[Music] I asked Shah Rukh Khan, I said, 'Am I taking
Gauri's place?' because typically your wife would sit with you. Such a loaded question! And...
yeah! *laughter* and he said, 'No you are taking Kumar Mangalam Birla's place!' *laughter* Earlier
on like a few thousand years ago all the gods were female and female are obviously superior to males
just like many of the insects and animal species. It's just obvious like I I should try not to
raise my oppressed yeah it it was so obvious that me
n got fearful MH and they tried to sort
of spread this new truth yes that oh it's men who are the leaders and and whatnot yes and then
it flipped yeah so it told me that it may seem like just ball art but it has its own vibrational
level and it's definitely doing something to the energy of that yeah no for sure yeah I mean there
were dogs uh dog weddings which were costing like hundreds and lacks and crores and the dog of
the Maharaja of this state and the dog of the Maharaja of this state
are getting married and
there'll be dog procession oh God you must read Xavier Morrow's book I have it you're not joking
you're not joking you're not joking I'm not joking this was a time of eccentric spending and the
writer is so Fearless cuz that's the way I've tried to conduct my career I would ask anybody
anything I was never politically correct um you shouldn't have said that cuz now I'm going to
ask you anything he would sacrifice things for her he would bring a car in for her like he
did
everything possible and started cheating on her now and that's I think again just the way men
that's their weakness they they get bored right like you go to a jeweler you Want to Hold Your
Hand he Gaz why don't you join us on Sunday we are going to be having whiskies don't you like
whiskies you know like they want to build an equation and they treat you like a lady it's
like that archetyp doesn't exist because women have been educated now they're working they're
independent so you wan
t to send me food for what a I'm trying to watch my diet I cook very specific
food I don't need you to send me any I love that I love you need soul food now you know what I'm
saying I love that I don't need he's a caveman basically I'll go hunt and I'll put something on
the table and I'm like I don't need that like you know all In Fear And they're so scared to ask me
things but you just doing what you want to do I said yeah but that's what makes it worth reading
oh wants to read about your
toothpaste and your toothbrush yeah exactly exactly and then I go
to your Instagram and the first picture there is off this bat and I was like oh my God that is
the lady yeah craziness um it's crazy that you remembered this book after a year and it was it
was the frequency of it coming up in my intuition was more and more as this trip was materialized
wow so maybe I don't know maybe I'm supposed to help you with something you're supposed to
help me with something yes maybe together to share
something yeah share something help the
planet with something liberate people's crap in their minds through this these conversations
you should tell that to my wife tell that to my wife there for yeah cuz I like yeah no she
shouldn't take it for granted very few people are constantly on a quest to grow so that is a
precious thing to her yeah but it drives everyone [Music] mad hey guys welcome to another episode of the
zepa show today I in Mumbai and I'm with Sanita wadani and if I pronounc
e that wrong she will
correct it for us I don't like to put people in boxes so I'd let Sita tell us a little bit about
who you are what you do what you like what your passions are right feel free to not put yourself
in a box either so really boxes scare me I don't believe in them and I think my whole journey was
about trying many things in life but as an artist fundamentally I've always been a sort of our I
resonate with the goddess Saraswati because she was known to not be really a hardcor
e feminist but
she found the institutions created by Society not relevant to the plot so for example her mythology
said she represents all the Arts so music painting writing you know and she was a wering spirit she
loved to roam the world and very interestingly there's only one Temple dedicated to Brahma who
was the creator who made sarasti and fell in love with her and wanted to marry her and there's only
one temp in Rajasthan where there's a story The Narrative tells the guy tells you the
narrative
that she was sitting at her wedding with Brahma the Creator and she gets bored with the whole
ritual and she gets up and she disappears and the poor guys got five heads and you know so many
eyes and he's just wondering what happened to her so are you I think so you know recently one of
my friends who a marari who's helping me to find suitable audiences for my art he said you are just
such a sarasti you don't want to be in one place forever you are restless when it comes to findin
g
new equations you want to keep learning you want to keep growing and I think yeah that kind of
like you said no not to put people in boxes but when I heard your story yesterday I feel you're
a male uh oh we're a team you're a team because you know you showed me you've also gone into
modalities you've been a life coach you've been in Fitness you've been helping people you've been
a musician so I think also we're living in times we're very fortunate where we're not struggling
for the basic
s like the older generation was and like you said sometimes there's a generation gap
but we've all found ways to balance our different passions along with the Practical essence of
work that takes care of bills and you know everything but of course for the longest time for
me content creation has been my life's epicenter I think that was my karmic Destiny before the
term content creation was cool absolutely we wouldn't call this content like 10 years ago this
was just be books right but beca
use now there's such a proliferation of platforms that it is now
uniformly known as content so this is mind the gap yes I really like the the cover art and I I like
the cartoon at the front dude get a life yeah but I'm your part for yeah so this is meant to take
a lighthearted take on what's happening between modern Indian educated women who are actually so
now independent but the sad thing is they carry that blueprint that a man has to be better than us
at every level so he has to be finan
cially better than us he has to be emotionally strong he has to
be uh you know uh indulge me make me feel like a princess but the pity is and the reality check is
that today the equation between men and women is more of friendship and equals and it's been hard
for the Indian woman to to realize that he's not the god that a man was made out to be when you
were a child oh that's what you mean by has to be right yeah the mother's brainwashed you to
thinking you know pesar you worship the man b
ut as you're growing and you're studying in the
same institutions working in the same offices very often the women have better Solutions or better
ideas but we're still in that patriarchal trap that a man has to be richer more abundant more
this more that and the result of that is that you're kind of always looking yeah there's no end
to that did you go back that's very interesting you say that did you ever go back spiritually
historically yeah and read about where that came from it's it's
a mindset that I think when
men were given the education benefit that women were not women were always playing a supporting
role it's just the way Society has shifted yeah so uh I was actually very curious about that
so I read this book called conversations with God by Neil Donald Walsh yeah I've heard of
it okay yeah so he wrote like three volumes 30 years ago and the most recent volume 4 awaken
the species was written like a few years ago so I read volume four first and then I started wit
h
one two three and he says that earlier on like a few thousand years ago all the gods were female
and female are obviously Superior to males just like many of the insects and animal species it's
just obvious like I I should try not to raise my it was oppressed yeah it was so obvious that men
got fearful M and they tried to sort of spread this new truth yes that oh it's men who are the
leaders and and whatnot yes and then it flipped yes I don't I didn't live then that's the same
thing that
Dan Brown's books explore oh yeah yeah with the goddess archetype right and he actually
shows you that you know Mary Magdalene and mother Mary and all the feminine uh entities even of the
Christian faith were suppressed and they realized women had certain powers to manipulate even nature
but not in a way that would damage or hurt nature so then you understood how to work with the forces
of nature but that was considered witchcraft I was just to say when the patriarchy came into power
they
were like hey wait a minute we don't want them to have this control over nature power and
then you had the S Wich hunts and you know during the Crusades or whatever so I do feel there been
a Witch Hunt for many it's a subtle witch HT with the di system say we are taking care of the bills
therefore you owe us this kind of thing I think a woman like me somewhere at heart I just could not
relate to that patriarchy and so a lot of people say oh but you're never married I said look at the
toxici
ty of that yeah the whole setup is against wom I know I wouldn't want to be a woman it is so
dictatorial first have a male child if you've not had that male child your trouble your bad luck if
your husband passes away your bad luck you have to to be avoided this whole yeah it's this whole
patriarchal mentality that is indicting you for just having the gender of a woman I know women
who of my generation who married had an arranged marriage could not deal with that patriarchal
culture and qui
t on the marriage in six months and they' be back good for them so good for them
and I think I've been blessed because I have beautiful home in Bombay as you can see time and
space and not this you know sort of pulling down factor with you didn't do this you didn't do this
you didn't do that which tends to happen in joint families where you have the mother-in-law and you
know and you really wonder did I miss something by not getting into that zone and I don't think so
I wouldn't have writte
n so many books I wouldn't have worked for six Brands I wouldn't have
traveled the world so I think for our times even if we are in an equation we would not call
it the standard if you get married it's nice to consecrate the relationship I'm all for tradition
I find there a beauty but we poisoned our own Traditions or then we need to kind of thread them
and weed them and say okay we don't need this we don't need this we need to update your Traditions
right I think I think I think some men e
ven more open-minded men today such as myself yeah might
agree with you that marriage is not the best thing and and I'm not just speaking out against my wife
she would say the same thing and we've reached that understanding because we actually watched
the podcast by Joe Rogan and he had a guest who was he deals with psychology and he was saying you
know it's funny the reason why so many divorces happen nowadays and this is maybe taking it out
of the Indian context of it but just globally ye
ah is because at teenage we're not sizing up the
other person right to be a good provider or a good partner yeah we're attracted to the perfume ah
which is a and now that you think about it that's every teenager yeah they're attracted to the
perfume and the clothes yeah and that has nothing to do whatsoever right with how you're going
to live a life together and then once the per wears off and you're like running around the house
without perfume and without a haircut and without nice clothe
s yeah you're like what you're looking
at the other person and you're like I married her is that my life like what is is that my life is
that my wife what's going on and I think you're speaking same for women very accurately from a
male perspective because just yesterday I was scrolling Instagram and there was a relationship
coach whose name I think Matthew hassy who was saying this and he said actually men are not wired
to be mon monogamous it's done to create family so the men have throug
h time never found it easy to
be monogamous it's always a struggle so you're letting yourself in for disappointment because
they just not programmed that way you know we produce one egg in a month you guys are producing
sperms every day so like it's a different biology I never thought about it that yeah it's a
different biology different level of physical desire between men and women so it's interesting
how I think through time we're getting to become become more and more conscious of the n
uances of
long-term relationship yeah right and so when I wrote this I actually this was during the lockdown
it was a lockdown effort I interviewed all the power chicks I had met through my profession which
was executive editor at Hello magazine so I was at all these fun parties and fashion weeks and
meeting these power corporate ladies so one of them who speaks beautifully her name is D Sara had
taken a small business loan from her father grown a massive luxury TV technology company which
has
a valuation now exceeding 1,000 crores perom oh employs lots of women so she's sort of like
a case study for this book right so she was very enthusiastic because she said Sita you meet
all these men whove inherited they haven't grown a business they've simply taken it on from mama
papa the house comes from mama papa the business and if you have a scene or a little romance with
them the attitude is well I'm such a catch you know and she's too so hilarious she's like that
what am I you'r
e the catch what am I right right so and her story is so much more powerful because
she's grown something with Concept to execution from scratch similarly with me I also there was
no history of anyone owning a newspaper company or a magazine so I went into the world with
just raw talent and I wanted to make a place for myself and that's why all these efforts came
on the side because within journalism you have to follow a certain kind of commercial framework but
these were my you know other
latent storytelling passions this is non-fiction and I've not really
done much with this in terms of promotion we did a zoom with bman Irani very well-known actor uh and
he was my chief guest and we just had a nice round of chats and a lot of women came in um and we had
a nice tempestuous conversation nice and B's view is interesting he said if you women are single
it's your fault he said the woman who married me saw me frying potato chips outside the cinema
hall right but she used to keep
buying chips from me and I asked her out and that's how we fell
in love and we got married but you women want the icing and the cherry and you just want it all
you know like a package deal like he needs to look great he needs to be Harvard or Cambridge he needs
you will not marry the guy frying potato chips outside the theater is that true would you that's
what I just told you everybody wants one up more than what they are so there many people like that
everybody see Asian culture women are
programmed to marry money right and I'm not saying that in
a proud way the difference now is the women are also capable of making money yeah the tragedies
they still looking for that oneup they want a man to be better and stronger in every aspect and that
makes it problematic because if you've taken your level here right for you to find 20x is not going
to be easy so you'll be single yeah well there's also a lot of talk about on the western side of
like polarity coaches and relationship co
aches and all these things there's a lot of talk about
how a woman or rather female at her core is a more vulnerable kind of energy right than a more male
kind of energy and I feel that makes sense because that's how you are more in tune with nature and so
so what's happening is they're only strengthening their masculine size a lot of them right uh so
so however though would could we say let's say we flip this a little bit just to explore could
we say that it might not necessarily be wrong
or unsuitable or you know inappropriate or not in
the best interest for them to look for someone who they feel is better because maybe that's
just their vulnerable side going like I want a protector so then how do we balance which I think
could be a very real need so how do we balance that and the true see a lot of female coaches
are trying to help women reorient themselves into their own feminine s when you become this power
boardroom power babe yes my friend loves fashion a lot of them ar
e indulging in very feminine clothes
but their basic nature intimidates men because they're calling the shots they're in charge
right so a lot of the men who would be drawn to them if they were not in those power positions
are sitting back and saying wait a minute she's a boss woman can I handle that energy so their
masculine has gone to this level their feminine is actually heading downwards you see and I have
also like you said yesterday about the stress hormone cortisol it tends to harde
n you up over
time because you're used to living on that edge right so if if the man comes in being very sweet
amicable and non-challenging and an underachiever compared to who you are that chemistry is very
hard to find that masculine feminine chemistry so that's what's happening not just in India I think
that's happening in China Japan yeah like I told you yesterday that in Japanese there's a whole
specimen of single women who refuse to get married in Japan because they're like you know t
hat whole
pig Theory like why you just you're getting the hot dog why do you want to buy the whole thing
sadly I'm not happy to see this development because I'm a romantic at half okay I'm vulnerable
I'm very emotionally vulnerable I've had a lot of younger men popping into my existence and I think
that's because I'm not settled settled so they don't get that settled energy from me they get
a adventurous energy from me so and they don't recognize that I may have so many years on them
but b
eing a traditional Society eventually there's a very funny movie called Rocky or Ronnie okay
where she keeps telling this guy yeah that the families in India are the biggest role players and
the biggest spoilers right and they always want to be the backstage control panel So eventually
families get in the picture and everything goes for a toss and they poison the young guy so
much oh she's done this to you oh she's doing black magic or she's trying to get you or she's
after your money I've
heard that one yeah but sad because actually if you think about it an older
woman is is better off with the younger man who would be there if they decided to adopt a child
have a child whatever they want to do if there's a child in the picture the younger man would be
around longer right so it gives some sense of security to the woman that if tomorrow if I pop
it he's there for my child but the sad thing that Society is not allowing that shift to happen they
coming in with so much judgment
and my horoscope says you're not going to have a regular scenario
either a much younger man or a much older I don't want to deal with it Grandpa you know archetype I
want younger archetype that's hilarious it is but it is problematic problematic because that we all
stuck where we are you know I feel like it also be like maybe you have a more like a nurturing um
like you said you know how women in the olden days who are more I would say just uh for lack of a
better word more spiritual yeah w
ould probably be more in tune with nature yes and more um healing
and more healing yes and more nurturing yeah and I think a lot of men me included we look for uh a
lot of us have what they call mommy issues because our parents generation was like severely impacted
by this Industrial Revolution thing survival blah blah blah yeah and so they became very hard and
so in our mothers we didn't get the mother we were looking for right and that's not my theory that's
a psychologist told me that an
d so they said when when boys don't get the mother they're looking for
in their mother they look for a mother in their wife in the wife right so every time you look at
a relationship where maybe the woman's earning a lot the guy's not earning he's like laid by ah I
took six years off and you're like nothing wrong with taking six years off but if you're wondering
why yeah it could possibly be because um he just wants to chill he wants a mother who was never
there and so yeah maybe it could b
e that so the thing is if you've not experienced a nurturing
energy while growing up yeah how would you even know it exists oh you would know if be drawn
to it like flies to maybe yeah if you saw it in somebody yes you would but I'm just curious
to know whether so I see you as someone who's a little balanced you are in touch with your
feminine because of the work you're also doing you know you're guiding you're healing and you're
also very practical in your own way you've set up a multi lev
el platform website you've experimented
with being an entrepreneur so you would would come into the category of slightly more evolved yeah
Indian men okay let's face that what I find here are older men don't even want to know what your
story is they just talk about themselves my dad does that there you go so as soon as the horoscope
says older man I go into that kind of total sort of recoil because I've had that I've dated older
men and they just go on about themselves and one guy was so fu
nny I was having a cappuccino yeah
and probably left a little milk mustache he just grabbed a tissue and saying that must never happen
and here I'm a power woman I travel the world you know I'm a literate person and you don't talk to
me like that must never happen so I rejected him because I'm like how am I going to deal with
this patriarchy energy I I call it P that me this man suffers from patriarchal energy and it's
not going to it's not going to get to her if you want a harmonious equat
ion you treat a woman a
new new age woman who equipped with education exposure I I interviewed the ambanis and you
name it the maharajas and you've seen my book right yeah I'm not going to deal with someone
bullying me course I would it would even last a date I was dying to itching to leave and then he
dropped me home and he kept analyzing me because he was into some kind of spiritual modality where
you know you just analyze a person oh it was like can I go now can I open this car door so I
felt
oppressed with older Indian men because they've not changed so so let me let's just clarify that
for a non-indian audience because this probably this is on YouTube so different people yeah so
when you say they go on about themselves yeah so there's a few different things there so when I say
my dad yeah I mean that and this is what my me and my wife have analyzed because we start to talk and
analyze people and because he had a very difficult childhood uh for him it was not that he didn
't
just get his mom I think he didn't even get his dad because his dad was in the Navy oh and so for
him I think he this is my opinion I we've not gone deep into it it feels to me like he wants to be
listened to right so when when I say he's going on about himself he's going on about stories from his
life are you referring to that or you referring to talking about look at me how great I am or
something else yes okay that the energy where it's like okay you're a woman you've probably not
do
ne much you just need to not happy decent you need to be a home maker so what do you have to
talk about you have nothing to talk about it's all about my life I've achieved this I'm capable
of this I'm this I'm that and they don't realize that you know then you're short changing your
own date experience you've learned nothing from the other person you've not been receptive you've
not been elegant enough to ask anything there's one okay there's one character who lives in my
neighborhood Who W
alks his dogs in the morning his proposal had come for me God he couldn't
make up his mind and I was busy with work so didn't have to it didn't culminate but they were
very wealthy So within the community they're like oh this is a great opportunity for your daughter
they have a hotel here they have a hotel there they have this they have this they have that
thankfully I didn't end up with him I I married my job and he with his superiority complex ended
up with a divorced woman who realized t
hat he had very little capability to actually be successful
everything was an inheritance so he could live off interest if he wanted to he didn't need to exert
himself and he had the ego the size of a building right so she couldn't handle that so she quit on
him because she was better at making money better at business and then unfortunately I started a
nonprofit for the Arts where we used to go from gallery to Gallery get people who are creative
to sing dance WR share poems it was a very n
ice movement reflecting something that happens in New
York this guy was we were common friends it was an American lady who started called Janet fine so he
was in one of her friends circles yeah she died of breast cancer two years later I had a morning
dream that you should try and bring this back because the city needs it right a nonprofit it's
all about celebrating art yeah so we had a meeting at the C Lounge I asked him to help me build the
community so he shared all the contacts yeah we
started things the moment he was not interested
in the hard work the moment the media came in the picture started talking to me saying what is
this all about yeah he wanted to take it over completely he said you are not to send mails you
are not to send invitations It's All About Me From Here onwards you are not to talk to Media it's
all about me that's not even trying to hide it like it's suddenly the agenda was it's all about
him okay and we tried to make it work and everyone said oh what
a romantic team you guys look so good
together and everything but I was stressing over my job deadlines and this guy would pick dates
for these events when I was heading to the Press when he knew Sanita is not going to physically be
around so what he would do is you make the program you get us the venue don't show up it's okay it's
me I'm the God here So eventually you can see how toxic that could have been in a marriage it would
have worked even though he's next door to me who cares about
your hotels not like you're going to
write them off to my name right so it would have been a very unhappy situation so while working
together when I was unhappy I would tell my father every day how do people live with Indian men how
do people deal with this kind of egoistic and then I found out he's some spectrum of autism which
means that when you have Co I had fever and he's tried to come back into my life again I had Co I
went to the doctor I took a couple of b12's I was very drain very
weak you know what he asked me how
much did you spend on the injection because not he didn't message me once to check are you feeling
better oh wow how much did you spend how much money did you give the doctor for your injection
I said 500 bucks he said do you know the actual V is only for 30 rupees in the store this is how
Despicable some of these guys and they're just not programmed to be intuitive sensitive or think
of another person's perspective today if you had covid as your neighbor
all he would do say I can
send you food I said I have a maid who's cooking for me every day why do I need your food right
ask how I'm feeling because I've come to that level of Independence right I need you emotionally
now I don't need you to take care of my dayto day right so that lack of evolution I I read that
online chronic yeah I read that online like uh women something I think Express or something by
by sharing their emotions and especially now today I don't need you to buy me food i
' go that i' go
square with you that's not the level of relating women one especially not working women yes the
ones who are total parasites like you know want to be like their mothers just live off whatever your
husband gives you manage your life whatever if it means compromising all your desires do it be good
to him that archetype doesn't exist because women have been educated now they're working they're
Independence so you want to send me food for what a I'm trying to watch my diet I coo
k very specific
food I don't need you to send me any food I love that I love you need soul food now you know what
I'm saying I love that I don't need he's a caveman basically I'll go hunt and I'll put something on
the table and I'm like I don't need that yeah yeah no the food thing is by by the way a legit concern
for all health conscious people naturally just not not just from their mates imagine he telling his
staff how I like my salad and how I like he say she's a total flip out so he st
ill not understood
why Sita is not into me but he's pushed all the wrong button have you told him how do you tell
a man how can you ask me about the price of an injection be a little elegant in life and you
know what he used to earlier none of the women in M want to be with it despite the hotels and
everything then he just doesn't know how to be large hearted he won't pamper you in any way it'll
be like why did you spend 500 bucks getting well but you could have tried to get an injection in
to
your own body and spend 30 rupes and nobody's that poor living on kica road then he should marry
a slum dwelling woman who values that kind of saving you know it's a it's a very cheap mindset
and you can't tell a man repeatedly that your reputation is down because you don't know how to
pamper women foret pamper you don't even know how to be sensitive you can't tell him that how can
I he'll reject it he's an old mCP nothing's ever wrong with an mCP yeah man I feel that so sad that
this w
as put into people's heads I think I maybe told him that I like in three days you haven't
message me saying are you feeling better and I don't care about the price of what I've taken
as long as I'm on my feet and I'm okay yeah yeah it it still doesn't make sense to him what women
want so I wrote this book but the pity is I need to print copies unfortunately I'm not sure how
to get it out there but these men really need to read it oh yeah see like when the other woman or
man is your phone so
a lot of relationships today are compromised because people are just on the
phone right okay a secret of Seduction the art of listening and younger women are better men are
better listeners because the women in their lives are stronger and they have a point of view the
older men have grown up with women with no point of view they don't read the news they just get fat
they have the babies they run the home so those men are used to that feminine archetype right
right which is not today's wom
an so there's a mismatch so the whole book and this is about being
casual physical which is another big pressure that I find men now are so used to having that fun that
they they don't even think you qualify to be in their life unless you're willing to do all that
you have to sleep around be easy then now what's happened it's gone to another level especially
in the suburbs where you have the Millennials the girls don't want to be with one man they want
to sleep around with everybody really
yeah so one of the younger man who initially liked me till
I was honest about my age um just fell out of a relationship and he's heartbroken because the
woman didn't want to be loyal and she was living with him for eight months she refused used to be
loyal he went into a form oh I I met somebody like that as well one of my fitness clients I mean I
can't say who obviously and he was like yeah my girlfriend didn't just didn't want to be committed
and so we just broke it off oh okay seeing thi
s guy wasn't shattered that's that's so strange
for me to hear that coming from Singapore there's the opposite what is it like that it's like girls
want to be committed guys don't yeah so I'm seeing India is going through phenomenal shifts which
even fully comprehended but what I tried to do is base this on true stories talk to a lot of people
emailed a lot of people and I want this to be out there so that you know this old school man has to
evolve if he doesn't he's going to be a loner all
the guys on Bumble and Tinder over a certain age
over 40 who their wives have left right it's not been the man saying bye-bye all the guys have
met of that age group the wives have walked away saying we just don't want to live with you
anymore that's interesting so that's yes it's a huge statement but sadly in India we're not doing
a lot of social surveys and you know we don't tabulate we don't find out what the numbers look
like and who left whom right you know have we done that kind of r
esearch or data Institute maybe they
need to conduct more relationship surveys you will see what what's going on with India yes you know
that would be useful yeah yeah so that's one book yeah um you also have two other books yeah I have
four in total the first one is out of print it's called Shakti inity again like you asked me about
my journey um when I saw the rise of female power when I was in college I I dedicated a series of
short stories to women coming of age in the city and I call i
t shaki in the city and we have to
keep this in mind Bombay's women will have very different stories and Journeys than women in the
north of India the north of India the patriarchy is still very very dominant now there's a plus
side to it where they want to protect you look after you you know Assist you facilitate be
committed be married have children all that's very much alive still in the north right the
downside of it is you can end up leaning on that man building your entire story only
around
the home and the heart and I just recently I was at a conference where there was a friend of mine
from Delhi whose husband started to cheat after I think 20 years of adoring her where she was a
rockstar in the marriage he would sacrifice things for her he would bring a car in for her like he
did everything possible and started cheating on her now and that's I think again just the way
men that's their weakness then they get bored right but she couldn't handle it because it was
coming
too much into the picture so she decided to quit for a while and just come to stay with a
sibling in Mumbai right and now she's struggling to get on her own two feet so she comes from a
lineage of d ancers so she was she had created her own therapy where dance mudras you know which
can be done on your office desk and all can be used to facilitate wellness and she was teaching
that but probably not in a serious business like way right she was probably doing small groups and
everything but n
ow she said I need to scale up because I was used to a lifestyle which at that
time was funded by my spouse but I need to move out I can't live forever with a sibling who's also
single but happily single and I need to build my own existence financially mhm and she said Sita
in Delhi they just lump it they just swallow the man's infidelity man is disrespectful if he has a
drinking issue they lump it and they live with it because they've not worked on building themselves
up financially I've h
eard that I've heard that right so those if I was living there those stories
would not have been these stories so shaki in the city interestingly came out from from my years in
college and the early years working and exploring Bombay as a journalist and I had very deep
insights because I was going through a lot of spiritual work at that time for some reason I
was being guided to do Reiki courses then I had a Shakti Kundalini Rising experience all in my
20s so that book has hugely deeply phi
losophical insights into relating instability that family
values everything that was like looking like it was shifting to me I'm very energetic and a young
mind and an inquiring mind so it's still one of my favorite books sadly out of print uh because
the publisher shut off so each copy is now being sold by second and third vendors I don't see any
of the royalty for 4,000 rupees on Amazon what because it's out of print it's considered rare
and Antiquated it was launched in 2000 Oh you mean
like um old old versions used like a rare
book like you know limited edition rare so any commodity that's rare the prices appreciate but
none of us none of the royalties are coming my course they come to the middl men so people are
reselling it yes people who own the book once yes and you'll find secondhand Edition valued at
this and firsthand Edition and good condition and it amuses me how the book business works and one
actress I had interviewed who was a very serious like an art house ac
tress she said if I were you I
would have pitched it to someone to make a series like a web series you still can yeah so they'll
have to locate a copy because I I probably gave most of mine away I may have one somewhere in the
did you have the script at least in an old laptop so I have to buy my own book bag get it retyped
I have sure you make a YouTube video about that that's I get retyped and reset and reprinted and
I need to do that with M so this was published by the Amazon printing arm
they have a facet of
their business that prints on demand so you're not wasting copies but it's a th000 rupees a copy
which is not feasible for me to distribute I want literally I want to hand this to men that I've
met right I was just thinking like you should have given that guy the manual they all need it
all the guys over 40 who grew up in a world where women had no voice no will no decision making
power and then they just talk about themselves and they kill the relationship before it h
as a
chance nice yeah and uh so let's just briefly touch on the two before we go into our other
topics so actually we're still on our first topic which is who is s and has taken a nice Arc but I
think the books tell you a lot about right so so what's this one about so this was interesting so
I was uh quite taken in by the shifting values in our movie stories and where you know see movies
are sort of the spiritual barometer of a society U there was a time the hero could never go wrong
you c
ould never kill the hero there there was a distinct Vamp who did the sexy stuff and there was
a virtuous heroine who did the good stuff right so that kept people in a comfort zone everybody
from the villagers to the urban they all related to archetypes but as I was seeing in college
and then later that the vamp and the heroin are merging the woman has to be sexy regardless
you know the wife and the girlfriend are always now hot and sexy and they do all the item numbers
whether it's like She
ila Sheila they have to be very sexual to make sense today because the
men now are so programmed to look for that can we just can we just tell the audience what
an item number is nobody knows what that means outside India so as you probably have heard some
very reacy dance tracks that usually make a film come to life in terms of promotion and marketing
um the women that the female lead is often made to perform these songs and they're beautifully
orchestrated they're just brilliant so like e
ven a song like acon when he came to India and he
he sign you are my Cho so these songs because we live in the age of virality tend to go viral
around the world you know recently Theon song in pan so that went viral I saw YouTubers doing
reviews from everywhere around the world and they all assume that the woman is singing whereas
in Indian tradition is always a backup singer and she just is kind of going with the song and
lip sinking uh but this item number becomes a big part of the formul
a to sell a movie so so
so that's okay so for an international audience you've described what a dance number is or song
and dance number what is this word item it's a slang it's a colloquial way to describe it because
item you know in in like if for example a woman is hot okay and you have these sort of working class
guys having a cup of tea in a cafe somewhere out and this hot woman is walking by they'll go you
know like blow whistle and they like yeah item you know so item basically means
a hot chick okay
and when you do item number it means a hot chick performing a really hot song nice right and
that's like every movie now so it's part of the success formula you know it's what draws you
to the movie whether it was patan whether it was shilak jaani they so iconic now all these songs
recently they had Chala yeah and sometimes it's not even Central to the plot but it's it's just
I but what this F was trying to say is that means now that woman is not so virtuous she has Shades
of Gray the hero is also Shades 50 Shades of Gray because shuk Khan's first film he was actually
cast as a man throwing women over the Terrace of a building and he was the lead but he was a
psychotic lead was that bazigar uh yeah yeah I think it was baser yeah something yeah yeah
Baza right okay and he was a psychotic hero he wasn't a healthy normal man he was obsessed he
was talking the heroin and responsible for murder so there's so many Shades of Gray in day-to-day
life that sooner or
later that has seeped into the scripts and the characters so when I wrote this
I was a journalist at Lal magazine and we were featuring lot of personalities from the movies but
I didn't want to be superficial and just get the star narrative because the star narratives are
everywhere I always told the star I want to see you how you work how you relate to the women on
the team how are you treating the technicians so I met shuk so you know how you manifest things when
you're on a project on a
journey so I first wanted to get the lyricism back in my work so I quit
my job not quit really but I took a three week of article I joined a adult creative writing Prof
for professional course in Scotland in Edinburg where they don't know your history so if you're
producing mediocrity they have no problem telling you that this is crap and you need to go back to
your room and you need to work on it so we had a Greek I was very fortunate I wanted to you can
see my obsession with mythology I w
anted to build mythical archetypes movie archetypes character
archetypes and leave them in a narrative right very ambitious kind of way of working right and we
had a Greek teacher who was very attuned to G and goddess archetypes from Greece okay so she made us
do exercises where we have a conversation with a god of God and the Goddess that I chose was maali
who represents the era we're living in the kug okay I don't know if you've heard of malali have
we could go into that for hours but yea
h yes so I wrote as a class assignment a conversation with
Kali and then we had to present it to class and imagine you have Irish people African UK people
Brit people never heard of maali but the character was so vivid in the dialogue that they all got
Goose BBS and I read it with that kind of force and power you know like as so I had a latent DGA
inside of me so I read it with that really like powerful ination and they freaked and I think I
talk my class in one assignment at least not ever
y assignment but that one so when I came back I said
you know nobody's updated mythology for the times and maybe that's why my book hasn't reached the
critical mass yeah again you need marketing muscle for everything and content now people find very
hard to digest right large but had this become a series a web series a movie the filmmaker would
have a picnic recreating a conversation with Kali addressing today's existential questions from
a young energetic writer and the writer is so Fearle
ss because that's the way I've tried to
conduct my career I would ask anybody anything I was never politically correct um you shouldn't
have said that because now I'm going to ask you anything well but back in the day people were
like really like wow like I met subash and I had red streets in my hair and I was very blunt
with him on many things about how he portrays women and everything and he said you know they
used to treating media like the kind of poor cousins like they live far away th
ey don't have a
lot of money but I wasn't that kind of journalist right like in India unfortunately it's a lot
about demographic so when I was really Brave and like least interested in impressing the guy
he just said you don't ask me anything and if I ever make a film with a journalist I'll make her
like you she will be having the red hair and she will be asking me many things which nobody has
the courage to ask they D you know because he's a powerful man right journalist like you know all
In Fear And they're so scared to ask me things but you are just doing what you want to do I said yeah
but that's what makes it worth reading who wants to read about your toothpaste and your toothbrush
yeah exactly exactly and that's how that so a lot of people behind the scenes I wanted them to be
part of the narrative so because star narratives like you know they're Overexposed everyone knows
when I met shuk it was at a America had a variety magazine awards night and I was at that time
th
rowing 50 invitations in the bin every day I couldn't keep up but when I saw variety magazine
awards I said okay this sounds nice this was in some ballroom and seven star and my date was late
I had a friend picking me up and his mother had an exhibition because he was late we entered
the ballroom and the lady in charge when she said oh sale magazine she said listen I I think
your seats are taken but fortunately we have a seat next to sharuk in the front right the front
table and there was K
umar mangalam Ba's name name tag on my chair and I was pulling it back now
you know who Bas are right the oldest corporate industrialist so B he had gone missing he wasn't
coming so I'm pulling the chair sitting down yeah and uh I asked shuk Khan I said am I taking gory's
place yeah cuz typically your wife would sit with you such a loaded question and yeah okay and
he said no you are taking Kumar mongal Ba's Place yeah and then we had a fun like ice breaking
night I handed my card and what
a man you know I had chatted with him nine years ago at L magazine
and at that time he wanted to meet and I just I said you know I don't want to make it to film City
too much time gets lost and com there why don't we just do this I need a quote from you let's do
it over the phone he so could not get over that this writer doesn't want to even meet me and she
doesn't want to hang out with me at film City he never forgot me and I had an accent maybe a mild
one not a really I don't have an Indi
an accent I have like a nowhere accent right so he was very
intrigued by that he kept saying I want to meet you I want to meet you you sound interesting
I want to meet you so that night when I gave him the card and he saw Sita wadwani he said
we spoke nine years ago yeah you didn't want to meet me so but then I said I said shuk I'm
working on a novel about your industry and you know I if I ask you questions I know all that's
everywhere so I want you to show me how you work so call me when y
ou're doing a photo shoot I
just want to observe you at work and he gave me the magic words and the numbers and every dates
everything and I and actually got to see him at work right amazing he had P Zinta on his back when
he had a slip disc and he wasn't complaining and it was the style team that was worried about
they're like Sho like dude you know you have a slip disc what are you doing with pett Zinta on
your back and that's the kind of insight I wanted into how he works he's known to e
levate People's
Energy wherever he goes right and I think he's a hugely blessed man definitely so anyway so a
lot of these anecdotes are part of Bollywood on the bend and I'm hoping one day it gets picked
up for an OT show because it has a lot of lot of insights it's very rich right including going
into Indian philosophy Indian archetypes you know and the Quest for feminine actualization because
lead characters are women yeah you know an so it's a love triangle the writer who is a reflectio
n
of me comes in after 911 comes to Bombay meets a film producer oh there's a story about fiction
oh my God a writer coming from New York after 9/11 scared to live in New York alone her parents tell
her go to India you have family there parents are in Hong Kong she comes to stay here with cousins
and family but she finds that archetype very oppressive where the women are only programmed
to married and we're talking about the '90s and she has a young cousin who's not allowed to take
up a jo
b because it won't look good on the family name so this she bols out she goes and meets his
film producer who she meets on the flight tries to work her way into writing a movie and then she
meets this really eligible cute guy called sadab who is the young director training with the old
fellow the old fellows modeled on subash guy who was flopping across the board the young fellow
says you need fresh blood because your formulas don't work anymore so the whole movie It's called
Bollywood on t
he B it's telling the story of young blood coming into the business old people being
rejected by audiences for their formulas the the strengthening and the the sort of detoxing of
patriarchy in cinema and how also this young team gets down to write a very new story but they're
leaning on the archetypes and they're redefining them do you do you realize yeah you said the
whole movie I hope people make it into movie yeah as you said that I got that same shiver down
the spine feeling we got I'm
dying for someone to pick it up it's a great movie probably will
yeah when hopefully in my lifetime okay yeah so that's Bollywood on the Ben on the B with real
appearances from aik and you know if they made this film like with a farak Khan as a director I
can see her doing a great job what don't you write to her uh they don't read the book I've actually
handed a copy to Karan johar yeah they pass it on to the assistance to read why don't you give
it to far I'll send it to her I'll call her
and I'll say have an amazing but thing is they don't
have time to really read a book they can read a synopsis then they'll give it to their teammates
to read then whether those teammates come back and actually read it so actually uh I haven't told
you this yet but because it didn't come out but my wife cousin mhm is actually a director I think
he started as a producer now he's a director and he worked with shok Khan's company red chilies
fantastic yeah so maybe we could you guys up with th
emy yeah I'll try and do a tight synopsis he
just had a kid so he's a bit busy right now okay but uh I'm sure I'm sure he's not quitting the
business you're feeling the Shivers it means it's meant to be a movie can you imagine I'm talking
to K I'm asking about commitment issues and K's solution is that you you see me killing things
all the time you need to declutter and you need to keep killing things because if you go into things
with the heart your heart is your most precious uh body part
you are constantly slicing it so be
dispassionate whatever you do be dispassionate be detached now all these archetypes have never
spoken in cinema it could even get me into trouble like a Salman rushi but Salman was dissing
religion I'm actually giving it a voice I'm actually saying give me solution but some people
would yeah but some people Al argue that Hinduism isn't really religion it's spirituality it's a
lot of spirituality but we do have icons right we do have a bigger heads and th
ey've got their
narratives and all we're doing is teasing that narrative a bit for our times we're saying how
does it work for our times and I would love to see this in an OT show I mean it would lend itself to
many episodes and then we can create new seasons because as as I was as I were as you were talking
my guy popped into my head and it said multiple YouTube channels there you go but that's just me
yeah okay so this this is the one that I got from you yeah encounters with the rich also
kind of
heavy yes because it's a pictorial book it's very rich and Illustrated and this kind of encapsulates
20 years of lifestyle and celebrity journalism where you can see the range of people there's MF
husin an iconic artist who's no more there's awara there's Mr ban there's princess Dia Kumari so
princess Dia the first time we met her he was in a c which captured all those images she just met
us like a regular woman in charge with a lot of responsibilities with a fact machine and you k
now
it was all school and lovely but as we started featuring royal families the lady especially ended
up working out they lost weight they got into beautiful designer sories and they realized that
we represent a legacy so hello was responsible to bring these families back into the Forefront
because the Indira Gandhi regime actually tried to cut the out of the picture completely they took
away all the privileged money that the you see earlier they were part of the taxpaying structure
so the
y had privy purses from the government to maintain The Monuments the Palaces the festivals
and they were patrons right they were sustaining Artisans and all that so there was a Structure
where the government the newly formed Republic had privilege purses for the royal families to
sustain what they have but Indira Gandhi was a socialist and and there were crazy things that
some of the maharajas were doing which didn't make sense when India was completely bled by the
British colonial time so
she said now each one has to sustain one more and I want an egalitarian
world I don't want this crap where you know they had pigeon siiz diamonds and I mean there were
dogs uh dog weddings which were costing like hundreds and lacks and crores and the dog of the
Maharaja of this state and the dog of the Maharaja of this state are getting married and there'll
be dog procession oh God you must read Xavier Morrow's book I have it you're not joking I'm not
joking this was a time of eccentric spe
nding right one Maharaja fell in love with a dancing girl in
Spain who was broke brought her back made her a white Maharani and built her something that looked
like the Palace of ver I can see myself doing that for for a woman you love yeah so and she was
broke her family was bankrupt they literally sold her to this more you know they looked at
them all black men as Moors but he was a Sardar Maharaja from Kap so all these stories so we were
able to get into that whole historic period And I
have to tell you it was super super engaging
because I like I told you I'm a romantic those days lovers would hide themselves into like you
know a suffocate themselves to protect a Lover's reputation hide in these little like boxes and
castets and even if they were being gunned down through the box they wouldn't make a sound because
the maharani's reputation is important so there were all these like yeah stories of shivalry what
of immense love and you know there's a we we need to do more v
ideos this is the one video is too
short yeah yeah The Men Who if they were having an affair with a royal princess or a queen they would
sacrifice their lives to keep her going to keep our reputation wow so that was the age of shivalry
so when we used to visit all these palaces I used to go into my own like Dream Zone you know I used
to say oh I can imagine this happening here and that happening there and then it's still alive in
Rajasthan there's still a sense of shivalry mhm it's a sweetn
ess it's not that toxic patriarchy
like you go to a jeweler he will want to hold your hand he'll gaze it you why don't you join us on
Sunday we're going to be having whiskies don't you like whiskies you know like they want to build an
equation and they treat you like a lady it's like when sorry sorry when did that happen recently
I've been going to the joyo L Fest okay so I always end up visiting my Jeweler friends there I
used to buy these little like you know je I still have a jeor Emeral
wait like random Jewelers or
Jewelers no you build an equation like M jewellers and all they get to know you over time and they'll
always say chai low t low G low like you don't be happy and they really make you feel like you have
a gender what tends to happen here in the city is you could be any gender from morning to night you
don't remember I've had guys opening doors for me and I go to culture shock I'm like huh oh yeah
of course you're a man you would open a door for me because it's n
ot part of Bombay life it okay
everyone's going dutch everyone's expecting a fling on the first day where is the there is
no perseverance there's no poetry there's no you know there's a beautiful quote I remember me
to sing R kapur's mother who was also an actress right is a beautiful Hindi word that means
cultivating things slowly t means to wait so patience so she said you're not in that age of
perseverance and patience and idealism you should watch the gri interview with Simi garal on Yo
uTube
there's an unabridged one okay where she's tra her life Encompass the change right she went from
being a princess of Baroda third wife of Maharaja J Singh of jaur and the BBC at that time they
were very like let's make a scandal out of the fact that she's the third woman so they used to
come down to do interviews and she was named by vog UK as among the 10 most beautiful women in the
world so the media was always hounding gatri DVI for interviews so they told her but in our part
of t
he world The Third Woman is the mistress she's not a wife and isn't that intolerable isn't that a
scandal so she would say in India we respect women so much that if we love a woman we'll marry her
whether she's first second or third but they give her the status of a wife and a queen they call
her Maharani you know grii they didn't just call her raani raani is when you're just a wh who's
your you know mixed your jeans with the Royal jeans and then you produce Bast children she was
called Mah
arani grii and lovely books about her as well that's nice and she was Progressive right
so she insisted that there should be a girl school so she started the MSG girl school in her name
uh she wanted women to come up not we the PARTA there was a tradition after the Muslims left to
have women in par she said that's not us we're not going to be like that she used to smoke she
used to go hunt tigers at the age of 12 she shot her first Tiger but that was a royal Pastime to go
into the forest an
d shoot but you know that when I met another Maharaja of kishar he said we always
had ecos sensitivity we didn't need it from Peta and all these World bodies if we knew we shot
so many animals for our hunt we would let the forest regenerate the populations during meting
season no hunting let the animal repopulate then you take your hands and there also they would
keep a headcount of the Trees of the Flora and the fauna so I learned it was the richest time of
my journalism career when I was
at hello because people are so well endowed with values the
further back in time you go you start seeing the values that drove them it's values where we
deteriorated interesting it's values now which have been confused and it just saddens me we've
thrown love love in the bucket it's all about lust and sometimes it even disgusts me the way
people behave because you know you're a writer you you're looking for the story where is the bloody
story you know people jumping each other's bones is wh
at the monkeys are doing so how have you are
you evolving are you devolving are you going back in evolution yeah but I I think I think uh I think
to be fair like to be more neutral um if we look at it from another perspective um we might also
be these values I'm not saying we should lose the good ones but I'm saying like maybe people
nowadays because some of us are becoming more conscious we want to question like everything yeah
maybe to the point we're overthinking sometimes right so maybe
maybe a balance would be I think
what works for people at a soul level needs to be prioritized if you're just consuming people
consuming products consuming food um then you've just lived at the level of the body you've not
cultivated anything deeper trer more beautiful if you come into Udu poems you see movies like
umra Jan or even jodar you'll see that you know love used to be stirred like a nice slow cooking
slow eating of hair and that's when it touches your soul if you're just at that
I'm telling you
just at the five senses you're not evolving and the tragedy is Suburban Bombay has become a jungle
of lust you know the girls just literally I was chatting with a journalist friend of mine who's
got friends in that Millennial age group you're literally like they're consuming men like Monsters
you know you can't how are you commoditizing people reducing them to body parts I mean give
me a break so I'm a little like now not so in sync with what I see here and I think there's m
ore
depth outside India outside Bombay not Delhi and all they're still a little more traditional
but definitely this Suburban jungle I'm not so enamored by okay Soo still has the older
generation right so there Soo still will have that ECT what Soo South Bombay oh yeah but then
again it's like a senior citizen's on conclave within the city everyone's much older much older
so it's not even very exciting yeah that's cool so that was um encounters with the Rich and Famous
but then here you'll
have bachan story and you'll have like Hima Malini and what how you know as a
mlck lady she was a Mars red stone Mong women tend to be the third party in a lot of equations right
so uh so she was cast as the second wife which in our modern world is not given its due recognition
so she had built up a world which was filled with the Arts every evening they like di in the
house you know they detox the atmosphere she was raising these two girls that's almost like
single she had a partner but h
e was not in the picture she had the respect of her wife because he
married her he Chang his religion married her so that way Hima Malini was bit lucky but there was a
despondency because every woman wants the husband to be in her life in her home yeah but then she
flipped it around and we talked to her she said but then today I can have a political meeting I'm
opening a dance school I travel I do my ballets and I'm not running around a man and I have to
see the positive in that course imag
ine for her generation that's a huge Evolution yeah right and
then I asked him I said but as a second woman in a triangle uh did you ever feel hurt when he was
acting with other girls and you know with a wife and so he said he was always a gentleman he would
never do things to hurt he was proper like a he's a what you call a j jart Punjabi men very romantic
all heart so she said he was always a gentleman now where do you see that kind of gentleman code I
even wrote a story and hello saying
gentlemen have died I see so many I you know what as you saying
that I'm having so many alarm Bells go off yeah and I think my generation would um because uh are
you 30 something or 30 36 yeah okay this October so so that there there would be many men and women
in many cultures in many countries would be like I don't care how gentlemanly he is it's a one wife
Deal or No Deal yeah yeah it's like you're not she didn't really unfortunately she had really fallen
for the guy her mom tried to to
get a hitch to a single actor called jitendra yes but some I think
jitendra was going to marry a Cindy woman called sha right so sha orchestrated to get jitendra
uh to get dhandra to the wedding that was plan between jandra and Hima Malini obviously mother
told her you want a man to yourself why would you want to share a man and dhandra came disrupted
and said I'll change my religion and marry you so it wasn't her first choice sometimes you're
hopelessly love or your gen so I don't think at
a practical level she always knew it's a compromise
you know but don't forget in the movies you're any way in an alternative reality you're shooting
so many intimate scenes you're so much with that person that you think you know what I really
can't love anyone else I love this guy you know what I'm saying yeah no that's definitely possible
yeah yeah and you are maybe meant to be together but in that weird way yeah the mongal start does
the Mars in a woman's horoscope it creates a lot of th
ese issues Reika is heavily even more mlic
than K malani she's always been the Third Woman and not even acknowledged as a wife and there's
a lot of sadness you look at rea's pictures no matter how well maintained she is there is that
vacuum because she never got the respect of her wife which in her and generation was everything
right you know she came for a Hello Hall of Fame awards svi had recently committed suicide or
passed on we don't know what happened with svi but svi was again a seco
nd wife he divorced his
first wife and married svi Boni Kapoor so she said it with so much feeling she said svi Bon
kapor is no longer with us so you could see the importance of having the name of a male spouse
because Rea never got that right but she still has the love of the master she's Immortal she's
just W Arabia cover now you mentioned that yeah I mean I I just I it kind of slipped my mind but
even my dad's mom U married twice and my dad's dad married twice okay yeah I mean after they
were
married to each other they and we were friends with everyone Okay so yesterday I just met so
farad that I was telling you the journalist um he his mom was my dad's Dad's second wife that's
really confusing uh my my dad's uh uh dad so your grandfather's yeah second wife and so and we're
still friends and we had a nice chat AL look at Alec padam see he married three women and all the
women are friends and all the kids are friends and they have big family bashes that's crazy though
that
is absolutely crazy he did it at the same time yeah okay's a Muslim so he's allowed to do
it and uh they all strong women there was PE padam the first wife who Child R padam very big on NOS
and theater and there was Sharon pracher who was the third woman who this hot you know item singing
on stage so actually actually have do you follow te Swan no so she's this spiritual leader I mean
there's a thought leader online and she released a video on PO polygamy uhuh and actually there are
a lot
of Clues and signs and stories about like previous generations like not this far recent but
way back where and i' I've been having this more and more and me and my wife we were discussing
because there was this guy in the friend Circle who tried to touch her and then denied that he
tried to touch her like I'm all for everyone touching each other if you agree that that's what
we're doing consensual yeah and and also just be honest even if it's not consensual just like say
oh man sorry I just
your wife was too beautiful I I prefer that rather than oh no I didn't do
anything right so we were having these discussions and I told her maybe there's nothing wrong with
what he did he's just embarrassed because and just like T Swan was saying actually all humans
just desire connection so maybe marriage is a sham like this whole like male female not not
not not that it's not valid that the energies need to mix and blend and blah blah but maybe
it's just a modern day construct but I ther
e's no actual answer to that because some species in
nature they do do just like one partner but you're saying modern day const I feel it's a modern day
deconstruct the modern world is just tearing it apart that too that's too yeah cuz we're going
back towards spirituality yes and not only that see this what MF husin the artist told me he said
it's redundant today the woman doesn't need a man for economic power women are widely available man
doesn't need a woman for sex right so what used t
o keep marriages Solid Rock Solid that Foundation is
no longer there yeah yeah so the compulsion that I have to attach to this one person for the rest of
my life till dead to his part the foundation isn't there to keep it going you may be drawn to someone
who's more evolved as along with your journey of evolution your husband may not be evolving you
will drift apart it's going to happen yeah right and you can't even sit on judgment earlier there
was a lot of judgment right people are so de
facto about it like okay we grew apart yeah simple yeah
and it's honest you know it's true yeah I'm I'm happy to say that me and my wife we that state
where we talk about everything openly yeah we even ask a question actually why are we together every
week yeah not in an angry way yeah just exploring yeah just exploring so yeah um for kids yes I can
see that you need to build a nest for the children so there is a nice function to marriage because
that's it yeah but you're right it's very ha
rd to know where who you will be tomorrow who he will be
tomorrow if you're able to grow together you're in a happy situation if only one person and that's
the problem with these older Indian men they're not willing to change to grow so it looks toxic
from the Outlook it's very arrogant yeah it's toxic all right yeah okay so actually you and
I with our personalities we can go on chatting for days but but but but before we end yeah or at
least this episode I want to uh let's just talk about
something else as well that was a good lunch
break yes thanks for the meal like homecooked food yeah just it's comforting and comfortable yeah
and easy on the belly yeah so I I wanted to chat a little bit about how we met and how this
meeting was sort of meant to be and maybe from there we can talk a little bit about spirituality
and some of the new work you've been doing and so on so actually what happened was um I visited
crossword I know you've heard this a few times but for the audience
now yeah so I visited this really
nice bookstore called crosswords which I've been visiting since I was a kid so I love to read and
over the last two three years my career was taking a bit of a transition and so I was walking there
after lunch at play and Pip with a fitness client who I previously only met online when I coached
him and he's a Pary guy and so as we were walking we were discussing our careers because even he's
quitting like a shipping longtime shipping career to now open his
own organic farming aggregator
website okay which links farmers who organically Farm to Consumers maybe such as yourself right
out here in India yeah yeah and so big movement yeah yeah yeah and so as we're walking through
the shelves we inevitably ended up at the show shelf cuz I'm always looking at the music stuff
and then we see your book right up there yes um and as I see a book I have this imagination of
this lady called Chelsea who I saw on Netflix um who just like you knows a lot of
famous people
he's met a lot of them had had a show come out where she's sitting at a round table with um the
singer from Imagine Dragons whz Khalifa I believe uh Mary J bliger another U African-American singer
and she's the only non like musician artist there but she's a artist in her own right and as they're
going around the table talking about each person they come to her and so she was like I don't
even know what the hell I'm doing because they were all opening up about the insecurities
about
work and she was like I don't even know who I am I just know I like to be with people I like to
talk about entertainment so here I am and this is my show but I actually don't know what it's
called or who I am like there's no box right yeah and so something in I'm realizing oh my God
that is me in the Singapore music scene cuz they can't figure out like is this guy a drummer
or a singer or he produces because I do all of it ah and I'm not very clickish I like to make
friends with eve
ryone and so I'm remembering your book more and more before this India trip happens
and I'm thinking back to that crosswood and I was actually thinking I'm going to go back and buy
it because I want to read about what she did and how she did it and I'm just having more and more
thoughts and then on I think it was Thursday or Friday the day you were there as well I was having
this thought in the morning oh yeah Crosswoods I got to go there later and so we go to justlo
hospital for my dad to
see his eyes sorry to to talk to a doctor about a potential stroke uh
which he doesn't know happened okay because there are parts of your brain where you could get a mini
stroke where you don't know cuz maybe that part of the brain just controls your eyes then he has
eye problems so He suggests eating at the Chinese place next to you know Kim's corner and I was like
no let's go to this other place I know and so I walk in and then I sit down with him at the same
table I sat with my Cent nsha
the previous year and we look over the table where you're sitting
there with chali and I was like first I could only see chal's face right and I was like she's
doing a reading for you after a while I saw you explaining and I saw the head movements and the
hand motions and I was like and then I kind of saw your aura and then I was like this is a seriously
witchy person I need to talk to her but what do you see in a Wii Ora it um I don't know I just I
can instantly it was a feeling it was a
feeling it was a um so it wasn't something you see it was
something you sense I do see people's or us but that day I saw I sensed to you and I I just I was
like I have to talk to this lady I don't know why so I went over and talked to you yeah and then um
you gave me your card and I still don't know that you're the author right because as far as I'm
concerned it's just like some Indian lady who you know encounters with the Richard fam because
I wouldn't pay attention to the au's name and th
en you pass me a card and I go home and it's a busy
day we're running around trains and buses and cars and all sorts of stuff so I was like okay what's
the lowest barrier to entry here and I see your Instagram so like okay Instagram so go to her
Instagram and then I go to your Instagram and the first picture that is off this book and I was
like oh my God that is the lady yeah craziness uh absolutely it's crazy that you remembered
this book after a year and it was it was the frequency of it
coming up in my intuition was
more and more as this trip was materializing W so maybe I don't know maybe I'm supposed to help
you with something you're supposed to help me with something yes maybe together supposed to
share something yeah share something help the planet with something liberate people's crap in
their minds through this these conversations uh but also we got talking about the tarot and and
thanks for the reading you did Welcome uh and so you've uh maybe we can talk a little b
it about
it's obvious to anyone who knows anything about spirituality when they look at all this and
your face and blah blah blah that you're into spirituality but do you want to share a little
bit about your spiritual journey we a 30 minute description I'll try to be quick so basically I
was inducted into a Reiki one class right after my cousin Vishal who's now a well-known musician
had Reiki in his house he had a Reiki class and we stumbled upon it I was intrigued I said what
are all the
se people doing right so I met the master I enrolled at 25 at the age of 25 and that
Journey sparked a greater engagement because I kept meeting people from different spiritual walks
of life and I started exploring all the different Pathways that were opening up including going
through Kundalini arise Shakti paath experience at 27 and I think that worked very well with
his career like writing because in writing you have a moral responsibility to make the society
reflect on change for the be
tter that's the way I see broadly you know and you're also supporting
other lives and Journeys by saying this person's achieved this this person achieve that so it
was a spiritual career intrinsically and not a profit driven career the fact that it became
profit driven happened on its own that was again the universe doing its own number where the do
com see are and then the salaries multiply but so this all I would credit to The Awakening of the
galini which was the Shakti experience which
I had at in my 20s and I started taking my art a little
more seriously because the universe planted me in the times of India building which was just a walk
away from the GJ School of Art which is Bombay's most renowned iconic Art institution so I told
my editor if you don't mind for a few months I will leave a bit early because I have class and
I started there fidgeting with pastels and oils and different mediums and that's when when I was
losing my dad he had a stroke he was bedridden I ha
d to spend more time at home then I started
buying into this and I even called the teacher home from GJ School of Art and I said I want to
do a series on gods and goddesses and I also think zepher that when I was a kid my mother wanted us
to read amitra Kata stories oh I read those you know those right so those are the stories that
tell you about the mythology of India all the stories of Shiva Krishna so on and so forth the
ramayan the Mahabharat so those images were so deeply engrained som
ewhere in my subconscious mind
that when I started to put brush to Canvas they were the first entities that appeared so Krishna
and all his Beauty Shiva and his meditative uh Tranquility then the combination of the two the
Shiva Shakti and a lot of people come home now because these Works have been up on the wall for
10 years almost yeah when they come home even if they're calling entities or they're playing with
darker energies they are not able to connect with them have this experience re
cently very ambitious
friend who believed in fire meditation fire manifestation and Aran friend who materialized
and manifested an incredible career journey and we were home from a night out and he kept throwing
his diamonds on the table and here and there and then he said you know what there is this entity
that is making fun of me right now and uh it's a very playful entity and I can manifest it and
show it to you in my eyes but the more he spent time trying to get it into his eyes and his
eyes
become demonic which we've seen in photographs but he wasn't able to call it in my house he said
it's just your house is deflecting this energy right so it told me that it may seem like just
wall art but it has its own vibrational level and it's definitely doing something to the energy
of that yeah no for sure yeah oh there are the sugars again see yeah so there's a lot of Truth in
what I'm saying yeah and maybe the spirit guys are saying yes there is a lot of blessing and I I do
fee
l protected by my own art practice and a lot of it has spiritual meaning I even experimented
with uh non-figurative works during the lockdown which became about the planet so do you want me to
hold up a few you could hold up a few or we could I could just I could just take the camera and we
talk as we walk I need to spread them out because they're all over here yeah and even like you're
seeing the M over here you can show this on herea this one I love this one yeah this again has it's
calle
d the Himalayas so you see a combination of snow sunshine and then the oh when you change
the angle of the work becomes a third eye and a trishu which is shiva's weapon wow if I if I
just twist it around it becomes a third eye so a lot of these works are imbued with very Cosmic
and very spiritual vibration amazing and that's why when you asked about the selling part it's
never been calized in my mind whether I want to sell no do I not want because they've been part of
the collective energy
here for a long time right but sure people said we really like this can you
make us one I will make you one insane you know the Shiva Shak yeah and so are you also going to
go further into like the tarot readings or card readings or yeah so the tarot was like you saw my
house lots of different so thanks to my spiritual experiences wherever I've traveled I've tended to
be drawn to tarot a lot and uh when I was at times of India I would spend my evenings with the tarot
reader at the Oxford bo
okstore and I had this deep Fascination for this art of divination and given
how uncertain the times we are living in I think having um a a medium to see where you're heading
to get that guidance is very very empowering so recently I've been enrolling in a lot of courses
some of the decks come with the booklets that explain you know the meaning of the card but I
want to start to internalize it so I've done I'm doing a diploma then I'm doing a Mastery with an
Indian teacher and a UK based te
acher wow that's and let's see where this journey goes and then of
course my my work is I've always been listening to human stories so this will be taking it to the
common man right earlier was rich and famous but now I'll be helping the everyday person yeah share
stories and also get guidance that's amazing and like I don't know how the session felt for you
how did it feel yeah I mean it was uh it was good very reflective yeah made me think about what I'm
doing not doing some skeletons in
my closet right like we all have those Shake Ratt and R skeleton
yeah yeah yeah yeah i' I've adopted weird methods of manifesting dreams like I told you and it's
always interpret some people will say that's a skeleton in her closet but to me it was just a
clean clear intent that I put in the universe like meeting shuk Khan had the variety Awards I
just came back from Scotland and I said how do I manifest shuk Khan it's going to be such a task
and the universe placed me on a chair right next
to shukan similarly this was such an ambitious
project I was like how am I going to manifest 25 lakh Rupees to go into print with a coffee table
book right but the universe put just the right person in front of me and he said it's not a big
deal I'll take care of it you focus on the book right similarly with the reges they they just said
we love the concept please go ahead and launch it yeah at the hotel so I do feel if you come from
a space of honest desire yeah and you never had malice a
nd you live with a relatively clean pure
Spirit then the spirit gues always help you yeah I do feel that you would know that yeah I actually
had that happen with a song where I first released a song which was trying to cop like as you do as
a beginner trying to copy my Idols produced that same way blah blah blah and the song came out
and a lot of Indian okay so I got to say this like I don't know maybe Indians are just more
fertile they're just more horny I don't know what it is but all the
Indian men and women I
showed it to they were like waa dude that's an amazing song and then Singapore people like it's
so misogynistic oh and I was like I'm just singing about a chick I met huh I sent it to her she likes
it I like it what's your problem yeah and they're like no can't put this [ __ ] out there oh so
then and then I had another song which was a way simpler song I wrote it on all white keys because
I didn't even know how to play the piano yet so I didn't Venture into the blac
k keys yet all white
chords yeah a love song I wrote it for my wife very simple production and it was my first fully
self-produced song myself and that song was on MTV India V uh MTV Asia VH1 India the video um and I
was talking to a a host in Singapore Anita kapor who was interviewing me um cuz I was setting up a
channel where we interview musicians and stuff and I told her like I I was so shocked like people dug
this song so much more and it went so much further and then she was like yeah
cuz you're doing it
from the heart like not trying to copy or just what was the name of this song uh sail away okay
I'll try and find it it's on my YouTube channel YouTube so I did two songs around YouTube one
was a copy of a mashup where we combine guys like you but I converted it to girls sorry yeah
I guys like you it's actually girls and that was Maroon Five and then we took raan's song you know
and so this was done by Jeffrey ibal who's a UK based musician and I love the entire mix and
the
production values I took it to a friend who runs a production company music production and I said
if you can replicate this I would like to do the voice and as a friend he said okay you know do
it in your Sunday or whatever your spare time so I was working Monday to Friday I went in and
it didn't take very long to put it down so that means I'm a decently decently recordable singer
you're doing the pictures and all that yeah I was able to get that going and within a short time we
had a
beautifully mixed replica but only thing it was the lyrics were adapted to a woman not to a
man right so that's on YouTube it's called guys like you okay and Sita Mone and the other track
was something I wrote in my 20s when I met a rock band Living nearby where they were saying Rock in
India is dying okay it has no future yeah and uh but so he had all these pre-recorded pieces and
scratches and he made me hear them and I started hearing a song over the scratch so I put it put
down the lyr
ics but we forced ourselves to do it in Hindi because at that time the whole business
was about Hindi we could not do English right so we did it and it was called GI jino and it had
all all the existential angst of a single woman thinking why is marriage so repugnant to me and
why can't I find my soulmate and why is Bombay so challenging to matters of the heart and the
same angst was in Shakti in the city but I put it into that song but recently I re-recorded it
as a ballad not as a dance t
rack where the depth of the lyrics resonates far better and I made
it also about sustainability and existentialism versus consumerism mhm like finding the beauty
of life and the joy of life being in nature and saving the planet so it gave it a whole new fresh
twist yeah and I shot footage in the males I've gone there for a break I shot in the Himalayas
at D prag so that song has a very spiritual very pandemic mode right and yet it has a groove it has
tbla bead I put layers and layers on it
so it's a very rich sounding track now I shot at a beautiful
stepwell also in Gujarat right and it has very suie feel there a lot of whirling that I'm doing
okay I want to check it out now yeah yeah I was whirling just it just happened yeah and and also
one last thing I wanted to end with was uh whoops one last thing I wanted to end with was I don't
know I mean I didn't tell you this uh yesterday when we met but you know when I walked into the
cafe where you were sitting there CU I was like
five minutes late right I noticed that you were
a little stressed out on your phone yeah and your face and your energy was a little shrunk uhhuh
but like 1 hour into a conversation I remember having a second thought going yeah oh look at her
face now it's like lit up yeah and and reminded me of something you said which was we live to our
our souls expand when we meet people yes and when we're giving so do you feel that's true for you it
is very true because I find it so hard to converse wi
th a lot of men here okay very sadly that when
you meet somebody who's well read well exposed traveled and worked with different modalities
and worked with people it is an expansion you've led a very expanded life so that was a pleasant
thing for me to encounter that I could actually touch upon many things when I'm talking to you
so naturally and even as a journalist when I was talking to people that learning was always feeling
expansive and I've been missing that because now it's not a ful
l-time preoccupation I've given it
a good part of my life now I want to work with these modalities and you know be a wellness at
so of course it was a joy to meet someone like you so well read well exposed spiritual yeah that
to my wife my wife there for her to because I like yeah no she shouldn't take it for granted very few
people are constantly on a quest to grow so that is a precious thing to have yeah you know but it
drives everyone mad though so don't engage with everybody I live on m
y own I do it like a Hermit I
just keep trying new things and nobody has to hear about it unless they want to but now yes this is
a journey I'm taking pretty seriously because it makes me happy I've done a reading for you I've
been reading for friends and I just feel if I'm supporting other lives that's what I was doing
as a writer right and if the writing industry has shifted a lot then this is a very good way to
take that Connect into my future like this people would you ever be combining
your new found
um sort of skills yeah with your whole life passion uping the plan would you ever write about
this stuff sure because see I'm going to probably encounter many lives again I'm going to learn
from those many lives I'm going to with their permission see if there's something they'd like
to share and I was contemplating a book called [ __ ] and witches because I was called a witch
by this eccentric German lady in Pune who just felt my energy and she said look you don't look
anyw
here near what you say your ages so you're 100% you're a witch and and she said you know
frankly I have these Arts that I want to pass on to a new generation but because she was senile
she wasn't communicating she didn't want to share her number she was senal and she was a bit racist
so I had to let her go okay you know because they don't want to be in touch with Indians it's a very
weird thing a lot of foreigners they forget the guru that they've come to meet as an Indian yeah
that's you k
now so when they talk about Indians it's a very derogatory way and I actually remember
telling this woman hey but you're here for Osho and Oso was rajin and rajin is Indian so just
in case you forgetting that you're in India for your Indian Guru yeah but there is still that Co
racism you know but she was she gave me she did a blow torch in my head because I said okay maybe
I am a witch but in a positive way not I'm not out here to destroy lives I'm here to facilitate
uh shed light on people
's lives and help to see them evolve help them to get direction so that's
a very positive Journey so I'm super super excited I'm training with a UK coach I'm training with an
Indian coach in Tarot so okay so just to end off um how could anyone contact you if they want
to engage you for services write up about you showcase your talents to the world yeah so very
easy My my Instagram handle s i n d h y Crawford it's one word Cindy Crawford at Instagram okay
and you can DM me I'm hopefully goin
g to upload some content related to my new work and uh you
can also reach me on my Gmail ID which is s n g wadh w@ gmail.com with any queries that you have
or if you want a reading just let me know and I will come back to you cool and we'll uh we'll put
those links in the description so you guys can check them out and if you're hearing this on the
podcast then head over to the YouTube channel to get the links yeah and uh yeah so lovely to meet
you s absolute pleasure yeah wonderful pleasure
think I feel very lit lit it's so wonderful I
hope all my episodes go this way insane I'm so happy we were able to converse and touch upon so
many things we have to do another one next year yeah there're many little trajectories to follow
so many and I'll probably meet very interesting people on this journey yeah so India has its own
parara of Witchcraft and they had these archetypes also who were healers called Diane you know who
looked after Emperors when they were growing up oh that hav
e not heard of yeah so if you watch movies
like J abbar uh but a lot of like you're saying in the west also the Crone you know who's like sort
of the mature woman who's guiding and guiding yeah they became notorious for having powers that men
could not handle so they were also thrown in the shadow and they called chel and Dian and this
and that and there was a negative connotation to Witchcraft which I think it's high time people
got Clarity on it it's just understanding how the universal e
nergies work anyone who's a Ricky
channel has also got a superpower so it's not just the witch who calls herself the witch but if
you're a Ricky Channel you have a superpower so everybody can engage with natural forces everyone
can educate themselves full moon eclipse moon this that grahan it's just science like any
science and it's how you apply that knowledge that distinguishes whether you're the good witch
or you're the dark witch that's what's important you have have to work with ethics
great message I
can't talk that so let's end with that yes thank you guys so much take care and see you on the next
and I hope to hear from you guys bye-bye [Music] [Music] bye [Music] [Music] video [Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a
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