kuchib and Aalavya and then Vahsa I've landed on like few principles one is classic principle liberalism right do what you want but my freedom should not affect other people's agency. So lot of my moral philosophy just flows from this principle and I think so much of what in general we think of a good society you can just apply with the idea of respecting other people's existence and the freedom and the problem is because this is not really binary they're like gradations to it because by being yourself it's not always possible that you'll not hurt other people or you you can't have if you are a part of a community unless you're totally isolated your actions in some ways will affect other people's agency especially when you start having more power when you're in a position of leadership you when you can no longer like in my 20s you are like really trying to fight out what the social norms are trying to uncover them trying to get out of them but again you know as you grow up then you start realizing now you're in a position when you set norms like what becomes normal you have in your small environments you have it that is when agency starts coming in so how I behave at that point what I do and I have power I think that's a process I'm currently going through but the corners to remain just freedom and I think that makes life very easy for me does that that's kind of identical to me yeah I would have used some words some other words instead of some words but it's identical basically yeah and of course it's not like clear-cut key now that you have this framework so everything becomes easy but I know like lot of ethical problems that I deal with I can really work my way with this first principles that that's where I am right now and how did you like come to these like you it's years of journaling like like really trying to like one of the things I tell myself is that the hardest thing for me is to fall in front of my own eyes you know like you can keep talking about I will do something what will the world think of this but when it comes to you have your own like I have my own standards of you know let's say what's a good person you know what what is the right way to be you know all of these things about in different contexts but then you try to be that person and you fail that you know you can't live up to your own image of the kind of person you want to be so what do you do then and that's a very good test of values like do you really believe in those values or what these just you know ideas that you had you like thought they're like you know like imagination ke ham maybe this is how I should be but I don't really believe in them sorry took a lot of my 20s working through this conflict about who I am and who I want to be. I'm going on that journey that really told me, "Yam and these values really matter to me and I'm going to walk towards it." So putting myself in positions not intentionally, but situations coming up dealing with them rather than running away from them. There's a phase when you want to run away from them, but upfront being in that uncomfortable position, figuring out, "Is that the way that everyone says, Kee?" You know, like, "Is Khadogh a solution in here? You can't do it." But also, then saying, "No, but my values are telling me that maybe I should behave this way." So then what do you do? So I think it's working in this conflict and I journal a lot. I think that is what, like I summed up in this way, but it came through a lot of this dealing with conflict. And now I actually feel relatively more comfortable, not like, this never solved. Ethical dilemmas will always be there, but there's also great comfort in, actually saying that, "Yes, I mean, there will be situations where I can't be perfectly moral, but that's okay in the sense that as long as I'm not completely infringing on someone that's just freedom, and I try to be the best I can." And not in a passive way, like, not in the giving yourself excuse through whatever, but there is some nuance there. Let me dig in some deeper and sort of, you know, in a sense, mine is pretty much the same. As I think I might have mentioned at some point, I don't know if he spoke about it in a last conversation, but freedom is such a misused word and can mean so many things. Absolutely. That, although that is the center of everything I believe in. You know, the word I used to make it more exclikableness consent. Like, there are two important questions that I have tried to grapple with in one of those is, how should I relate to the rest of the world? And number two, how should the state relate to society? And these seem wildly different questions. And I have eventually arrived at the same answer for myself, which is consent, consent is everything. And look at it as a proxy for freedom. And at some point, I thought I'll write an idea, I'll book on it one of the many books I haven't read yet. And, you know, it's basically an individual freedom respecting the other person's agency and etc, etc. And everything kind of falls neatly into that. But there are a lot of questions that this doesn't answer, or doesn't come close to answering. Right. And which other, which come from the nature of reality? For example, let us say that you are running a company, right. And the company demands your attention. It is doing important things. You want to satisfy your customers. You know, all the profit you make is by making other people better off, which is how things work in a free market. Double, thank you, moments. And you want to give a certain amount of time to that. But equally, your parents are aging and you feel there is a duty and need to look after them. Yeah. Equally, you might have a significant other at home and you feel that, oh my god, I've been too self-absorbed and I've got to be intentional about this relationship and nurture it. And all of those are important things to do. You only have so much time in mental bandwidth and you are unable to do that. So that is one kind of dilemma where I feel that no matter what you do, someone else could look at you and say, right, hey, you're being a bad person. Yes. You know, so how does one deal with sort of edge cases like that? You know, like decision I made a while back is that anyone who is talk, I'm going to get toxic people out of my life and anyone who brings negativity into my life, I'm just going to cut them off. And with one of those people, I did it in a very harsh roadway. I mean, I was an asshole to them basically, but I just wanted to kind of finish it. Now, is that right? Part of me just scabbles at that and says, no, of course that isn't right. Like, what the fuck are you doing? But on the other hand, et cetera, et cetera. So there are places where this really neat framework, in a sense, a quote unquote masculine framework, because, you know, everything is clearly defined. It pretends like it has answers to everything. But you, you know, some things are really muddy and you don't know. Absolutely. And also, like, just to add the caveat, it's not that this is a finished journey. It's a continuously evolving, figuring out things on a day to basis. But I think one, you know, like, Sartre talked about the idea of bad faith. Are you familiar with this concept where you know the term, but not in the way in which you use it? So like, in principle, like he talks about that, we often underestimate the freedom that we have. Again, this is contradictory to everything we talk about free will just a while ago, but he's saying that there is a certain context and he also acknowledges privileges and in whatever context you are. So assuming that the context is defining where you are, you know, what are experiencing you. But within that, you do have agency. And he said that we start denying ourselves the delusion that actually I don't have any control things happen to me. That is what he calls bad faith that if you ignore that and actually start recognizing that yes, you do have freedom. The moment you get there, you also realize how burdensome it is because the moment you make one choice, you are actually ignoring, like choosing something means saying no to many other things. So if I say at this point, I am choosing to live by myself in a city like Bombay while my parents are in Delhi and as much as I would want to be, you know, say a good son being with them as the age old, but I have consciously chosen to live this life. Now I call it in my head, it's a price of admission that I have, like I intentionally chose it. No one forced me into this. I today have the choice to go back to Delhi, actually build a good life. It's not that being in Bombay means something like I don't have a notion of objectively better life. It's just that this is what I've chosen. Intentionality in these situations has really helped me because it tells me what I have chosen and what I've given up. And as long as I'm able to make peace with that, yeah, I mean, I chose this not like things could have been. There's so many other things that I could have checked mark to be a good whatever, like good brother, good son, good friend, all of it. But so be it. I think that is how I derive, like I sleep well at night by having a map and then saying this what I choose, like a practical example of this is until like few months ago, like I wanted to be this person that like I care a lot about my friends and I want to be with them on their important days and moments, like a friend of mine was performing few months ago in Delhi, he has an art performance. So I didn't want to be like, you see, performance, or I will watch it and come back. It was so important for him. It was a small thing, a very community-based event, but I spend like eight hours with him because I wanted to be when he's being dressed up backstage moments, you know, there's a joy to see someone like it's a important moment to be with them. And I could spend like, I could say I'm not going to work today, like post lunch till late night, we then we'll go have dinner. It is for this friend. And I thought that is who I want to be, but then I made different career choices. Like now I have so much work and I've prioritized work a bit more that today all I can do is, you know, occasionally make sure that I'm in touch, I can make phone calls, you know, but not be as involved as I would have liked to be. So does that make me a bad friend? Or, you know what I mean? Like, but I realize, okay, there are phases, there are choices that you're making, but depending on what values to me at that point, am I okay with it? So, you know, when I started by saying that, falling in front of your own eyes, that's what I meant, that there are situations where I, in different aspects of who I am and who I want to be. Like, you feel yourself a failure in different contexts, like, especially I think this aging parents thing is something so many of my friends at this age are going through about conflict between our ambition and responsibility to upkara. I make peace with intentionality and at least so far at this point in my life is working. I don't know how it will evolve. This like, yeah, lots of things that you said that I feel so, falling in front of your own eyes, I feel like those are really those teachable moments of reckoning where you have to come up with a script to explain why you're okay. Not a justifying thing, but like, this is how complex reality is and I have to navigate this set of things. I don't really like, and update yourself with that. My journey to personal morality, I think it just, it starts with like, the sense of right and wrong, right? Like, you see something happening that you think you shouldn't be happening. And so you, I think, instinctually we are born with like some aversion and awareness of what is right and what's wrong. And then giving words to it has like, journaling, questioning everything, lifelong journey that I think everybody should be on or everybody does engage in, but it started with if so-called God is dictating these models of like, you know, don't chappers and all of that. Those those seem very dogmatic and superficial from the start. And then I was always contrasting it with the behavior of the people who espoused those things and those didn't seem like very model behavior. So I think it started with the idea that if you behave well and well means what we can come to that, if you behave well, you're a model person, you behave your dictates your morality. And then this, this behaving well thing because if someone's done harm to you, are you justified in hurting them back? Initially, I would think I was very righteous about my anger because especially as a woman, you're not, it's not given any space and I still think that anger gets a bad rep amongst most emotions because it's actually a sign of what you stand for and what matters to you and what you're willing to fight for. So yeah, there's a way to channel it maybe, but I used to feel like if someone's hurt you and you're angry or justified, but then I think that anger can also like it used to eat me up. And it was in trying to reconcile with all of these very difficult experiences and questions about how when the people were supposed to be close to you and take care of you are the ones who've hurt you the most. How do you even deal with that? That I went on with past now and since then, I think my models, the person morality that I have come to accept is is basically even, you know, the five Buddhist precepts that they tell you they are akin to the universal human rights, like if you read the Wikipedia page on the five pre-sets, they'll say that this is about as close as possible as you can get to universal human rights. And again, it came from like also, if you actually are a religious person, if religion is that framework of morality, personal morality for you, and you look at all religions in some, each of those religions actually advocates violence towards non-believers, almost all of them do, or like Christianity is like salvation is only for believers in Christ, Islam is more explicit about it, Hinduism, within Hinduism you have like violent daughters. So if you actually take all religions and faith value, you realize you're not going to have a very moral life on the face of it. It's only moral and comfortable for those who believe. So Buddhism also seems to like mathematically be non-violent, not by nature of your identity, but by nature of your behavior. So what are the five pre-sets that says that do not harm any living, any being, so that includes yourself, don't harm yourself or others, do not lie, do not steal, do not do sexual misconduct, and try not to consume intoxicants because if you do it will prevent you from acting on the, and that seems to me like very fair, it's a great script and applicable in almost all situations. So I feel like those are like more, and so it also has helped me deal with like these really thorny questions of if I'm a moral actor and I'm a writer criticizing the establishment, then how can I benefit from the establishment? And then sort of realize that that's a man-made contradiction. Like every writer has had another job if they've also like paid the bills or they chose into be poor, those are all choices you navigate. So apart from very, very gross realities of survival, almost everything is like a man-made contradiction and this thing. So stick to the five basic things. Are you killing someone? No, it's probably an okay job. Are you selling arms? Are you selling alcohol in intoxicants? It's slightly gray area, but almost everything else like being a tech pro is not actually fascism, although I think some of our right-to-least circles will be like tech pro's are the new fascists and their genocides, you know, but like it's not literal. It's a critique. And I think having that critique at arms length instead of identifying with the critique as I made, you know, in the groups that were part of it helps. It's given me like some breathing space. The other thing I wanted to say was also like the, you take the good else theorem of incompleteness has been a really useful way to navigate the, you know, insufficiency of any framework or any personal morality to actually answer questions about this thing because there'll always be new situations and new encounters like some are as mentioned. There have been times that I've been like, okay, I'm going to live by these five principles and like I mentioned, I've been a perpetrator of violence in dealing with the violence that has come to me. So what does that lead me with? Am I a moral person? Am I a bad person? And there was this psychologist called Albert Ellis who was the father of REBT or rational emotional behavioral therapy, which is what became CBT later on. But he says that human beings are neither good nor bad. Their actions can be called good or bad depending on whether they cause harm or whether they're true to your values and all of that. So you can define actions as good or bad, but you as a being are so complex over the sum of time and life you lead that you cannot mathematically, you know, even if you even if you want to make a polynomial equation out of all your actions and their morality moral weight and the importance of the thing, you would not have an answer to this question of good or bad. So I think personal morality is also realizing that there's ambiguity layered into sort of everything. What is it to be a bad friend? What is it to be a bad son? What is it to be a bad writer? What is it to be a bad professional? These are ambiguities you have to navigate and there's like objectively, very few things that are objectively good and objectively bad. And I think that killing is one of those. You know, ask both of you a question like after all of this discussion. And this is how generally my diary entries operate. Sometimes feel that at its core if you are just a kind person, you know, a lot of things get sold. And it's kindness really hard. It is hard when you have to extend it to someone who hasn't been kind to because your instinct is to hurt back and seek revenge, but it takes it's hard in some cases. But in general, like as a if you're generally talking about like a guiding principle, what if it's just that? Another just one line summary of I think personal morality and this does come from a religion actually. Just like do one to others as you would unto yourself. If you told someone only this about morality or this was the only thing that you needed to live by it would work because never do like if you don't want to be stolen from you don't want to be treated badly. Unless you're a master chest and then you'll be whipping everybody. You don't want to. In the case it's okay because you enjoy it. Yeah, no, no, no, enjoy being whipped. No, I mean to answer your question kindness yeah, but I feel like yeah, that's fundamentally that is correct. It is a quality we should all aspire to. But I wonder if that's a little glib and whether it applies to every sort of situation that you may be in for complexity. Yeah, it's it's it's really complex like sometimes if like so I was chatting a couple of days back with someone I just met and she was trained as a pianist and she spent some she's 21 now and she trained as a pianist for like for most of her life and then she gave it up and I said, why did you give it up and all of that and she said there's too much baggage because my teacher you know you've seen the film whiplash used to be like in the film whiplash and he used to you know beat me when I wouldn't do it well and etc. etc and I said oh my god, I'm so sorry that's so toxic and she said no, no, no, no, that is so necessary and then I sometimes it is so necessary and the other people at the tables said the same thing sometimes it is so necessary and I just argued that disagreed vehemently and I still do beating is never on period but then the question of kindness is that should you always be kind when someone is making mistakes sometimes being too kind can be a the service to them you know so I think it can get complicated. I think there's a difference between being nice and being kind not the same thing. Niceness is so you're saying the kindness would manifest in doing whatever the question is. See if I see let's say a friend of mine who is okay I'm making hypothetical situation let's say based on their behavior based on their patterns are making like really terrible choices about kind does not being being keen in ease of thinking or go that is being nice because you don't you don't have the courage to you know offend someone they can feel defensive or you want to be people pleases nice people people please kindness does not mean that you can't make someone else discomfortable. There's a very important nuance like I can comment tell you look you know what you're doing is actually very problematic you need to change course you can say harsh things about it or you know like things may go off and then you just understand where they're coming from and it's not kindness actually kindness takes more ownership or not ownership it actually shows more care. Niceness is about actually I don't care them a kuchvi bolder and I can move on. I agree with you but let me bring one element into it I think there's a problem with language that I read the survey recently where a lot of women who were beaten by their husbands actually argued that it was justified that he was doing it for my own good right and a lot of wise beaters can then say or a lot of child beaters you shouldn't even beat your kids yeah a lot of kid beaters could say I'm doing it for his own good so he studies more over. As far as I'm concerned I don't give a shit what the intention is it's just always wrong and I feel that and I don't know how what way there is passes because language can always be corrupted in weird ways and you can rationalize anything yeah but I just feel that that's perhaps a danger I'm thinking allowed I realize I'm also making a fundamental I was going to say something that you later immediately said you would not keep in mind but I think a lot of the goodness or badness of inaction is also about the intent behind it which which today I think commentary on morality has gone so far as to penalize people for the outcome of their actions even if like it's it's several steps removed from the action that you know they would really conceived it like my argument with that is that no one knows the intent not even the person themselves you know so unless you're conscious about it like I'm doing this with the intent of helping myself or others yeah but you know I think it's the same sort of mistake narrow and his colleagues may head in the mid 20th century when they built a really strong powerful state because they assume people like themselves would always be in charge of that state or our age I say people who are like this but the point is if you accept that to be a general principle that the intent matters a lot of the time you can't gauge someone's intent and a lot of the time they don't know it themselves and we'll rationalize the worst behavior to ourselves by saying but the intention is good and therefore I have a problem with that I agree that intent can often be a nuance when you're judging someone's action so it can be a nuance there that but I don't think you should judge on intent alone because then anyone can make any kind of rationalization for any kind of action and but the to the point about action like sort of thinking that just because I have the right intentions let me do it and then finding out that the actions are less than ideal I think that the wanting to then penalize someone for the right or wrong action or like basically incentivize that it's beyond anyone's control right I think at that point we're trying to win we're devising a moral scheme that accounts for that action you're saying that you we as human beings have some control over reality and by by saying this is right and this is wrong eventually the right action will be produced if people feel like just to be clear like the law already draws the law already gives has a space for intent like the difference between manslaughter and murder is intent right the murderer intends to murder the manslaughter it was something that they did wrong in some unended updying and therefore a punishment for manslaughter is less than for murder but there is a punishment yeah so that's my point that you take intent into account as a nuance but it cannot be We fully. ایک سکل پیٹری in its cells because then you can say anything like you know our dear leader did during demonetization ki my near to a cheer I'm actually even inclined to believe ki us ki near the cheer but it was a larger salt and property rights in human history as I keep saying you cannot you know you cannot look at the intention and say ki nahi it was devastating it was a crime on humanity as well you know so many of our economic you know also like on intent right this also that based on patterns of behavior right yeah if you cut this some things like you do something you go and tend bad outcomes happen and you say shallotica intent think that but if that's a pattern ke harbar yeah it's like intent intent intent and there is no change then that like I you can see that in people around you that for whom it's a one off ki intent was right outcome was off but for whom intent is always the justification and there is no change see I think with that economy comes into place a classic thing that you know where I think both Lord Krishna and Spike Lee would have made great poker players where they said I do the right thing don't think about don't focus on the fruits of your action right and that's something I learned as a poker player also that your skill manifests over the long run in the short run is mostly luck and that's true of life also to a lot extent so just focus on what you can control and get the process right so this seems to play to that however if you behave in ways that one would consider bad according to whatever your moral stand for these whether it is consent of freedom or whatever then wrong is wrong right then I don't think you need to you you can't excuse it in terms of intent like for me like one fundamental preset like you mentioned the thumb far from the precept about treat everyone like you would want to be treated like I take can't scatter the imperative seriously that never treat another person as a means to an end but as an end in themselves you know and I think but what about impossible situations like I feel like when people are judging world leaders celebrities holding them to standards of behavior that you know I think they should have done this writing they should have a there sometimes in situations where there is no right answer where anything they whatever they do there's going to be a bad outcome because there there you're in a situation where there's too much conflict whatever you do is a and in that case then the question of like ambiguity comes in reality and it's too ambiguous to always have the morally optimal choice and to actually then exercise it's what then I totally agree I mean that the your frame won't work in every situation right like I think for most questions in the world the correct answer there's only one correct answer and the correct answer is it depends yeah because the world is just so complicated yeah you know like one of the trends that I hate among you young people yeah is is that of always being judgmental and I think social media encourages that yes and I think that every time you're judging something what you are really doing it's an act of ego yeah because you're saying I'm more virtuous slash knowledgeable than you are yeah every act of judgment is an act of ego according to me right so especially in this deeply complex world where you simply cannot judge most things you can judge some things you can say Hitler was evil right but apart from that you know the world is so complicated that I totally agree with you I mean what's so then how do you think it's something that even like I still find it a little hard to reckon with this is the really really broken level of discourse then even though you're saying this and we all agree that it's it's complex that any act of judgment is and shaming especially is a sign of ego more than like a good opinion still there are so many posts that will say that if you think this then don't even like you are so wrong and be and I'm surprised that the work movement had not like the work movement whenever maybe want to get like that period of social justice lasted so long where shame seemed to work on so many people that if if this then this and therefore I think this and therefore I will talk about this like I think there's a profound lack of self-reflection because about 30 seconds of self-reflection would teach all those people that it was purely an act of ego like I often say that those who project the most what you possess the least but a lot of these I'm sure are people that you know are close to your close to or in circles that we belong to so yeah I mean I try to kind of stay away from these kind of people but I try to stay away from most kinds of people I think there is one like not to it's not a point entered equal to anything what said but I think a very important component here is just power right like my like complexity of person X compared to purse complexity of a person whose decision action behavior will affect 100 people 1000 people 1 million people like I'm not sure if the same principles apply like they if you are in a position of power there will be a slightly different you will be held accountable to a slightly higher you know degree of scrutiny then say someone else now you can talk about all sorts of that okay you know all humans fundamentally or so and so but if you have if you have power then you know you're impacting the world in different ways you're shaping it but that comes with saying that you you're actually signing up for owning the criticisms of course any decision you take it be you are a CEO or like a world leader or a leader in your own small community if you're enjoying the fruits of power then you of course like people will criticize you know the question will be actually question and you like you see the like I think that it's part and parcel of the I absolutely agree in the sense that you know like the decision I came on Twitter long time back is I'll just broadcast my links I won't have conversations and I want to sit on people the exceptions I make for sitting on people is politicians because they are affecting the lives of many people so I want to sit on their leader or the head leader of opposition who is equally inept or I want to sit on Trump and Kamla Harris both of whom are just horrendous I feel free to do so though I don't think I've done much of that recently also but they are fair game but what I will simply never do yeah speaker and them to eat her who said something and quote me dad and shit on that person I just think that's so deeply toxic now in the past I have also done that because we are all young and we all get carried away and to come to your like I was sinking allowed after you just start stretching about what do we if you have friends who do behave like that world and at one level the answer is that people grow out of it and you know you can only hope they do that that's one level but the other level where my answer goes in the opposite direction is you're back in the past when I was young my mistakes did not happen on the internet I used to be a work ends of weird things and I must have said all kinds of stupid things when I was 20 but then on the internet and no one's taking screenshots now what happens is that you take some position when you're 21 and 50 people in a particular ideological tribe go retweet you once say wow good that's great you know and then you feel that sense of belonging and you double down on what would otherwise have been a temporary self and then you become that person and I think that that might ossify certain toxic ways of thinking and then it's very hard to break out of that yeah and you know and I don't I think where I might just take that thought is that I think I like the idea of being friends with bad people even people that you know have done questionable horrible things I think it makes sense to judge people based on that treatment of you so what that means is I would be safe friends with just very extreme example a murderer because he's murdered someone whatever the reason is but this is the untenable possession the position that a lot of criminal defense attorneys I mean navigate every day right like even the most indefensible humans are worth something they're worth redemption they're worth attention they're worth consideration they're worth their lives that they should be allowed to live they should be allowed to be treated with respect and I think that just honors the fact that we're all capable of extreme behaviors and we're all we've all got that line of what is that popular saying we've all got the line of good and bad good and evil drawn through us how does that align with you but this is a solution it's in line because the Buddhist philosophy is all about unconditional kindness and compassion what like do know like the five principles I'm just curious because like how does that do what is like a person who's don't do not harm you okay he's harm someone there must have been some horrible for example I think this recent rape case may be a good good example to see where we lie on this but rape case from Kolkata the 31 year old doctor I mean when someone is committing a crime there's an enormous amount of evil and ill will coursing through them that I think that you should like feel sorry for them that they having to go through that and that they being compelled to the it just ties back into that other layer of reality right where the forces of like whatever's causing them to act so the first thing I want to do is you know you invoke that famous code by Saljhan Nishan I want to read the full thing out because he's a beautiful words of wisdom it's Alexander Saljhan Nishan in the Gulag archipelago where he says it was in rotting prisons straw that I felt the first stirrings of good in myself gradually it became clear to me that the line separating good from evil runs not between states not between classes and not between parties it runs through the heart of each and every one of us and through all human hearts this line is not stationary it shifts and moves with the passage of the years even in hearts enveloped in evil it maintains a small bridgehead of good I think it's not at all contradictory to put the person has taught in the heart prisons because they believe that even the worst criminals are deserving of compassion and the way to get them to change behavior is not punishment it is not punitive it's not about shame and you know being like what you did was so all of those we will teach you morality it's about giving them the tools to come out of it themselves by teaching them what melt and like they say that as you progress on the path it becomes impossible for you to feel ill will towards any even people who've heard you and I think that's like super advanced or whatever. I've not even but I think it's a nice position to aspire to that even the worst people deserve compassion, worst acts deserve compassion. Okay, does part of this come from my need to forgive what's what people have done to me. No, does part of this come from the need to show compassion to yourself as I think many of us fail in doing like you mentioned kindness earlier somewhere and I think the one person we are not kind towards ourselves is ourselves a nice struggle with this. So truly like about you said that falling in front of your own eyes like if I have to change and be better I have to first forgive after first accept reality like so for the first things that bitters, feel to swallow as I'm not the shit I'm not the nicest person I can be horrible I've been an asshole to people but we've established you are the shit. I have the asshole. You are the best. We have established. I got like I love that sharu khan song. I'm the best. Ironic kind of ironic. There's not like sharu khan. He's the worst actor in the history of cinema. So it's ironic he should do those like why are you looking at him? Why even if you say I don't know about his acting with such a charismatic personality. He's charismatic. I don't dispute that. No and also now I say it tongue in cheek but it's kind of a category error because I've grown up all my life engrossed in world cinema and so on and so forth. So I'm judging him by the from that lens while all his life is played nothing but himself and he's played his persona but you know Indians cinema is a different category. It's a different thing. It's so he's doing the right thing. It's the star. Yeah he's like I think somewhere he said something that you should empathize with where he said that I am basically a worker in service of my own brand. No, no. Actually he said it nicely. I mean you just made it very corporate. I'm sorry. But he's like again I'm I'm slave to the idea of Shah Rukhan or something like that like he. The person was like the definition of narcissism. No, like he said that there is a image like I'm understanding which I'm recalling from memories that there is an image of Shah Rukhan which has been constructed. So he has itself awareness that there's a Shah Rukhan that the world likes and now I'm playing that character. It's not who I really am. It sounds like healthy narcissism. I mean it is a spectrum we all have. Healthy narcissism is a nice thing. I mean I have a very it's a concept. I have a very complicated relationship with this man because like I've had this feeling to write this essay which I'll write maybe at some point how Shah Rukhan's camera generation. Okay about his of women. What? Of women. Yeah all the ideas that like you know it's a very popular trope among at least 90 skits that Bollywood's poiled our relationship like ideas about love etc. So I'm going to ask a provocative question. Yeah, I did an episode with Shriana. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, so she made the excellent observation. No, Nike fighting with Shriana and Parumita were over this because they think I'm nuts and I think they're nuts on this particular. Another way is we all like each other and so she once said at that you know and it's a great line and I was really taken by it then where she said that what in what in every Indian man wants to be Salman Khan and every Indian woman wants a husband like Shah Rukhan. It's a great line but then I got to thinking that can there be an addenda to that and I'll ask for for your opinions on it. Yeah, which is that every Indian man wants to be like Salman Khan. Every Indian woman wants a husband like Shah Rukhan but she wants Salman Khan in bed. I think you like such a romantic you've come to what I think is the female version of the Madonna or complex that men have. I also have no idea. The Madonna or complex. Yeah, what is that? So basically it comes in different cultures in different ways but the idea is that you can't have sex with the woman you respect. And the female version of it is she's aroused by the bad boy but she knows she should go for the good boy. Exactly. The good boy bad boy. I have I have I was looking for is there a more formal term for it than the good boy bad boy. And the irony is that they're both probably they're both probably good biological roots but as we have agreed the biological should not be normative. There is we should acknowledge and see it with reality but not India. I think the answer is that B whatever Shah Rukhan or Salman Khan just don't be Ranveer Kapoor. Explain. Do you have thoughts on Ranveer Kapoor? I think he has been maligned. Oh, really? I don't have a defense of him but I just feel like at some point see the interview with Nikhil Kama that he did recently where he says things like that. I haven't seen so I don't know. He says things that I don't think are on the face of a problematic but then we as the culture have sort of connected it back to the things that he said before that we know that he has said before like Aliya take off your lipstick and all of that in this interview he said that Aliya has changed more than me you know and she's whenever there's been an issue and like behavior change she's done more than I have which I mean I would think that the I was going to you know I thought people would praise him for saying that because yours a man finally acknowledging the woman's labor but me he was wrong you know like yeah she should not be changing more so if he had said the opposite that I have done so much for her then everybody would call him out for being oh you're just the typical man thinking you've done everything to make this way I mean so I think at some point celebrities can't get it right if you have like you you're you know beyond redemption. Yeah I'm feeling myself that I'm the most judgmental person in the room but I like to judge Ranveer Kapoor based on my own biases I think just again it's not like the most informed opinion these are the con-conviction have and I'm gossiping with friends but I think there's a whole layer of the kind of films and characters he has played and I'm not talking about animal if you just go in the past like you know very like things that you just find problematic in men is what characters he has what I'm just just what you'd expand on this I'm just say I have not watched animal because I did not want to put myself through okay I know misogynies pervasive but I don't want to see it glorified on screen I don't want to participate in the culture but so can you please tell me I'm that's from saying I'm not talking about animal I'm talking about his older films it's just that there is I think pop culture in that way like the like that's why like when we talked about Shahrukh and Salman we were talking about 90s a little to the thousands when they dominated the image of like in mass popular culture like the hero and then your hero is changing like who who are the big stars like then like what is the list that comes to the big stars at least they're spying big stars right you'll have the list of and we'll kapoor and we're saying like I don't think we have as big a star as like Shahrukh Khan and others like like fandom has changed conceptions but these are like the most people men at the top of yeah yeah yeah and so what the kind of characters had to play then that starts flowing down into what are the ideas about masculinity like I'm just talking about yeah like male actors the character so to completely dissociate at least for me the characters that you play and you know who you are like there's an in like you can say I'm just playing a character and like it's not me I'm just doing my job I actually make a distinction there that like you're choosing to play a certain character when you can play so many so there's some ideas that your character is portraying is like that links for me how I perceive an actor and there like if you look at the film Tamasha you do you have it's a very controversial film like and I think the reason I brought up and beat kapoor is because I think thinking about even just that film has been my only evaluation about like my own ideas about you know how to be in certain ways so you have that phase when you first was Tamasha like when it came out I was like what a stupid movie then people around me said so like you don't have taste that's why you didn't get Tamasha so I'm like okay and four years later I watched it again and I was like wow you know this what a film it is you know beyond its time the kind of things that it's talking about about you know questioning society breaking free from the rut and we're about finding finally finding you know his place like rejecting norms and coming out of it and then you watch it again and then you see another lens which is like what was the like what was the pickup are you going to do in that film and let this whole idea that a woman has to come in your life to you know fix you you are such a tortured soul you watched a much more than yes and it's about me but you know like after that like this whole manic pixie dream girl kind of thing which I think so I'm saying that is like one example of a character he has played in that after that you know this and we couple totally lost for me and then I think we should see those patterns again definitely given name to the male version of the manic pixie dream girl I what should that be you know by the way the woman who named this she wrote a piece later saying that I'm so sorry I coined this term because now people like I think like me are now misusing it I'm so old I don't even know what the fuck it is a wonderful concept it's a great concept so I'm going to take my hand at attempting it I don't know how if I'm going to be blibbically accurate about it but basically the manic pixie dream girl is like this ethereal sidekick to the hero the hero is the protagonist she's in the movie she's that you know she's got this combination of contradictions and she's blissfully unaware of it also she's like hot pretty she's like the perfect intellectual companion to him not smarter than him but she gets him she she and you know helps him become who he's truly meant to be and she's quirky and cute she's beautiful but her personality is not being hot you know she's all of these things and she's somehow also like totally unaware of the effect she has you know she's just that you know quirky surface level thing and it's a great concept because I think a lot of women I expected like like that's what I mean by my purposeful unlady like uncuseness and I must acknowledge all of these things because otherwise I'm a pixie dream girl I have attained conventional standards of achievement and whatever I had my eating disorder molded myself into size zero approximation and I'm supposed to be unaware I'm supposed to like go out party with the boys stay thin and I'm supposed to be unaware of like the told this is taking on me and I'm supposed to like float through life like a you know daisy business princess like the cost of what it means to be the woman murdered into the ideal woman thing is not something that I'm supposed to acknowledge. I'm just supposed to engage with it on the surface level. So I think it's a great concept because it shows you like truly how that character has been written, right? Like it's just a sidekick is just about let your awareness be to the level that suits the plot. Like everyone who's listening to this. Yeah. Will one day watch the films that you have written Sanjana and they will start judging your characters. Let's see. She wrote Manic Pixie Dreamgirl and this character comes from Jung. So I hope that day comes. I've already. Of course, you're saying up and sold some un-failed screenplays. So it better come now. Hamid, but I at this point like totally digressing, but I have to say something about the nature of the podcast medium. But also, it's like the like you know when I'm writing like I actually have to like I sit I write I think then you know some Garberid Hots will come on paper and then read it the next and like edit edit edit and you know slightly cleaner prose will come up and I have a like a solid argument to make. Unlike just what I just did, right? Like I said some like I have so many thoughts out on Beirukovar. I can't even I'm not even going to. But you know like it's not coherent and it's not like doesn't feel like a I don't feel confident. I actually made a case against a Beirukapur, which I want to right now which feels like the limitation of the podcast medium. I know it's a total digression, but you're a podcast and you're a writer. Do you don't you feel this difference? I mean, if you're aiming for an explainer, keep five minutes, we're subsombring it. The three things, the five things wrong with Ranbir Kapoor. Yeah, of course, this is not meant for that. Yeah, yeah. But I think then very feminine. What? You know, I've been told it's a minute. The podcast, the podcast video, it's not structured. It's not about a point. There's no goal orientation to me. I've now constantly referred to the scene in the unseen. She. She, her. She, her. Yeah, the podcast. Yeah, but in its own discursive way, the lightning and it's moving us forward. It's just not linear. I think. Interesting. And I also view all the conversations I've had over a period of time and I've thought about this and those of my listros, one my meta thoughts on podcasting episode 49 of everything is everything is called a deep dive into podcasting. So the art of podcasting. So that has everything, but something that I've been thinking about more and more and it's really interesting is that you think you're having one conversation. But actually, all the conversations you've had are almost like different floating parts of the same conversation. Yeah. Right. So we've spoken about men and women and desire and the authentic self and intentionality and so on and so forth. And these are all in different ways, streams running through all my conversations. So someone who listens to the show over a period of time, you know, will sort of have an over, you know, things start to take shape, things push you in different directions. Certainly with me, I feel like my thinking on a lot of stuff has changed. With all the people I speak to. So it's not one person, you know, when I stop talking to you today, that's not the end. You know, it's just going to continue with other people in other places with you at some other time where you will be saying something different. You know, Sartak will be telling us about how much she likes to invite Kapoor. And you will be telling us about no, no, murderers are bad. They're not bad. I think it's again, I think I'm looking for interesting things. And I think it's conflict is interesting. And I feel like I would like to be a criminal defense attorney because it would just put me in an impossible situation where. I think you're at heart a storyteller. Yeah. See, there are two kinds of storytellers I've realized. And I realized as well riffing during some intro I did for one of my things and the thought came to me and I realized, "Keehai, and this is something I should be conscious of." Now, what is storytelling? Storytelling is the world is deeply complex. You are telling every story is making it simple. So you can make sense of it. We make sense of a complex world by telling simple stories. Like imagine you're into historic times. There's a big orange ball in the sky. It comes and it goes every day. You gotta tell a story about it. And that's a beginning of religion, right? So therefore, I think there can be two kinds of storytellers. One kind of storyteller who is simplistic, who is boiling everything down to a trope and missing the complexity. And another kind of storyteller who wants a complexity, who wants to dive into it and wait into it. And Sanjana, you're clearly one of them, which is why I am just so fucking confident your screenplays will be good. But I'm not so confident at the level we made because it's too complex. Possibly because I think that there is, like at least within the mainstream, there is a desire for stuff that is dumbed down and easily consumable and whatever. And no doubt, you're skilled enough to be able to do that with good work. But it's not playing the game. Actually, there is forgetting the name, but there's a 19th century Russian writer, totally skipping his name. But he was making 19 or 20th century. But he was making a case like why his books are not that popular. As it told so your dose of ski. And his thesis was that look what these guys do is that they have a clear worldview. And like they might write a thousand page like in our Karina, or you know, crime and punishment. But there is a underlying philosophy about the way the world is, which is coming out to literature. Like they will tackle with complexities. But in the end, you know where the sympathies of the writer lies. He says, I don't like to do that. I don't want to tell my readers about what is the right way to do things. I keep it very open. So he said in that time, 19th century 20th, I think it's 19th century Russia. People were looking for answers when they were consuming literature. And like they wanted writers to tell them how they should be. And if you just leave that open that you know, figure out for yourself, I'm going to give you both sides. Those kind of stories didn't work. So that was his thesis. And there's a name to this kind of literary classification, which again, I'm forgetting. But I think that gave a very good reference frame. Even if you look at like a lot of modern cinema, like have you seen the movie and auto me for fall? I know. I wrote a newsletter post from it. Yes, I think. And basically just about complexity. That you don't know who's right. You don't know who's wrong. You don't know what the fuck is going on. And that's the real world. Everything is right and everything is wrong. Both is happening. So do you have the ability to deal with a story like that? Like what it does to you? Do you like for me when I see? And there's so much good cinema that gets into the heart of these complex situations. Like if again, this that scene, you know, the scene that a fight scene, which is the iconic scene of the movie. If you read about that scene, there's a, you don't know the history of the why she wrote it. Have you seen Marit's story? Yeah. So it's Carla Johnson. And was that a driver? So she said, like in that Marit story, there's another fight scene, where the man is totally like, you know, like bursting out and it's like really intense. Like it will hit you. And then she said when I was looking at that movie, I was thinking, how would a woman respond to that situation? That was in her head. And then she wrote this scene. So it's flowing from, you know, that scene. Again, if you look at Marit's story, like, you know, again, going back to Bergman, when he did scenes from a marriage, scenes from a marriage has, because it tackles with this complexity head on. It has inspired a series of films, including Woody Allen's husband and wife. There's another movie I'm forgetting. And Marit's story and an automobile fall. So you see, there is history to these films, where over and over one artist is inspired by other, two surface complexity, you know, and let me, let me, let me, yeah. But you see what I'm trying to say. Absolutely. You were saying something. Yeah, let me tell you about a Russian short story. I read when I was 10 when I was 10. I had space that I've discovered. Dostoyovsky absolutely loved him. Red-ended everything by all the Russians except all Stoyhue I never liked. So just simply, you know, separate matter. Not for this reason. I wasn't evolved enough at the age of 10 to come up with this kind of thing. Not so at the age of 10. You were actually denocerying at 10. But I remember one short story so vividly. And I remember it just like shook me to my core. And it was by a guy called Leonid Andreyev. And it's called the Abyss. And I think I remember, I thought of it during a podcast two, three years ago, and then I looked it up and I realized I was remembering it kind of slightly wrong because 30 years had passed or 40 years had passed, 40 years had passed. So anyway, so that story is great. And I think Sanjana, it's just your kind of story in the sense that it's just so complicated, which is basically this guy goes out walking on a snowy day through some snowy forest with his girlfriend. And then a bunch of ruffians come and they beat him up and he runs away and then they rape the girl. Right. And then after a while, he manages to go back there and the girl is now dead. And he has sex with the body. And that's a story. Wonderful premise. And I don't think this is something Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky would have written. Right. This is deep shit. And it stayed with me. I remember it just really hit me then. And then I read the story again recently and I think it was slightly different from how I remember. But I think this is where it is that there's no easy way to even think about it. Yeah. I think it's very rich premise. So you choose premises that will naturally if you double click on it, take you into very different strands. But just like I want to say a few things based on some of the things you said, which is the first screenplay that I wrote. I had a friend who was working. He'd done marketing for the sky sping. And he was basically a drug-cogulf him. So he the first thing which is based on a portion of my life where I was subject to moral policing at a Indian educational institution. So it was based off of that one incident unfolding over time. Like how does that affect these two people's lives? And he was like, this is very indie. There is not enough plot-wise happening every sort of minute and a half if you look at like a film that gets shown on screen. You have like a base that goes with it. That's the one feedback I give you. If you want to write something that these people will pick up. And so the next story that came to me, I think it's sort of married these complexities in like a black mirrorish kind of way, which is basically inspired by my struggle to be myself online. Because who I am on Twitter, a totally different side of me comes out. A totally different side of me comes out on Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm a totally different person. I feel like I had like skits of radio or multiple person ideas or in a way like a lot of people like today existence, if online existence is fragmented and then you have your own life at home that is different from all of these things. So how are you struggling like these multiple personalities? And so the film is actually about like people contorting themselves to become something marketable, which is what I was trying to do then. And everyone in the script going about it their own way, like there's this girl who wants to become a writer but she's not able to get into this thing. So she starts like playing the guitar. There's a guy whose a guitar is but he's not happy with his level of success. So he becomes friends with the rapper and then they start wrapping together. And it's like it's about the fluid relationship that you're allowed to and able to have with art and your career today, which I think some artists in a more traditional more might look at, you know, what people have to do today to sell a book for example that you have to create reels, you have to have like a social media presence and people have two responses to it generally one is that this is great. We live in a world where anyone can make a career out of art in a way that was never possible before and the others are like, this is gimmicky, this is cheap, this is is terrible because I may have a lot of sense to make in the format that I'm good at but just just get that hurt, I now have to like do a 10,000 things that drain my ability to produce that right. And I think both are valid and I find myself sometimes oscillating between the two like I find myself very drawn to I think short form as the medium is great because like you said, if it's a complex world and I'm named after an ad so I'm very partial to like how powerful they can be like you get a point across in you touch people's hearts in 30 seconds that's probably a bigger feat of storytelling than a feature length movie right. So I have a appreciation for like the various different I think reels as a culture like it's created a whole dimension of relationships and friendships where I'm getting to know more about someone based on the kind of reels they like and like I thought of you I send this to you and something deep and we were unfolds from there and we have like this brief exchange and like I have friends that I'm in touch with in almost exclusively this way so I think it's fascinating. Why do I have this feeling that Amit cannot relate to this at all or can I relate to what to this whole real culture and no I relate to all of this dude I want to prefer with a TikTok superstar remember that one of my courses. I did a course in TikTok in TikTok first release in India because I just thought it is so beautiful it's empowering so many people by allowing the certain kind of self expression especially among marginalized communities and all that it was mind blowing I love it but what you do not know about me is that I have wanted to be a TikTok superstar for a long time. Is this a TikTok creator? Yes. So what are you trying? I created a BTS video recently which we put up on Twitter. Was it during shooting everything is everything where I play Githangeli. Githangeli if you know Tagore as a novel call Githangeli. Yeah. So I've written it to be a girl called Githangeli on whom Tagore has written a book and she's upset about it and I have a little bit of Bengali accent and then after I recorded Robidas response to it in Bengali which then the people I was with they laughed like mad but they said don't release it will get cancelled so I don't know because I really don't know this nothing. Did you really love it Bengali? Is it one defect works I think but it's very muddy and notty? Was it a vertical video? Both vertical videos bro. I think you keep saying on the podcast that you can take multitudes. Since you're a marketing person, Sanjana I want your opinion on this also. What you correctly said is that there is an impression that if you've created one product you have to sell it like this and I find out a lot of it in Instagram video, but now YouTube, YouTube, Shorts, but now a lot of it can become ticking boxes that doesn't really achieve anything. Now from the purest creator point of view the advice I give people is don't think of anything as marketing. If you've written a book and you want to do reels, do reels but let your creativity go fully into your reels as if that is a separate product by itself and ditto for your shorts and ditto for everything that you do. Don't be cynical about anything that you're marketing. Everything will turn out to be marketing for everything else you do by default. So what is your sense of that in terms of marketing? I agree with this. I want to be able to hold this view and believe that it's not gimmicky if you're pouring your heart into it and it is possible. I have had similar urges. I don't know if it's modeling myself as Gita Angelie and having reactions recorded, but I'm the best Gita Angelie. We need to see this video. Yes, but yeah, I've pretended to be Arunambu Swami. I think it's hilarious to caricaturize certain characters and I love sketch comedy. I think it's really funny. Have you tried Sanjana? Yeah, I have. See them show in Bangalore. Right? I've done it a few times. It's on my Instagram. I'm gonna find it and link it. I've done, yeah, it's like huge. Like I said, been on stage. I love different kinds of art and performance. I just don't know if I mean want to make all of them a career, but like you should try and explore as many avenues as appeal to you and I seem strategically useful to your careerized art as well. I think where I kind of get the other view is that there may be a lot of writers who have great points to make who should not see that they have to do this to be heard. And then how can you recognize and find those voices even if they're not making readers and if they're not sort of they don't have like 60,000 followers or whatever it takes to sell a book, but they've got to be perspectives that get overlooked in every generation. They're only later you recognize and who are they now? Like Bach. So I have a question. I have a controversial view which I don't know Sartok if you've heard it before. Sartok. Sartok, yeah. Yeah, Rocky, Rocky, Rocky, Rocky. Like which personality should I have in the podcast? That's actually a good one. Rocky. I think we need to start. We need a flavor of Sartok. See, I need that artist. We need to offend him. No, we need to offend him. So you can't be Sartok just like that. I need to. I mean, Sarmad character right now. You're in Sarmad character right now. That's a character. I know I like the guy who knows. I'm like Rocky. So you can't afford an iPhone. I have an iPhone. I don't have an iPhone. Neither do I. It's okay. I have an iPhone. So Sartok. I'm Sarmad. Are we there yet? Whatever. Whatever. You were just going to propagate a question. Yes, my provocative question is this that people will often say, "Hey, yeah, that was the time. That was the time. That was the time. That was the time. That was the time. That was the time." I think that's bullshit. I think that now from a simple mathematical, allegedly male point of view. If you're crunching the numbers, the sample size of people creating art today is orders of magnitude greater than in the past partly because there are more people partly because much larger percentage of that people has a means of production. Yeah. So my contention would be that today we have musicians more talented than Bhagwathoban and the Beatles. We have et cetera, et cetera, across all the arts. But where modern life has changed and this is largely a good thing is that there is no mainstream anymore. Everybody is not listening to the same thing or reading the same thing. Everything is fragmented. Up in a genre, you are listening to something. I know for the other hardcore fans of Peter Katkampany who are just like me, but the rest of the world has simply not heard of them. And I think that is okay. That people get content that's so tailored to them. But one of the dangers of this is that there might be Shakespeare's who are completely lost and they're actually direct counterpoints to what you said is that yeah, there's a flourishing of niches like never before. But we still have monocultures, Taylor Swift, Charlie XX, every now and then because of the algorithm machine prioritizing what is like the pop sound, whether it's in writing or music. You feel they're the last of a kind or they'll always be around. I think it's the much like the industries that they're part of depend on finding the latest pop star. So if Taylor Swift may be a little immune to this, but every 10 years they find someone new and make them the spotlight. But my feeling is that industry itself is kind of crumbling like the mainstream is crumbling in different domains in different ways. You know, we've seen that in the media, we've seen that everywhere. Like, okay, so he has a thought that tell me what you guys think that my sense is that there are many institutions today and many forms of interacting that are artifacts of the past. The came up for particular reasons that no longer apply for example, if I am to be a writer in the 1990s, I'm going to write a piece and I'm going to let's say I write a 800 word piece, I send it to T.O.I.T.O.I. publishes it. Now, what happens there is that the means of production is not with me. I have to go through a gatekeeper that gatekeeper will aggregate eyeballs and they'll sell it to advertisers and I get a tiny chunk of the money. And the whole system is deeply inefficient. What we have today is a means of production. Now with me, I don't have to go through gatekeepers and therefore restrictions of length and subject don't apply. And most importantly, I don't need the advertiser. I can directly monetize my audience. Now in my specific individual case, I'm lucky enough to be able to do this. I know everybody is in there yet. But in the West, it is happening a lot. And I think what will happen in the long run is that creators of all kinds will directly be able to capture some of the value that their readers have for them and they don't need to be many readers. Like if someone is listening to an eight hour episode of mine, they are actually paying for it because time is money. They're paying a lot for it. And most of them would be glad for me to capture some of that value. Except in the past, it was a very inefficient way of doing it called advertising. And I think in the future, you won't need that way. In which case, a larger meta question comes up, is that what do brands do? Now I know, you know, influence of marketing, mimetic desire, that's a whole thing that's going on these days. But as a marketer and as a creator, what are your thoughts on it, Sanjana and even Sartak, Sambat, Rocky, after that. One is, I think the dream is realizable. And many people have realized it. But the sheer amount, you do have to conform if not to the middlemen that you've used to exist before and, you know, being part of the social identity that would give you their access to conform instead to the new overlords, the algorithms. So you have to conform to so the new metal man is basically the platform. and you do have to pander to what they think is good writing or good content. And so that's what I mean by the Shakespeare's of today. Not necessarily Shakespeare's because I don't know, Shakespeare was that great honestly. He was awesome. But whatever they're saying that may not fit this mold, that need not fit this mold. Are we losing some great art? Perhaps we're always no systems perfect. But yeah, it's enabled a lot of people to have a voice. It's educated. I think cast consciousness is a reason in our generation because for the first time antica's artist got a voice that was unmediated by uppercast Indians. So as a creator, yeah, nothing but great. And as a brand, I think like this, that point we were talking about earlier, which is that kind of slight role reversal maybe again, where brands and the mainstream is always forming culture that then people were getting shaped by. But now you have art that's spreading more faster. And brands are always trying to be cool and they're not seen as cool anymore because directly selling to people. Nobody wants like, we're tired of being sold to. So as long as you, your stories are cool and they actually genuinely grab my attention, I may actually give you some of that currency. And I think there's some direction that AI might work. It truly does liberate us from having to work and we're all just creating full time and we have basic income taken care of. That is a very capitalistic route to some kind of YouTube here. I think there is a strong word of view on this because I mean, actually we had the same conversation. In our conversation last, which I didn't listen to again before, which I should have. But I'm saying that my, it just came to me that how much I thought say, what in the last two years? Oh, lovely. Like I'm now on the opposite side. When you know this whole idea that there could be an individual creator, they can do whatever they want. There is a gatekeeper of it. By default, this setup, like criticism of this setup is to say that gatekeeping is bad. That it is not allowing individual artists to flourish because someone is selling them, what is the right way to be? I think that's where the criticism comes from that. Now you can flourish more voices will be heard. And if you take it to extreme, it's like just go whatever anyone wants to create, they can do it in their individual capacity. The current technological and economic structures allow you to do that. And I believed in it. But now what all of this loses is that at least I believe in it. A lot of good writing and a lot of good art is not an individual creation. It is happening. It happens to people coming together and then creating good things together. And that's where you need organizations and systems to enable that kind of work. So for example, the thing that I know the best in like my profession is journalism and magazine writing. To imagine that I like no one is born a writer like you don't just one day decide to keep from today onwards, I can start doing magazine writing. There is a you learn it via mentorship, you learn it by doing it with people. There needs to be an editor who cares for you, cares for your story and helps you tell a better story than potentially you can do it by yourself. And I based on my experience, I know that great journalism is created in this setup compared to someone like they could be an isolated person killing it on subtract. But if you want to do it sustainably on the long run, you need institutions to support this kind of work. And also given the economic environment that we live in, few creators can actually you know like you know, whatever sustain but where will the new voices get a platform? And how does that happen? So I am now coming to an idea that there needs to be a new way to think about institutions about what these platforms are, what they do. Whereas not an extractive relationship. Yeah. Where like the institution is everything in the writer is not anything. But the idea of institution and brands have to change, which is more you know like which gives that support to individual artists so that it doesn't feel like I am submitting myself to anyone or I can't be the kind of writing do I do the difference and I was having this discussion with a good friend. She the writer that when you're writing a book, the thing that matters the most is the writer because it's your book. When it comes to say a magazine what the writer matters but also it's what the ethos of the magazine is and you know what the brand stands for. And one thing that we have seen and I like tell me if you disagree. But there is a like individual person that you can relate to compared to a brand that you know values that it espouses for. The longevity of you know humans going up and down and failing compared to a brand seeking to its values. It's very different because brand is an institution. There are checks and balances. The founder of the brand who's a person can fall and you know there could be systems in place that kicks the founder out but retains the values of the brand. So that if you think about the phenomena that you describe not saying that it's not helpful but I think there is a we need to recognize the importance of people coming together doing things in an institution which not only then like things scale and you know reaches to wider people new people get introduced. I think that should be part of the conversation. I'm not arguing against institutions per se. I'm arguing against the old kind of extractive institution. Yeah. Which is the term that you use. You know three things. Number one that all voluntary ways of associating people associating with each other is fantastic and that is really what is happening here. Number two, publications like the plank which you've started or 52 would not exist in the old paradigm. Right. In the old paradigm, Suprae and I would have been told that we have no space for long form journalism. Yeah. And that's what you would have been told as well. But these are individuals who with people manage to form new kinds of institutions, driven as a labor of love driven by certain principles and the desire to say that hey, we'll make this work. We believe in it. Fuck you when you're outdated conventions. I did the same thing. Right. What am I? I'm like I released an episode this year as 9 or 53 minutes. It's the most popular episode of the year. People look, it's completely viral every day. I get mails about it. Right. You think anyone would have allowed me to do more than half an hour. You know, when audible came to India, they started something called audible sono which was an app. And I had just broken up with my previous partners for the scene and the unseen then. So I thought let me go to sono and see if they want to buy the scene and the unseen like hang out. They didn't. I made the same offer to Spotify. They're in either. So anyway, and of course the show wasn't as big as it is now, but it was fairly big then. So anyway, so I went to them and they'd hired some woman from some film company from some Z something and she said, "Key, look, half a hour says, "No wait, there are people who do long episodes. Have you heard of Joe Rogan?" And she said, "No." Right. At which point the conversation was over. And what I was pitching was to our episodes because that's how along my show was in. So I think the very fact that the three of us can sit here together like this is a testament to the fact that we are in an age where we don't need gatekeepers and etc. So that's I think you know, that you're doing point. That's somewhat I think you said something. I really hope to see come alive someday, but the that will the question is a middleman existed. They're not as extractive or in the same inaccessible shape as before, but they do exist. And I'm like I'm able to pander to the algorithm to a decent degree. I'm not I don't I don't find the process of worsen. I find myself is fluid and mutatable enough, but I think conceptually there needs to be a way to create art in the in the oldest paradigm of how it existed, which is that the artist cares about nothing, but the art their survival is not a question. They are patrons of the court. And the king is sort of secure enough in himself to sort of employ the court gesture and all these artists and sort of fund them and stuff. So where is that today? The artist is fending for survival and is creating art. So when when you talk of like institutional support that create these platforms, I don't know like, you know, not specifically the plank or the 52, but I saw a tweet that's a Y and VC sort of funding art instead they're feeling threatened by artists and creating their own, you know, sort of channels to the public because they don't want to they think journalists are attacking their status and sort of they don't have the they're in the business of creating false narratives. So we need to have a dialect channel to the public and said like why don't you patronize the arts, right? So what is where is that culture of, you know, institutions funding art apart from very small pockets in India? Is that what you meant when you were talking about? No, see there is again, one distinction here is that like I have some conversation with people that how in general India, we don't have a great philanthropy culture and whenever whatever philanthropy exists given where we as a country you want to invest in health education, you know, they're like other deeper problems to be solved problems to be solved rather than thinking that we'll direct our money to creation of art which may or may not do anything to the world and you know this whole idea on impact which art may not directly have at least you can't measure it or see it. So this sense of doing something for the public good that something should exist just because you know it should exist that compared to other like cultures even like if you compare to the United States, you don't see that culture happening in India. Yeah. And it comes from that sense about okay what is if I have so much money where where it should go how should I locate it can I create more wealth from it. So there is that one layer of just what a lot of people who have dabbled with philanthropy and trying to raise money to do things have experience but on the other hand I also feel that it again I don't know the facts here but feels that there's some slightly romanticization of the past here because when you read about artists and writers in the past you know I've always like this romantic idea of that there is a writer who just wakes up in the morning writes their books and then goes to sleep and has coffee and whatever. That seems like a small minority because the more you read you like yeah people are waiting tables at the night and waking up writing you know just trying to get through but somehow now we have this idea that no I am a writer so all I should do is write but why not I you know past time romanticizing is before 1920s I'm talking about like the medieval like I think you're romanticizing it severely because the truth was that 99% of people then were just dirt poor yeah and you even those who were patronized by the codes would be a small handful of people. And they would have to please and cater to the taste of whoever was there in the code. So we can maybe romanticize certain figures. Yes. But there's a tremendous selection effect in play there happening I think. Yeah. And like I think this is by far the greatest era for artists that has ever been by far. The other point I would make is one about philanthropy is that and I've been thinking deeply about it. And there's a fundamental way in which philanthropist worldwide, but especially in India get something wrong and leave art out of it for us. Look at even the philanthropic work that they do in the sectors you mentioned which are education and health, right, which is that philanthropist, especially naive philanthropist like every philanthropist in India, they have a need for things that are measurable and attributable. 100% So they want to spend their, it's not that they want an ROI is philanthropy, but they want their impact to be measurable. So they can tell it to themselves. If not to others that hey, we did this. You know, we fed so many villages or we sent so many kids to school. So it has to be measurable and then it has to be attributable to them, which means that it has to be a short term thing necessarily because in the long term, nothing is attributable in this deeply complex world. And the things that really make a difference to human progress are things that in the short term are neither measurable nor attributable. And this is a major problem, not just with philanthropy, but also within the mainstream economics profession within the things that the world bank chooses to do because they're all focusing on the RCT curve. Let us prove that malaria, that mosquito nets help prevent malaria, which was literally an RCT because that is measurable and then it is attributable because you'll distribute malaria nets as if you made some great discovery. But it actually does nothing to move the needle. Yes. You know, I've had an episode with landpricet on this and seen on the unsee. Yes. I've done an episode of everything is everything on development. Yeah. A fundamental problem with people with money, whether they are institutions of philanthropist need to think about that you need to take the broader view and get the ego out of it. Yes. That it doesn't matter if no one says that he has a good job. Do I really care about the world? Then this is where else went my money. And there, I think the argument that the flourishing of art is a huge positive externality to use a term they would understand is I think indisputable. That is a case that can be made so well. Yeah. But there is no liberal democracy in the world which doesn't have free speech on a flourishing art movement. You need those things. Absolutely. But if you are going to say, "Oh, I want to boast about what I did, what good I did with my money, I want to measure it." You can't measure it. You can't measure the impact of a beautiful song. You simply can't. And also, this is something I've observed in a lot of very problem being in 30s. Like when you say younger people, I'm also, you know, you feel young. But like even younger people that you know this whole thing about that, you know, I want my work to have an impact. You know, if there's no impact, then what I'm doing. So the moment you say that it's impact, like what is the idea of impact in your head? Now it's not just actually the philanthropist or people with money. It's a cultural thing, right? Like if you want to say that my work has impact, so it should be visible. Okay. Impact who I ask her. So then the way you choose your jobs and like, like I see that in journalism, right? Like what kind of stories are worth telling or not worth telling? What kind of impact has it been discussed in the parliament? You know, like say did something happen or did it not happen? But does that like really change? Like is that the only metric with which we are going to tell with stories worth telling or not? If you do, if that is a benchmark and it up, I think it applies across professions. Then there is a fundamental selection bias in that you have added right at the beginning about what gets created, what does not get created. If at all you're thought about the purpose of your work, right? If you know this, you see what I'm trying to say that and that is where you see the delinking between purpose and impact. Like in effectively impact should come from purpose. But when you forget that there is a thing called purpose, which is not measurable, it is about values and start evaluating everything from the sense of what is visible, what is metric. Actually you're doing a disservice not only to the quote unquote cause, but also to yourself and do that for five years. And I've seen so many people ending up dissolution from the world of nonprofits and philanthropic organizations or social doing social good inside management consultancies. This is exactly the fact because if you are going back to earlier, efficient self aware, you will see it for what it is. And then it will hit you. I think this is two parts to this one is that, yeah, I think anyone who is pulled towards creating art in the way that if I don't do it, I will not, I will fall sick. I will not survive you are doing it because you don't care about the impact. You do it because you have to. It's the physical necessity almost. I need. And so that that base thing is always there, but I went from initially thinking that I don't give a shit what anyone says about my writing. I have this internal definition and standard of excellence. And so long as I'm achieving that, it's great. But then I started to see the value of quote unquote impact. And let's just call the there is a version of it like external recognition because it started to give me more opportunities more. A way to do the kind of things I love the more. The way to do the way I wanted to do it, like just writing a piece with a certain vision instead of because I'm a name that nobody knows. Now I have to, you know, to the party line, say tell the story the way you wanted to say in sort of sort of if I have a point, I'm taking a little more seriously. So I think there was this French writer called honor. The buzzer. Who died of coffee? What? No, no. How what is that of coffee? He's got a great essay where he talks about drinking coffee. So he used to write in four day of frenzies and he would use coffee for that. And at one point his addiction grew so severe that he couldn't just drink coffee, he would just chew coffee beans. Oh my God. And then eventually that gave him liver disease and he died. So he died of coffee like perhaps even I will also but can you. That is the most unglumorous image of the tortured artist. But he has a quote that I'm paraphrasing which is basically the artist biggest challenges to get recognition or to get this thing. This once you do you will be able to do better art. So I've gone from disparaging it to sort of realizing strategically, creatively it's a necessary thing to navigate like any other professional institution. There's amount of networking and there's amount of gatekeeping doesn't exist to the degree that it is. And then you have to make the effort to put it in front of the right eyes, get your art. And if you really believe in your art which I've come to realize that maybe my disparagement was also self abandonment in some ways that you know like I if you want the best for your art, you will create the conditions in which it can thrive. That is also the artist's responsibility. So I actually like the point that you guys made that actually maybe he was never that great for anyone except a few artists. Maybe most of them obviously did struggle. John Denver went around peddling his music. I don't mean posthumously that we know the great names to be great names, but they all probably read quite unglomerious lives that we as consumers have now glamorized. Just to add a no on summit that when I say impact see if I am creating something and I believe in it, of course I wanted to be read by more number of people like if I and I think that's what you're referring to, right? Like if it's so long in the trade off exists like just to be read by more number of people, I don't think I'm going to say something I just don't identify with. That's what I'm saying. You prioritize authenticity but then you really go all out on. Yeah, so I think that's the no one's here. It's sequential. First, you create what you think needs to be created based on your vision, your values, you don't compromise on it. Then you say, okay, what is the world in which I'm living in? I'm living in this world where you know, if you have to reach people, if you have to discover people, there are different ways you do it. Like again, if you forget like a very isolated writer kind of thinking and just think of it as a brand and you're trying to place your product should be discovered. You do 100 things like you know, you do small things at a small store so that your thing gets visible. But on the other hand, you might do a billboard ad. So there are all sorts of things you're doing because this is the world you live in. This is how people discover you. So there's a writer also. Once you are clear about your values and what you're doing, then you find, okay, if I'm on Twitter, what needs to be done so that my work gets to more people. If I'm on LinkedIn, what I'm doing, what am I doing on Instagram, what am I doing on my newsletter, what I'm doing other places. So strategically, it's not about saying I don't care about reach. But saying as long as like, you know, the right balance is create what you want. And then if there are some strategic input, you can put in to get more reach than do it. Because then, you know, the someone can be happy with jungle. Me more nacha. Kiss me. So if you're that person great, but if you'll be approached for more writing assignments. I want to add to that. I'm agreeing with both of you, but just like one sort of conversation I often have with my writing students is what should they write where I tell them that you should keep, you should always have the reader in your mind when you're writing because writing is not just transferring the thoughts into your head onto your laptop. You want it to be read. But that should never apply to the content itself. Yes. Your content should be what it is. You should never compromise. Never dumb it down because I think what happens is and you made this point that you lose your authentic self. Yes. As a lowest common denominator, you will completely lose your soul. Never second guess what people want to read. Just write what you write. Now, you know, regarding, you know, the point that you made that it's got to get published and I got to get my name out there. Otherwise, what's the point? Even if I do good work, no one will read it. You know, just for a lot of people, it's how do you get that process started where you get known and you can do the kind of writing that you do and the need to get your name known is so that you get the financial independence and you can write what you want. But in many cases, in my case and in your case, we don't write for money. We don't need to be right because we want to write. You know, you're a marketing person. I do what I do. I've done many labors of love for no money at all but the point is that luckily we are fortunate enough to be key or something and in that case I would say it is actually a mistake to go down those paths where you are getting published for two reasons like what I again I would often tell my writing students is that let's go back to the 90s for a moment and I'll make a separate point you write a piece it comes out in Indian Express two months later you write another piece it comes out in times of India somebody reads you in both places and they think how you know Sanjana writes well I should follow her but they really have no way to do so and it's very dispersed plus what is happening is because of the gatekeepers and the formats and the fashions of the moment you are doing less writing than you otherwise would and along a very much narrower band in terms of form and content so what I recommend for them is that if you're not trying to make a living out of it start a newsletter for example where you write whatever the hell you want and you might have 10 readers to begin with because what happens there is that unlike the previous example where somebody reads your piece and they say how interesting person and then they lose track of you here the moment somebody likes a piece by you they put the email ID and for the rest of your life they are part of the Sanjana community and then everything that you do whether it is writing whether it is screenplays whether in Shalala and future it is crowdfunding to make a film these people who are already fans of you are there so that is one advantage and the second advantage is we get to excellence by constant iteration by writing a lot and by trying new things and your own publishing site whether it is a blog or a newsletter allows you to do that writing for others simply doesn't without even realizing it you can strain yourself so I think it's great great conversation right but few thoughts when like I said when I started it was this internal the stories that came to me there was like a mold that they had and I was looking out in the world for places that would be the best home for it and I think I would love to get both your thoughts on this but it's because I had this notion an internalized notion of the writer writer I just didn't want to be any because anyone can start a sub stack anyone can write for 10 weeks in a row anyone can sort of mind their mundane lives for some profound something on you know this or that I was like what is the gold standard of excellence if I was to think about it for myself as a writer what are those part of the ideas that come to me then and that's why I kind of like for example I haven't sort of I don't think I've been published in times of India I don't know I haven't been published in the Hindu I haven't been published in too many mainstream places that might get me the most readership or at least explain to my mom that I'm a ledger writer but I sought places where I saw like a match in what I think is literary excellence or like a really good writing and I think that that process is teachable to right like so if you define what is the best writing to you and if you are able to find a way to actualize that in whatever way which could be a sub stack it could be your publication some that thing that has like 5,000 followers that nobody else knows about if it's true to you if it's true to your unique ideas great that's what I think is one of the first things to do and like building an audience instead of those are strategic things that I started thinking about after doing it for a while I was like oh Twitter matters Instagram matters and all of that but I was not led by that and I would say that actually to your point it's also perhaps useful to be led by that I'm a little I think the writers that I look at now and the reason I call myself Sasha at times actually is because there's a writer called Sasha Chaapin on Twitter who has a newsletter called Sasha's newsletter and I love his essays he writes a lot about meditation writes a lot about like everyday mundane art of living daily life kind of things and I would like to maybe go in that direction next but it's only after I've done some of the things that spoke to me first so I think everybody also has like their own individual especially if you are an artist and you're not doing this because oh it's cool to be a writer everybody's a writer today I also want to fall in if you're not doing it for those reasons if you are following the ideas that come to you it may look like a path that has never existed before but you will feel called to pursue it I just have to say one small thing you just casually said that everyone can write 10 weeks in a row they can't so everyone who does I think they should give up they pat them says on the back that they did it even if like 20 people are eating it because I know so many people who have the urge to write they want to express they have things to say and they have like they have genuinely good things to say like when they tell me that I have an idea I want to write them then why do you know writing is comes the whole thing about what it will be all of those things will come in and they'll never write or they will say I was talking to a friend you know he said to me such a good clear thinking process when he writes memos so good but I said up you need a river it's like the writing that I imagine is good I can never be there so why should I publish you know that we keep talking about the instant talent difference so he he didn't so that's what I'm saying that if there's someone out there who actually does it I feel in my people I see there's actually a small minority who actually get started and then even smaller minority who keeps continuing doing it for the longer and so nothing against what you said I'm just saying that no I feel like yeah you see what I'm saying what you're actually saying it's enlightening to me that I was so you know cavalier about writing 10 weeks in a row you have already explained very forcefully that you're brilliant and you're the best and all of those things will be agreed with you so yeah so no maybe I should try writing 10 weeks in a row I feel like I'll be able to do it but it's also I think some of it is also the whole being different thing right like if everyone if in my head everyone can have a subscribe and what is the really hard thing to do there's no problem with all of these like number one I think that when you say that if anyone can start a substrate why should I is like you know young saying that anyone can write a book why should I any psychologist can come up with a theory why should I I 99% of everything is crap we know that but you want to be that 1% so I don't think that's a thing the other thing is that the one thing that it took me years and years and years and years to get past is the desire for validation like even some of the terms that you've been using like gold standard of excellence right that is an outward directed term other people call something the good you know or even if you do there's a lot of crap in those publications also like each of the publications you've written for but that goes back to the earlier point but the other thing I would say is that you know there's no need for you to do anything different as you just said yeah there's only a need for you to be yourself and what allows read the most is the question so I think when I say gold standard of excellence I mean what are works of art that when I consumed touched me and I remembered and stayed with me and then I think those have sort of coagulated with my own thoughts in some form and produced right you use that phrase for publications yeah and I would only write for publications that I thought of as gold standards for excellence and I'm saying firstly there's nothing like that and secondly the gold standard for excellence is almost an outward directed term that you know but you don't so for example yes the New Yorker produces a bunch of crap but I would love to have a byline there don't you have like these what are you measuring your writing life by right now actually you know here's the thing so for about 20 30 years of my life I thought the New Yorker is amazing and I'd love to have my fiction published there someday yeah I actually no longer do that you know they publish a particular kind of thing and I love it and you know some of their regular writers like Alice Monroe have just been the idea of favorites of mine but I no longer have that because I just want to do work that kind of full fills you that fulfills me and then it finds this way out into the world and that's you know happened with the podcast not happened with writing because I haven't done enough of it but otherwise what is your otherwise you're chasing something from someone I think that's enough for me this something I feel very fortunate about that one of the greatest things that happened with me at a younger age is that I got my first byline in the Atlantic I was about 2526 a guy then you get a second byline and I remember the first byline came out the people are suddenly you know the satcha's industry and it's got a Atlantic article right to me that he would be some category of a writer he if he has a byline in the Atlantic and I also like it like I would go and say where are you published I have a byline in the Atlantic but then you soon realize that I actually don't want it I don't want to write for an international publication where if I'm writing a political story I have to explain what the BJP is and use you know the ideas about how I love it's a great American publication but actually I don't care about that much once you have had it and the reason I look to sasha's writing now is also because if like how independent it is how untied by editorial anyone else the editorial consideration that is it's totally him but yeah same thing in the 2000s I wrote for the Wall Street Journal the Guardian the observer all the foreign guys I won the bus tear prize I could have basically written for anybody in the world I wanted to and I absolutely fucking hated it because then when you write BJP you have to write comma in the nationalist party yeah and you have to explain everything and dumb it down and I didn't want to simplify you know we took over the two storytelling instincts yes for them I would have to simplify I didn't want to simplify I wanted to go deeper into my own little whatever and once I got passed the thrill of the validation carry firongs are publishing these guys are publishing once I got passed at so voluntarily I haven't written for them for like 18 years now and obviously I can I could have built my brand and been whatever but they can you know also but also I think I think like I think if I have to just imagine from your perspective I think you're coming also from a sense of is it an internal compass that a chart once you get it that let's say whom you imagined have let's say an editor was a taste of good writing or publication is that some kind of you okay I've touched the milestone and now I can be free or like I get discovered is it coming from there like or is it something else because we have actually we have had this conversation yeah remember where I am big on self-publishing that there are so many times I would write something and friends would say why don't you write it for someone then I'm like I don't want to write it for someone I'll put it up on my blog and they clingy. We have a three three four thoughts are coming to mind right now one is this external validation sort of you aren't something until someone else really reputed says you are that which sort of like I said it brands define your life if you want to define your life brands define your life if you had a like I said setbacks in your life the way you earn respect is by in like we're all here because we've been affiliated with some great brands in our life like status in society people like heuristics is what people use so maybe there's a trace of that thinking or that's that is a way of strategizing and navigating the world that's been there in my life because how do you break it down how do I become a writer I seek places where writer writers write a sub published yeah and for that that for me like the artisty comes because that's not times of indian necessarily that for me that stood out as a caravan for instance I really liked their writing the way they broke stories down at that time I really liked and I still think there's a lot of me I know you you have your thoughts about the people who both have thoughts about that basically I the places that appear to me who's the stories that touch to God those struck a chord with me right then the second thing I think is I'm not going to say that my stance has merit or not merit it's just it is what it is but I do think you said be yourself right and I was like being different maybe that is a driving core of my aesthetic like if some everybody's doing something I don't want to do it even if I do it my own way like I want to find like I would love to start like a sasha asc substacks speaking of like person that says consistent every word I think you're being incredibly hard on yourself yeah just almost makes me angry when you say that you know I have to be different no you don't have to be different you have to be you and that'll be good enough and I will by default be different air come on in your writing like I have said this to so many friends I said publicly you are you like even if you yeah so I'm sure you can see key arm at the personal league though you know I would have loved like 2000 more words but in that NDTV column also you are my voice comes through I think so I'm not fast about this and I don't think this is a version of me being hard on myself this is a very strong aesthetic sensibility that makes me I have a very strong cringe thing that I find things the certain things are capital C cool certain things are capital C cringe so right the capital C cool things and I tell you what like this this self-publishing thing very few people get it super right a lot of self-published is just not good quality yeah but you know what see see and I wanted to say this to both of you it's only after you got that brand that you decided to just walk away from the brand it's only people who walked the brands that then have the status to choose a lower status path but if that's what you directly did that curve would be much deeper where you're building your own brand independently without affiliation to anything yeah but you know I went through that experience but it didn't do much differently in terms of the way the outside world view me like all the cred I had was from doing India Uncut which was this madly successful blog in New Zealand in 2009 then I disappeared I played poker for five years and everybody forgot me when I came back no one knew who I was a world that completely changed Twitter it become deeply toxic not a place for conversations and I had to start from scratch completely and literally there was nothing those brands were meaningless I mean to most of my listeners it must be a surprise that I ever wrote for those guys so it was completely there in the past so where I'm coming from is that I came at myself in a sense having felt that I have been a failure all my life wow and in certain aspects I still feel that in the sense I haven't written the 10 books I should have written and all of that and I think that brought me to a place where I said that I have to stop freaking torturing myself by caring about what the world thinks of me and just doing the things that make me happy like certain kind of work makes me happy now the scene in the unseen happened to be just a fun experiment which became something that I really came to the Wendy plane to and kind of enjoy it but what I would love to see happen in your progression like I totally get it early in your career you are at one level even trying to convince yourself that I can do this and therefore it is useful to be published by Express and Caravan and all that and I totally get that because I've been through those exact same phrases the thrill that you get when you see your you know by line in a particular paper or you see your credits at the end of a TV show I've worked for five years in television in the 90s I totally get that but I think the next step at some point and hopefully after your book comes out is that you do you and you do you with ferocity and with zero compromise and newsletter feels like one way of doing it maybe you become an Instagram real superstar it doesn't really matter but yeah I feel like what I'm about to say might be construed as defensive that I can't control but I feel like the book that I'm writing the book that I've written it's it's the most unfettered sort of me that I've been now what I feel about long form has changed in the process of writing it was also my reservations with picking up something intense in long form right now is that I do feel like if I'm listening to myself and what I'm being called to create next it's it's it's shorter stuff so I feel like I have always been strategizing between my turn of compass and the home that it can find outside in the world I don't know how to be I would love actually to be a little inauthentic and have like a more mainstream kind of interesting I don't think I've been able to do that so but I I think I get where you're coming from is that be even more myself this is exactly where we didn't want to end up with two men are advising a woman or her child she's like she's feeling on us we have self-cancelation on each of you we have fallen in front of our own eyes we have why what brought this on I've completely forgotten but I have a suggestion the suggestion is we take a break and the delightful thing that I like is we've spoken for I think a total of about three years 50 minutes and not even gotten to dating so let's take a break and let's kind of come back to that yeah and you know I will of course yeah so we'll have to see what the title of this episode is it will have something to do with dating but then I'll have to put a caveat in the intro that white three or four hours I'm going to say I love romance dating identity have you always wanted to be a writer but never quite gotten down to it well I'd love to help you since April 2020 I've enjoyed teaching 27 cohorts of my online course the Art of Clear Writing and an online community has now sprung up of all my past students we have workshops and use letters to showcase the work of students and vibrant community interaction in the course itself through four webinars spread over four weekends I share all I know about the craft and practice of clear writing there are many exercises much interaction and a lovely and lively community at the end of it the course course rupees 10,000 per GST or about a hundred and fifty dollars if you're interested head on over to register at indiauncurt.com/clearwriting that's indiauncurt.com/clearwriting being a good writer doesn't require god-given talent just a willingness to work hard in a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills I can help you welcome back to the scene in the unseen this episode is transformed into rocky or rani ke yamar kahani or is it the romance between Sasha and Sarthark or is it no it still is Samarth and Sanjana Akasanjubhavijyavacharagar sitting here with me so yeah so let's start talking about sort of I won't even say dating that's a little bit narrow but that whole process of finding love figuring out what you want defining love for yourself etc etc and I'll begin with you Sarthark because you wrote this piece which I think has surely become iconic and hopefully gotten you many dates called romantic idiot where you know you kind of spoke about your lack of experience till 28 and spoke about how your friends would keep telling you keep dating karo and you would be like you know not required matukushu and you know akla chalore as it was and you had to have this intriguing line at one point where you say when people around me were building relationships with others I was busy building a relationship with myself and it's lovely line because most people never do this that is build a relationship with themselves not with you so can you elaborate on this a little bit like what do you mean by building a relationship with myself and what was in general like all of us have a fuzzy notion of romance in our heads or fuzzy romance of how relationships will play out what was that for you and how did that evolve when I say building a relationship with myself I think it was just how I think about my 20s that it's if you're out in the world you have a notion about how things are and you are consistently in the place of we were previously also discussing it right like how you see yourself how the world sees you what is your place in the world all of that so those questions both about values the work I was doing the life I wanted to build became so dominant and that's been right to college that thinking about it and 20s of the time when you are like really shaping your identity in so many ways so that I think consumed so much of me me trying to take you know intentionally taking decisions taking life in a certain way that all of it just over a period of time meant about like trying to like really figure out how to be with myself and especially this really triggered when you know I started my freelance career into 2019 I was outside an institution pandemic hit you are you know all you are by self then I move to the mountains so that whole period of like four four and a half years which is my 20s that was really just about being okay with myself and what then starts happening especially like in retrospect now I think like I spent three years in the mountains living in a cottage by myself Like that's a transformative experience. So like all your day structured around like doing what you want, trying to like really make things work, would professionally, personally, what gives you satisfaction. So when you're really in that zone, it's not that you're not being interested in people like, you know, getting romantic urges or like, you know, getting feelings for someone is a near universal human experience. But it just does not at that phase of my life, that was just not something that crossed that I want to build a relationship with someone, not through the entire three years. I'm just talking about that process of mid to late 20s that it never just crossed as an idea. Like I saw people around me when conversation would start as, you know, finding the partner being one of like the dominant questions around structuring their lives. It was just never an idea that struck me and it felt so suffocating because I would go at places and it was almost assumed that if you're single, then there's something problem, something off and that it's a transient state. Like, you know, they will say things like, Oh, no, no, you'll find someone or something will happen. And I'm like, why are you telling me that I have a problem in my life and I am not telling there's a problem in my life, right? So it was that phase. So that is where that line meant that just because you think that I should be finding a partner does not necessarily apply that is the context, life context in which I am. So that is what relationship with self meant. It was not something like super conscious. It's just me trying to figure out what was I really doing and that's what it turned out to be being okay with myself and trying to create, you know, like what seemingly good life. Yeah, I totally get that. And Sanjana in this beautiful piece that, you know, you wrote, it feels like it's almost the opposite way with you that whereas summer started with the sense of that, you know, why should, why do I need summer? I'm okay. I'm doing my own thing with you. It was almost the sense that there is a pattern and that pattern involves you're getting married and then at one point in your piece, you write settling down suddenly seemed too distant from who I felt I was becoming, even though I'd been anxious to get married throughout my late 20s. Yeah. Right. And I'm very interested in how this realization comes about because still then you're kind of living the template you are. As you mentioned in that piece, you're in a great relationship with a great guy. You love his family. Everything is so awesome. And then what happens that takes you into a direction that to everyone around you must seem both irrational and even out of character perhaps? I think actually even before early 20s that I remember my, remember I talked about having a eating disorder that started with my cousin initiating me into girlhood around the same time. I when I was fat, a male friend that I just made was like, what is your plan? Like how are you going to get guys to go out with you? And he was referring to my weight. What eats and you know, I was 16. Like I just joined the J. Coaching and I'd met this not the best friend I guess over there. And I mean, I think all of those things started happening together. We're actually, I thought I was super independent always, but you know, subconsciously in your conditioning is driving you in different ways. So I think maybe my girl who would my, my body image, the way I thought I should look everything was driven towards the single point. How am I going to get guys to go out with me? What about this incredible, you know, pressure to be like, for women, I think it's about being the best possible mate you can, right? Like that's where you're, even if you're educated and sort of being pushed to excel in your academics, it's with the ultimate goal of increasing your market value. At least as your family sees it or as a lot of people in slightly see it. So that's it actually goes back that far where if I'm not dating someone as a girl and I'm not like being crushed upon them, I'm even enough of a girl. It goes back that far and I think as I started working out as Navya, my cousin and I we started grooming ourselves to be pretty and girly. We did get the commensurate attention and validation and that feels great. Like it's a drug when you are the center of attention and like everybody likes you and it's not necessarily very superficial, right? Like people were actually interested in me. It's like they saw that I was funny and pretty and like it was, it's, it's, it's, it's I think it's great. Nobody wants to stop being that so much so that as you get into a 30s and you realize that that girl who is not that girl who you're now entering women who I kind of have a longing for those years of my life still I look very fondly upon and I'm, I think with some amount of this is just open, but I'm like what, thank God I actually got into shape. Sometimes I'm like, thank God that friend told me that because it did turn out to be strategically right or whatever. So and as I started getting that attention, I actually met boys that I liked. I've you know, thick friends, you know, good chemistry. We actually had many meaningful relationships. So it never seemed like there's any any kind of problem. Monthly my late 20s when break up started having a lot of anxiety for me. Like I was just like, why am I not able to make it work because if this doesn't end in marriage, then I have to find the next thing and that needs to end in marriage. So the fact that like your degree and like your career, your romantic life becomes a project that's associated with success and status, like someone said, you will be seen as we heard if you and the single who does meant to be transient. As you mature, I realized that actually those were towards the end of my 20s. Those were the forces driving my relationships more than my like deeply noticing the other person and loving them for who they are. Have I always just been craving a relationship so that I could say that I'm normal and I'm capable of despite everything my family's been through. I'm capable of a normal relationship. So I think it was that confrontation with the self that made me realize that if I can't say for sure, like sure nothing on paper is wrong with any of these things, but it doesn't feel right. It feels like they may have been layers of influence that I don't know that I want to identify with. I need to investigate deeply what I want in a relationship in you. I need to see if I want to be with other people. I just know that I don't want to get married in this in this frame of mind where I feel conflicted about it. So I think and I think that this is not a typical for women. If you've been socialized to equate self-worth with your relationship status and how much people desire you, you're constantly subconsciously molding yourself into a personality that fits. So yeah, for me was the reverse and I think it's interesting that we've had different parts and different relationships with singlehood. Only now I feel like as I have been single for the last couple of years, I feel more autonomous. I'm not using my relationship as a crutch as I was at times like, I can't make up my mind about something. You help me make this decision, especially as an artist and as a writer, you're sort of putting your mind on papers. You need to have conviction without other people supporting you. And I feel like it's been very molding for me to like put myself out there without a man affirming me this whole time. Like, oh, you're not crazy. What you, these jokes are not too weird for the internet. I just put it out anyway without any sort of like sometimes my friends will prove free what I have to say, but mostly I think these are big wins to make up your own mind about everything in your life towards the end of our relationship. Like I say, I mean, there was nothing wrong on paper. If like I had to get married to someone, he was probably the right mate, but the issues that we were having, like, there was emotionally distanced. I felt like we were not connected to each other. I felt like I might be polyamorous. So I didn't know that unless we opened up our relationship, how I could just sort of shut down that part of me that felt like it was just brewing, but there was also things like I was craving solitude. I didn't enjoy being around someone all the time. And in a situation where you're supposed to get married to someone, the expectation is that you will continue living with someone forever. And your families will become entangled with each other. Their family is your family. And I just, I wasn't sure that I wanted all of that. Even though I liked them, right? It just seemed like too much entanglement, which now some people might say is avoidance, the avoidance attachment style. But anyway, it had to be explored. I had to not brush these feelings aside. But yeah, I wanted to have my own space. I wanted to live alone. I wanted to not have domestic sort of issues like who's going to do the dishes and how do we manage the house become part of romance. Like our relationship is not working. And we're saying that some of the issues because of how we run this house, like that just didn't make sense to me. Like if we have emotionally, we're not connecting then how can we add this to the variable right? Let's live apart and see if we can have a relationship then. So I had all of these like thoughts and questions and I just felt like I wasn't ready. So at the time these thoughts made sense to me, but having now lived two years beyond that decision, I'm also like, what else are the deeper currents there? Is there an avoidance streak? Is there a fear of commitment? Is there a genuine love of solitude that maybe if the culture was normed in default to couple them? I don't think I don't sense the fundamental lack at times. You know, it's because I've been like, we're so told that you have to end up settling down is occurs and pairs. It's never just you living alone, being a grown. But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think more role models of women living alone, men living alone would be great. I think while it's interesting, like you said, that both of you came at it from different directions. I still think that is not surprising because I think that that's like, I'm struck by this phrase that you use when you were talking about when you were 16, where you said that your groom to be the best possible mate. And that's a lens through which you're looking at everything. And that's almost a heartbreaking lens and I don't think many, many guys would really get that. You know, because the guys are just focused on being the best possible guy. You know, there's no other person in the equation. You want to be the best dude you can be. And of course, you have your own kinds of anxiety. You're wanting to fit in and be the coolest guy or whatever. But you almost feel entitled to eventually finding partnership and companionship and all of that. And if you're alone, you're chilled with being alone. And can you double click a bit more on what that weight of expectation does because it seems that then for the longest time, you and women in general are evaluating themselves through their desirability as mates. Yeah, the first thing to notice that it's not conscious, like, no, we're not at the age of 14, 15, 16 realizing that, oh, they are telling me to do these things because these people believe that it will make me the best adult. No, it's just sold as best practices from how to live life. So you're just, and what, what that gaze is essentially, you're internalizing the, you know, patriarchal male gaze about what it means to be a woman. And so you're becoming that person. And then this authentic self becoming only happens like we spoke about earlier towards your late 20s. So I think it's a right of passage that everybody outgrows their conditioning. I also, I want to just disagree with you. I think men go through it too. But it's again, it's not conscious to them. And they think that they are benefiting. And in many ways, materially they are benefiting. But I think psychologically, for example, the flip side for them is a boy who's not good at whatever will make him like have a good career. He's not allowed to be feminine. He's not allowed to be emotionally expressive, like dancing, for example, skills that are discouraged just because you're a boy. Both genders aren't allowed to be their full whole androgynous selves. You're being socialized into what the culture thinks is male and what the culture thinks is female. I just don't know that men are, men have a suffer enough to question that it was good or bad for them. Like I've suffered enough as a result of that. And that's when it's only when you've had enough bad experiences that you're like, wait, you know, I don't know if this is for me and you start going on your journey to find yourself. Whereas if you're continuously being rewarded by the system externally for you shaping yourself into that, you never need to introspect. So maybe that's where the difference comes in. Do you have anything to say on this as the resident male? Because I'm doing the podcast, I'm neutral, I'm an androgynous. Yes. I don't know if it's coming from a sense of desire, like the way you freeze it. But when especially when when you are consciously dating, when you know like there was a phase of life when I was not interested in it, but there's a phase of life when you are let's say out in the dating market. I actually don't like the word market in this context, but still I use it a lot. But let's say when you are in the dating market, then of course, you're conscious and then you start sometimes consciously, unconsciously, you are trying to be a certain person given the world that we live in where like in initial settings, you know, this idea of this whole cell and whatever we were discussing complexity, that doesn't come out. So whatever the initial check marks are of who could be an interesting person to go out with, beat on Instagram, beat on an app, etc. You do try to embody some of those character, characteristics like personally for me, like I wrote about it in the essay, but something so obvious, but it still hits you when it hits you that when I went through my fat loss, like, you know, I did my 20 kilo fat loss journey in pandemic. For a time, I left house, you know, when lockdowns open, go to one of my go to cafes sit and like it has never happened with me that like a woman at a random moment will hit on me just trying to strike a conversation and I was totally blown away that oh, so like, like this is what happens if, you know, your size goes from L to S, right? And again, not that anyone was living in a delusion about how much attraction matters and, you know, like we know, but it just becomes more real that your own sense, you have to say me, you like, you know, what just happened. So in that sense, and when it that bit happens to you, then of course you and then when you are in the dating market and their points when you are figuring out, okay, why does this person I'm interested in not interested in me the classic question, then you go through your checklist, that okay, like is there not checklist, but what are the markers of potentially good mates that I might not have, which might like, you know, you're doing this viewer thing about decoding, where you're going in all sorts of directions, sitting with your friends, trying to figure out what ever I, when the reason could be something totally else that you're not connected with, that is the phase where like I have done this evaluation, because the internal like the female guests can only be internalized by men to evaluate themselves critically and with like that's helped and I when there's a female gaze, which has only come up in the last, with the internet last 10 years or so, because otherwise all media has been shaped by the men in power making it, but there is I think around the time that Karina Kapoor and Saisiro became a phenomenon was that they disco and Shah Rukhan with the six back abs, and I know that some of the people that I've dated and my male friends have body images shoes. Yes, many. Nobody's absolved from the objectification that happens from images that are being shown on screen and like that sort of acts effect kind of female sexualization that there is a you know reversal of that too that's happening like men are also sexualized and objectified, but I just like yeah, I feel like discourse needs to evolve beyond men are not affected by patriarchy. They are if they're introspecting and thinking about it like and yeah, you're not allowed to cry and are allowed to be emotionally expressive, but there are like a lot of the signals of this. For men with body image issues, I would just say that losing weight is hard embrace H&M. They get the size is just right as I was saying, if you go there for every size like for excel, you'll have a regular fit, a skinny fit, a loose fit and oversized fit, the last two of those are awesome, so forget dating, embrace H&M. Saisiro. I'm really lucky. I'm very shy, very shy. I will say though that I think looks and personality both matter, but it's in case of men because that thing about the entitlement in the this thing, yes, it's matters. Yes, it's not as easy as we might make it out to be and women definitely like that neurosis can really eat you up and consume you, but like I think yeah, even if you're say an ugly poor man, you're probably better than an ugly poor woman. What a thing to say. Better off, not better, better off. I was reading the work called David Bus. This evolution is awesome. He's written this great book, a book called The Evolution of Love. Evolution of Love? I've heard him in the 90s. Every article is an article so they're like again, like you know, it just helps to understand what evolutionary reasons are affecting our behavior. In dating context, like he says that it's not like both men and women, paradise, physical attraction, but men do it more because from an evolution standpoint, it's a sign of like in evolution is saying it, I'm not saying it, that it's a sign of good health fertility and for women. And so that increases the chance of a healthy offspring. For women, they are more selective and in terms of mating preferences and paradise, that is and resources because the idea is that my child will get better care. So just it's not a they don't care. It's just a degree with which men care about physical attraction is more than women. I think another interesting stat I heard was apparently the age group that each gender prefers when they're looking out for mates when women are looking for a mate, they're looking for plus minus two years of their age, two, three years. And when men are looking at the dating market, there no matter what their age is, it's always 18 to 25 or like this younger, much younger women is also okay with them. Yeah, that's and it increases with age. Like there's a age gap. Yeah, I'm forgetting people or studies, but like for many changes, like especially as you get older, there's a like data shows that I think half your age plus seven is supposed to be the acceptable for men. Ideally, not ideal. But it's like a 40 year old. No, but you know has an interesting thing that half your age plus seven. That's a year. In for a 40 year old and 27, which is a big gap. That's a big gap. And obviously gets bigger as you know, but here's the thing. So the thing is that the way we are wired because of evolution is that what is at a premium for women, what is really beauty and youth because that shows your evolutionary fitness, so you will get attracted to that kind of person because they will have good kids and they will look after the kid and everything is much more likely at a time where life spans are like average 40, right? Or even much less when we evolved in prehistoric times. Well, for men, it is status and that actually means that fundamentally the game is skewed because men as they get older, they can get more and more status, but women cannot really most of the time, you know, get more and more beautiful. So what do I do? So it but I mean, I'm not stating this again as an normative thing. I'm making my personal judgment. I'm just saying that this is hardwiring that we must fight. No, I feel it like, I feel like all things that I fought and told my mom, don't push me to it. I'm like now 31. And I am having been deeply obsessed with my body and how I look. I can spot every difference in my face and in my body versus how I look. And I felt like I'm a choring in sort of self-love and all. It's gone so far, but there is a window for self-hatred that remains that, you know, like, I can see the blemishes that didn't exist before. I can see how I look without makeup. I know the accessories. I need, I know why Ola is going to have an effect on me soon, you know, stop the seven signs of ageing and all of that. And if I've sort of come to accept that my desirability, which I earned in my teenage years, and now I'm going to prolong it. I'm going to spend money on it. It's it's a market for a reason. Yeah. Women, their social status, their self-worth being tied to how desirable they are. It's yeah. It's not easy to get over. Is attractiveness like a bit of a drug in that sense. Like, some of the time you mentioned that, you know, in your piece, that's very cute. That this girl hits on you and you're so surprised. And I can imagine that how and you, of course, be now. fitness freak ever since and why not and one can understand the incentives are perfect. But even for you, when you said you turned 2021, you got feminized by your cousin as it were and started getting common-sourate attention which I thought was an excellent use. I was surprised to see that. Yeah, man. I was totally rock and roll. Perhaps the first time that face has been used in that context. So then I wonder if number one, it becomes like a bit of a drug that you crave more and more of it because of the awesome validation that you get and then number two, can it be a little bit of a trap that you let that become the parts of your personality that you work hard as strong. Especially if you are a performative person which I have repeatedly proclaimed myself to be if you enjoy being in a group, dropping phrases, being attractive, I think is a huge part of that social capital because like I can, you know, you enter the room, you can see people's eyes turn like have you seen modern family? No. Both of you haven't seen modern family. You will need to do it. I have seen it and not liked it but my relationship with friends is like his relationship with Tamasha. Yes, literally. Modern tortured so much. In modern family, there is Sophia Bergara, the actress who is gifted beyond measure, not in just in talent but in terms of her features and her proportions and everything. She's got that hourglass shape and everything and she is very self, she's on main big see about her looks either right. So she says in some episodes, she's like not noticed and then she opens up about how, you know, if I'm entering a room and everybody is not turning around and looking at me, I know I feel like I failed. So it's a drug and especially like if you have like a main characters in room, it's part of the tools you use, you know, to be good at what you do. It is a drug. I guess the market knows and plays on this. Here's another question. I did an episode recently with EF AirBank, Susan American journalist who wrote a great book in South Africa. But she spent her early years before she went to South Africa to write a book in Washington, DC in the press course there. And she wrote this beautiful piece. I'll send to you guys an handling from the show notes where she wrote this piece about how whenever she would do something great or say interesting things at a conference or write a great piece and men would speak to her and she would think, "Hah, these men are interested in me for my intellect and whatever." And they would spend time and they would maybe go out for a coffee and she would think that I am being respected and all that. But inevitably it would always come down to the same damn thing. That the male gaze and that they want to sleep with her and etc. And that made her question her own sense of self-worth. That boss, this is not the kind of attention I want. I would like to be admired for my intellect and my amazing journalism and she is an amazing journalist and not this shit. And is that then somehow an issue with you? Because some earthen I would have the luxury and the privilege to be just taken for what we are by people and there's nothing else in this. Mostly no other baggage. But in every woman's case I would imagine that every time a man speaks to her there is that extremely great possibility in India that you just don't know what the reasons are. And that can make you wonder firstly what is so good and attractive about you which you should then therefore try to enhance and it could also make you doubt yourself. So what has your sense been like that in all interactions with you? Very fraught area because there's a lot of like I was the first word that came to mind is stress issues. This does like it comes in different ways. I know a girlfriend who had this dichotomy that I am very pretty. So if I overplay my prettyness people think I'm dumb but I'm also very smart. So I want people to notice me for that. And I was like don't play to the binary just be yourself and let people perceive you however because it's not just of course it's a lot of men who approach you with whatever intentions but it could happen even in your family right? Like you don't want to do anything but be yourself because you know then that affects your way to move around the world. So the only thing you can do is be yourself and let whoever it is deal with it in whatever ways and how it does happen is like I think the word for my personal either what I get a lot from men is intimidating which I'm not trying to be consciously but it turns out that if I'm not like smiling and being cute all the time and I can't have a pretty dead pan face I'm not constantly smiling and you're arresting that pan face. Which face? You're a big risk. You're a big risk. You're not arresting that pan face. I don't know maybe I mean depends on the company also but yeah like people deal with it in different ways like men can sexualize and objectify you they can call they can misinterpret your intelligence as arrogance intimidation you know she's think she's a it what do you think like especially if you don't give them attention they may call you they may you know the flip side of their affection or desire for you is that if you don't reciprocate they turn the opposite so they you know shun you you know make you feel like shit for not reciprocating and it's weird because like a lot of these men are older than you especially if you're encountering them and like semi workplace slash workplace later like and almost anybody today if you're meeting them for the first or second time you don't know right like you could be a professional like I would be want to keep it respectful professional formal and then they say something off like it's happened to me very recently also like someone that I had just met said something quite off about my parents and I was like you should not feel comfortable enough to say that to me and then they also said I really admire or like it's it's I don't think men know how to talk to women sometimes I don't think they are very good at dealing with a woman who's not slotting their sort of limited binaries or you know few categories that women are allowed to be so if she's smart and funny and good looking then what do I really I mean you just treat her as a whole human being you don't try to like impose any sort of your projection of what she is on her and then she's navigating that trying to not upset you keep the relationship there's a lot of that that has gone on also like I've seen like from the in other context like the trust issues in general in Indian society like if like probabilistically if you talk about it like the base rate of a random or like in context a man coming to women and talking what is the probability that you know they are up in like the inexperience of the woman that I hear that is coming with what intent it just feels like in India may the higher probability is that they're coming to you know like not talking about work but they some other agenda let's say now that it feels there's such a low it feels like in in today's like in our our circles that trust issues are so low that I've been on the other side where like as a journalist like I remember being at a conference and there was this woman said something really interesting and I was in a reporter mode and like she left and I just went and asked her a question about that you said something really interesting you know can I follow upon it that conversation happened and I could just immediately see that there was a certain setback yeah about like why is this guy and and quote and quote on paper it was not something very highly credential let's say an institution that she worked for but I just found it so interesting so I went and I could immediately see that there is some tension that this person has so then what do you do at that point so I'm like I figured so I also I wanted to exit so I just dropped my card and said like if you can talk then here's my card then actually in our later like she texted me back saying that oh I of course we didn't talk about this dynamic but she said sorry I had to just leave I couldn't talk to you at that point but I just googled you like I've seen your work so then she gave me the details but you see this happening in my understanding is just that baseline trust issues are so high good reason especially I think if you're a somewhat of like one recent thing that I articulated for myself was and the internet has also caught on it's like you beware of the nice guys yeah I was at a party recently and a friend introduced me to his friend he's like I think you guys will get along I mean that's just a casual thing to say I don't know how that guy took it but like he I think he took it upon himself that oh he thinks we get along that means I must charm this woman over the course of the night and I wasn't drinking and every like 15-20 minutes he'd like we're going to get a drink you want one I'd be like no I'm not drinking I don't want one he's like come on it's Friday night it'll be fun I'm like do we we're not 18 anymore I don't really know you stop asking right at some point but he didn't stop he seemed to be fairly drunk himself ordered me a drink even though like the third time he asked me he's like I'm getting you one not taking no for an answer and while doing all this he just also asked me like are you okay I'm just checking up on you you're just sitting down I'm like the I'm just being myself and you have taken up this role to be like the charmer of the night or whatever and you're I'm more okay than you are stop asking if I'm okay and like just the ingratiating personality that I think that's where this distress comes from like oftentimes people men who think that oh I'm going to be nice to her and like I don't want it I just simply don't want it you may be nice you may be very interesting and I just I don't want the attention yeah that's Kate Winslet in eternal sunshine of the sport sportsman you seem like I don't she has a very like very nice in the train code like I don't want nice talking about the nice guys in her in some ways but actually I want to ask you a question because there is I see a tension in modern dating where again I mean first the caveat like any generalizations are very hard so we are speaking from personal experiences a lot of women around me and you know we have this notion key dating apps are there hellholes we want to go back to the old traditional ideas of romance you know we meet at a coffee shop or a book shop or office and then something happens so I've seen women on internet and in person saying you know men don't ask how to any ask us out anymore in order. additional sense. So what is happening, you know, when I'm forgetting that. So when I talk to men and myself included, we are actually, you're quite stuck that what actually is the norm today. Like what exactly is a protocol in our society and what setting, what is okay, what is not okay. And like I go through this, like you're talking about neurosis. Yeah. Yeah. The neurosis is that you seem like you see someone, you find them attractive and then you're thinking, should I go, should I not go, people say that no, you have to be out there. You have to talk to people, strike a conversation, maybe it goes somewhere. So you're in that zone. But you see a smart, independent looking, a woman working, doing her own thing. Then you say, isn't people like me exactly the problem that, you know, women have their personal space in a physical setting, but no, you're a man, you'll go interrupt her space and you know, screw her day. Yeah. So then people like me and I know so many friends who go through this neurosis, then we say, no, no, no, let's err on the side of question. And we don't do anything. I think from what you are describing, I feel like self-reflection is a sure part to being both a good man and an alone man. You know, exactly. So when I tell this to my woman friends, so like their story is that they say, this is exactly the reason you'll always be single. Because if you go into this, you know, analysis zone while in the moment, so this is, you know, what will happen and my understanding after watching like American cinema, like especially older ones, I just feel the way you see that on screen about dating, not just like relationship is that you see characters actually, you know, going up asking in a certain way, it's not like creepy or like there's an art to it. There's a charm to it, which I don't have. Like, you know, like, what does it mean to start a conversation people? And then I actually see like other like smart men who are actually able to do it very well. So it's also a skill issue, but I'm just laying down that these kind of neurosis at least some men go through a bunch of weird wild and came tears. Bunch of things you said that can should be double clicked on. One is like, yeah, men are waiting instructions. Like so much as like male desire is that like demonized right? Like there is no because there seems to be, I don't know whose fault it is, but no sort of too healthy way of expressing it. Like if it can be perceived as creepy too much and so they hold back and then when they repress it entirely, it comes out in violent ways. So sort of men having a healthy relationship with their own sexuality and desire is another sort of modern issue. And like the whole Aziz Ansari controversy, like did she was just leaning into it? Very, very gray areas. I think it's so specific to the individual skill of like how you do it. You know the case. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. How you do it really matters, basically, I'm open to being interrupted, provide the interruption is better than what I'm doing. And if you like, I would love nothing more than for a guide, charm me. Yeah. I'm severely lacking that energy. I read a really good tweet about this, a woman like again, in the west, you're saying that actually you should come and ask, but there's a way to do it and always give an out. That if I don't want to engage, it should be easy. Don't make it uncomfortable for me to exit the situation. Have you tried it? And actually, approaching someone and giving them an out. What are your learnings from this? See, this is a very trial and error thing, right? Don't blush. No, no, no, I'm not blushing. It's a very I can't see your face. No, let's just say that I've not been very successful at it. Yeah. Why? What has happened? See, again, giving an out because again, this is a personality type, that I are like, you know, like you're always making a choice that you take a slight risk. Okay, I'll ask Rejecto. So it's okay. So I have that thing. But in a very complete, dangerous scenario, like I are on the side of women like men like me are the ones who will you know, invade on your space. And I actually don't know. So I make a mistake. I'm saying it's a skill issue. What? At the same party that I spoke of, there was a guy who actually managed to strike up a conversation with me in the most effortless. I think he played his cards right, but it was when I was leaving and he was like, oh, you're leaving already. And I was like, we haven't spoken. Yeah. And then we had a bit of like very good conversation and I gave him my Instagram and I was like, that's how it's done. You see, like, that's like, I hope now I'm waiting for him to like ask me out. After that, like, I've been waiting also, like putting up stories that may that is the way I'm going to open into this. So, you know, I once showed the only, so for the economic times I wrote a column on poker for about a year. I think I wrote 42 installments of it. The only column on poker and a mainstream newspaper in the world. That was it. And the first of my pieces was called the bookshop Romeo. And the scenario was that a young man enters a bookshop. Let us call him Samarth. Samarth enters a bookshop and he sees a young lady reading a book by an author. He likes. Yeah. So it is a perfect opportunity. And now the question is, should he go and talk to her or not? And the danger is that if he goes and talk to her, A, he could be intruding, which would make him feel bad later or she could be rude and rebuff him and insult him and etc. etc. But the flip side is that, you know, he could make a friend or he could get a date or etc. etc. And my argument there was using probabilistic theory and pointing out that of course he should go and talk to her because a downside is very low. Even if 99% of the time she tells him to fuck off, the downside is super low because what has he lost is you know, 30 seconds of hurt me. Whereas the that 1% that he's found his life partner or whatever. The upside is super high. So you should always kind of do it in a probabilistic sense. I have a good and embarrassing story. But I'm feel comfortable because I know other men also have done this. Have you ever had a bookshop story? We won't tell anyone. We'll tell you the thousands of people. But I am telling you, I'm comfortable because other men commented me, they're actually really smarter than me in multiple ways. You're not even smarter than you hurt. I carry on. So they have also done this. I had like the craziest like a bookshop story like I am a bookshop. And you know one of the biggest problems in modern dating which is these headphones. I mean, a lot of headphones are better than I thought like how do you even start a conversation, right? There's people have discarded you. So I see bookshop in two people. I am there and there's this woman and she's expectedly with her headphones. So I'm like, "Challon, I love you." You know, there's always this moment of tension. Like, "What? Like there's a setup here, but you don't, you know, Sunna, right? Like there's a setup. Like you don't know like a, like how am I supposed to be a metha-grab, but so anyway. So first you ignore. But completely ignore. So I know. If one of our screenplays has a scene and a bookshop, you know, I'm like, "What is the smartphone?" It's a real story. So then I'm like, "Challon, headphones, we have." And so I met her and I just go and not really potentially, but I go to the classic section. I have to do some French existentialism. Let's go to Kamu's book. I'm in that room. So I'm going and listening. Then of course, like briefly, you'll also just, you know, move around and say, "Get char. Where is another person?" Is she looking at me? Is she looking at me? What is happening? So there I see her, the headphones are off. I'm like, "Okay, interesting. That takes it when level." She's asking for it. She wants me. I could see her ears. I could hear myself. How's she going to lift this down? So Kamu's, she's gone. So then again, no, but I'm like, "Okay, no, no, back to back to book." Which book of Kamu was it the stranger by any chance? The outsider. So that, I mean, that's in, but then I go back to my book. I mean, I do, you know, that's in, I'm like, "I can't see how I can do this." So then I turn around and she's nearby. And then she asked me, "You know, actually, I don't know why." She said, "I'm actually, she's the boy you're looking for." So I'm like, "You know, I'm looking for some of these books." To the love of my life. Then she asked me that, "Are you from around?" I'm like, "No, actually, I'm a bit of a fool. I'm a bit of a fool." So I was like, "Oh, wow. You traveled so far for a book shop." She said, "I heard about it. So I come once in a while." So she looked quite impressed because she's like, "I didn't live nearby. I don't know." So she was like, "Cool." Then she was like, "Actually, I'm looking for a book for my friend. Can you help me?" I'm like, "Sure." Then, "You know, this is your day today." You do that, you go through that conversation. Great. Then she also asks me about how often do you come here? I think in retrospect, all potential science talks about it. This is a moment where your friends mentally start calling her, "Bhabhi." Yes. It's me in action, right? I'm like, "Okay, great." So she said, "Kidabli." Then I started telling her about two minutes. "Bhoti Sai Kidabai." This is your friend with a light. She said, "Great." So then, she asks, "What are you planning to do?" I'm going to get a coffee. Do you like coffee? She says, "No, I'm not a coffee person. I'm a hot chocolate person." I said, "Great." So she says, "And then I'm like, okay, then I go look at my books." What? Yes, yeah. That's a reason I'm single. So then she. You were attracted to her in the first place. I mean, see, please feel free to judge. I'm telling you the story. Let me finish the story. Please, let me finish the story. Keep judging and the ridiculousness. I mean, the comedy theory is being tragedy. Okay, so then that happened and then she goes. "Dekar Om Nikita, I didn't find something good. I see that." And then I was thinking because again, that moment of tension comes up. Right? Like, now what happened? Should I go back? The moment has gone. When the conversation was happening. Now, she had the bidding counter. So what am I now supposed to do? Should I go and ask her, "Do you want to exchange numbers? Do you want to do Instagram?" Whatever. So then I was like a total fat two. I didn't do anything. then I go, you know, she goes away. Then a moment of revolution happened that what the hell did I just do? You know, like you, hmm, she got it. But what did you say when she said you want to exchange them? No, she didn't say that. No, I think that was supposed to be my cue. Like I think she gave the hints, but you didn't, I didn't pick it. I didn't pick it at that point. And then she goes imagine her thoughts if she's listening to this right now. Uh, whatever. But so then then I, then she goes away and then it hits me like, what the hell did you just do? You Instagram, I mean, what's going on? Right? And then I go down, pre-market, like, daily people would be familiar. Then I actually do the rounds to say that maybe, uh, very creepy. Like maybe she's that one of these person, where you go, you know, hot chocolate bowl. I was like, hmm, so then I go and I don't find her. Then comes the, I don't know why I'm telling all of this, but every business, you go there at that time. No, no, no, no, no. What I did, I'm like the ridiculousness I can do when I feel I just made a fool out of myself that I go back to the bookstore. And then I asked the guy because, you know, the woman who came, I heard over the conversation that, the first self, the one who was available there, he said, then I had to made up some shitty excuse and I'm not very proud of myself. Not that. Uh, I became the saath of the character. You know, actually, uh, I made up some reason. And you also, uh, actually, you know, um, I'll give you some of the things I wanted to tell you. So, can you give her, give her number and of course, the judgey eyes of the bookseller as it should be. Then no, sir, we can't give that to her. So I'm like, I had my visiting card. I gave that to her. That can you take it and, uh, like, give it to her. Give it to her. But like, like, that is the ball is in her court. No, it isn't because there's a stranger's court. It's a stranger's court. And then for the next two days, I wasn't so much guilty because, you know, first, like, men like me keep crying, you know, reading expert attention, attention, you know, no one does anything. Then you, uh, drop these situations and, you know, you. So that's what I think neurosis sad action. Again, I think I was very illustrious. Super endearing learning experience for me that men feel shame about fumbling. About fumbling. See, the reason I mentioned, of course, it in retrospect, very embarrassing. And it's not just one case I have multiple stories where I've behaved like this. And I know other men who have done this. And that's what I'm saying that there is this intellectually that you know, like, poker, you probably take it away from the party. I've also written that when you go out of the way, actually, one time you don't even have to worry about it. See, what is this? You have one hand and you've folded it. This is that kind of situation. Yes, you're right. Bombay made. No, but, uh, let's explore. Why do you think, I mean, are you afraid? What? Are you afraid of like, actually, why are men when they see? Again, I don't know. I'm assuming that most men in my situation would do the right thing. I didn't like, again, not right wrong, but like behave in a different way. But that's something that, you know, that's a mental block that like, I actually don't know like where it comes from, what it does. Like, I have not really gone to self-analysis mode of what is happening. Why I did this or in those moments, in those moments, like, yeah, but the reason I mentioned this is that this is a conflict that I live with. That on one hand, like I'll always be criticizing, you know, the modern traditional dating apps wanting this offline connection. But then you are in this dichotomy that when a situation arises, partly because of lack of experience, partly because of, you know, this whole idea of social norms that you have somehow created in your head that just overpower your day to day interactions. That even in the moment where, actually, you should not be thinking and go with the flow, that this analytical mode starts and you just screw up the situation. So again, I'm not saying it would have led to anywhere. But now, but I also think that, you know, with this, actually, your beautiful story, we should be a teachable lesson in all textbooks across the country. You know, if they're teaching male-female interactions, yeah, highlights two things about men. Like one of my co-hosts for my YouTube show Ajay Shah one told me the biggest problem in India is men don't know how to talk to women, which they're solicit. But I think what's happening here is, you're swinging between the two extremes here, which Indian men do. As one is, you have no clue how to talk to women and it is just scary thing. I think Aris Murdoch once said that love is a terrifying realization that people other than you are real. Yeah. And while this is not love, it is, you know, it's a real situation. And your mental hero is completely gone. So number one, you are just unable to speak to her and approach to her and be normal with her, which is a headline would be normal. And number two, when you do decide to do something, you're being super creepy and toxic about it, like, you know, going through the marketplace and asking for her number. Like what we're going to do with a number call of so. No, that's what it's actually. It's kind of shady. And I think this is a great tragedy that both of these are sort of behaviors outside the normal bound. And I completely agree with Ajay, like even I went to a boy school in the eighties and all of that. I had no idea how to talk to women, you know, it's something that you kind of discover through life. And this is beautiful line from your post, which I want to ask Sanjana about, where you quoted some anonymous commentator on Reddit and you said, "For men dating is like dying of thirst in the desert, not a drop of water inside. For women it's like dying of thirst in the ocean. Water is everywhere, but it's mostly toxic and full of salt." Now you mentioned the trust issues and the problems with the male gaze. And I wonder then that if you ever found yourself without realizing it, just unconsciously lowering your bar. Yeah, I think they interested me. I think see, to everything that someone said before I answered that, I think it's like, it's the norm for the issue is right, that maybe it's in this case talking about talking to a woman who's indicated she wants to talk to you, but just this fundamental relationship between the male and female, swinging between the polarities of, I must be the good boy and therefore extremely careful and the bad boy of obsessively doing whatever it takes to get her number. I have to make it up now. I think the line is when you stop seeing this woman as the scary object and you're like, how would you speak to a friend in a bookshop, a new friend that you want to make? It's not like you wouldn't be nervous. You would still be trying to be your interesting best self. But the mythology around it I think would fall and I think friendship could be like the best entryway between both the genders. Actually, before we come to the red comment, just two points, say, this is me being self-defensive, that I would, you know, the moment of self-defense comes where I would not have done that creepy thing of getting the number and doing anything with it. It's just the instinctive reaction. But second, I have another observed a pattern and you confirm if that happens with so many, I have a whole bunch of like woman friends and when I make new friendships, I've somehow seen that either in the first conversation or the second conversation, if they are in a relationship, you just know it. Like, there will be in some context, they will drop that, you know, my partner said this or, you know, my husband said this something and these are all very unconscious things, but the moment that happens, you relax, you relax. Like, like, it's like, it's like, I think somehow, whether she has done it consciously or not, but I've seen repeatedly this happens. And then it's like, okay, not that, you're having some other agenda, like it's a work called, it's a setup, you're a professional, but somehow with that angle coming in your atties and that's, then I notice a pattern that actually most of my woman friends are coupled or are in relationships and that's so simple. Do you relate to this? I'm just thinking about this from a completely different way. I don't know if I have like what you meant, but like, I'm just thinking about how like so much of monogamy is about exclusivity and so the moment you're in a relationship, you're like, oh my god, I'm in a relationship. I shouldn't have chemistry with someone you might explore to anyone. I shouldn't be interesting to other people. God forsake that, you know, sparks some attraction between us. So I think that's something I don't really appreciate about coupled. I'm like, I said, I strive to be the most interesting person wherever I go because I enjoy you know, being stimulating and being entertaining to the people around me. And if that is going to, I felt like a relationship could have been restricting in that sense. Like, well, I'm not supposed to be attractive to other people now. I feed off of that. I don't know, that's toxic. No, it's great. I mean, you are who you are, you're owning it. I just want to be an individual first and then like that person is on an accessory, but it's one part of my life, not the center of my life. So I don't know if women and men also feel like they need to declare that in a relationship, less, the relationship is jeopardized by external attention. That's why I also wonder because it never doesn't never feel conscious. It just comes up and it happens so repeatedly that I wonder if it's so unconscious. But it's interesting that you felt like you could let your god down after that. It's counterintuitive to me. So what is it? I can tell you like it's as simple as that. That I think it's more of a personality change that happens that I remember when this leads into complicated territories of gender. Like I remember when me to broke 2018, we were in office setting. So many men started saying, "Upto, you know, how do we even talk to our women colleagues?" Because even if you talk, they will make a case. There was this sense. Then I read this amazing piece on medium where this woman wrote that, "Look, all of the men who are asking this question, they should just do one thing. Every time you're talking to a woman, close your eyes and imagine you're talking to Dwayne Johnson." That is what you should think. The way you talk to that guy, talk to that woman, life will be easy. Because you just are talking to a. No, no. The essence was that why do you have to attribute. Why can't you just have a condition like a normal person and don't have any ambiguity? So again, for myself, I've seen the moment this. For the lack of a word, clarity happens that there is no. Any scope of ambiguity goes the way and I actually become my more authentic self in that conversation. and then that has led to so many good friendships from that point on. So again, I just want to clarify, it's not like a constructed pattern that I'm following. It's just that I've seen that so many times that now I see that there's something going on here about gender norms that has made me a bit conscious about what is the right way to be, how to exist, and then that defines my behavior. - It's almost as if in the film, "When Harry Mancehali", Billy Crystal is constantly arguing that every male-female relationship has that inherent tension within it, and there's no way past it and all that. So do you think that that's part of the case, that the reason you are so much at ease when she tells you that she has a partner, is that tension dissolves? - Yeah. - You finally be just another person. - You can finally be just another person. - Yeah, and as I also said in the beginning, like again, this is just a personality dive. It is whatever to me and my personal life that I air on the side of caution. Like one of my actually, you know, "Harry Mancehali" was inspired partly from Annie Hall. - Oh, I didn't know that. - How would there is a people have written about it? Have you seen Annie Hall? - Yeah. - He just, he just remembered. - But like that's one of my favorite movies. I think it told me so much, like, not, but I'll just talk about one scene from Annie Hall, which I think captures, like beautifully captures on film. What is happening? So when Woody Allen and Diney Keaton meet for the first time, you know, they are on a tennis court, okay? And then like Diney Keaton's like fumbling, like what should I do, how should I talk? So all kind of weird things happen. And in that chaotic moment, this is chalo. Let's try even. I will drop you. Drop happens and like there at say, "Harry Keoniche." And then now that tension moment second, like what happens now? Should Woody Allen go up to her house or not? And then that moment gets resolved. And now they are in the house. And you know, they're looking around and talking about things. Then they go out in the balcony. They're having a drink. And then there is this amazing scene where both of them start talking. And they are like talking like mad random stuff, really pretentious stuff about art and photography, something like Kuchubul Jare. And captions in the subtitles. They are both are talking about actually what are they talking about? They are talking about what are they talking about? Right? And like both are basically navigating this tension. Yeah. So that when that came up and I was like, okay, you know, like you generally don't know right about until you're like really, really lot of literature or movies like this that whatever, what are you talking but what is going behind your head? What is that dichotomy there? So that scene just told me that, okay, maybe some kind of, like you know, like confession or whatever, but this some other connotation mind, family happy. I read that scene completely different. How did you read it? That scene is I think about when people are floating with each other, they're trying very hard to be intellectual and act as if they're not floating. Like, oh, I'm into the same poetry. I like, oh, that's so intelligent. And so it's my part. But actually they're like, oh, I wonder what she looks like. Like make it. To me, that's enduring. It's a commentary on how floating in chemistry feels like and really trying to impress and be interesting to each other while secretly thinking about how much you want them. Yeah. So it's like stethersignalying is happening. So it really is. Yeah, but not in a, not in a like, ulterior motive. These are the real intentions. Which is how it is. Yeah, it's just like how chemistry feels. So let me, let me read out an extract, Len Laurie. He's just a great American scholar. You might have heard of him, African American guy. I think a ten-year-old professor at Harvard, at 23 or whatever. Recently, wrote his memoir. And he's talking about a date that he went on when he was young. And he says, over drinks, we do discuss politics and our career. And as we talk, I'm also working out a game theory puzzle in my mind. I desperately want to get this woman up to my hotel room. I hypothesize that she also wants to come up to my hotel room, but she does not want to appear cheap or overeager. If I proposition her to early to directly, she'll believe I think she is cheap and over. Yeah. And she'll say no on general principles game over. My solution to the problem is to not state my intent outright, but to reveal it progressively in such a way that I can plausibly disavow my true intent at any point without receiving an explicit rejection. The rule is this. So long as there is no rejection, the revelation of intent can progress. Once I cross a certain threshold in this progressive revelation of intent without receiving a no, I can make the proposition explicit with a sufficient degree of confidence that I'll receive a yes. This is very much a common-so-rate kind of person. [LAUGHTER] So, so, so. And now his words continue. So, Dan's begins in which I advance and retreat. We talk about politics. I answer her questions and ask them in response. I ask about a professor's at Smith about a class is slowly getting a little more personal. I make a joke that is maybe a little serious. I ask about the romantic partners and I watch her eyes. Is she avoiding eye contact? I hope not. That's the last stop before no. But she is holding eye contact. She is smiling and laughing. I deploy a double enthondra and she smiles again. And I ask her what's so funny, nothing she says. [LAUGHTER] I know that I am advancing more than I am retreating. I let her catch me looking at her legs and she does not try to cover herself up. At some point, I believe the threshold has been crossed. I don't really know if it has, but I decide that even if I get to know, it's OK, because I find that I really do like Pamela. The worst case scenario is that I've made a new friend. So, I suggest that we continue the conversation up in my room. And she says, yes. When we enter the room, she excuses herself to the bathroom and takes a purse with her. I sit and wait and wonder what's taking her so long. Finally, she emerges wearing nothing but a bra and a slip with no panties. In working through the many permutations of the seduction problem, I had not considered the scenario in which the intent to seduce was mutual. [LAUGHTER] And I found this such a-- So brilliant. Such a delightful-- And the raw fiction. This is-- This is a memoir. My first one from Glendory is a memoir. I came across it because I call Rob Henderson Postard. The same guy who coined the term luxury beliefs. And my question here is that what seems both funny and tragic during this whole dance of seduction is that both people are talking about things they don't really want to talk about. And they just have one thing on their mind. And it becomes this very complicated thing. And I think most dates will not necessarily end in a way that the intent to seduce is mutual as it is here. But in both heads, there are different scenarios playing out and different-- so for the guy, I'm sure when you were talking to that girl in the bookshop, beyond the bookshops is a layer of other thinking that is going on, except you're unable to act on it. And the girl also must have been thinking stuff. And even in this case, Pamela, is it where the girl he was dating? There's a drama going through her. I had also-- Why doesn't he fucking invite me to his room over the cases? So I'd like to know about how-- like in your experiences, how has this dance evolved for both of you? Because I guess when you first started dating, it's a particular kind of dynamic. And then you wizen up and then perhaps you want different things as well. And I'm sure it is completely and obviously different for each of you. So how does it really play out? But I have to say one thing that against not the best thing. That's my second one. I know this subject. No one gets to our seven, just continue. OK, so see this. I think with first to recognize that, a lot of Indian men just don't know how to float. You know. And you know, Ata in here. I'd like-- You know, like, hey, we're just not good at it. So now, in that tech world, what is happening? Like I recently read, maybe globally, how much problem do I know? But now, AI is actually trying to say that the main problem is, what is the main problem? Men don't know how to talk to women. So now, AI is going to engineer those conversations to fill in for the charm. You know, if the problem is-- No, no. It's like, F.T. article, you can read it. That is the problem that men don't know how to talk to women. So the AI chatbot can actually help you have those conversations so that on the apps, that whole sit-action process that happens on text, see what you're pushing out to present yourself can be mediated by the bot. So when I read that, then I didn't know what-- like, it felt very dystopian, that, like, what is happening. But also told me that, yeah, I'm-- I would not do-- but you know, see what is where I'm trying to go here, that this whole thing about the-- we're not going to be seeking it, and let the bot do this. Whole tension thing. [SPEAKING IN FAN] [SPEAKING IN FAN] So I just brought it up to say that-- The dance of seduction is being automated. Automated, and it's going in like real weird directions other than, like, personally, for me, I think there is a-- it's not really a mathematical game often about dating and relationships because he won bad experience. Actually, it's not something that you can always easily ignore, especially if it's something that the dance has happened for, let's say, weeks or months. You know, like, there is always this assumption that I've met someone on the app or met someone, and you're going through that zone. It's not very easy to let that experience-- like, you can just forget it because, you know, there are so many people out there. It's your catch feelings, you catch feelings. You catch feelings, and you see where I'm going, that it's not always like a mathematical thingy. [SPEAKING IN FAN] It's not a number. It's theoretically. Yeah, because you're not commodities. So I think, like, you have some of these foolish experiences that are in retrospect, you are like, what the hell did you just do? But I think a lot of that also comes from that when actually you try, sometimes things go well, sometimes you don't go well. And when they don't go well, and then the kind of impact it has on you is not simply about a rejection. It's-- it does something more to you. And I think that then shapes how you will be in-- Of course, so that is-- Yeah. Can you say this in concrete terms and make it real? About-- Tell us when you felt bad, basically. OK. I will find a way to-- You're too kind. A little bit more specific. So I think one of the hardest questions is really, like, are we friends or are we more? And like, forget, this is not a stranger meeting. This is someone that you know. And probably, how do you know it? That you're getting along well. You're talking. You have great time when you're together. So what is this? That's a question. you wonder, because you don't want to spoil the friendship. So if you make like a move, isn't the answer to this, something that comes with the initiation of physical contact. What? Like if you kiss your more than friends, if you don't, you're not there yet. But you have to initiate, right? I mean, just as a, hmm, you have to initiate. So for that to know whether to initiate, you want to have a sense of how they feel. Yeah. So it's great to articulate the turning point between, are we just friends or? Yeah. So I'm saying see there are so many variables there, right? Like now you have that feeling that are we friends or are we more? Now, how do you go from this to that? Like the process of knowing, right? Like you either, simple thing, people say, just ask. Yeah. Push low. Right? Like what is the, but there's like we said skill to ask king skill to ask, right? And then you figure out, okay, what is the most polite way to ask? Is there a, you have to drop hints? Because I also set the stage because the person on the other end is not set in stone. They may not be in the space, but with you in the space, they may develop feelings depending on how you play the game. So that's exactly where I was to know when you're asking in college. Now I asked you to elaborate also after this, but for just to like, so when you ask in concrete terms, I like if you are stuck with this question, let's say for weeks or months and you're always and there's something that happened like in retrospect like this, whatever I did here, didn't turn out like the answer was like your friends and I had imagined more than the person did. So then you know, there are all your assumptions about, okay, what are the hints that you're picking wrong? And this is a phase that again, thankfully, like I know so many people go through that. When you're in that zone, you want to pick up all science, kidney, any interested hand that you are amplifying your head and all science of disinterest, you will ignore because you want to believe kidney, meaning this is a story that it will go somewhere. So you see this pattern, even when you're seeing science of disinterest, you want to not acknowledge it and then a dance keeps happening. The problem happens when the, it feels like this person on the other side is also confused. And their behavior is not really always consistent and then you're like, you're not total mess. And as you are dealing with it and then the moment comes and you actually in the most right way, ask and it didn't work out then I think it just leaves a difficult, it leaves you in a difficult spot where then you are trying to reconfigure, okay, this is done like you take some time to move on. But then what should your index interaction be? Then there's a phase where like I went to this phase, when you go on the apps, then you start getting validation, you know, you're getting likes, talk a lot, it's like, I'm, you know, like it also happens with men, right? That you get some romantic validation on the apps, you start getting likes and you feel like, oh, you know, I'm still a commodity in the market that's valued. But then you then going to like, like what I'm really doing. So you go through this dance and then there's a point when it comes to like baseline normal. But all of this cycle is not lifelong. But it takes a toll on you is what I'm trying to say that. It's not really my. I love everything. Summer has said so far because it says that it applies to both genders, but especially having a man admit that yes, we catch feelings and it hurts when they're not reciprocated. That is so human. And that is just such a great point about like how the apps would have you approach dating as a numbers game as you're saying, probabilistically maxed out. And so what you have is multiple dances of seduction going on and where people don't remember what jokes they cracked were and what facts she knows about my life. Because I've told so many people the same 17 stories I have by now and it's you you're in touch with your humanity, which is great. And I think that if you have that element in your approach to dating, I think you're already better off than those who are looking at it as a numbers game. Because it prevents you from overdoing this numbers game thing. You will fall for authentic connections still. And also like that's also something I should please answer the reddit question. But I think one of my favorite answers on reddit on like, you know, there's a rabbit hole that when I and I think again, you get into key to go to the subject, and I get it will look at what it was because reddit feels like the best is on the internet. Yeah, I'm going to push back on that. I think men lean on reddit way too much. Way too much. But I'll provide some examples. Yeah, but I'm also like, you read it with a Google and you read it and see what other experiences. Then one person really said it like really nice. He said, look, his essence was do whatever, etc, etc. And of the way it comes down to luck. So like you will be like, so he was telling his own story that what happened period of time, it just luck struck and like is very happy with his partner. So that is what sometimes it feels like and this may be a delusion. But you okay, you keep feeling, you're wondering, you don't have skills or you actually don't know, you don't know anything. But somehow some magic will happen again. This is a very romantic ideal where you're taking it away from skill and letting chance to its thing. Yeah. But sometimes it also feels that this is the only way to do this, I think. Yeah. The moment you make a project out of it, it's a cool. Yeah. Yeah. I have a related question on that. Like one of the things that you also said in your piece where you'll speak about, you know, I wanted to explore something but I didn't know what to do. What was the process? What were the steps? How do you progress to the next stages? What were those stages? Could I be interested in someone else or not? What's right and what's wrong? Stop could all really charming questions and you obviously hadn't discovered Andrew Tate and all the sort of dating advice on Twitter. But so I kind of went into the rabbit hole of all these dating advice. I think Neil Strauss's book, The Game is also something. Yeah. Just because I just anthropological interest, I found it fascinating what the fuck is going on. And number one, of course, say, sort of dive into the hardwired buttons and they amplify on those. But also it is almost like, it feels so manipulative in the sense that there will be advice like if she texts you, don't reply immediately. Your text should always be shorter than hers. You have to make her wait. You have to make her crave your attention. You should not simp. You should not have. What toxic amacrosses? It's a bit of a deal. And I wonder how do you draw the balance between that? Because when you meet someone, you want to be your authentic self. But at the same time, you want to succeed. And I lost both of you this, but you know, from that male point of view, some of you first, that how do you then deal with this? Because you don't want to manipulate at the same time, you want to fucking win because you don't want to be a loser again. And you know, what all of this advice says is that if you're too needy, if you're too much into it, they'll just turn away. You know, you've got to be, you've got to ignore them a bit. And it's just very, very toxic. So how? I think I've already told stories that should tell you that like not really good at it. But I think even when you look at all these traits, these are not something that like I imagine myself doing. These are just toxic behaviors. So the worst thing that you can do and I think like now I've been, I was uninitiated, but teen cells are in the zone. We are trying to figure out dating protocols and trying to figure out what's the right way to talk. You go on dates, you meet people. The worst thing you can do is not be yourself. We are weird in our own ways. And it actually, things where actually things work out are where you like really feel comfortable to get to that stage where you can actually start the conversation by your weird ideas. And I realize, even if I want, if this is the way, like, things to do, then though I'm a definite loser. So you got any like even on the apps when you start conversation, like sometimes I actually start, like once I actually put it on my hinge prompt that so yeah, I mean, basically I'm supposed to create a charming prompt so that or create that first message to entice you and fake a personality so that you'll start talking to me. All of these things. In search, clever line here. In search, like all the things we do on hinge prompts. Just to catch attention. And you just feel so shit about yourself that I am not this person. Why do I have to behave like this? And again, maybe so I may not be playing trying to play the game. You do it in a sense when you are in a situation and then you do weird things like Instagram story here to immediately need a knee. You know, you know, you know, I was just going to say in response to that list of things you get out and the general like nobody I think who's ever been in love would tell you to do those things. Those are only single people selling to other people who share their loneliness and see a market and want to plan like whatever manuscript exists. I'm glad. I think. But are the other roles of the game you keep in mind because I imagine like the female version of that kind of advice would be that you should not come across as too forward and you should take it. Yeah. I hate that advice. I think I hate when I like the idea of curtailing how much affection and chemistry I'm feeling with you when playing it cool. When I do that, I feel like I'm then what is the point? I'm not saying be madly deeply in love. And if someone is just sort of, Rekha Jha has this wonderful piece on floating and I it's one of I mean, I'd rarely ever reread pieces but I've read that twice. And in it she says that floating is like a game of, you know, two people are standing at opposite ends of a field. One person takes a step. I'd leave the other person can just take one more step towards you and match. But the giver takes a one and a half steps or a two step and then slowly that person takes two or three steps and then you meet at the middle. It has a net unattractive to let the other person take all the steps or for you to run across the field without seeing any motion on that side. Both are equally an acceptable and she actually likings it to the psychologically to the toddler worldview where the expectation is that you are just loved by your parent without you having to do anything. So unless you are psychologically well enough to see it as a mutual obligation and be secure, match it as you see. Maybe a little more if you're if you're that type of you can see that potential here. But I think that's a great framework for floating and for people who have, you know, and she says that the real grown-up people seek joy in giving and I feel like yeah that's that's kind of what I mean when I I want to float back like I want to I'm totally I've asked guys out I find someone cute. I was in Prague traveling per solo part of my europex change strip. It's cute. I thought he was the cashier of the store but don't know he owned the store and well done. nice. I built something and I was like holy shit this guy is cute I must do something it felt criminal to me to not act on my desire and so I leave and I'm like you know what I need a bit of courage only great if I found someone who had a certain something I could smoke and soon enough I smell it and he's another guy and I'm like you know what it's rude to smoke alone when you're he offers some of it to me and I take it as a sign I'm like shit I found the thing I needed to go and ask him out I go back into the store and I'm like I've thought what I said was supremely charming but he basically we exchanged numbers what did you say I don't remember exactly or something like oh this bottle I bought was not the only thing I wanted from here or something can you please give it to me if a guy says that you're calling security bus yeah exactly right as a woman you have some leeway to you know the when a woman is forward it's can be charming and attractive but when a guy that's the whole distrust and the wife you sad for me to desire being demonized I mean there's nothing you can do about it because you can't stop the other members of your gender from being violent overnight it's a long repair this near but I was yeah I think I don't like curb I don't like following these rules I see the value in like not running across the field when all you've seen is one step forward I've done that and I've had my heart broken again from someone who would give me these mixed signals yeah and I think typically when that happens when you're encountering people there's a bit of this this the term I learned for it is limerence where you actually what what's happening there is you're seeing parts of yourself in them and you're infatuated and what you need to do is integrate those parts qualities within you and then you can like when you are actually evolved and mature you can do the secure attachment of one step one and a half to three like that right also do you feel that so I think yeah just in summary to the like I think that is a great way to approach flirting this yeah sorry well asking that again in the situations like beyond flirting like the first encounter yeah this rational part of you then comes in like see there is emotion which like there's no logic to most of these things right it just things are happening you're going with the flow and take it but then your other part also comes in that you want to actually criticize the other person key in the year with love why do you give me signals or whatever is happening but then you also like I know what is the full context in which this person is operating and what are the parts that I am missing out that with going on their life and how they were perceiving me that I am either idiot who read everything wrong or like do you do you get into the zone or is it mostly just like you did wrong with me because I am hurt so is the question that if you feel wronged in such a romantic altercation yeah do you call them out on it do you call like okay like you know you're starting to talk like what is your sense of right or wrong here like yeah yeah how do you think about it so in this case the first time it happened to me was also the first time I was rejected rejected by this guy that I thought was giving me all the signals okay he was dropping or notting hill references and you know gushing over my words every girl right or one side you think you see whatever you love it I'm like wow you can't love it if you're not into me into me yeah he just kept flirting with me and at some point I was like if stop flirting if it's just we've reached a boiling point over weeks that if you don't make a move of some sort I'm just like what is this energy it needs release right needs some progression I was like I'll ask you out and that was the time my charm didn't work or so I think because he was just like I wasn't flirting with you at all and I felt gaslighted at the point I was like what no way when you mention we got peace about that full flirting dance yeah the thought that struck me is that everyone will like especially all men will define flirting differently and they'll see signals when they're on advice and you simply and that becomes so complicated that instead of flirting with the woman you're basically fighting a war with yourself like young summer trade in that bookshop and then it can kind of so to answer his question in this case I was like then why are you sending me these things if you're like it to me these things are what define flirting and if you don't mean then you're gonna have to change the way you talk to me yeah and for a bit there was a bit of change but then he wrote me a fucking poem and I was and then I was like on my birthday and I was like I thought maybe you over time again change your mind or there was a evolution in your feelings and he's like no I just wrote you a poem and I was like fuck off I don't think we can talk anymore I know exactly what you mean and I think when that happens it's because you need to grow up those those damaging experience are actually learning yes that you need to have they're very and that is why the whole AI thing right it's so broken because like this whole process of dating as much as like it feels hard and hard on yourself and like what are we going through and you know we have a life to be in the elks for like so much is happening and then this feels like a second full-time job kind of a scenario but I always when you have to go through this you know to actually learn and be a good partner I think there was one thing you said that I wanted to add to which earlier you said there's here's two people talking about things they don't want to talk about with the expectation of the mutual intent if me or me not being repeat and for me I just I don't think it's things I don't want to talk about I'm explicitly if the conversations are great as someone's a hinge from said and we didn't go on a date was like if our conversation don't bang we won't either I think that's true talking having a lot to talk about and it's effortless and it's intellectual and dumb and silly and smart at all at once is what I'm looking for so that dance has always been very real for me and the beginning of everything and it's necessary to build intimacy and then once you've done that you know the intent forms for me also the fear of writing and being honest in my writing and I think some of us knows a bit of the discomfort that I have in every time I admit that I might feel like I'm Bolly or I have leaning towards Bolly's I just don't want to label for so many reasons one is that I think there is a judgment that's going to happen if a woman says she's Bolly then that means she's frivolous and free and that's not true where you feel connection you feel connection and it's nothing morally wrong about that but people seeing that way is a real distinct because they might be actually men that I can make them an augmentation should work with it depends person to person that may not see me the same way because I've said this out loud the second thing is actually don't know if I'm Polly like what if it's just a avoidance response where I don't want to commit to any one person and I'm just like okay with half-seeing a few people because intentional me scares me and like mad at scarves you. There's a label on a frame even matter I mean you go through a label. Which is why I don't use any of these labels I'm like I don't know. So has a has a has a sort of a multi-part question as it were for you guys which is that how does dating change you and I can see it working in two ways that one the positive ways could be dashed in anything that we do and this is a very quote-unquote masculine way of looking at it but anything that we do iteration makes us better and if we date a lot then we get better at you know playing the game so to say and understanding other people and etc etc and another way in which it can really work for you is that you get a wider choice you meet more people you might even get clarity on what you want which you otherwise might not know when you set out. However there are a bunch of negatives also attached to this for example you know because you're meeting so many people and you have multiple things going on there they can be less imaginative investment in the people like when you meet someone and you attract it to them and you got feelings and then you're imagining something and they're imagining something and that can go too far you can fall in love with your image person rather than yourself. But at least there is that investment happening and there is that work happening and whereas if you're just seeing multiple partners at a time you're not it's almost like really shallow you're flitting from thought to thought that is one negative one other negative could be that you could become hyper aware of each person shortcoming because you have so many other people to compare them with. Like one of the past guests on the show Utsav Mamoria he was chatting about this and he quoted a friend and he's he said quote I'll quote him in this online dating feels like a boufet you can like quality one in person a quality two in person B and get satisfied by dating multiple people we forget that we're looking for one person who will not have all the qualities you may want and hence they are not satisfied with any one single person stop good I think he was quoting a friend of his and again so it could just make you dissatisfied with everyone right so you could meet Rocky and you could think he knew you know Sartok is richer and however. Subot is honest Rocky has a great body summer dishonest and they all have like a friend quality so they're all actually one person in this particular case the other one person but apart from so you know what is that process do you feel jaded like I did an episode with Malini Goel on her book in Bangalore unboxing Bangalore and she had a great chapter on Tinder there where like one of the revelations was that they did the data science thing apparently Tinder and they found that in Delhi the point of contact like the amount of time between first point of contact and one person going to one of those houses like six months major trust issues when somebody does go to someone's house it takes six months in Bombay it's a few weeks in Bangalore just a few days so Bangalore it's just a few days but that was a quantitative data work that she did but she did the qualitative stuff of actually doing a survey and speaking to people and she said they're all freaking unhappy because there are so many choices and they just don't feel the connection and etc etc so what do you feel about you know what the process kind of does to you you want to start I don't feel unhappy in the sense because for me I'm not upset about having new conversations and meeting new people and like I have a bunch of friends that I've made off of meeting people on dates and just not wanting to comment for whatever reason you see this flow that club it's just you don't feel all you feel that maybe a thirties thing also because I've spoken to a few people in their thirties was like I just don't feel romantic the way I used to in my twenties where you meet someone you catch feelings, you go all in. You just, you're not, I think we're all in more individualized age of our lives, where focuses on yourself and companionship seems to be the dominant mode of relating. So maybe relationships themselves change over time. So I don't feel unhappy about being on the apps and meeting people. The moment I feel like, oh, I have to get married by 32, or the thing is when the unhappiness creeps and when I've made it a project and I made it a goal and I've set timelines and I'm tracking where I am versus that and I have like six leads, three of them, I'm scoring, you know, probability that makes me unhappy. That's that's one. So if you don't make it a project, I think you, you're, you're, you're, you stand to have like good conversations with people. I would say that like, I think again, if you have to make a framework to this, right? Like, dating and relationship is an explore explore problem. Right? Like classic that. First, like, you know, the explore explore problem, like you're in a city, there's so many restaurants, where you go to if you keep trying new restaurants all the time, then how will you enjoy the one good that you so if you are on an endless exploration, you're losing out on the joy and you'll have to go to a lot of city restaurants. But if you just like find a good place and then stick to it, you lose out on so many other things. So in so many cases in life, right? You have to find the right balance between explore, explore it in careers. The thing with just in context of dating apps and not just modern dating in general, is that of course, like you're always, it gives you more choice. So you feel like, you have so much to explore and then you can find a point and like stop and exploit. It's just that apps make the process of exploration very taxing. Like, you know, the hard part should come at exploitation. You know, when you're actually doing the hard part of building a relationship, trying to actually know that my romantic idea of this person actually doesn't fit in, but I've committed. So, you know, you go on that journey, but just the exploration part, like the way, just structurally the way apps are built. It just makes it very, at least for me personally, a very taxing experience. And the trap is that you know this. It's I'm not really feeling amazing by swiping left, swiping right. And you delete it. And then you'll feel like, you know, I'm beyond this. I'm going to meet people here and there. The in my mind, you'll make an account again. And that's this cycle that you get stuck in, that despite knowing that this app is going to subject myself to misery, you always feel there is some possibility because you know, if you're in the dating market, then you have to be on the apps, like, how can you not be there? So it gets me into that zone. And you know, that's where the Reddit quote, you know, actually makes sense because for men, like actually, if you look at the stats, and again, I'm not saying that as a matter of complaint, it's just a statistical observation that across okay, keep it Tinder and hinge all three internal data sets have shown something very clear that how does dating apps work? Hey, there are more men than women significantly more men than women men send more likes than women. And there is deep attraction inequality. So in hinge, their data scientists actually put out a paper or blog where he said that top in terms of attraction, top 10% of men get 16% of likes. So it's a three-tiered market. They're top 10%. Then in the 50 to 90th percentile that Uscabazzara, that's the second market. And the niche is a bottom 50%. They get 60% of the likes. So you see the. So it's 16% or 60% the top top. Top. Top. Top. tile or whatever that top bracket gets how many% of the likes. Just give me or I don't want to factually be incorrect. Yeah, while you look that up, I just wanted to say that the way I started to approach my profile when I realize that if I want to meet quality people whether or not it leads to romance or just a friendship, I'm going to have to signal things about myself that attract the people that I'm likely to be friends. So I made an effort. Like my humor is a specific kind of humor. So I've answered prompts in a certain way. And so you are actually the way people type what they've revealed about themselves in a profile, you know, those height, whatever filters, the institutions you're from. There's a lot that you can profile about someone based on these things. And so if I'm getting a match or I'm sending a match out, I think my initial instinct is am I going to vibe with this person and then later meeting and finding out I think I'm usually right about that. I'll come to that. But just to get this statistic right, I think totally messed it up. Sorry. Is top 1% of men on hinge receives 16% of all likes 16 top 10% receive nearly 60% of total. The bottom 50% receive 5%. So basically if you are in the top 10% you'll have a good time getting matches and I have friends who get that. If you are in the 50 to 90th percentile, there is still a possibility. Right? Like you'll get matches, you'll go on dates. But if you're on bottom 50% that's when you're like sitting on weeks, you're not getting a single like and I know people like that. And it's like really demeaning about like you know, you start questioning yourself for like what is happening. Do I all sorts of things happen to men? And that is where then you start being money. Yeah. Right? And now like a friend of mine who was telling me that in Bangalore, like when he like he was not getting any likes on Bumble like zero. Then he was like he was making good money. Then classic engineer mind. He was like okay, what have I run an experiment? I test and do something. Then he created a fake profile of woman. Like he said he I did a photo. Nothing on the Bumble profile. Just the photo. And then he like for crazily started understanding what kind of profiles are he being showed? What is he showing? How are you getting matches? Then he created another fake profile of a man. Don't know phone. So that there's no location. Like you know, location to start me and then what I'm starting doing a bit. I see and came up with a framework. How to crack the algorithm? In a month, he went from zero likes investing 10,000 rupees a month to getting 50 likes on Bumble. So he said and usk about like he got really fed up and then left the apps. But he was his main conclusion was that if I'm not pumping in money and I'm not that conventionally attractive. Then either I spend or I should be on the apps. So this again, not something that is super surprising. But once you hear about all of this, it just feels actually very exploitative that the business model of the apps kind of works on the loneliness of men, especially if you're not getting attention. Especially since I suppose men are the bigger paying segment since they want to be able to send more likes. They want to send more likes and again, you know, right? Like how many matches you get? Yeah, I can see. There's some statistic also around like every second or third profile you'll swipe right. Possibly gets you a match on Bumble. Have you experiences? What do you mean? Like what's there? Okay. If I swipe right, which is accept a match, I've got him and we are matched. So what is your probability that if you swipe right, the match happens 100%. Because they don't get like because they have sent me the match. And if I've accepted it, then we match. But if I've sent the match, yeah, then I have to wait for them to accept it and then we match. There is no second. How often does the second will happen? Where I'm sending my default flow when I open one of the apps is I see the matches I've got. None of them are. Yeah. I think then I start swiping. Yeah. And sometimes it's for me. It's like swiggy or opening the fridge. Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like browsing Facebook on an social media. I'm just talking, seeing what they said. I've become totally ruthless and brutal about it. I know. Just take photo. I chanilaga. It's like it's really brutal. And I mean to imagine like it's also how people view your stories on Instagram, right? It's like a huge part of your life and they're just they're not noticing the song you've put up with it. They're not noticing your makeup. It's a feed. And that's why I like to sum up what I'm trying to say is that the experience of men on the apps and the experience of women in the apps is very different. I don't know if you have the similar pyramid for women like what percentage of women get how many matches. Actually, that's very interesting because when the stats came out, like people are talking about I'm sure all the women will get matches. Zero, but there's no way to have because men are so. I don't think that's very nice. Actually, I should. This one's that on. I have gone through a friend's profile in Hinden. I saw like the number of her matches. They were like Hinge sort of shows you up to 50 and then 50 plus. Who is it? And it was I mean, not it was not the 50 plus range. So it's not like it's not like women are all drowning in matches either. The question is a fundamental question. Yeah. That what do men want and what do women want? And my sense is that men and women have always wanted different things whether because of wiring or social conditioning or patriarchy or whatever you feel the reasons, but they've always wanted different things. And once upon a time, you had an equilibrium that kind of sorted for reasonable non-unhappiness of both types of people, which was you have a traditional kind of in India, you have an arranged marriage and then you're married for the rest of your life and deal with it. And I'm broad. You have different kinds of customs, but eventually you're supposed to be kind of monogamous and that's a whole deal and marriage is supposed to be a particular thing. Man is provide a woman takes care of the house and these are terrible children. And that equilibrium seems to have completely fallen apart and it no longer sort of works and it was always a sort of a very shaky little thing and it's completely falling apart. And I'll come to the marriage end of it later, but as far as the dating end of it is concerned, how does that happen? Like when you when a man goes on a dating app, what do the men want? What do the women want? How do they deal with the differing ones of the other sex? And how does it change as you become sort of older? Like how what do men in their thirties want? What do women in their thirties want? So, you know, so I can tell you I don't want to be Chetan Bhagat and say what men want. What young Indian? I think every time you generalize your obviously wrong, but you also obviously there's a kernel of truth and all that. So in general, I just generalize your build that caveat. Yeah. So there's definitely a age factor to it. One of the things I write when you're dating around 30, again, please confirm the trend. I have seen that woman I actually get along with, they are on the apps with the goal to marry. Right. And they will make it very clear. There's not even ambiguous that they want to be clear that look like we're getting along. Let's meet. But I want to be clear about my intention that if it goes somewhere, then it's about marriage. If the and I know men also who say can aim shadi.com can't just say and we want agency. So we'll do that. That I think is not essentially the case when you're in your early 20s because you're still more in the open exploratory zone. So then that starts creating dissonance and that's where like I feel that you're I'm not on the apps with the goal to give me like a project to find my wife, which if you tell it, then it's assumed that your commitment for big or you're not into long term relationship. But you know, get into that nuance. Like if you are saying that you want to be in a long term relationship, then how can you not talk about marriage? So so much of this tension starts happening because you know, if you're not approaching dating as a project, if it's like, okay, we're going with the flow, let things happen, then you know the attraction and the emotional connection that you feel that leads you to possibility of, okay, I want to build a life for this person. So what do I need to do to enable that? And then you start thinking about compatibility. Like Alan DeBotten has this great quote where he says that compatibility is not a precondition for love. You know, you know, love leads to compatibility. Like you make things happen. And that's actually much more likely to happen when the two people are meet get together relatively young. What happens at what you do that you start evaluating from date one that okay, long term commitment. So this is all you have. So this is not all of these, you know, things that could you could change as a person, it could evolve. You're taking off the boxes right in very first few dates and that starts feeling again, depending on what goals you are. It feels a lot of pressure that you have to fit in a certain archetype of who's a man at 30 what he wants, what he does not want. So again, I think I've digress from telling you about men want I'm just talking about personal experience about dating around 30. Then it becomes a little more a more goal oriented rather than exploratory and that really creates a dissonance because the checklists in some ways, you know, start showing up. You start to see see my top area's point. Oh my god, you guys have seen. I have sent you know, this is a matchmaker show in the matchmaker. I haven't seen it. She's like 60 70% only you'll get 100% your date. Yeah. Which is what I was saying. Now if you want to get, then only 60 70%. But if you're looking for 1890 100% you don't need to get you can just. Yeah. What's it been for like for you and your girlfriends and like typically what do they want? How do those want to evolve, etc. I would say that I think it probably what we seek for in a man probably differs from girlfriend to what we like and what a piece to us. But I think generally my my thing says on hinge the way to win me over is by being weird and unusual but also stable. Which means half personality but don't be a waco with substance abuse issues. So the guy with read that was either way, but what about that? It's specific. It's like. Yeah. I mean what do you want like you want me to be stable but also want me to be weird. So like there's so much like you can do so much. I know I'm weird and unusual but stable. I think but that's you should be concrete. You know the whole idea about abstract concrete like if you're concrete in weirdin what way and all like men can go in there. So once you provide a metric they will game it. They'll give it so you don't want to provide. But I think the men who will appeal to me it's like you know along with the other things have written it's it's going to strike a chord and I feel like it's led me to at least friendships and people who are like generally off beat like but they're not you know falling apart they're not emotionally unstable and how do you check it from the profile? No, no conversation. Conversation. Sex from the way they're texting and then subsequent behavior. And they make you wait and then do you anticipate that X more if they make you wait? That's it. I'm trying not to be that girl who's allured to by the absence because that shows that you're obsessed with the space between you other than the person and that's not healthy it means you have some work to do. I'll also tell you to or the train I think I want your response on it. Yeah. So I have one rule which is again reason why I'm single. If your rules are fascinating I think you should write a book how to be single. I'm telling you I'm an expert on big singles. I can talk about it for. You said this before we got actually think about it without trying effortless effortlessly single but see for women on the dating app says sense high just high then I will not engage with that person because it's like you know men are supposed to craft like super interesting first problems first because you know to catch your attention. Like you can't do. You like you'll say high and then again you leave it key up to me. You have to and then all not because there's so much in my profile like I would like it's not like proms and not saying anything. I'm not saying my most controversial opinion is pineapple and pizza all of those you know things that people write here. So if you just send me high then it means it you want men to put effort but you don't want to put any effort then I'm like okay thanks by you know so that's the same rule and in this case I'm of the fact you know a general lack of personality lack of a word is probably common to I'm a I'm a wanderlust I'm like really my favorite book is 1000 Clintid sons. The best way to ask me out is asking out. Yeah all of that is I think that's enough it exists on both sides. Yes. So I'm through this conversation must be obvious to any listener but this is a very sisset oriented discussion. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's the people of the other general mostly straight and except some are just really looking for no one from what it's you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but the other thing is I feel like men don't ask any questions. I yesterday I'm not sure the guy where the first message was he said when do we start I mean it was a good response to my prom to K. It was like I'm okay with this when do we start. I thought like yeah good good like sounds like you have you know verbal game you can give to the gab. So I respond with something and then he had said if loving this is wrong I don't want to be right and the thing he said was math I was like why would anyone dislike math and he's like lots of people are scared of math. I said yeah women especially I've seen that and then I ask a question which is very very from and he's just applied one word answer. And then I'm like so wait I asked you a question you've answered it. I would assume like the one and a half thing needs to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I am a match because I've seen too much of this type where they don't give a two questions I've asked a rule which is the response to your thing and then my own question. Yeah. And you know his pictures have this whole like. Teen button. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like do it if you're not going to ask me questions I don't want to get to know you because I feel like most of the times I'm carrying the conversation. Yes. In on a date like I've guys working at EY I'll be like what's your job at EY like. How often on dates do you feel that the person is really interested in you and not asking questions to fill the gap and to play the game. When it's on date almost I feel like it's it's when you find someone it's rare to keep those people in your life and those are the people in my life but I have been on many bad dates and I also feel like I having now been on the market and I think I've made a great decision to follow my single call to singlehood because I have now like I start to notice what I like and what I dislike more when I'm interacting with someone and I really notice the guys who ask questions were just listening because they like your thoughts and they want to get to know you better and sure there's a mutual intent hopefully it's there like I I know that if I'm attracted to someone I will have that intent and I will be floating back and stuff but yeah you genuinely you're interested in the other person's thoughts their mind is unique to you you're you have fun talking to each other and that's what I think that's why I haven't given up on monogamy's that I don't think I want to like see multiple people all my life I want to find someone I can actually grow old with and not get bored with or be bored with even like we can talk about things we can be quiet but those are the things that I'm looking for without saying it's for marriage yeah like those are the qualities that I'd like to have when you said there are a lot of bad dates but you also said previously about the intuition being better with though you know like the checklist on the yeah yeah because I would initially have an impression I'd be like we're probably not going to get along with what's to lose I'm going to get a story out of it which is what I mean by my expectation of bad experiences so that I get to talk about it yeah but I've had a few really funny bad dates yeah and I just like I'm based on the interaction I'm like love to me right he's going to be fun but I'm going to see what's going on. So go back to the earlier question which came from the reddit code yeah did you you mentioned you said you said you said you're bored low you know just elaborate on that like from where you're like what is a minimum like I think you know that particular metric that oh he's listening to me and asking cool questions and he's genuinely curious I think is a fantastic metric then of course you know even I would take people like that into my life but apart from that what are the metrics what are the red flags and how much have you lowered your bar because I don't think it's a very conventional experience that I have here it's very like what I meant by the fatherless experiences that you emotional absence or even like abuse basically feels normal to you and it feels like even if someone's treating you like shit, it's fine, it's part and parcel of love because love you'd never get your 100% you, you're going to be exposed to a person's dark side and you continue to love them through that. And when I'm in lowered my standards, I'm in like yes, I've known this person for, we've dated for three, you know, like a long time, there's a lot of history. So I'm willing to actually, with my friends also excuse a lot because if like it's not a deal breaker and 30% of you is rotten to the core, 70% is fine. I think that ratio is there for everyone. Is there a sense for you guys that as you go on more and more dates for what constitutes as a successful date or whether you decide whether the second date or whatever level you take it to, is there a sense of settling at some point, settling in the sense of, you know, not having your expectations as high as it would have been the very first time. I think you can tell in 25 minutes whether you're going to see someone or even less like just based on how smooth the conversation is with the vibe is you should be able to tell very quickly if you want to see this person. Again, if you're having to force it and just the vibes are off like, I've learned to not disregard that initial instinct because it has fallen flat on its face because you're the one who's finding the vibe off. No, and you will not change immediately. So if you just trust your instinct on this. Yeah, one of my friends explained to me this way that if you have to actually think too much and probably it will not work out because then it works out. It actually feels effortless. In fact, Nikhonby, I think in one of his books, I forget which one was it high fidelity? In one of his books he talks about how, you know, if a girl is going to be with you, she's decided in the first five minutes. Everything after that is completely irrelevant. So you don't need to stress out what it was a context like what five minutes has in in the first five minutes of the date or meeting or whatever she's decided and after that it's it's, you know, and when we'll overthink it and they'll plan every move and the point is in her head to see there are no worries already really soon is that the case. One of my pet theories about why dating modern dating is hard is like I've the people I've had serious relationships we've all been from the same institution at some point. So we have gotten to know each other without ever having the project or intent of dating when we started to talk. We were first like, oh, you're a person I've noticed you're in the same college. We got to know each other this and then it unfolds and develops no agenda. Whereas with dating the explicit agenda is I'm now going to be sizing you up based on my idea of what I think is right for me which could anyway be wrong. And then I'm checking you off this thing. I'm face a chani like a kombati a chini ki tumni siru deli bhol a kumat karum hai. You get all these it's very very, you know, algorithmized. So the lack of like a third place as people call it, I'm not the first one to bring this up. Basically, there's a third place theory where you don't need the first place's work, second place is home, the third place is where you go agenda. You know people, you mean people. So I think again, it basically means you don't have a plan which is anxiety inducing. You're just like I need to go hang out at places where I'm a shared activity. Yeah. Featured interest. Yeah. Have you guys heard of the pineapple experiment and spain the whole pineapple thing? So I mean, we're all deficient in different ways. We shall correct it. But the thing is, you can't make me watch modern family now, but I can tell you about the pineapple now. So I asked a bunch of my writing students that I'm doing an episode with Summerth and someone else who I didn't name because I hadn't taken your permission on whether on modern dating and so on and do they have any questions. And one of them, Rushmi pointed it pointed me out to this pineapple crazed that is going through Spain. And apparently it's this and there are TikTok videos on it, I'll link from the show notes that where there's a custom, there's a supermarket chain called Murca Dona, right? So the deal is right on a particular day. I think it's a Friday evening. People go to Murca Dona and they have to go to the pineapple counter and if they place a pineapple upside down in their shopping cart, that means that they are looking for something. Then they have to take the those cards to the wine section. And if somebody bangs your cart against you, that indicates that they are interested. And and here's where it gets really interesting. If you put lentils in your cart, that means that you're looking for something long term because lentils last. But if you put letters in your cart, it means you're looking for something short term because letters doesn't last. And when I heard about this and it might well be a marketing exercise by someone like you, Sanjana. In this too, Murca Dona, for my magnificent India may suggest you're. But what I loved about it was not the pineapple or the Murca Dona part. So far so good is like a dating app in the real world. What I love was the lentils and the letters because you're completely like putting it out there then. And then there is no scope for deception. There's no scope for guessing and you're not playing those kind of games and that. And I kind of really like that. And I wonder what you feel about that. Like is it sort of like in life, what is exhausting is you're always playing different fucking roles for people. And eventually we grow old and tired and we say, "Oh, Nigan, I am who I am fucking." But you know, and in dating, it must be like way harder because you have to continuously pretend and project yourself of yourself and all that. And I, you know, isn't pineapple and lentils and letters? It's, you know, the pretend sends out the, so what are what are sort of your feelings? Like what are the results of this experiment? Like what did it let? It's not an experiment. It's become a custom. It's a social norm. There are videos of it. There are videos of that pineapple store and it's full of people and all that. I'll send you TikTok video. I know some friends who have gotten married off of dating apps. So safe to say that it's not maybe all bad. Of course. There are so many friends stories. And it's a neighbor that access that, you know, the shiqit at school could never talk to the popular girl that that status has fallen apart because you don't know who the popular girl at school is just based on her profile. And you don't know that he's a shiqit off the face of it. So yeah, maybe it's not all that bad this whole thing. But like this, I don't know, it just sounds very funny and gimmicky. Exactly what you're doing on all these apps. Yeah, it's just like it's codified, right? There is less to go by than on a dating app. What? In this people's showing, except you see their full bodies and everything, but like the banging carts is not a euphemism. And someone might well say for conversation, don't bang the carts, one bang. But I just I wanted to say something when I think someone mentioned just give up all hope, right? Like and this is a new angle to the whole thing. But my dominant approach to a lot of life problems now is manifestation. Oh my god. There's a lot of three. Sorry. There's a lot of manifestation works. You shouldn't disparage it. Or asparagus it. I'm not as vegetative. Carry on. Discrash and asparagus are the same. Manifestation. Yeah. He isn't. No, but there's so many courses. The whole industrial complex of spirituality, manifestation is about they know what people want in their lives. They want affluence, abundance, wealth, good career, good partner, soulmate, attract your soulmate, all these courses. And that's the superficial level of it. But I think when I have set an intention, take an action towards it, more often than not. It's worked out for me. And when it's not worked out for me, it's taught me something that's made me become the person who eventually gets it. So I just feel like you should trust the universe with more things. And I think that's the world's difference. Don't just at a very fundamental level. What is the difference? In this whole idea of manifestation and you know, the universe will conspire to get you what you want. If you believe in it, that's fundamentally manifestation, right? That you have to build your own kind of thing. It's not like you just decide. You know the manifestation thing, right? No, I don't. See, it's harmless, but it's also like very pseudo scientific. Do you believe language shapes thoughts? Of course. Then manifestation is kind of real. Because your thoughts shape your reality. And it's not about, give me a concrete example of how this would work out. This is what I've also mean by my transition from like, you know, sociopathy to genuine self love and other love and rationalism to be rooted in and having experienced manifestations, let's say. Yes, but elaborate. I'm not going down to a science. No, but I'm particularly interested in what you said about how language shapes thought and thought shape people and so yeah, yeah, that aspect of it, not necessarily with something personal, but just to get a sense of, you know, I'm not saying like, okay, I think that I should be 10 KG's lighter. And so tomorrow I in two days, so in two days, it happens. So of course, it's bound by the constraints of reality and stuff. You can't bend the laws of physics. That's not what I mean, but I wanted to be a writer. Why was I meant to be a writer? But things happened that really sort of, I think, impossible things happened on my way to becoming a writer. And I'm not saying that the universe conspired. I made it happen. I was in the right place in the right time. I pitched, I got the opportunities, everything, like, I feel like you guys are so blank right now. No, you finished. No, you know, you know, you want to be listening on this right? Yeah. So is it that the thoughts I get are thoughts that are meant to be true and they go, they come true or can I just do anything? I don't know about those two things. Maybe I am meant to find the right person and by thinking about what that relationship would feel like and not feeling a sense of land. You get, I agree with this. Yeah. Where I agree with this is like this is advice. I must have picked it up from James Cleyer, I think, but I use it in my writing course when I talk about process is that, you know, Nike say, just do it, which is great. And I also talk about the importance of bias for action for creators. Yeah. But I also think there's an importance of just be it. And that is in the sense that if I am going to say want to be a better reader and I will say, okay, between seven and eight every day, I will read. And that's just do it kind of thing. And I do it one day. I do it another day. Then I fall of the wagon. Then I say, fuck it. I can't do this anymore. Let me go on and I'll try and find and etc. and you follow the wagon and it creates a vicious cycle where your actions or your lack of them lead to your self image going down. But instead if you just own a version of yourself, say you think about who is the best version of me, what do they do, which I don't, what do they not do, which I do, and you own that. And then you construct your self image by saying something like, I'm a self dot polymath. Whenever I'm bored, instead of reaching for a phone, I reach for a book. You know, then that thought can actually shape your action because once you own that self image, you will start reading more. This is kind of exactly what I mean. This is what I, like I went through having, you know, sort of what I mean by emotional regulation when you fall into negative thoughts, pirates that you know that I'm not going to help you if you really believe them. So notice your thoughts, change them when they occur if they're not helping you. I also gave into the flip side the summer, where I was like, I have reason to feel bad. I'm shoving my feelings away. I'm suppressing them if I don't indulge them. And so I let myself, follow in the despair that I was feeling and I became worse. Like I didn't sort of take the necessary actions to take care of myself every day. I was sort of balluing and not acting as the self that I wanted to be, but I wasn't just universe was not giving me the things I wanted. So I was just throwing a tantrum and then I made my life objectively worse. And I was like, okay, it doesn't actually help to indulge every thought and feeling. You can control your thoughts. So what you've been doing all this time, just start doing it again. And I'm doing better now. So what I mean is just you need to just think of yourself as, so when you have these setbacks where you say, talk to someone and you thought it was something and it don't not to not be that. It's not that you need to reevaluate your understanding of the dance and how people talk to each other. It just didn't work. That's how life is. And that the right thing is eventually out there and everything is leading you to that. And you can just keep doing the things you do, but like just have good thoughts basically. I will just think that there's a certain reflexivity in the world that if you think negative thoughts and you're pushing yourself down all the time, things will get worse. It'll be a vicious cycle. Whereas if you just stay positive, then you can ride over the bad shit and then eventually good things will happen. I will. I'm not able to articulate it very clearly, but there's something very discomforting about this idea for me because at least in my world view, chance and luck plays such a big role of course in everyday life. That this. I'm talking about the controllables like assume like I believe luck is 99% of everything. Yeah. But that one percent is what you control even less than 1% of reality. Quite likely. I mean, actually zero because there's no free will. Yeah, that's what I'm saying that when if the dominant thing is luck, then what about it's like will to action like of course in day to day so many things that you say, okay, I identify like you know, like I they're a good side to identity when you say that, okay, you know, identify myself as a person into fitness. Right then when you're thinking about your diet and nutrition, you then don't give a like two hoots about whatever other people looking at your plates and thinking about it like this who I am, you know, my work. Yeah, exactly. And you do it. That's what you mean. Same with being a writer that what do writers writers write. So I'm going to find time and write all of those things you do it is how you perceive yourself and do it where the idea of manifestation makes me a bit discomfortable is that the underlying assumption is actually key, the will to action that I've got. I think that extremely any book on this if you read they say that it's not about thinking it and going to sleep. Think it so that you are embodying the version of yourself that acts on it. Yeah. Instead of like I think having thousand questions about or should I should I actually write 10 weeks in a row when you were giving me that example, it sounds like the person who wants to write a soul anxious about being a writer that they will do everything but write. It's about getting out of that loop and like I'm a writer it's not not a big deal. I'll write. You know, it's about taking being a version of yourself that acts on the thing that you are. The layer that where I feel discomfortable is that you act. But given if we agree on the at least in this room, 99 and one that luck shapes so much, this assumed idea that because I'm more act on these things, then something will happen. Nobody's probably a mystery. Why would you act? It's probably the only thing that we at least manifestation is. It's not about in popular culture. It talks about you can actually. I think what's happening here is talking about cross purposes because you're looking at an interpretation of manifestation which in a certain kind of popular culture, this course is kind of associated with people who don't have a lot of credibility and maybe that is the. But then the thing that you it sounds like almost like you shouldn't have hope when you say that like because I take action, I will then expect things to happen whereas luck is such a big part of things happening. So should I just not have hope? You will always act believing the best you your mind is supposed to have one touch just believing the best will happen for you and entertaining more thoughts is why because I've been so I've gone through enough mental health crisis to know that being anxious. I absolutely agree with that. You know, one of what is happening in this conversation is actually like I remember we are hanging up on you. That's one thing. A lot of fun. So you know, there are there's one of my fears is that when you read like there's a novel research. So you know the novel starts and like I think the character is Larry and I'm reading the book and I feel so amazing. I mean, this is me. This is me in like two, three years ago and I feel so relatable to the character. Love it. And then the last chapter this guy suddenly turns to you know, like starts believing, discovers Eastern philosophy. And all the things that happen to this person and I felt so directed in the end that what just happened to this person. Same case, same thing told us to what's a you have not read also, right? But I think level and now Karen you know, say like there are parts of it like I'm level and I'm level, you know, like oh my god person fictional character 200 years ago. I could relate to and then towards the you know ends just change happened. It was my greatest and I don't know what's going to happen to me in the years to come. But these kind of things you somehow feel that my whole idea about the values that you uphold the world you would just feel such a fundamental shift that what is that teaches you the size and with your values because isn't it a respect for human autonomy? What are taking responsibility for yourself and saying that my I am the architect. My thinking I am the architect of my life. My thinking will change my actions. My actions will change my life and given to have the maturity and talk is at a risk for the city's world. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm not able to articulate why this is making me. It's just the fact that it's associated with this disrespectful people. No, I mean, you know the Shahloch online right from Om Shanti Om Shanti Om. Is that not okay? I mean, I don't know. You know that like, if you know that like, if you know that, if you know that, if you will to something, the universe will conspire to that's a typical Indian stalker line. But, yeah, but you know, so that people who believe in men. And if you didn't have told me that this is what manifestation is that you believe in something and then the universe will conspire to actually make that happen. No, that's simplistic and not true. But the thing is you believe in something to the extent that you begin to act upon it. You have to act upon it. That's a key step. And you are more likely to act on it if you believe and it will lead to something. And then it's more likely to happen. And that's all things to it. And I think that's a good way of thinking about it. And I think like I said, do I only think to get away with this universe telling you and you know, working with you. So why sort of go into the veracity of that statement necessarily? Like it's a way of saying what you want will happen if you put your mind to it, I think. So that's my next question. It's a rhetorical thing. I get it. When we think of love and romance and when we think of marriage, we often are, you know, we've been conditioned to think of it as a package of things. Right? So marriage, for example, is supposed to have companionship. This supposed to be romance is supposed to be sex is supposed to be looking after each other in the different ways, et cetera, et cetera. And that is a package. And what typically happens is after a period of time, the package falls apart one or two elements kind of fall out. And there's a danger that you insist on the full package and then there is unhappiness and bitterness on all sides. Or you don't kind of know how to deal with it. And I would imagine that even in the quest for love, they can be all of these different things and they get decoupled and then you don't really know how to deal with it. And my thinking is that perhaps socially we need to evolve to the point where it's okay if they get decoupled. That all my needs need not be fulfilled by one person or even by one person for an extended period of time. And I am a human being and I will buy letters from somewhere else from somewhere else and panopathy. Yeah. Whatever. You know, this sounds very polyamorous, but without using labels. And I'm just that we are different sets of things. There was a time where a particular, particular institutions in particular ways of dating and all of that evolved, particular notions of love and romance evolved. But if you just sort of a kind of deconstruct them, if you look at them closer, it need not be that way. Everything may not be entangled. So one, what do you feel about that? And two, what do you guys think about life designs that don't involve following the conventional life path? We're dating, we're dating need not be a quest to find a life partner, but just a way to meet new people. Yeah. Or where you need not have a life partner, but different. I mean, situationships seem such a ugly word and such an inward word, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. That you do your thing and you've got different things going on and it is what it is and you find happiness in different ways and everything is in flux and we contain multitudes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want. The first question was, my first question is that, what do you feel about the disentangling of the package that have you struggled with it that, oh, I need all these things in a perfect partner? When the last relationship did and it was because I felt like my emotional needs are not being met here. There's I think our esoteric relationship, which says that marriage sustains itself on familiarity. attachment, long term, you know, the context relationship that's been built over all these years, but sex and it drives from novelty and excitement and those are fundamentally by definition at odds with each other. So yeah, you can keep trying new things and you can give new and that can last however long it lasts maybe 20, 30 years and you will die, which is fine. But then it makes sense to be real about it and be like, yeah, I'm probably, I think, evolutionarily, we all are capable of being attracted to multiple people and I often feel like the choice between monogamy and let's call the other thing polyamory for lack of things but maybe the label is limiting whatever but it's like, you know, maybe vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism or deciding to eat home cooked food forever versus occasionally ordering from Swiggy, which is why Swiggy exists. So it shouldn't be like a threat to the primary partner idly for both of you, if you're both sort of like you know, equally sort of you have both of you who get attention from the outside, outside the relationship and you know, like that navigation is a wonderful Instagram page called the poly couple, couple of 16 years dates, other people and they show these like messy and tangled movements that they get into. It seems like a lot of drama and self-created problems but I feel like they're being authentic and true to themselves, it's whatever. So I think yeah, it makes sense to diseng tangled it to and like the honest, uh, but in your case, how do you think about it for you? Like how is it evolved for you like web? You know, 10 years later, what's he, what's a good day for you, 10 years later? Okay, I have thought about this off late since I am trying to manifest it. I imagine. So there's a, there's David Mitchell and Victoria Cohen, she's a poker player and David Mitchell is a historian, comedian, he appears and all these. I think they have a great relationship, she didn't wake up, solve crosswords, puzzles, they are their own thriving TV careers presenters, etc. And they seem to be happy from the outside. I imagine I would like an intellectual equal partner with whom I can share everything. A lovely house somewhere and go out with like a bunch of dogs and we're like pillows of the community and like we help people and like we're, you know, building things together, doing things together. There's like a enough of an understanding that okay, where people with full lives and what happens outside it happens outside it or maybe nothing happens outside it and by that time those parts of us have died and don't need like constant expression. But yeah, there is that stability and anchor that I see 10 years on the line I'd like to have for myself. Specific, you need to be specific in what you want to manifest the visualisation. So that's your specific manifestation. So if you meet a really good looking guy from say, why are not in Kerala and everything else matches will be like, 'Nay Manay, go as watch. I need to summon from Kerala. I'll be open to an open relation too. Oh my god. Send other in the first question. The Esther Paral also has this other idea. Yeah. Where she talks about that, one of the problems with modern dating/relationship is this expectation that one person is supposed to fulfill all your needs. And she doesn't come out from a sense of monogamy or like polyamory. She talks about communities that this idea that individuals in itself like, you know, will fulfill all your needs. Doesn't matter like there are parts of you that, you know, your friends will fulfill you. You're like, you need intellectual simulation in certain cases. So your partner doesn't have to do all of it. You can have communities of people where you talk like, I don't know, history of warfare, right? Like your partner doesn't have to be involved in that discussion. So she talks about it from that sense at this expectation that one person has to fulfill all my needs. Where is the notion of community and people around you? And that is her thesis of. That's an evolution in me is that I have like, if you ask me about the nature of my early dance of seduction, it's always had, we both are super funny people. We have a lot to talk about, banter is a huge feature. And then, I mean, even inevitably those relations did end right. And turns out that maybe funny people are not the nicest people and the most stable-getting people. And anyways, maybe it's just me. I'm meant to be funny. I'm supposed to be whatever emotional role, which I guess the other person can be a good companion, whatever it is. I haven't found the right mix, but like maybe some of the things that your insistent partner should have, I think that you need to meet your needs for yourself. Are funny people sad people? No. No, I wouldn't say I when I was I thought I had to be sad to be funny, but my output of funniness has only gone up as I've gotten happier because I'm not constantly deriding myself. So, I mean, there's other on your both-person second thought, like if you look at the history on evolution of ideas around dating and marriage, you know, the way historians have talked about it is let's say even in the West, 200, 300 years ago, like while love is a, like feelings for love is a human experience, marriage was largely not organized around love. It was around economic, economic, political reasons. So then with the enlightenment and you know the romantic moment, at least in the West, the idea that love will become the justification for marriage. That's already merging in let's say the 18th century onwards. In India, it's still much later and like among, like even not back then in India, still like we're talking about a country where 95% of marriages are arranged. We must talk about caste if we're talking about marriage. Let's talk about if you finish this thread, what is happening to, and that leads to the second question, that it's no more for people like us, let's say the elite of like all markers, right? Like caste, class, availability, you don't have a pragmatic need for a partner, let's say to get through life. In the sense about you have to split rent or you know, you have to, like you can't survive. Which, yeah, I said this one time ago, like we don't need to be domestically entangled, we can just be companions me. So that means let's start that you know the necessity sometime that will just to get through life, you want to companion and then you will now that you are with that person, you will make things work and hope to find your happiness even in orthodox tradition structures, at least you will give that short. That constraint does not apply to many of us. And now that constraint, because it has gone away, so the idea comes at then love should be the justification of being with someone and then what primary motive primary motive and that's where like, you know, but you also know that in long term relationships, now this is extensively like studied people talk about it that you know the partner that you choose matters less than the relationship you create with them. Like you know, we are constantly looking for the perfect person. I also have my own biases there, but that is not really a good predictor of long term happiness within a relationship. So what we desire is not like you can predict based on even data from dating app like what are people deciding, but is that a predictor of a success of long term relationship? No, now that's so well established, we know it. So what is a predictor of so there's a what I did it's something like compromise or like that's not something you can do. But like I mean, the first what it was a very interesting study because the it's answer was very cliche and you know sometimes cliche is being validated by scientific studies is good, but they basically said that you know people actually who feel completing themselves and don't are looking for a partner to complete their life in some ways actually form the most happiest relationships. And of course, then there are a whole like studies around what makes a marriage work like basic things like emotional regulation, clear communication, efforts to maintain intimacy over a long period of time and not just being in a novelty seeking initiative. So these were the intentionality ends up mattering a lot then. Yeah, but primarily I think the primary finding was this that it's about if you are trying to get into a relationship to fix something in your life, that's probably not something that will lead to happiness. It's more like if you're sorted not okay, not sorted, but you know, like you're not trying to fix a broken life with someone coming in and everything will be okay. I feel like an extension to what you're saying is when when you feel like what the culture has defined as love, which is your infatuated with the other person you're obsessed with, you know, you're noticing everything about them. Mostly what you're doing is projecting. You've projected something you like as qualities onto them. They may be real. The person may actually have them, but you're you have an image of them that you're attached to and obsessed with and love breaks down and becomes exposed actually the fact that I think we actually only love ourselves because when someone is not conforming to your image and your expectation of them, you don't continue to love them as love would have you, right? You are like you don't meet my needs. I don't meet your needs. Bye bye. So I mean a lot of love is actually attachment to some kind of image, which means that we actually only love ourselves and like there is like a very nice anecdote about this that like Buddhist anecdote where there's a king and a queen and they're meditating together and the king opens his eyes suddenly and he's like, who do you love most in the world? And the queen opens her eyes and she's like, I love myself the most and normally you expect that this causes some kind of disruption, but later they later go and talk about it to the Buddha or something and he's like, what if you are being honest to each other about this and because you love yourself, you're trying to get your own needs and companionship etc. I mean you're not looking for pieces of yourself in another person and then getting upset that they're not there because they're actually not there. Yeah. And you know, that's where like one of my such a common thing like the problem that I find with a modern discourse around dating is that like I could be happy and like very content in my singledum, but I could also be open to finding a partner. These are not contradictory ideas to say that, oh, because you're open to having a relationship or dating, that means something is off in your current existence. That's why you're looking you know, that's why you're seeking. Well, else, why will you seek? Or if you are seeking, then it assumes that kuchsto, you're not satisfied with your friend. There's a hole you're trying to fill. So I'm saying these are not, you can be like both. You can say that I'm actually very content. Right now, there are other things in my life that are higher priorities. So I'm not putting active effort. But just because I'm not putting active effort does not mean that being passively open is some kind of degraded idea. And that's where we talked about earlier in the conversation, what's really frustrating being single at 31. Is this idea that, ah, you are single fine, but you will find someone. It's a transient state. So this nuance about that, oh, great. Like, if I meet someone and go somewhere definitely, like, we'll take it forward. But it's not a project that you have to do. And this, and I'm so glad that actually not men, but books are coming out, women like in their 40s, they're started writing about, you know, the contentment in their singlehood, how they, you know, had this ideas about romance and how they are like. And I think the more narratives we read about people in their 40s or 50s, being single and talking about it, not to either glamorize being single or glamorize being in relationships and figuring out like, you know, again, the clicheting, whatever works. I think that we need more of something wrong with the very idea that the success of a relationship is either its longevity or the fact that it ends with two people. You can be meant to be with someone for whatever duration and it's fulfilling in both of you come out. And you can remain friends after that for a further duration. Yeah. The idea of divorce being stigmatized, your relationship, and being sad. They don't have to be true. Actually, Dan Savage, you know, Dan Savage is an American columnist. He actually made a really interesting point. He said monogamy is one of the few structures in the world where the success is measured by 100 percent perfection. He's saying, like, if you're a great chef, of course, you will cook bad dishes. Like, you're like, it's my design. But if you are in a monogamous long-term relationship, let's see your together 50 years, one mistake of infidelity, like, no one likes, you know, pardon, cheating on someone else, but let's say one mistake and your 50 year project is done. So the success of monogamy is treated by that either the success and sin death, the one percentize away. So that is success, right? He said what we say about writing perfection is the enemy of production. Yeah. But you see, like, he was and he's not against institutional monogamy. He's just saying that the standards that we have set about what constitutes a successful marriage or monogamy or what is this obsession with? This is his words or his ideas, long-term relationships, rather than thinking of a series of multiple long-term relationships. Like, what is off with that idea? Like, why does there is a culture? It feels that we have failed at being monogamous couples. If you're not together for life and again, ideas, notions around divorce are changing, but still there's so much burden on it remains stigmatized to a lot to undo that. But I really like your point about single good not being transient. I don't think it I wanted to be like one other default that people have and I was, I mean, I think I read somewhere, I don't remember the source or the figure exactly that said that actually only x percent of marriages are going to be successful and a large, I think it was full of life only that most people are not meant to be married. That's why it ends in divorce. I think there is a orientation that instead of partnership and companionship and building a domestic life together, the two kids, dogs, new house and the suburbs kind of seen oriented towards life of freedom and autonomy and exploitation and wilderness. Like, I don't know where I'm going. I just know I want to walk. But maybe not everyone is wants to or meant to be married. Maybe I just people just want to be free. Or also like, but even in freedom, right? Like, I often think about it in two ways. You know, the classic idea of positive liberty, negative liberty that like I think my in 20s were more about freedom from like oppressive societal structures, norms, like you really fight yourself and create a life. You don't have to fit in the structures and then you feel liberated. But now I think in my 30s and this is a identity shift that I've had that the joy that I find in committing to something. It's so amazing because once you and I'm talking not just in, but this is actually a negative liberty only. It's not positive because it's a feeling towards, like there is freedom from something. Yeah, but that's not what as I Berlin's concept. What was it again? Can you remind? So a negative liberty is freedom from. So for example, free speech is a negative liberty and a right to life and all of that because no one can no one should shut you up. No one should kill you. So those are protections from people. And then there are positive freedoms which aren't really freedoms. They are entitlements rather. Yeah. Where you say that for example, freedom to eat, which imposes an obligation on someone to feed you. You know, anything that involves an obligation, like if you say that like a positive right would be free internet. That everyone should have free internet. But the point is for the government to provide you free internet. They are taxing other people and this coercion involved in that. So whether or not you think free internet is desirable, it is not a right or a freedom as it were. So that's a distinction. Whereas in your case, if you voluntarily choose to enter in obligations, it is still a negative liberty. It is still negative liberty because no one should stop you from doing that. That's the only thing. Okay. So I have caught this wrong. But it was more like freedom from and off-freedom towards. So there's such a joy in freedom towards that you say, okay, I'm going to choose this and I'm not going to get about the rest. I'm going to choose this and all of it comes to so much privilege and you know, like there's so much to it complexity to how do you reach this stage. But once you do it actually feels very joyful. So this again, idea about again, this is because I said, I thought a lot about being single. The stereotypes that we come up with, right? Like the idea that if you're a single person, you can't commit to things or that you actually want infinite freedom, which will lead to anxiety, all of it. I don't think that actually applies. There is a single people are also very different. We are not one unity of people who can say the key, a true single people like that and that really frustrates me in everyday conversations because I am the one who's always subject to answer questions, are you on the apps? Are you dating? You know, like I'm not asking you on a day to day basis, okay, are you marriage happy? Are you supposed to be the person? You know, like I'm always on the explaining side and people do it unconsciously when you're well-meaning friends. Say we'll do it. And at a point, it starts feeling that so suffocating that like I'm not supposed to explain in a like we are just hanging out together and I have to give you this whole theory about single word every time we meet. So that is one of my words. What happened to me recently, a female friend who is married actually, we have told her how my life is going in great detail and then towards the end of like a half an hour, 40-per-minute beginning, she's like, so are you lonely? As I have told you so much and you're asking me, is it just stereotypical question? And I should I ask you how your marriage is going based on my stereotype? I assume marriage is still working. And I was like, no, I asked my married friends if they're lonely, if they've been hanging out with their couple all the time, I was like, I don't hear it. It's just boring to me that you ask that question after all the beaters I probably did you. I think it's it's yeah. So we have 25 minutes left and I'm going to ask three more questions since I'm good at counting. And the reason we have 25 minutes left is this full, summit buncle is catching a flight to Delhi today probably for a hot date or something. I don't know. But so he has to leave for the airport is eight to eight five now. He has to leave at eight thirty. So we are constrained and Sanjana has been trying to convince him. He can't say that he may get a car. You know, so but anyway, here's my third last question which kind of ties in what you wanted to talk about as well, which is that one would imagine that in one particular way, the sort of dating that young people do these days where you're on apps and you're dating many more people and you settle down late, etc, etc. It's fantastic in terms of broadening the pool and perhaps broadening your outlook, right? In the sense that like in a broader sense, you know, when I was born and for the first 20 years of my life, we were all restricted to communities of circumstance. And you know, it is what you have geography constraints. You go to a particular school. You go to a particular workplace. We have friends are from there. You don't you know, no one else. The delight of the internet is that we can form communities of choice rather than circumstance, which is how I know you guys. Most of my friends are people. I would not have met otherwise because of circumstance, but we could do that. And even with dating and partnership like India, of course, has a really sad history of cast and dog me Tony Joseph writes about it in his book where for 2000 years has been severe cast and dog me, which is why, you know, when David Reich looks at the genetic evidence, he says that if you're talking about a large population, it's a Han Chinese study look at India is a collection of many small populations, deep social tragedy and obviously out of that cast and dog me also emerges, you know, the drive towards women's occlusion because then you don't want your women to go out and etc. And it's been pretty terrible. Now you would imagine that modernity and globalization and urbanization would change it. And especially in this new age of dating, it should change it to a fair bit because now your pool is suddenly everybody. You know that assortative mating thing that you will only meet people like you, even if you're having love marriage, you're meeting people like you only. And that game can get diluted a little bit. You know, so what is your sort of observation on that? I won't say experience, but just your observation from, you know, watching the people around you and all that that do you meet interesting people? You would not have been friends with otherwise. Or do they all end up being people like you only English speaking elite educated in cities, etc. So how does that sort of play out and you know, has dating sort of broadened a personally, your visions and the way you look at people and be do you feel that there is some larger thing happening in society or it is still the same old same old despite this. I think this cost awareness is increasing. in my generation, there's more people who are aware of what their privilege, that dimension of their privilege, that I was in college, that we just never talked about, right? We were all umbrella identity of Hindu Indian. And anecdotally, I know that some of the intercast couples, they've sort of not always consummated, even not even intercasts, like same religion, different communities, similar social listening, they're like we're not, you know families are not okay with this and they decide not to get married. So I think that those, because marriage is a decision that involves previous generations, that's not entirely easy to change. So yes, there is awareness, but I don't know that it's become easier to break those fault lines to get married. Personally, also I would say that most of my new meetings are also because I live in Bangalore, probably I'm just overshooting, but 80% of people are like me, which is they've all been to similar college, they've all got this similar job working in a startup or working in tech. And it's very likely that we're all from the same caste class, this identity, I don't think my pool has really expanded. And all whatever awareness I have is from reading the work of people not like me. Of course, like internet has expanded options and people you meet, but also like even in offline spaces, like it's not more about being depending on like, like if you show up at places, you meet very different people, you know, like I actually meet a lot of people with absolutely different backgrounds than myself, like depending on what they have, it somehow happens more in Bombay than let's say in Delhi, that you just encounter like really interesting people. So I mean, all I'm trying to say of course internet has expanded choice, but depending on where you are trying to show up, like if you are just going to office, then two coffee shops where you go, same restaurants, then of course, how will you expand the like the kind of people you will encounter. But as growing up like as my interest widened and I show up and I make it a point actually that when I'm in cities and I'm like to express cities that I show up at, you know, not for the reason that I want to with objective meeting, but to experience things, but it could be like a dance workshop, it could be, you know, taking a heritage walk, it could be, you know, doing gallery hopping, then you meet people encounters happen and it could go wherever. So you, you know, there's also this nature, cosmopolitan nature of cities, which is called nothing to do with internet, apart from internet telling you things are happening, which is also quite beautiful, apart from whatever internet does. Like my penultimate question then is if there are young people listening to this work confused by all this dating game or intimidated by it or whatever and, you know, what would your advice to them be? And both of you can feel free to give advice to both sexes, not just, you know, so it's not like some sort of man co-bola girl because what advice will you give men, bro? And like, I think I would like to get advice. That is my humble admission. But I think I should, I just like, people shouldn't feel like romance is the end and the determinant of a good life. It's part of a good life. It's an ingredient of a good life. Like many things are and yes, you should wanted, but you shouldn't crave it. You should be desperate. You should be, you should have a personality in a life of your own, which will actually just enable you to get that into your life. And like, I just manifest it. So one thing that like I just purely based on personal experience is that not just about romance, but in general, that just the beauty of figuring out that you go through phases. Yeah. That there is not like I was my ideas about dating marriage were so different in my mid 20s. Last year, how you should think about it, how it evolves, you are in different phases. And that's lovely and too chart out that journey. So this fixed ideas about that you generally form at a earlier age, they don't really apply your partners change in the course of relationship etc. So being open yourself to this idea of change, I think, is the only thing I can say from experience. So wise. So true. So do more. So my final question, Samarth has been through this. So I'll ask Sanjana first and especially Sanjana, I'm looking forward to your answers. And this is obviously a question about recommendations, recommend for me and my listeners, books, films, music, which fill you with joy and mean a lot to you and I've shaped you or you simply enjoy them so much you want to share it with the whole world. And I already know that I'm going to dive into whatever list you give right now because you have read so much more than me and these areas in these areas. So go for it. And if there is time left then Samarth will come. Because we're on the subject of love and the whole psychology of love thing that I wanted to bring up. A lot of that was informed by the Eden project by James Hollis, which was a really fascinating exploration of how we're constantly looking for ourselves in the other and mature love is about loving someone who their otherness not what they reflect about you in a natural, but it's like kind of technical and intense. But the thought song is beautiful. Yeah, it's called the Eden Eden project. Why don't we do this one by one so I can think of another? I can tell movies because that is something I'm going to be greatly exploring. So of course I mentioned Bergman and scenes from a marriage. There is an HVO didn't adopt a fit in American setting. Though things I'll tell you don't watch it. You can watch it. But please watch the OGs on you. So six part it's like absolutely mind-blowing. So that's one. Two lately I've been exploring. How do I? I'm hoping don't get the pronunciation wrong. Aki Karasmuki. Aki Karasmuki. That's my finish director. Yeah. So this movie Fallen leaves came out I think. Yeah. It's such a beautiful movie and then I watched this other movie I hired a so bad with names I hired a like he this person hired a person to kill himself. I'll give you in the show. I was a person to kill him to kill him. How? Kill him, right? I hired a criminal something. Yeah, but both movies actually like how beautifully he's able to you know, take in I heard a contract. I hired a contract killer. Yeah. Short movies, but so few dialogues, but just by acting situations he places though, you know, the society in which we live in the feeling so working class the ideas of loneliness and what it does and you know, how love can actually spring up in the most unexpected places. He does that very beautifully. So I'm out to Google the name of the film I typed I hired a and now these are all the autocomplete red I am reading. I hired a wife for an hour. I hired a billionaire husband. I hired a wife for an hour full movie. Then the maid I hired recently is mysterious. Then I hired a private investigator on myself. I hired a billionaire to be a to be my husband again and then contract killer contract killer. Oh, I just had no screenplay. Yes. This is all influenced by Amit's search history. I think. Oh, God. I'm so sad. And last and then, suddenly you continue. I have to say this. Please, if you're comfortable in separating art from the artist, please watch Woody Allen. Absolutely amazing director. I'll say you have to watch any haul, especially all this 90s people who watch Kuch Kucho. I think it's compulsory for you to watch any haul. So watch that then man hadn't again a very controversial movie, but really amazing. But also a lot of his movies in the 80s and 90s, which you know, don't make that much flash now, but like husbands and wives, crimes and disc meaners bullets over Broadway. My favorite Woody Allen movies actually not my favorite Woody Allen movie, which is what in the sense he participated in this anthology called New York stories. And he made a mediocre film in that, but Martin Scorsese had a great film in that called Life Lessons, which is my all-time favorite Scorsese. Is it? So yeah, but anyway, that's the passing. But anyway, like this is not to say about Woody, but I think these were some of the things it's a journey to explore that guy. There's a lot to say about Woody, that's what she said. I can think of two or three more recommendations and then maybe one more topic that I'd like to explain. And where are the smarty jokes? You said that you're going to keep doing smarty vice-cracts through the episode and I opted for censored certain good articulations instead of hippies. That's not either of it. The other book I want to recommend is Running With Sizzlers by Augustine Baros. It's a memoir. And it's about his really difficult family life and the aftermath of it and he became a writer to cope with it. I read it in the aftermath of a very difficult visit home and I was like, this can't just be me. I can't be the only one surviving this. And I went and looked up a bunch of dysfunctional family members and it gave me a lot of solace to know that there's worse out there. So if anyone is looking for solace about their family lives, that's a good read. He's also queer and is up in an abusive relationship with a man much older than him. Then I want to recommend Afterson, which maybe both of you have already heard of. So movie. I haven't seen her. Speaking of the relationship between fathers and daughters shaping her life and her relationships and her sense of self and how complicated their own lives are. So I just want to actually apologize to my family a little bit because I think I've read all our secrets in the interests of being interesting myself. But like, I think we do have to separate the art from the artists, especially when you want to read my book. I have a questionable model record myself. And I think that that whole topic is facetious. The art form artist. Yeah. How are you only expecting good people to write and create art? Like, what does that, that is, it's never made sense to me that this is a debate. It's completely not. Yeah, yeah. Because look at Elena Ferenthe, nobody knows who she is, everybody loves her. But now if you find out that, like, are you supposed to judgment, are you supposed to suspend judgment on every work of art tell you have character? Yeah, I think it's just, it comes from a very childish view of life and reality in people which is that only good people do good things and people are actually only good or only bad, like we discussed, I mean it's a very complex question and. Like two of us are social paths. Yeah, at least. I'm not confirming again. Which is why you're single. At least two of us are. Good diagnosis, I learned something new. Things you can say in bed and on a podcast. Yeah, good one. Yeah, good one. Yeah, good one. Film's music. The one bloodline comes to mind because I'm obsessed with it, it's on Netflix. Only once the season is good but I'm too hooked into how like one family's won't mix them all murderers in being unable to forgive each other. They become worse and worse and more horrible in protecting the family name. I like bloodline. What did you hate watch lately? I'm assuming you do hate watchers. Isn't life too short to hate watch? I do a lot of comfort watching. No, watch a comfort watching. I usually default to a sitcom because I feel like I don't want to deal with any heavy themes. So I recently watched Sex in the City for the first time and then. Would I let you assay? And just like that and then the two sex in the city movies I went on a whole spring. I didn't realize that I started watching it as a 30 year old single woman which is what Carrie is. I think it's early time in the show. You ever you mentioned Carrie and I actually noted this line down because it's a great sentence where you say Carrie was one of TV's first female protagonists to portray women as desiring beings rather than just desired objects. Also, yeah, I mean more in my book but like Rachel from Friends, like they show her lasting after Ross and sort of being overpowered by desire in some scenes and I was like wow, that dimension of being so attracted to someone. It's only Western women on screen because you don't have those, I mean until very recently in the last few days. And the Pitampura bookshop. There's no bookshop in Pitampura just that. Oh, you came from Pitampura. This was somewhere else. This was a Wastand Kunch. This was a Wastand Kunch bookshop. Yeah, Wastand Kunch. The girl in the Wastand Kunch bookshop. What about her? She was lasting after you. For obvious reasons, frankly. See? Should you hurt your forgot thing. Yeah. You're not thinking for no sexual act. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to have the right to go for airports. Yeah. I want to buy a book for a friend. Yeah. Yeah. Movies. I can't even think of the last movie I watched. But do you remember like first movie of Spike Lee? Do the right thing, Kipale. What? Do the right thing. No, like because you don't know what she said. The. The MIT Times. Yeah. I didn't know also that it was there were two other women apart from Ronan Farrow, which was quite telling that the women investigating sexual harassment got less over the lie. I'm like, then Ronan Farrow. But the movie she said on Netflix is quite good. The reason I mentioned the Spike Lee first movie thing, Spike Lee the director. Because the character like the woman that plays for me, like it's I think is a 70s movie, but just show like a woman who's complex is flawed, but like really owning up to a desire. Like, I just want to have it. Yes, she's got to have it. Yeah, she's got to have it like there are three men in the lives, three very different characters. They come in and like how she's basically taking charge of who she wants to be with. And when the movie ends, you're not thinking that oh, she's a perfect woman in any sort of way. Like she's shown as a flawed character, but the fact that she's owning it was actually the idea of desire that I have desire. So be the way I am. I think even about sexuality, I think it came out. It's very striking movie. Actually, I want to recommend a YouTube channel called the take. They do. The take. Yeah, video essays on different shows and critical analysis. I think the insight about Carrie was something I got from there. Basically, they they analyze sex in the city. They have a wonderful episode because there's a have you seen succession? Yeah, there's a character called shift. And I think she grapples with a lot of what it means to be a woman in a made-ed-ominated boardroom business world and how she actually has to forgo her femininity to succeed, which I think we talked about very way early on, like, having parts of yourself in order to fit in. They have some really good videos. Is anyone who wants to be a writer could benefit. This is a moment where we could try a Philly Buster thing where I asked Sanjana a question and she is so interesting, so interesting for so long that you miss your flight. Somehow, do you think that's a possibility? I think it's a so I won't do that. But thank you both for coming on this show. We have all agreed prior to this that once a year, the three of us will meet and do an episode. So I'm already looking forward to our next meeting. But thanks is so great to do this and so good to meet you. Thanks so much for having us. I mean, I honestly feel like I am the shit. If you enjoyed listening to this episode forward it to anyone you think might be interested, check out the show notes and the rabbit holes at will. You can follow Sanjana on Twitter at Ramchandran Esk. You can follow Summerth on Twitter at Pai Samarth and I take a pause because these are really confusing names, but they're also linked from the show notes. So you can find them there. You can follow me on Twitter at Amitwarma, AMITV ARMA. You can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen and unseen at IN and every podcast step of your choice.