Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Episode 100: Shrey Ghate / India, Hinduism, Pakistan, Nuclear Concerns

Transcript

Episode 100: Shrey Ghate / India, Hinduism, Pakistan, Nuclear Concerns · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
• 0:15
  And we're live. Shrey, welcome back.
• 0:17
  I this is, I say welcome back. I don't mean it's the podcast
• 0:20
  because I'm unfortunately this is your first time, although I'm
• 0:23
  so happy that you're the 100th episode because I was waiting
• 0:26
  for. I wanted a really great guest
• 0:28
  for 100th episode. And you and I, and I think I was
• 0:31
  was I in the podcast that you did a couple of years ago on the
• 0:34
  don't worry about it one. I was.
• 0:36
  I was, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I was.
• 0:38
  I was so. So we haven't done a podcast.
• 0:42
  Yeah, we haven't. It's been it's this I'm, I'm sad
• 0:44
  that it took me this long to be on on your podcast, but now that
• 0:48
  I'm here, I'm hoping that this this is worth it.
• 0:50
  Oh, it's. Going to be awesome.
• 0:52
  I'm so excited. So, so why don't you start by
• 0:55
  telling, by telling us a little bit about, you know, who you
• 0:58
  are, where you where, where you're from, where you live, and
• 1:01
  we'll dive into a dive into things from there.
• 1:04
  Awesome. All right, So I am Sri.
• 1:06
  I am A, I live in India right now, but I used to live, I study
• 1:12
  and live in the United States where that's where I met Fe or F
• 1:16
  Prime as I like to call him. That's right.
• 1:19
  What I live in Bombay right now. That's where I'm where I'm
• 1:22
  originally from and I did engineering at Rutgers and then
• 1:26
  went on to work for consulting companies like Deloitte and now
• 1:31
  I do consulting for like the Pharmaceutical industry with Sip
• 1:35
  Line India. Oh, you do That's.
• 1:37
  So you started, you got back, you're still in consulting.
• 1:41
  I am. I am, for better or worse than
• 1:43
  in consulting. Do you, do you have to travel?
• 1:46
  Do you travel the same rate that you did in America?
• 1:49
  No, it's, it's again, I don't know if this is a net positive
• 1:52
  or negative because I, I don't have a family like you yet, but
• 1:56
  I don't travel anymore. Like it went from 100 to 0 real
• 2:00
  quick. I think they quick, I think
• 2:02
  companies wised up. They realized that we were not
• 2:04
  really needed after the pandemic era to be in person in a lot of
• 2:08
  these client offsite meetings and that they could save a lot
• 2:11
  of money flying us down and feeding us expensive food.
• 2:14
  So unfortunately, yeah, nobody pays for you to travel anymore.
• 2:18
  It's. All.
• 2:19
  It's so sad, isn't it? It is like it feels like my
• 2:22
  wings have been clipped. They have been because you, you
• 2:26
  were travelling everywhere, right?
• 2:27
  I mean, it was when we met with Seattle where you, just you, you
• 2:31
  work, you'd be consulting wherever you just hop on a plane
• 2:33
  and just get to. Everyone and you know, that was
• 2:36
  that was a time people thought I worked as a, as a, as a steward
• 2:39
  or a pilot. They would be like.
• 2:41
  No way. Like twice a week, like surely
• 2:44
  or you're, you're working with United or JetBlue.
• 2:46
  But I was like, Oh no. You should do that, by the way.
• 2:50
  I feel like that be fun. I've I've spoken to a couple.
• 2:52
  I have a couple of friends that have been that worked on
• 2:55
  airlines and even if it was just for a year or two, they've
• 2:57
  absolutely loved it. I have considered it.
• 3:00
  I have. But you know what?
• 3:01
  I think I I I have something called congenital tremors, which
• 3:05
  is like these tremors that happen in my hand and I have no
• 3:08
  control over it. It's nothing really.
• 3:10
  But I feel like, yeah, yeah, I got it from my dad and my
• 3:13
  granddad. But what that means is that I
• 3:15
  make a terrible steward. Imagine I am out to give you
• 3:18
  your, you know, kosher meal or pour you a glass of wine and I
• 3:24
  pour it all over you over so myself.
• 3:27
  Yeah, that was that. You know, I'd be like a hot spot
• 3:32
  for litigations and a lot of. Well, if it makes you feel
• 3:35
  better, if it makes you feel better since the last time you
• 3:38
  wait. Have you been to the states
• 3:39
  since since 21? No, I haven't.
• 3:42
  Like it's it. I so travelling customer service
• 3:45
  here has gone to shit, so I think that even if you did spill
• 3:48
  over over anyone, you'd probably still be one of the better, one
• 3:53
  of the better service people, I would imagine.
• 3:57
  Yeah. It's a shame.
• 3:57
  Mm Hmm. So wait, how long have you been
• 4:03
  working for this pharmaceutical company?
• 4:04
  When you do consulting, what do you do for?
• 4:06
  Them so I contrary to what I used to do for Deloitte, which
• 4:11
  was more external clients, this is more internal.
• 4:13
  So I, I've been with their IT vertical as a, as what they call
• 4:19
  business partner and I'm essentially responsible for, for
• 4:22
  streamlining and keeping the ball rolling on a lot of their
• 4:26
  projects within that department. So it could be anything from an
• 4:30
  integration with called, you know, of a certain software, it
• 4:33
  could be managing databases, it could be automating certain
• 4:38
  tasks. These are certain projects that
• 4:40
  come up and all internally because you know, we're we're
• 4:42
  always. Trying to Are you doing the
• 4:44
  building yourself or you just no, no, no.
• 4:46
  I, I, I'm, I get involved from more of like a project
• 4:50
  management standpoint, SO or PMO as they call it, and I'm more
• 4:54
  responsible for liaisoning between the different parties
• 4:58
  and making sure that everyone's talking to everyone and we're
• 5:00
  getting things done. So it's more management.
• 5:04
  Type. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, more
• 5:06
  management type. Awesome.
• 5:09
  Awesome, awesome, so cool. So I wanted to talk to you today
• 5:12
  because I want to talk to you a lot of it, a lot of things.
• 5:15
  But one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is I was
• 5:18
  talking to my wife. We have to meet a couple of.
• 5:22
  Absolutely. A couple of weeks ago, I was so
• 5:25
  excited for you to come hang out again.
• 5:26
  We always have so much fun together.
• 5:28
  But I wanted to, but I was talking to her and I was it
• 5:32
  actually started with AI. Did AI did an interview with a
• 5:34
  doctor this past week. And she before she went to Med
• 5:37
  school, went to India for a year and and she learned about
• 5:42
  meditation. She learned about Buddhism, she
• 5:44
  learned about yoga. She learned about dietary health
• 5:47
  and food health. And and then when she said, she
• 5:50
  said that when she went to Med school, she kind of went with a
• 5:53
  little bit more of a broad picture than most people would,
• 5:56
  you know, typically have. And when and while while we're
• 6:00
  talking, I realized that I feel like America in our in our
• 6:06
  exciting, excited, youthful, perpetual state of chaos, you
• 6:12
  know, kind of doesn't pay so much attention to other older,
• 6:17
  richer and, you know, more established cultures and parts
• 6:21
  of the world, including India, you know, and that's when I
• 6:24
  realized I knew nothing about your whole part of the world.
• 6:27
  So I want so, you know, then the war kicked off and I don't know
• 6:32
  anything about that. So I wanted to, I wanted to talk
• 6:35
  to you a little bit about, about first of all, you know,
• 6:39
  day-to-day, you know, the differences between day-to-day
• 6:41
  life and Indian America and maybe a little bit about the
• 6:45
  political scenario and the war and what's going on, the
• 6:48
  tensions. And if all that stuff sounds
• 6:51
  fun, there's some of the history about Buddhism a little bit.
• 6:54
  So where do you want to start? I feel like there's so many
• 6:57
  great topics to pick up from. I let's, let's start actually
• 7:00
  from what you know, your friend was talking about, because I
• 7:02
  think that that we can, you know, segue from there, because
• 7:05
  I think there's a lot of interesting points you brought
• 7:07
  up there with her saying that just being from, from India and
• 7:11
  being exposed to holistic medicine here.
• 7:13
  It if I'm if I got it correctly, it informed a lot of her
• 7:19
  approach towards medicine once she got into Med school in the
• 7:22
  States, right? Yeah.
• 7:24
  Well, one thing that we can, one thing that we both concluded is
• 7:27
  that there's a difference between health and medicine, you
• 7:30
  know, and someone could be a healthy person and not receive
• 7:33
  medicine and someone could receive medicine and not
• 7:35
  necessarily be a healthy person, you know?
• 7:37
  And so she said that she felt she learned more about health
• 7:40
  and life and longevity in India. And then the Med school was more
• 7:44
  about the medicine aspect. That's that's it.
• 7:47
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 7:48
  That's an interesting observation because, you know,
• 7:50
  that's something that we think that I think about a lot these
• 7:52
  days and maybe not so much from a cultural standpoint, but you
• 7:57
  know, when you went there was the Olympics that happened
• 7:59
  recently. I don't know if it's as popular
• 8:01
  in the US as it is out here. But if some, if there's
• 8:04
  something that you notice is that a lot of the bodies that
• 8:07
  you see in front of you, whether it's in swimming or it's in
• 8:11
  weightlifting or table tennis, they're very differently shaped.
• 8:15
  And these, well, you know, we're talking of pro athletes here,
• 8:18
  people representing their country at the highest level.
• 8:21
  And it made me think that, you know, we have really brought
• 8:26
  down health to looking a certain way to to an aesthetic standard
• 8:31
  when health is so much more than that.
• 8:32
  Because here I'm looking at people who are pro athletes, who
• 8:35
  are sportsmen, who I'm sure are incredibly healthy, but they
• 8:38
  don't fit that mole that we, you know, have kind of begin, begun
• 8:42
  to associate with being healthy or being fit in the conventional
• 8:47
  sense. You know, when you think about
• 8:49
  it now, it's like being ripped and muscular or so like you
• 8:52
  quality composition. I don't.
• 8:55
  I don't know about that but but. You know what I'm saying?
• 8:57
  We all know it. You know what I'm saying, right?
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  Like we, we've, it's, it's been, it's been distorted to an
• 9:04
  aesthetic standard and where, where health is is far more than
• 9:09
  that. And it's not just superficial,
• 9:13
  right, Right. It's, it's not just superficial
• 9:15
  and it's, it's interesting to know there are a lot of these
• 9:17
  people that look a certain way, often die 30 or 40 from a heart
• 9:21
  attack because you know, they've internally they're, they're a
• 9:24
  mess. Whereas you know, the, the
• 9:26
  people with a little bit of a pot belly and you know who, who
• 9:30
  look like they enjoy life. At the same time, a lot of them
• 9:32
  go on to live to like 90 and 100.
• 9:35
  So it's there's, there's something to be said about how,
• 9:38
  you know, health is more than what we make of it.
• 9:43
  That's a great point. That's a great point is that is
• 9:44
  that idea more heavily emphasized in India than it is
• 9:48
  in America? Because I know in America it's
• 9:50
  obviously all about kind of the superficial looks, which is why
• 9:53
  I think like Ozempic has taken off those type of drugs has kind
• 9:57
  of taken off because everyone could feel like they look
• 9:59
  phenomenal without having to put the effort in.
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  But I, I, I feel like everything in life kind of has a category
• 10:05
  of either being the equivalent of junk food or the equivalent
• 10:08
  of healthy food. And you can get the junk food if
• 10:12
  you want and you could be full off that, but it's not really
• 10:15
  what's good for you in the long term.
• 10:16
  And I feel like there's always short term things and long term
• 10:19
  things that you can do. And, and I feel like, you know,
• 10:23
  like generally speaking, you know, living a healthier
• 10:26
  lifestyle would be the equivalent of healthy food,
• 10:29
  while just opting to look good with Ozempic or one of those
• 10:32
  shots or whatever would, would be a little bit equivalent of at
• 10:35
  least unless, unless you're trying to use it to balance out
• 10:39
  and, and, and, and kick start your own healthy lifestyle.
• 10:42
  You know, a lot of people that are overweight, you know, can't,
• 10:45
  can't even start working out. And so they need to lose a
• 10:47
  couple of pounds before they even start exercising.
• 10:50
  Right, right. No, absolutely.
• 10:52
  I think, I think Ozempic is one of those things that it's it, it
• 10:57
  depends on how you wield it, right.
• 10:58
  Like if, if there is something genetic about your, your body
• 11:03
  mass problems, like if you if you're diabetic or if there's
• 11:06
  something that's, you know, outside of the control of
• 11:08
  conventional things that you can do to medicine.
• 11:14
  Yeah, like I think I think there is there is benefit to it.
• 11:16
  But now I think there's also this idea percolating in
• 11:20
  people's minds where it's it's a quick fix solution to to being
• 11:23
  all weight like it's just you stab yourself every what once?
• 11:27
  A week, a month, and. Something like that, yeah.
• 11:30
  And, and you, you, you know, you, you lose, lose the weight.
• 11:33
  But as research is coming out, people say that, you know,
• 11:37
  there's a lot of side effects we still don't know about.
• 11:40
  And it comes back to this idea that there are no free lunches,
• 11:43
  right? You got to put in the work.
• 11:44
  You have to, you know, do something to to get something
• 11:48
  and I think we will be seeing more of that as this miracle
• 11:54
  drug, as they call it. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:57
  Is it as big in India as it is in America?
• 12:00
  Not yet, not yet. So India is an interesting
• 12:03
  problem, and I think this comes down to like cultural things.
• 12:09
  We are a population that is predisposed to hypertension and
• 12:13
  diabetes because of successive famines that were orchestrated
• 12:18
  by the British Empire. That's something I learned very
• 12:20
  recently as well. So can you.
• 12:22
  Explain that to me a little bit. Can you give me some more detail
• 12:24
  about that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 12:27
  So if you if you notice that there, there tends to be a very
• 12:29
  skinny fat mole that a lot of South Asians tend to fall in,
• 12:34
  it's not exactly obese, but it's not exactly skinny.
• 12:37
  You know, there's, you know, skinny arms.
• 12:38
  But that weight, you know, you tend to put on more weight
• 12:42
  around your waist and hips and midriff.
• 12:45
  And I think a lot of research has been done into this.
• 12:48
  And while there are certain lifestyle factors to it, there's
• 12:52
  also negative component to it that goes back to the British
• 12:55
  induced famines. So when the the British
• 12:57
  colonized India. What year was that?
• 13:01
  It was. So it started sometime in the
• 13:04
  1800s and you know, by, I think by the 1830s they had most of
• 13:08
  the Indian subcontinent under their control.
• 13:11
  And at that, and you know it, it started as a company.
• 13:16
  It was the East India Company before it transitioned to the
• 13:19
  British Parliament. And whether it was the East
• 13:22
  India Company or the British Parliament, there was always a,
• 13:26
  a very extractionary approach to their rule in India, the
• 13:30
  colonial rule in India. So the food that was produced
• 13:33
  here, the raw materials produced here, the the wells produced
• 13:36
  here, the textiles produced here, a lot of that was just
• 13:38
  taken and sold in markets in the West and elsewhere.
• 13:43
  So that was that was that was kind of the nature of colonial
• 13:48
  rule. So these that's.
• 13:49
  Crazy. Yeah, Yeah, it was it was an
• 13:51
  incredibly extractionary process.
• 13:53
  I mean, people today put the total loss to the Indian economy
• 13:57
  if, you know, you had to compare it in relative terms to billions
• 14:00
  of dollars and, you know, we're still in a way recovering from
• 14:04
  it. When you think of India as the
• 14:05
  third world or, you know, why is, why is India like that or
• 14:08
  why is Pakistan like that? It's it's essentially a lot of
• 14:11
  it is baggage from that era. But coming back to the coming
• 14:15
  back to the famines and the genetic component of, you know,
• 14:18
  our Physiology, these famines essentially caused us to adapt
• 14:22
  because that's that's the nature of the human.
• 14:25
  It's the beauty and the curse of biology that we will adapt no
• 14:29
  matter what. So when when you don't have a
• 14:31
  lot of food and you have to make do it little, the body started
• 14:35
  to naturally store more fat in certain places as a way to as a
• 14:41
  way to, yeah, overcome that. So that is how this board, this
• 14:44
  Physiology started becoming a thing in the South Asian
• 14:48
  population. And, and, and that's why now
• 14:52
  when researchers talk about obesity in the South Asian
• 14:54
  context, they, it's not just about Ogo and Rananda Chadmur
• 14:58
  more or, you know, eat less. It's also looking at this
• 15:02
  genetic component that has developed over so many
• 15:05
  centuries, decades. Wow.
• 15:07
  So, so is there, what do you, how do you change that?
• 15:10
  Is it just a slow progress? Like it just takes a lot of time
• 15:12
  to undo it? Likely likely what it it, it's
• 15:16
  taken. So it's, it's, it's a product of
• 15:18
  so many centuries. I mean, not so many, but like at
• 15:20
  least 2 centuries and a little more than that.
• 15:22
  Because that's how approximately how long the British rule
• 15:25
  lasted. And even even into the first
• 15:28
  year, decades of India's independence, food was a
• 15:31
  commodity that was often at the risk of scarcity and not it it's
• 15:38
  not always due to a lack of production or crop vitality.
• 15:43
  It's sometimes, you know, distribution issues, supply
• 15:46
  chain issues, the lack of warehouses, etcetera.
• 15:48
  So I think until something called the green revolution,
• 15:51
  which happened in the 1960s in II was a food scarce country.
• 15:56
  It was after the Green Revolution that we became a food
• 15:58
  surplus bread basket nation. And now, now we have enough food
• 16:01
  to, you know, send out to other countries that have scarcity.
• 16:04
  But yeah, the the the genetic imprint was that done was.
• 16:08
  That done through industrialization or is that
• 16:10
  done just by the sheer number of people there and just worked
• 16:13
  working in farmers and stuff like that?
• 16:15
  The Green Revolution. Yeah, the Green Revolution.
• 16:18
  It it was, it was actually done through American help.
• 16:21
  So that was an American company and researchers that got
• 16:25
  together and they created these hybrid high yield varieties of
• 16:28
  rice and wheat which was then brought to India.
• 16:32
  So these high yield varieties were more resistant to
• 16:35
  pesticides and you know, they use more chemical fertilizers to
• 16:39
  improve output. And that is what really helped
• 16:41
  take India from being a food scarce nation to a food surplus
• 16:46
  nation. I see.
• 16:48
  And is the, so you know, what a lot of people talk about these
• 16:51
  days, especially with RFK and everything like that is the
• 16:54
  whole Make America healthy thing.
• 16:57
  And that we noticed that all the stuff that we put in our food
• 16:59
  has been poisoning us for, you know, ever.
• 17:03
  Did you did you get that from with America's support?
• 17:07
  Was, was, was a lot of that kind of it does.
• 17:09
  I know, for example, I'm sorry, just to kind of clarify the
• 17:12
  point, when my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Greece, we
• 17:16
  ate bread everywhere all the time, you know, and we didn't
• 17:19
  and we felt great. We didn't feel bloated.
• 17:21
  We didn't feel disgusting. You know, if I eat a hamburger
• 17:24
  bun in America and this from the supermarket, I feel like a piece
• 17:27
  of crap. You know, I feel, I feel like it
• 17:29
  sits in my stomach forever. Is India's food cleaner than or
• 17:33
  is it also impacted by the American help in the revolution,
• 17:37
  the Green Revolution? So that's an interesting, you
• 17:40
  know, point that you bring up because I think a lot of
• 17:42
  American travelers seem to echo that sentiment that when they go
• 17:44
  to Italy, they go to Florence and they eat the pizza there,
• 17:47
  suddenly there's no gluten intolerance.
• 17:49
  Suddenly, you know, like, yeah. Isn't it crazy?
• 17:52
  It is crazy. And I think people have kind of
• 17:55
  chopped it down to the way food is grown.
• 17:58
  So, you know, I, I do believe RFK, I mean, not agree with him
• 18:00
  on a lot of things, but I do think he has somewhat of a point
• 18:03
  here that there is an overabundance of chemical
• 18:06
  fertilizers and genetically modified variants of crops that,
• 18:10
  yeah, we, we don't fully understand the effects of that
• 18:13
  are that are, I don't want to use the word, but but yeah,
• 18:17
  poisoning the, the food system, the food, the food and it and
• 18:21
  it, and, and you're right that that has been a criticism of the
• 18:25
  green revolution in India as well.
• 18:27
  And, you know, there that there are instances of farmers in the
• 18:31
  areas where, so the Punjab, you've probably heard of that
• 18:34
  area. It's in northern India.
• 18:36
  It's OK. It's a very, it's a very
• 18:37
  agrarian part, which is where the green revolution was
• 18:41
  particularly centered. A lot of the farmers that, you
• 18:44
  know, worked on these, they started developing cancers
• 18:47
  because and, and a lot of genetic defects because of their
• 18:50
  exposure to artificial fertilizers and chemical
• 18:54
  pesticides. So, you know, if if that's what
• 18:57
  the people drawing the food for you are, you know, suffering
• 19:02
  from, there is something to be said about how it percolates
• 19:05
  into the the food chain as well. But I think in India, there's
• 19:09
  also there's this deals do it. There's you know, you can find
• 19:15
  organic raw stuff that is drawn and devoid of a lot of these
• 19:20
  things. So as long as you can afford it.
• 19:23
  And I think this is. Is it expensive?
• 19:24
  Is it like prohibitively expensive or it's it's
• 19:26
  reasonable? It's it's relatively reasonable.
• 19:29
  It's relatively reasonable. Like I, I wouldn't say it's as
• 19:32
  it's like if you had to go to Whole Foods, Yeah, I think that
• 19:35
  would that would work out to be a lot more expensive.
• 19:37
  Whereas in India it's a little more mainstream, OK.
• 19:40
  Cool, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha gotcha.
• 19:44
  So what so tell me so so you went so you spent a lot you
• 19:49
  spent a big chunk of your life in America, right and amazing.
• 19:52
  You know, and, and from what I, from what I understand, it was
• 19:57
  you you not only did you have a great time, but you're also.
• 20:01
  I'm going to say this for you. You were very successful in
• 20:04
  your, in your endeavors, right? In terms of in terms of
• 20:07
  community, in terms of friends, in terms of education and work.
• 20:10
  You kind of you kind of you, you certainly thrived in, in all
• 20:13
  aspects. I know that, you know, I mean,
• 20:16
  think, think about all the times that we had together and think
• 20:18
  about the mutual friends we had and everything we had, you know,
• 20:21
  and everything that you've, that you've gone through it.
• 20:24
  What's what are some of the biggest cultural differences
• 20:27
  between the Americans and the Indians that you've observed
• 20:30
  while you're while you're spending time in America?
• 20:33
  Some of the biggest cultural differences, OK.
• 20:36
  Or similarities or both. Or similarities.
• 20:39
  So I think, I think that we're both very, very capitalist in
• 20:43
  some ways. You know, like we we're both
• 20:45
  very, you know, all about very enterprising.
• 20:48
  We're very, let's find a solution to this.
• 20:52
  There's definitely an aspect of that it expresses, it finds
• 20:56
  expression in slightly different ways, but I think we're both
• 20:59
  very enterprising people that way.
• 21:02
  What are some other similarities?
• 21:04
  I think what are some Let's talk about differences.
• 21:10
  Yeah, we don't like families, their relationships and stuff
• 21:12
  like that. I know that in America people
• 21:15
  don't. People kind of look at
• 21:17
  relationships like you're kind of supposed to wait off to have,
• 21:20
  you know, get married and have kids till like you're in your
• 21:21
  30s at this point. Is that the?
• 21:23
  Is that the case in India? Not really, but it depends on
• 21:29
  who you're asking. So like for me, for the, for
• 21:31
  instance, the, the kind of socioeconomic circles that I
• 21:34
  inhabit, we, we, we don't really care about it.
• 21:37
  Like if my parents never ask me about marriage, they really a
• 21:41
  lot of my most of my friends are unmarried.
• 21:44
  The ones that are married don't plan to have kids or, or, you
• 21:48
  know, it's, it's no longer and it's not no longer the burning
• 21:52
  issue that it used to be previously.
• 21:54
  Of course, of course, I will preface this by saying that
• 21:57
  we're a small minority of people that mostly belong to like the,
• 22:01
  the, the metropolitan cities, the, the, the quote UN quote
• 22:06
  elite circles. So this is not, this is not
• 22:08
  something that you know, you will, you will see across the
• 22:12
  length and breadth of India. But but yes, there is if you go
• 22:15
  to the urban centers, if you go to cities in India, you'll see
• 22:18
  that kids here, the youth here are not very dissimilar to
• 22:21
  American youth in that sense. Like, you know, people are
• 22:24
  willing to put off marriage. They're willing.
• 22:26
  There's a greater interest in self actualization in finding
• 22:32
  your path and things that you know you would you would see
• 22:35
  resonate among American youth as well.
• 22:37
  So, so there, there, there's definitely a lot of overlaps
• 22:41
  there that. So, so I think it's so from what
• 22:43
  I observed in America, especially from, you know, my
• 22:45
  parents and grandparents era, a lot of it, I think a lot of
• 22:49
  today's, you know, desire for self actualization, as you put
• 22:55
  it, typically comes from a feeling of being like suppressed
• 23:00
  as an individual while they were growing up.
• 23:02
  You know, like there wasn't a lot of emphasis on, hey, who are
• 23:07
  you? What's your passion?
• 23:08
  How do you want to live your life?
• 23:09
  It was more like, here's your responsibility.
• 23:11
  You're supposed to have a wife, you're supposed to have a kid,
• 23:13
  you're supposed to get a little house and you're supposed to
• 23:14
  work hard. And and then before you before
• 23:17
  you blink, you're 60. And then a lot of people
• 23:18
  rejected that notion and said, well, yeah, what about what
• 23:21
  about my life? You know, I only got one of
• 23:23
  these. So is that, you know that that's
• 23:28
  from my, from what I see, that's the American kind of perspective
• 23:33
  is that is that, is that similar?
• 23:36
  So again, yeah, I wouldn't say it is something that the vast
• 23:40
  majority of Indians would resonate with.
• 23:41
  I think there is a certain. But in the big cities, you know,
• 23:44
  yeah, it's more of like the like the upper crust of certain big
• 23:49
  cities, right, Like Delhi and Bombay, that Delhi is the
• 23:52
  capital city. Bombay is think of Bombay as a
• 23:55
  cross between LA and New York. It's like the entertainment and
• 23:58
  the financial capital of the country.
• 24:00
  So, yeah, so like in our cities or Bangalore, which is like our
• 24:05
  Silicon Valley, there is there is, you know, a very significant
• 24:11
  minority of people who who do subscribe to this American view
• 24:16
  of, you know, self actualization and like you said, finding your
• 24:20
  path and and but is that. Building on like the pain is
• 24:24
  that building, the pain of being told that they don't have like
• 24:27
  almost a right to be themselves, or is that just because, hey,
• 24:30
  let's just copy? Americans or.
• 24:32
  Like you want to live a better life?
• 24:34
  It's all economic. So I might be quoting this
• 24:36
  completely wrong. Like if, if for you and your
• 24:39
  listeners, please feel free to like chat, you do this later.
• 24:42
  But there's a cope that goes something along the lines of,
• 24:46
  you know, people work as blue collar workers so that their
• 24:51
  children can work as white collar workers so that their
• 24:54
  children can work as poets and artists.
• 24:58
  So it's like, you know, people often times these choices are
• 25:02
  not really choices. They're they are kind of imposed
• 25:06
  on you because that's, that's just the circumstances that you
• 25:09
  grew up in. You have to do certain things,
• 25:12
  you have to take on certain responsibilities because you had
• 25:16
  no other option. But tomorrow, like for instance,
• 25:18
  and, and, and we see this across the board as well, right?
• 25:21
  Like tomorrow, the, the, the sons of a very successful
• 25:24
  billionaire are not likely to also want to be to hustle as
• 25:29
  much because the the fire in the belly is gone by then, right,
• 25:32
  Because you've grown up, you have grown up in comfort, you've
• 25:35
  grown up in luxury. You and and that's a good thing.
• 25:38
  That's the point of human evolution.
• 25:40
  Like some people be more. I know there's that.
• 25:43
  There are people that say, Oh, no, you, you, you got to hustle
• 25:46
  as well. You got to, you know, go through
• 25:48
  the same rights of passage. But I don't I disagree.
• 25:50
  I'm saying that's the point to to for every successful
• 25:53
  generation to be more comfortable than the previous,
• 25:55
  to have choices that I wasn't able to make or my and you know,
• 25:59
  fathers and forefathers weren't able to.
• 26:02
  So I think that's where it comes from.
• 26:03
  The self actualization is just a natural combination of growing
• 26:08
  up in more comfort in being afforded more choice.
• 26:12
  Yeah. And more free.
• 26:13
  Yeah, that's right. That's right.
• 26:14
  It's a very interesting point, right.
• 26:17
  I think it's I think it's interesting because I think that
• 26:21
  these days, the way that you kind of see people manifesting
• 26:24
  themselves or like starting their own businesses.
• 26:26
  They're not starting like a mom and pop supermarket, you know,
• 26:29
  like they want to start up one day and hang on to their kids.
• 26:32
  They're starting, they want to be a podcaster.
• 26:34
  They want to be, you know, social media guy.
• 26:36
  They want to be, you know, they want to be an entertainer, an
• 26:39
  actor or singer, you know, and I think it's good by the way, I
• 26:42
  think I think it's really beautiful.
• 26:43
  I actually think that we probably need that kind of the
• 26:47
  way you describe like the burning in your belly.
• 26:49
  You I think that we need to have, I think that it's a
• 26:51
  company. I think you have to balance in
• 26:54
  order to be in order to really accomplish anything great.
• 26:57
  You need to have that fire in your belly.
• 26:59
  It's just depends on which direction you want to, you want
• 27:03
  to handle it. And then there's a lot less
• 27:05
  urgency when you don't feel like your next meal is on the line as
• 27:08
  opposed to like, oh, let me just do this podcast or not, you
• 27:10
  know, and OK, fine. So this week I only have two
• 27:13
  episodes instead of three, but my family is still eating, you
• 27:15
  know, like, yeah. So you it becomes a lot easier
• 27:19
  to justify and rationalize and you might not not even
• 27:21
  necessarily have the same kind of work ethic because you have
• 27:23
  the comfort of knowing that you know that not everything will be
• 27:27
  fine for when you do. Yeah, exactly.
• 27:29
  Your head. Right.
• 27:30
  And you know, this is interesting because I noticed
• 27:31
  this even, you know, just to give you a personal example, in,
• 27:35
  in my life, like in in the USI was on an H1B visa and I or, you
• 27:40
  know, like an OPT visa, which is kind of like a temporary work
• 27:44
  visa students are able to sign up for.
• 27:47
  And I knew that I was, you know, I had bills to pay.
• 27:50
  I had, I, I had to pay rent in Manhattan.
• 27:53
  I had to put food on the table. I needed to pay my, you know,
• 27:56
  con Ed like party bills and what.
• 28:00
  Yeah, absolutely. Like, and, and, you know, going
• 28:03
  out at night, like, it was all a lot to think about.
• 28:06
  But. And so that makes you more
• 28:09
  cautious about how you tread in the workplace.
• 28:11
  Like you, you're more likely to, you know, if if your boss wants
• 28:15
  you to work till 1:00 AM all five days, you will do it
• 28:19
  because, you know, you may grumble a little bit, but you do
• 28:21
  it and you have more of an impetus to do those things.
• 28:24
  But now I realize in India, like I'm a little more outspoken or,
• 28:28
  you know, I'm, I'm more vocal about establishing and
• 28:34
  maintaining my boundaries. I would be like, OK, it is 7:00
• 28:37
  PM. This is not, you know, a burning
• 28:40
  issue. It's not something that needs
• 28:41
  resolution. Now.
• 28:42
  We can do this tomorrow. So these are.
• 28:44
  All things I love that. Yeah, yeah, these aren't but but
• 28:47
  I also recognize that comes from a place of privilege, right?
• 28:50
  Like that I, and over here, I know I have a roof over my head.
• 28:53
  I, I stay with my family. I, you know, there, there's
• 28:57
  food. Like I know I can, I can
• 28:59
  survive. So I, I'm able to make those
• 29:02
  boundaries. But I know, so I, I think it
• 29:04
  comes down to that again, like how, how much privilege you have
• 29:07
  to, to, to rock the boat, so to speak.
• 29:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's really, yeah.
• 29:13
  It's really interesting. I, I, I don't think that it's
• 29:16
  inherently a bad thing. I think that the next challenge
• 29:19
  that we're going to have as like as a species as I go, as, as a
• 29:23
  world, as, as, as humans, the next challenge we're going to
• 29:26
  have is that we're going to have so much abundance and, you know,
• 29:30
  and comfort and well, and hopefully I listen, I hope, I
• 29:33
  hope for everyone, right that, that, that the question really
• 29:37
  will become how, how much, how disciplined are the individuals
• 29:42
  now that they are comfortable to put their all into something
• 29:47
  else? And that's going to be the next
• 29:49
  challenge. You know, the next challenge is
• 29:50
  if you don't have to go to work tomorrow and you don't have to,
• 29:53
  you know, answer that e-mail for work because it could be
• 29:56
  responded to tomorrow, then then what are you doing with today?
• 29:59
  Are you, you know, and, and unfortunately, I think that, you
• 30:03
  know, and by the way, I'm not saying this because I'm anti
• 30:05
  this. I'm I'm really, I'm really, you
• 30:07
  know, but like, for example, you see more Americans smoking a lot
• 30:11
  more weed now than which I know that you are almost inherently.
• 30:17
  What do you call it? Like you can, from what I
• 30:20
  remember, you weren't able to, yeah, you could just consume and
• 30:22
  not able to get Yeah, it just didn't work for.
• 30:24
  You, yeah, I, I had to, I remember going with Ari the next
• 30:27
  day because I was, I was like, I need to feel this.
• 30:29
  So we went and got went to a dispensary and got like their
• 30:32
  highest dose edible. And I remember for 45 minutes it
• 30:35
  still hadn't hit me. And I was like, you know, well,
• 30:37
  maybe, maybe I'm just immune to this.
• 30:40
  Thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:42
  Yeah, yeah, so, so. I think the people, but the
• 30:45
  people, the people that aren't immune to it are kind of just
• 30:48
  doing it as almost like, well, I don't know what else to do now.
• 30:51
  So let me just do this. You know, I think that a lot of
• 30:53
  a lot of people in America, as weed has become a lot more
• 30:56
  accessible and a lot more, you know, legalized in more states.
• 30:59
  I think that we're actually kind of just like sedating ourselves
• 31:04
  by just saying, well, I did enough today and I'm
• 31:06
  comfortable. So let me just, you know, sit at
• 31:07
  home and take an edible or smoke a Jay and then I'll be fine.
• 31:11
  But that doesn't typically translate into, you know, that
• 31:16
  again, that but that burning belly in your in your stomach
• 31:18
  sometimes, you know, for some people, they could manage it.
• 31:20
  But I think that by and large, we have to figure out a way to
• 31:26
  kind of incentivize and motivate people to to be their best, not
• 31:30
  because, you know, dinners on the line, but because it's their
• 31:35
  own lives. And you only have one of it.
• 31:37
  And like, you should treat your own life seriously because
• 31:39
  that's your life, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 31:45
  Want to tell me a little bit about?
• 31:46
  Buddhism, Buddhism. So I don't know a whole lot
• 31:51
  about Buddhism. I will be be very honest with
• 31:53
  you. I can speak to you more about
• 31:54
  Hinduism. Oh, yes, because I'm sorry.
• 31:57
  I I, I wait. I don't know the difference
• 31:59
  between them. I'm so ignorant.
• 32:01
  No, I apologize. You know, in some parts of
• 32:05
  India, they're, they're, they're interchangeable.
• 32:06
  And you know that this is an interesting way to talk about
• 32:09
  them as well, because in, in India, the, the way Indic
• 32:11
  religions are, the the lines are blurred.
• 32:14
  You know, like if you go to Nepal, for instance, where one
• 32:17
  stops being Hindu, where someone starts being Buddhist is, is
• 32:21
  very blurry because, you know, in yeah, yeah.
• 32:24
  Like in a person in Nepal. And this is not just Nepal.
• 32:27
  It's, it's in other parts of India as well.
• 32:29
  In parts of Sri Lanka too. You could be worshipping Hindu
• 32:33
  gods, but you can also worship Buddha.
• 32:36
  And you may have elements of Buddhism in your life and you
• 32:39
  may mix and match them with elements of Hinduism.
• 32:42
  This is, it's, it's the South and even Southeast Asia with
• 32:45
  Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, it's very common for there to be
• 32:50
  a little mishmash if these two religions because Buddhism
• 32:55
  sprung out of Hinduism. It was almost a reaction to
• 32:59
  early Vedic Hinduism and it was it was kind of like a reformist
• 33:06
  creed at that time. And would it?
• 33:09
  Be fair to compare it to Christianity and Judaism?
• 33:12
  Or is that is that a bad comparison?
• 33:15
  It's it's. It could be.
• 33:18
  OK. That's a very.
• 33:19
  Polite way of saying it. And no, no, no, because I mean
• 33:22
  it, it really depends. There's no right or wrong
• 33:24
  answers here. There's, there's it, you know,
• 33:26
  like it could be one way because the Christianity did come out as
• 33:29
  an offshoot of Islam. Sorry of, of Judaism I spoke or
• 33:34
  Judaism. So it's, it's in that sense,
• 33:37
  yes, Buddhism did emerge as an offshoot of Hinduism, but yeah,
• 33:41
  for very different motivations. And but going back to to our
• 33:45
  original point, it's it's how we talk about religion here can be
• 33:49
  very different from how you talk about it in the West or, you
• 33:52
  know, in other parts of the world where Abrahamic religions
• 33:55
  are more neater boundaries. And like, you know, a Jew is
• 33:59
  very different from a Christian and, you know, you will do a lot
• 34:02
  of things very differently and you're kind of cognizant at
• 34:05
  that. But in South and Southeast Asia,
• 34:08
  those lines can be very blurred, very blur.
• 34:11
  It's interesting you talk. So what's the foundation of
• 34:14
  Hinduism? What's the what are the
• 34:16
  foundational ideas that you have?
• 34:18
  If you were to summarize to someone like myself who knows
• 34:20
  nothing, right? And you, Yeah, how do you?
• 34:22
  How would you? Yeah, the so the main
• 34:25
  foundational text or I can't even say text of the Hindus
• 34:28
  because it's an oral transmission much like the Torah
• 34:31
  was for for centuries is the Veda.
• 34:34
  So the Vedas were like the Torah.
• 34:35
  They were these series of hymns that were divinely revealed,
• 34:40
  much like the Ark of the Covenant, 2 sages in like 2003
• 34:47
  thousand BCE. And they transmitted it through
• 34:53
  an oral tradition for several thousand years before they were
• 34:56
  actually put down. They formed the corpus of
• 34:59
  Hindus, Hinduism's spiritual core.
• 35:04
  So they, and then everything after that is like an
• 35:07
  interpretation of it. So they're they what?
• 35:09
  Every other strand of it has a different interpretation of the
• 35:12
  way it does and that and those are the different schools of
• 35:15
  thoughts that have emerged. Cool, gotcha.
• 35:18
  So there's a basic, so there's a basic oral tradition.
• 35:20
  As time goes on, there's different understandings as to
• 35:24
  what the tradition, you know, how that, how that manifests and
• 35:27
  how people understand it. And then and then different
• 35:29
  sects break off because so is so is Buddhism a an offshoot or a
• 35:33
  sect of Hinduism like that in that sense?
• 35:35
  So Buddhism, it rejected the Vedas.
• 35:40
  They had rejected the authority of the Vedas and that's why it
• 35:43
  was it was so revolutionary groundbreaking at that time
• 35:46
  because they said we don't believe in this and we're our
• 35:49
  own thing. But a lot of concepts there is
• 35:51
  there are all apps like reincarnation, karma, the.
• 35:56
  So what are those ideas? What's what's what's Hinduism's
• 36:00
  relationship with with afterlife or recreation?
• 36:04
  What do we believe about the soul?
• 36:06
  What do you believe about lives and afterlife or previous lives?
• 36:10
  What do we say? Right, so reincarnate.
• 36:13
  So Hinduism always is, let me preface it by saying, a very
• 36:17
  optimistic religion. Even our villains.
• 36:20
  Even the worst person that you can think of, Effie, will end up
• 36:23
  in a good place eventually. It's just that he will take more
• 36:26
  lives to get there. So every birth that you take is
• 36:29
  a way for you to atone for the sins of your previous birth and
• 36:33
  to go closer to a state of the Buddhists call it nothingness,
• 36:38
  the Hindus call it Satchitanand, which is pure bliss and of the
• 36:43
  consciousness. Now, these are very esoteric
• 36:46
  concepts that I don't think we'd want to get into, but it
• 36:48
  essentially means that you go to this undifferentiated state
• 36:52
  where there is no happiness or sadness.
• 36:55
  There just is. You know, it's not, it's, it's
• 36:58
  not like we dream of a heaven in the Christian or Islamic sense.
• 37:02
  We aspire to reach, to become, to merge into the supreme
• 37:06
  consciousness that permeates us at all times, but we're not
• 37:10
  aware of because of our earthly limitations.
• 37:14
  That doesn't sound very far from Judaism at all.
• 37:17
  I mean, at least from my understanding of Judaism, you
• 37:19
  know, that, you know, we have these notions of what we call
• 37:22
  like Takana, which is to repair, you know, like repairing
• 37:26
  previous, you know, mistakes and, you know, and repairing,
• 37:30
  repairing our, our either our own, if we, you know, we're
• 37:34
  reincarnated our parents mistakes.
• 37:36
  And right. It's a kind of, you know, I get
• 37:40
  and I and I and, and there is that also same theme of like
• 37:43
  oneness, you know, the whole interconnectedness and the
• 37:47
  whole, you know, mass consciousness.
• 37:49
  Yeah, that I, I, I have such a hard time believing that all
• 37:55
  these. Religions, you guys have this
• 37:58
  concept called tikkun olam, right, which is to make the
• 38:00
  world a better place by the smallest of actions.
• 38:03
  So it's, it's in a way to repair it, repair it, correct.
• 38:06
  Thank, thank, thank you for using the right word.
• 38:08
  So I, I remember reading about it and I said, that's very
• 38:11
  similar to, you know, how we Hindus, we, we may not frame it
• 38:14
  as repairing the world, but you know, just being good and doing
• 38:17
  good into the world so that it, you leave it in a better place
• 38:20
  than that which you received it. So, so there's, you know, there
• 38:24
  is, there is that idea as well also, But I would say there's
• 38:28
  also a lot of orthopraxy in Hinduism, similar to Judeaism.
• 38:31
  Like there's a lot of ritualism, right?
• 38:35
  And things like that, which can, which can get a little madding
• 38:38
  and dizzying, But because it's, it's, it's a very personal
• 38:42
  religion, as we like to call it, a way of life.
• 38:45
  No, you're not. You don't have to subscribe to
• 38:48
  all of these things. You don't have to do a lot of
• 38:50
  these things to be a Hindu. You just are, you know, it's so
• 38:54
  like, you know, you know, in Judaism, you have a lot of
• 38:56
  mitzvot. I It's mitzvahs that you have.
• 38:59
  To you got it. You got it?
• 39:00
  Yeah. So, but in Hinduism we don't
• 39:03
  have it's not a hard and fasting you may want you can do it.
• 39:06
  We call them sunscars, you call them mitzvahs.
• 39:09
  You want to do it, you can do it.
• 39:11
  You don't want to do it. That's fine.
• 39:13
  You know, it's a lot more flexible.
• 39:16
  Interesting. And there's no, are there
• 39:19
  notions of like quote, UN quote repercussions or I hate the word
• 39:23
  punishment because I like to think of more consequences to
• 39:25
  actions. For example, you know, if
• 39:28
  someone doesn't invest in healthy relationships, then
• 39:31
  they're probably going to end up just being lonely, you know, And
• 39:33
  like, I don't call that a punishment.
• 39:35
  I call that a consequence of years of years of a particular
• 39:38
  action or behavior or mindset, right?
• 39:40
  You know, is that is that emphasized?
• 39:44
  To some degree, but there's there's, you know, like there
• 39:48
  is. I think Indians tend to be a
• 39:50
  little more God fearing like so I think there's there's a
• 39:53
  certain fatalism maybe that people do believe in that
• 39:57
  they're that it's a weird contradiction, right?
• 40:00
  Like there's there's this great belief in karma and personal
• 40:04
  agency, but there's also this idea that.
• 40:08
  There, there, there's predestination.
• 40:10
  So, so in, you know, in in between that you kind of live
• 40:13
  your life like there's because you may, you may control
• 40:17
  everything in this life and in the here and now, but some
• 40:20
  things that happened to you were written because of what
• 40:22
  happened, what you did in a previous life.
• 40:24
  Now you obviously have no memory of that life.
• 40:26
  So, so it kind of accounts Hinduism kind of accounts of
• 40:29
  both things. Like for the things that you can
• 40:32
  control, you obviously should be doing more and, you know, do
• 40:36
  your best. But for the things that you
• 40:38
  can't control, we, we'd say, well, that is because you might
• 40:41
  have done something bad in a previous life.
• 40:43
  And it's, it's, it's, you know, a way of making sense of what
• 40:47
  can't of, of the unknown. Every religion has a way of
• 40:51
  doing that. And I think in Hinduism, we
• 40:53
  attribute it to the the, you know, it's like a carried
• 40:58
  forward death from a previous life.
• 41:01
  So interesting, so cool. I, I think it's, I think it's
• 41:04
  beautiful. I really, I, I think that that
• 41:06
  idea in general, because I think what it does is it gives you
• 41:09
  license to kind of take responsibility.
• 41:13
  And then if things don't go the way that you kind of expect it,
• 41:16
  then you don't say, oh, how come me you say, oh, well, this must
• 41:20
  be the hand that I was dealt with based on my, based on the
• 41:23
  way that I behaved in a, in a previous lifestyle.
• 41:26
  And so now it's my job to kind of rectify it.
• 41:28
  So it's, I, I feel like that still is a lot of agency.
• 41:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's actually a nice
• 41:33
  way. You've given it a new lease of
• 41:34
  life in my own head. Because there you.
• 41:37
  Go it does it it does take away a certain victimization because
• 41:40
  I think that's something that, you know, and I see this a lot
• 41:43
  in the West, especially where people that there's a little bit
• 41:46
  of an I me myself, why me idea? But but Hinduism tries to, you
• 41:51
  know, give you a more 30,000 foot level view of your life and
• 41:56
  say, well, you know, it's not just you and it might be due to
• 42:00
  something that happened in a different life and and that's
• 42:03
  and it's OK, you know, but yeah, now think about what you can do
• 42:07
  about it right now. So I think, yeah.
• 42:09
  So I think that that does take away a little bit of that
• 42:13
  following in self between the You know you Can Fall chapter.
• 42:18
  Awesome. It's so it's so cool.
• 42:20
  What's are a lot so in America in the West these days, and I
• 42:25
  think we're actually coming a little bit the pendulum swinging
• 42:28
  the other way. But for probably the last 1520
• 42:31
  years minimum, it was almost kind of like a like religion or
• 42:35
  God was kind of like almost like a bad word.
• 42:37
  You kind of didn't want to say it or admit it because you kind
• 42:40
  of almost seem to disqualify yourself as someone that was
• 42:43
  less than practical, which is, it might be a little silly, but
• 42:48
  you know what? You can't.
• 42:48
  You're going to do what you could do.
• 42:50
  Yeah. What's, what's India?
• 42:53
  What's the general population's relationship with religion?
• 42:56
  Are a lot more people religious believers or religious or a lot
• 43:00
  more people secular? What's what's it like there?
• 43:05
  So I'll give you a take that is a little, you know, harsh, but
• 43:09
  but, you know, it is what it is. Yeah.
• 43:12
  In India, religion is a little bit of an opium of the masses
• 43:17
  because see, we've suffered a lot under colonialism and then
• 43:20
  on and you know, right after independence, we're we're,
• 43:24
  we're, we're a democratic country, yes, and a very
• 43:27
  thriving, chaotic one. But the, the institutions that
• 43:31
  we see today, they have taken a long, long time to build and
• 43:34
  they're not perfect. So when people have no way to.
• 43:37
  How do I put the frame this, you know, when the institutions that
• 43:42
  are meant to serve you and promise you the life that you
• 43:46
  deserve for short, when there's corruption, when there's a lot
• 43:51
  of red tape and and you're not able to rise up and move to the
• 43:56
  next level because of the systemic injustices, then you
• 44:00
  can you. Give me an example of some of
• 44:01
  them. What are some?
• 44:03
  What are some kind of injustices that pop up?
• 44:05
  Let's say, let's say there's a village in a part of India in
• 44:09
  the hinterlands and the, the, the district collector or the
• 44:13
  person in charge of taking care of it is, is, is thoroughly
• 44:19
  corrupt and embezzles funds. So you, you know, you were
• 44:24
  promised electricity or, you know, and Wi-Fi and clean
• 44:28
  drinking water next year. But because of the corruption in
• 44:33
  the system, because there's, you know, problems with people
• 44:36
  taking that cut bribes and delivering substandard work, you
• 44:41
  are not able to get 100% electricity or the water
• 44:45
  connection you are looking for by the end of next year.
• 44:47
  It may take two years, it may take three years.
• 44:50
  And even when it does come, it may come with its fair set of
• 44:54
  issues, it may not be as promised.
• 44:58
  So I think this is one example of it, a very, you know,
• 45:02
  contrived one, but it happens that it happens at all levels.
• 45:06
  It happens in different capacities.
• 45:08
  Some states are better than others.
• 45:09
  It's not, you know, like India's think of India as a
• 45:12
  subcontinent. It's it's like the European
• 45:14
  Union. Every region has its own story.
• 45:16
  But I think it's some, you know, if we, if we had to zoom out,
• 45:19
  we, you can say with certainty that this is a problem that
• 45:22
  plagues a large cross section of it.
• 45:25
  And because of this, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
• 45:28
  No, please, please. Because of this.
• 45:29
  Yeah, I. Said because of this systemic
• 45:34
  what I would call. Corruption.
• 45:37
  Or, you know, corruption. A bureaucracy, Maybe even.
• 45:40
  Yeah, this rock that exists, people have to repose their
• 45:43
  faith in something, right? Like so where?
• 45:46
  Who fills the void? It is.
• 45:47
  It is religion. It is.
• 45:49
  And that is why you see so much religiosity.
• 45:52
  And in some senses, religiosity is proportionate to how
• 45:56
  destitute cute they are. Because the more you feel like
• 46:00
  you have no way, no agency over bettering your life, the more
• 46:04
  you're going to trust an external force that might offer
• 46:10
  you salvation. Perspective.
• 46:11
  Such a thoughtful perspective. So when you see like, so when
• 46:16
  you see people being religious in India, it's not so much
• 46:18
  because, you know, they, they want to do it.
• 46:22
  Like in some ways it's a sad thing because they have no other
• 46:25
  way of, you know, making sense of this life.
• 46:28
  They they think that they. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 46:32
  Some people, you know, like in the US might or not just the US,
• 46:36
  there's people doing it all parts of the world may turn to,
• 46:39
  to drugs to, you know, to, to numb the pain and whatnot.
• 46:42
  Some people turn to, to religion.
• 46:44
  So, you know, and, and I'm, I am not a Marxist by any stretch of
• 46:48
  imagination, but, but in I, I, I will tell you that it does hold
• 46:52
  true to some extent in India, where it is a, it's a coping
• 46:55
  mechanism. It's a it's, it's a way of
• 46:57
  filling the void that the the systemic injustices leave in
• 47:00
  India because for so many people, it's the only way for
• 47:04
  them to account for whatever is happening to them.
• 47:07
  Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like that's always
• 47:09
  been the case with the religion, right?
• 47:10
  That's what makes it so, so, so powerful.
• 47:13
  And that's what makes it in so enduring is that there's so many
• 47:16
  people that kind of depend on it to make sense of their lives.
• 47:19
  Right, Right. Which by the way, I don't think
• 47:21
  is a bad thing necessarily, because I think that I mean, my
• 47:23
  understanding with, you know, when I say, you know, when I,
• 47:26
  when I say that I believe that Judaism is, is, is truth, right?
• 47:29
  I, I, I think that it's truth in the sense that it's a guidebook
• 47:34
  to live a successful and happy and meaningful life for almost
• 47:40
  anyone that wants to kind of cling themselves to it.
• 47:42
  And you know, it sounds the same thing with Hinduism.
• 47:44
  It sounds, and I know it's the same thing with with all other
• 47:46
  religions That right, you know, that that it's almost like it
• 47:50
  helps give us directions and helps keep us grounded to I
• 47:54
  always look at religion almost like the evolution of
• 47:56
  consciousness, you know, that like we kind of go beyond the,
• 48:00
  you know, our our primal instincts for something greater,
• 48:04
  typically community or typically, you know, long term
• 48:06
  investments that we wouldn't ordinarily think to make right.
• 48:10
  You know, I guess evolutionarily or biologically, you know, out
• 48:15
  of just, you know, desperate need to survive just the moment,
• 48:17
  you know, absolutely, I agree with that.
• 48:21
  Interesting. So cool.
• 48:23
  How how do politics work in India?
• 48:25
  What do you think of Modi? Is that his name?
• 48:28
  That's his name I heard. I heard.
• 48:29
  I heard him on Lux Friedman's podcast you listen to.
• 48:31
  That I don't think I'll be very honest with you.
• 48:36
  I typically don't listen to podcasts.
• 48:38
  I have heard some of yours before, but thank you.
• 48:41
  I yeah, but but I, you know, I typically don't listen to
• 48:44
  podcasts. I'm more and even if I do, I
• 48:47
  this sounds horrible, but I, I read the transcript.
• 48:49
  I love reading the transcript. I'm more.
• 48:51
  That's great. Like I like, I like reading
• 48:53
  things rather than listening to things, even though it might be
• 48:56
  the same thing, but but it's just I feel like I process
• 48:59
  information faster that way. But no, I I haven't heard the
• 49:03
  Friedman podcast. But yes, Modi is his name.
• 49:06
  That's the the Prime Minister been serving his third term
• 49:10
  right now. Unlike the United States, we do
• 49:12
  not have a term limit. Yeah, a term limit.
• 49:16
  So you can stand theoretically as many times.
• 49:19
  As you want, is it for? Is it 4 year terms?
• 49:22
  It's 5 S 5 year. Term cool I.
• 49:25
  See this is this is his 11th issue going into 12th tier into
• 49:30
  power. And what what do people in India
• 49:33
  think of him? What are his what's what's his
• 49:35
  is? I don't I don't even know.
• 49:38
  I like does does American American left and right politics
• 49:43
  translate to India left and right politics or not quite?
• 49:46
  That's a very good question. So I, I, it doesn't, it really
• 49:52
  doesn't because now let's say Modi is the leader of what would
• 49:55
  be considered the right wing party in India because he's
• 49:59
  touted to be Hindu nationalist and all of that.
• 50:02
  But now when I tell you about our nationalist right wing
• 50:05
  parties, they support a lot of policies at the economic level
• 50:09
  which are very socialist. So right wing in India is more
• 50:13
  to do with social conservatism to some degree and not so much
• 50:18
  with fiscal conservatism if that makes sense to you.
• 50:21
  That does make. Sense.
• 50:22
  Sure, yeah. It's like, you know, over here,
• 50:25
  a very right wing party like the one that Modi leads at the
• 50:28
  moment is notorious for welfarism, for competitive
• 50:34
  welfarism, as we call it, where people are giving out dolls of
• 50:38
  1200 rupees ₹1500 if you belong to a certain minority or if
• 50:42
  you're a woman that earns less than so much, which is, which is
• 50:47
  unthinkable in a right wing party and say, the UK or the US.
• 50:51
  Yeah, the yeah, the, the more. So, yeah.
• 50:54
  To go going back to your question, it doesn't need to map
• 50:57
  onto the Indian political context.
• 51:00
  So what? So what, what what's what's
• 51:02
  India's general relationship to Modi?
• 51:04
  What do you think of him, if I can ask you?
• 51:06
  I mean, if you don't want to answer, you don't have to.
• 51:08
  But you know, like I don't want you to be able to do anything.
• 51:10
  I not at all, no, there's no question you can ask me that
• 51:13
  will fail. But it's I'll briefly tell you,
• 51:17
  India definitely likes Modi. That's why he's enjoying his
• 51:21
  12th year in power, although that popularity has taken a hit
• 51:25
  over the years, but but he's still holding, holding on.
• 51:29
  I mean, it's it's it's not fallen perceptiously.
• 51:32
  My own views of him are far a lot more complicated.
• 51:35
  I generally have not had a very positive opinion of him because
• 51:40
  I I don't agree with his politics.
• 51:42
  I don't agree with. And and you know, when you see,
• 51:44
  when you don't like someone in their first and second year of
• 51:47
  power, it's mostly theoretical, right, Because you you it's
• 51:51
  things they've said it's things they said they're going to do
• 51:53
  that inform your opinions. But now into his third term, I,
• 51:58
  I, I can see what he's done. I can see the results of his
• 52:01
  actions. I can see the consequences of a
• 52:05
  lot of them. Like, for instance, there was a
• 52:07
  time when he banned a certain currency not in the Indian
• 52:12
  system. And all of us had to line up to,
• 52:14
  you know, turn them in before a deadline.
• 52:17
  And this was ostensibly done to curb corruption.
• 52:20
  And everyone knows that had absolutely no effect on it.
• 52:24
  So there, there's been a lot of short sighted policies which or
• 52:29
  recently in Kashmir, where, which kind of has led to the the
• 52:33
  war we're seeing right now. There have been things that, you
• 52:37
  know, I I think could have been done better where he's kind of
• 52:41
  played to the galleries and does things just to win elections and
• 52:46
  you know, that are gimmicky, but not thought through with a long
• 52:49
  term perspective. So I think I think that is where
• 52:52
  Mike rouses with him typically lie.
• 52:56
  OK, that sounds reasonable. It sounds like it sounds like
• 52:59
  he's just, I mean, I don't know how politics work, how
• 53:01
  politicians work, but it sounds like pretty typical, you know,
• 53:04
  politics to me from from American Point, you know, like
• 53:08
  our like our new head of the FBI, Tash Patel saying, you
• 53:12
  know, for the last several, you know, like the last year or two.
• 53:15
  Oh, well, you know, first day that I get in, I'm going to turn
• 53:18
  the whole FBI building, you know, the whole Hoover, the
• 53:21
  whole, the whole, the whole FBI building into a Museum of the
• 53:24
  Deep State day one, you know, and you know, and that's it.
• 53:27
  It's a great talking point. It's very cute.
• 53:29
  It's a great cat, you know, like it's, it got a lot of people to
• 53:32
  rally onto his side. But it's, you know, and all
• 53:35
  sorts of practicality, like, what are you gonna do?
• 53:37
  You know, like, how's that gonna happen?
• 53:39
  Right, right. And, you know, maybe maybe
• 53:41
  that's just the age we're living in, right?
• 53:43
  I feel like it's the age of social media and short attention
• 53:46
  spans like, and you have to do things that you sometimes have
• 53:49
  to just say crazy things out there to get people's attention,
• 53:53
  even if even if it's not the best thing to say and if it's
• 53:55
  not the best thing to do. So I think, you know, a lot of
• 53:57
  these demagogues, these politicians that we see today,
• 54:01
  they promise things that grab eyeballs and, you know,
• 54:05
  attention. But are they, are they in the
• 54:08
  best interest of the country? In the best?
• 54:10
  Interest. How realistic are they even?
• 54:12
  How? How realistic are they?
• 54:14
  God knows. God does we.
• 54:17
  We know too, by the way. God knows and we know you know
• 54:20
  the answer is. Not we know, yeah.
• 54:21
  Yeah, it's not. And the answer is not super hot.
• 54:24
  It's not super, super realistic. It's true.
• 54:26
  It's true. I see.
• 54:28
  And so, so got it. So, so overall, he's been a
• 54:33
  leader for a long time. Modi's been a leader for a long
• 54:35
  time overall, generally speaking, obviously, because
• 54:40
  people, you know, there's a third term, people have
• 54:42
  obviously liked him to a certain degree, yeah.
• 54:46
  Is there a lot of competition or is the like, are there a lot of
• 54:49
  other political figures that could be really a threat to him
• 54:52
  or not really? So you it would dizzy you to see
• 54:56
  India's political landscape because we follow a British
• 55:00
  parliamentary style democracy. So unlike the two party system
• 55:03
  that you have in presidential style that you have in America,
• 55:06
  we have maybe like 100 different parties of course in in
• 55:13
  parliament. Coalitions and stuff like in
• 55:15
  Israel. Yeah, Oh yeah, Israel's a great
• 55:17
  example. So it's the, the, the, the
• 55:19
  system is very similar to Israel where you need to sometimes, you
• 55:23
  know, if you don't get the numbers yourself, you need to
• 55:26
  reach out across the aisle and form alliances and whatnot.
• 55:30
  So we, we do have that. But in the 1st 2 terms, Modi had
• 55:35
  no need for alliances. They won pumping landslide
• 55:38
  majorities and there was, there was no need for coalitions.
• 55:41
  But as a sign of his, you know, slightly declining popularity
• 55:48
  and and a bit of anti incumbency, the third term was
• 55:51
  not as resounding a victory. He he had to cobble up an
• 55:56
  alliance with a bunch of people. And yeah, so the current
• 56:00
  government is more of a coalition government, but not
• 56:02
  not as not as much of A tenuous coalition as the one BB
• 56:09
  currently is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:12
  I was actually talking. So I was talking to a friend of
• 56:13
  mine recently because I was complaining about BB to him a
• 56:17
  little bit. And he was like, listen, he
• 56:18
  goes, you know, I, I, I certainly don't love BB myself.
• 56:22
  He's like, but you, he goes but, and he goes.
• 56:24
  But we don't as, as Americans, we don't think about the fact
• 56:26
  that if the, if, if the Israeli government decided tomorrow, if
• 56:30
  one of the coalitions, one of the people that he'd agreed to
• 56:32
  come with, you know, it's a partnership with decided to
• 56:35
  leave, they could force elections tomorrow and
• 56:37
  everything could fall apart. And he goes and the person
• 56:39
  that's going to be, that's going to replace BB tomorrow is not
• 56:43
  going to be someone that's going to be more left-leaning.
• 56:46
  They're going to be far more, far more right leaning and far
• 56:49
  more aggressive. You know, and he's like, so BB's
• 56:51
  kind of has, is being forced to stretch.
• 56:54
  And I, I, I, I actually do hear that.
• 56:56
  And I think it's a point that's really not made often enough in
• 56:59
  like in the, in the global commentary on the war, is that,
• 57:02
  you know, that if he if he acts in one way that really pisses
• 57:06
  off one person one day the wrong way, the entire thing could
• 57:09
  really fall apart. And then.
• 57:11
  And so I think that that should give people at least a little
• 57:15
  bit of pause in terms of their judgment.
• 57:17
  It certainly gave me a little bit of pause.
• 57:19
  But you know, on the other hand, it doesn't mean that you
• 57:22
  shouldn't still strive for for, you know, better and for, you
• 57:26
  know, and for as good as you can make it.
• 57:28
  You know, like I understand that's reality.
• 57:30
  But you know the whole what makes humanity great is that we
• 57:33
  dream and that we is that we aspire and push for greater even
• 57:36
  though we don't think it's possible.
• 57:38
  Absolutely, absolutely. I, I think that is the beauty of
• 57:40
  coalition governments where you can't steamroll, you know,
• 57:44
  people with, with one idea, you, you have to go through a very
• 57:48
  consultative process to, to build consensus, to build this
• 57:53
  kind of consent for your, for your policies.
• 57:57
  And I think that it is slow. It is, it is frustrating at
• 58:00
  times, but but I think it's in the best interest of the of a
• 58:04
  country as diverse as ours. I hope so.
• 58:06
  I really do think so. Where is Pakistan relative to
• 58:10
  India? Again, excuse my excuse, my
• 58:13
  absolute negligence, but no. But where is Pakistan?
• 58:16
  What the heck is going on right now?
• 58:18
  So. Yeah, geographically.
• 58:21
  So Pakistan sits on the northwestern frontier of India.
• 58:25
  So India is bounded by Pakistan to its entire W to China in the
• 58:29
  north and and then to Myanmar or Burma to the east SE.
• 58:36
  And then we have Bangladesh, which is kind of we, we surround
• 58:40
  it and Sri Lanka as an island to our southern waters.
• 58:44
  So that's, that's roughly the, the, the geography of India.
• 58:47
  But yeah, Pakistan is, it's the northwest.
• 58:51
  It's the Northwest, yeah. How far is that from Bombay from
• 58:53
  where you are? From Bombay, like Karachi would
• 58:57
  probably be about 500 kilometers, Yeah, like that's,
• 59:00
  that's like another post coastal port city that belongs to
• 59:06
  Pakistan. And they would probably be about
• 59:08
  500 kilometers from me. So where Bombay is not
• 59:11
  incredibly far from Pakistan, but it's also not super close
• 59:15
  like what we call the border states like Punjab and Gujarat
• 59:19
  and Kashmir. So those those are the states
• 59:22
  that have a direct border with them.
• 59:25
  OK, And what's this tension? How long has this tension been
• 59:28
  going on for? Is this war out of the blue?
• 59:31
  Is it has it been coming? You know, has it been boiling,
• 59:33
  simmering for a long time? What's been going on with that?
• 59:35
  How does What's been? What's the story with this?
• 59:37
  Let's let's draw parallels. I always tell my Israeli and
• 59:41
  Jewish friends that it's India and Pakistan is a divorce that
• 59:45
  went through, you know, like, you know, Israel, Palestine is a
• 59:48
  divorce that never happens. And here we have a divorce that
• 59:53
  actually went through. We had lines drawn and we said,
• 59:56
  OK, this is yours, this is mine. It was it was so clinical that
• 1:00:02
  when the British left, they even divided the Indus Valley
• 1:00:06
  civilizations. Excavations between our two
• 1:00:09
  countries so you imagine a 4000 year old civilization like you
• 1:00:13
  know that that drew out of our in this river it was also
• 1:00:17
  divided like these porcelain pots they go to India this.
• 1:00:20
  Is that mistake? When did that happen?
• 1:00:22
  It was terror partition is is probably one of the bloodiest
• 1:00:26
  events in history. I think millions of people died,
• 1:00:31
  were displaced because the British there it was, they
• 1:00:34
  essentially drew a line through what was then undivided India.
• 1:00:38
  And the idea was at the heart of it was when the when India
• 1:00:43
  started developing a sort of national consciousness, it there
• 1:00:49
  was a section of Muslims that felt like because they were not
• 1:00:53
  the majority in the subcontinent, they may be lauded
• 1:00:57
  over by the Hindus who are in the majority.
• 1:00:59
  So they wanted there was a demand that they spearheaded for
• 1:01:02
  their own state, which was in its inception, it was supposed
• 1:01:06
  to be a secular state, but simply with a Muslim majority.
• 1:01:10
  So Pakistan was supposed to be the mirror image of II was the a
• 1:01:15
  secular Hindu majority state, while Pakistan was supposed to
• 1:01:18
  be a secular Muslim majority state.
• 1:01:21
  The British under score Ratcliffe was who had no
• 1:01:25
  experience whatsoever in any of these things and and was seeing
• 1:01:28
  maps of India for the first time.
• 1:01:31
  He drew a line through areas of northwestern India where he felt
• 1:01:37
  like, you know, OK, this is a more Muslim majority part.
• 1:01:39
  We put it there. This is a more Hindu majority
• 1:01:41
  part. Let's let's put it on this side
• 1:01:43
  of the line. Sometimes he'd use rivers to
• 1:01:45
  mark boundaries. And he eventually came up with a
• 1:01:49
  bifurcation of our two countries.
• 1:01:52
  So that is where partition happened.
• 1:01:54
  And there was a mass influx of people because suddenly you
• 1:01:57
  found yourself on the wrong side of the border.
• 1:01:59
  You're like, oh, well, that's the Hindu majority country.
• 1:02:02
  But I had that side. Oh, that's the Muslim majority
• 1:02:03
  country, but I had that side. So people, you know, caught in
• 1:02:07
  the emotions were at an all time high.
• 1:02:11
  People were rioting and killing. And suddenly, you know, you have
• 1:02:16
  people coming from the other side of the border displacing
• 1:02:19
  you and saying, hey, this is mine.
• 1:02:21
  You no longer belong here. This was a mess.
• 1:02:24
  It was. It was a colossal mess and a
• 1:02:26
  dark, dark chapter in our history.
• 1:02:28
  This this is the late 1800s, this.
• 1:02:31
  Was no, this was this was 1947. Very, very.
• 1:02:35
  Really the same time as Israel? Yep, same time so.
• 1:02:38
  How come? How come I don't know anything
• 1:02:40
  about this? It's it's funny, the British
• 1:02:42
  talked both of us over at the same time.
• 1:02:44
  So just like how they threw the man screwed.
• 1:02:46
  Everything up, man, Seriously. You you see the maps of Israel
• 1:02:50
  and Palestine when they drew it for the Mandate of Palestine,
• 1:02:52
  when they're about to leave, it was, it's just squiggly lines,
• 1:02:55
  OK, This is going to be the West Bank.
• 1:02:57
  This is going to be Gaza. This is going to be the
• 1:03:00
  internationally administered territory of Jerusalem.
• 1:03:03
  It was, it was similar, like someone just came and drew
• 1:03:07
  lines, squiggly lines and, you know, and and then we were left
• 1:03:11
  to our devices. They left, they were, they were
• 1:03:14
  like, it's not our problem anymore.
• 1:03:16
  Let the let them sort this out themselves.
• 1:03:19
  And just like you have the Israel, you know, like the
• 1:03:22
  Nakbars, the Arabs call it, or you know, the Israeli war of
• 1:03:26
  independence. We had something similar here as
• 1:03:28
  well, where India and Pakistan, shortly after this mass
• 1:03:31
  population transfer, went to war over Kashmir because Kashmir is
• 1:03:37
  the northernmost part of India and it had an interesting
• 1:03:40
  history. So the population of Kashmir is
• 1:03:43
  predominantly Muslim, but it was ruled by Hindu king.
• 1:03:47
  So in addition to when the British left India, there were a
• 1:03:50
  lot of princely States, and the princely states were given
• 1:03:53
  complete autonomy to decide whether they wanted to join
• 1:03:56
  Pakistan or India. And the king of Kashmir, being a
• 1:04:00
  Hindu, acceded to India. He signed something called the
• 1:04:04
  instrument of a session and said I want to be part of India.
• 1:04:07
  And it was ratified and done. The Pakistanis were like, no,
• 1:04:11
  but it's predominantly Muslim. It belongs with us.
• 1:04:15
  So there was, that was the first war that broke out.
• 1:04:18
  And they send some irregular Pashtun tribesmen into the
• 1:04:22
  capital of Kashmir. We, we, we airlifted our
• 1:04:26
  soldiers into the city. There was fighting and we
• 1:04:28
  managed to hold on to most of it.
• 1:04:30
  They hold on to a little bit of it.
• 1:04:32
  So that is the first war. And what we are seeing right now
• 1:04:36
  is the most recent iteration of that same conflict.
• 1:04:40
  Why did it start? What did has it always been?
• 1:04:43
  Has it always kind of been bubbling almost like how you
• 1:04:46
  know what I guess how Palestine and Israel has been?
• 1:04:49
  Or is it because has it been constantly just back and forth
• 1:04:54
  but with relatively peaceful periods?
• 1:04:56
  Or is it just kind of us leave it alone for now and then it
• 1:04:58
  kind of just blew up again randomly one day?
• 1:05:00
  It's it's, it's turbulent. It's like, I wouldn't say it's
• 1:05:05
  exactly like Israel Palestine, but yeah, there, there are
• 1:05:08
  periods where you know, that, that, that have been a little
• 1:05:11
  calm than others. But by and large that that area
• 1:05:13
  has been relatively turbulent. And, and I think the nature of
• 1:05:18
  the wars have changed because initially it was, it was, it
• 1:05:22
  was, it was purely a land dispute.
• 1:05:24
  But now what we are seeing today is also kind of a response to
• 1:05:28
  terrorism because Pakistan has, as a, as a matter of state
• 1:05:32
  policy, funded and provided resources to a lot of terror
• 1:05:37
  groups, not dissimilar to the way the Iranian Revolutionary
• 1:05:41
  Guard does. You know, the Houthis and the
• 1:05:44
  Hezbollah and Hamas and all of them, these are all, you know,
• 1:05:47
  if you trace the, for the currency, the money, it, it all
• 1:05:52
  leads to offices in Qatar, in, in Tehran and all of that.
• 1:05:57
  So similarly, Pakistan as a matter of state policy has
• 1:06:00
  funded and chained a lot of Islamist extremist groups to not
• 1:06:07
  just cause 'cause destabilize India, but also other neighbors
• 1:06:11
  like Afghanistan. So, so in, in some ways
• 1:06:15
  America's also involved in this because back in the during the
• 1:06:20
  Cold War, when the US wanted to push off the Soviets from
• 1:06:25
  Afghanistan, they punched a lot of money into the Mujahideen,
• 1:06:29
  which was the local mullahs and whatever in Afghanistan because
• 1:06:32
  they were the, the, the resistance against the Soviets.
• 1:06:36
  But then after repulsing the Soviets, what did the Mujahideen
• 1:06:39
  do? And who was who was handling the
• 1:06:41
  Mujahideen? There was the Pakistan deep
• 1:06:44
  state. So the Pakistani deep state
• 1:06:46
  simply took the Mujahideen from Afghanistan.
• 1:06:49
  They took those resources from there and they moved it to
• 1:06:51
  Kashmir because now that the Soviets were gone, they, you
• 1:06:55
  know, what do you do with this reactionary restive force?
• 1:07:00
  So they, they, you know, they've employed terrorist extremists
• 1:07:03
  like that to, to bleed India by 1000 cuts, as we call it.
• 1:07:07
  And, and it's, it's, it's happened all across the length
• 1:07:10
  and breadth of this country. Bomb blasts, kidnappings, mass
• 1:07:16
  executions. That's that's what we saw most
• 1:07:19
  recently in Kashmir. Really.
• 1:07:20
  Where, when, how recently I didn't hear again.
• 1:07:23
  I feel so terrible about knowing about any of this.
• 1:07:26
  No, no, no. I mean, it's, it's totally fair.
• 1:07:29
  It's this happened on the 22nd of April in, in, in Kashmir.
• 1:07:34
  So Kashmir is why is a very Alpine mountainous region.
• 1:07:37
  It's considered the Switzerland of India.
• 1:07:39
  And in the summer months, a lot of people from the mainland tend
• 1:07:43
  to go there to holiday. And especially, you know, in the
• 1:07:48
  past few years, a lot of normalcy has returned to the the
• 1:07:50
  state and it's, it's no longer been as on the boil, so to
• 1:07:54
  speak. Yeah, turbulence.
• 1:07:56
  So, so there's been, there's been an uptick in tourism, which
• 1:07:58
  is it's biggest source of revenue.
• 1:08:01
  So there were a bunch of tourists that were gallivanting,
• 1:08:05
  having a nice day in these meadows in the mountains, when a
• 1:08:09
  bunch of terrorists swooped down and indiscriminately started
• 1:08:14
  firing at them. And they singled out all of the
• 1:08:18
  ones that were Hindu. They, they spared the women,
• 1:08:21
  they killed the men in front of them.
• 1:08:24
  And they, they literally put a gun to their heads and said,
• 1:08:27
  well, if are you, are you Hindu or are you Muslim?
• 1:08:30
  If you're, if you're Muslim, recite these verses from the
• 1:08:33
  Quran so we know you're not lying.
• 1:08:35
  If not, boom boom, you know it. How many people died?
• 1:08:41
  About 28. Man, really?
• 1:08:44
  It was, yeah, it was, it was, it was a brutal massacre and so
• 1:08:48
  unexpected. So it was, it was a bright sunny
• 1:08:51
  spring morning and afternoon at that point, and people were just
• 1:08:56
  enjoying themselves, having a good time.
• 1:08:58
  You know, they, you, if you see pictures of it, there's picnic
• 1:09:01
  mats, there's people just taking selfies when they hear gunshots.
• 1:09:04
  It, it, it was that sudden and unexpected.
• 1:09:07
  So obviously that led to a huge a lot of outrage in India and
• 1:09:14
  people demanded accountability. And while there is a side to it.
• 1:09:19
  So is that what got these tensions kicked off?
• 1:09:21
  Was this massive? That's what got this kicked off.
• 1:09:24
  Yes, that was that was the spark that led.
• 1:09:27
  Are these terrorist groups calling when I went, I, I, I've
• 1:09:32
  been trying very hard. It's, it's hard for me to do,
• 1:09:34
  but I, I really have been working very hard at it to try
• 1:09:36
  to kind of understand what the other side of in, in the
• 1:09:40
  conflict of saying what's the other, what's the other side's
• 1:09:43
  rationalization, justification or what's it, What's your story?
• 1:09:48
  So Pakistan, at least what they tell themselves and, and what
• 1:09:53
  they try to sell in the world media is that these are local
• 1:09:58
  Kashmiris that are aspiring to independence and separatism,
• 1:10:02
  that they, they don't want to be part of India, that they're
• 1:10:05
  being forcibly held on, you know, occupied and colonized by,
• 1:10:10
  by the Delhi. And and that and that their
• 1:10:12
  support for these extremists should be seen as a as a as a
• 1:10:16
  support for freedom cycles. Yes, classic, but but you know,
• 1:10:21
  Kashmir is a settled issue. People, the people who they were
• 1:10:26
  Kashmiris were caught in this carnage as well.
• 1:10:30
  And one of the immediate responses, first from local
• 1:10:34
  Kashmiris, because you have just killed their greatest source of
• 1:10:38
  revenue normalcy had returned to their to their restive lands
• 1:10:43
  after so long. They were finally, you know,
• 1:10:45
  welcoming tourists. There was the businesses were
• 1:10:48
  running. The economy seemed like it was
• 1:10:51
  making a turn for the good. And then you send in these
• 1:10:54
  terrorists and obliterate all of that.
• 1:10:57
  So, yeah, it's, it's, it's hard to reconcile that, right?
• 1:11:00
  But, but it is, you know, it's, it's just a matter of state
• 1:11:04
  policy. Now, Pakistan has always tried
• 1:11:06
  to prop up this fake resistance as a as a justification for its.
• 1:11:14
  Behavior. Behavior, but but it it holds
• 1:11:17
  very little credibility and doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
• 1:11:21
  Yeah. Have you, you know, I've been.
• 1:11:22
  Have you been to Israel before? I have, I have.
• 1:11:25
  I actually went as part of the David project was through hello.
• 1:11:29
  It was funny. It was almost like a like a
• 1:11:31
  birthright trip because I didn't pay penny for it and.
• 1:11:34
  That's awesome. How long do you go for?
• 1:11:36
  A week, 10 days. Yeah, it was about 10 days.
• 1:11:40
  And did you go to, I'm assuming you went to to the Old City in
• 1:11:44
  Jerusalem, right? I did.
• 1:11:47
  I did. So did you walk through the Arab
• 1:11:49
  shook there? Against the advice of my work
• 1:11:54
  group, I did. I did I Right.
• 1:11:55
  So so yeah, the. Reason why, the reason why I'm
• 1:11:58
  asking you, the point I'm trying to get to.
• 1:12:00
  So, you know, I used to be afraid.
• 1:12:01
  My grandfather, my Saba, my mom's father, he died a couple
• 1:12:05
  years ago, but he's an amazing man and he loved Israel.
• 1:12:09
  And one thing, you know, and I used to be afraid to walk
• 1:12:11
  through the Arab, the Arab shook the Arab marketplace.
• 1:12:14
  And he's and he told and he's like a friend.
• 1:12:17
  And he goes, they, these guys just want a living.
• 1:12:20
  They just want to put food on the table.
• 1:12:22
  They just want, you know, to feed their families.
• 1:12:24
  They just want to live their lives and have their businesses.
• 1:12:27
  He's like, if anything happens to you, they lose their living
• 1:12:30
  for weeks or months at a time. No one trusts them.
• 1:12:33
  He goes so they're just so they want to live.
• 1:12:36
  They want to get along as well as as much as anyone else does.
• 1:12:39
  And he goes, if you have a couple of, you know, extremists
• 1:12:41
  or young kids or whatever it is, you know, he goes,
• 1:12:44
  unfortunately, you have to keep your eyes peeled, He goes.
• 1:12:46
  But by and large, everyone just kind of wants to live their
• 1:12:48
  lives and do their things. And it really made me feel a lot
• 1:12:51
  better about it. And not only to make me feel
• 1:12:52
  better about it, but I actually felt more inclined to stop in
• 1:12:55
  stores along the way. And just that, you know, kind of
• 1:12:58
  look and see what they have and, you know, to make them feel
• 1:13:00
  like, hey, you know, we're working together over here.
• 1:13:01
  And I understand that you're just trying to live and I'm just
• 1:13:03
  trying to live. But, you know, but humanizes put
• 1:13:07
  it the, yeah, we need to do that.
• 1:13:08
  So we really need to do that, you know, and, you know, of
• 1:13:11
  course, you know, of course when things like, you know, mass, you
• 1:13:16
  know, mass murders or, you know, terrorist attacks happen,
• 1:13:19
  obviously, you know, there's, you know, there's no excuses.
• 1:13:23
  But, you know, but, yeah, to humanize and to say, listen,
• 1:13:25
  like a lot of these people just want to live, you know, they
• 1:13:27
  just want to, you know, they just want to be, you know, so,
• 1:13:30
  so. And if you notice, if you notice
• 1:13:32
  Fe, it's always the, the, it's, it's always people from outside
• 1:13:35
  that come and start most of these troubles.
• 1:13:37
  It's now the people with the, with skin in, in, in the, in the
• 1:13:41
  game or people, you know who it's, it's all the
• 1:13:44
  radicalization always comes from these, these people trying to
• 1:13:48
  start proxy wars and, and instigate them.
• 1:13:51
  And, and, and you know, we know in Israel Palestine's case,
• 1:13:54
  there's so many parties that are trying, you know, that have
• 1:13:56
  their fingers in the pie. It's the same case even with
• 1:14:00
  Kashmir, where Pakistan is always trying to light this
• 1:14:03
  fuse, even though people there is no appetite for it.
• 1:14:06
  It's a, it's a done and dusted. It's a settled issue.
• 1:14:11
  But they they will not stop because that's that.
• 1:14:14
  There's also something to be said about how Pakistan is not a
• 1:14:18
  a vibrant democracy like us. It's more of a military run
• 1:14:23
  democracy because the army views disproportionate power there.
• 1:14:27
  And these conflicts with India are the only thing that provide
• 1:14:31
  them legitimacy. They are.
• 1:14:32
  They're bloated, corrupt, rotten to the boat, and the only thing
• 1:14:37
  that allows them to keep up a certain image in the public I is
• 1:14:42
  is these manufactured conflicts with India?
• 1:14:45
  Is this constant needling? Is this?
• 1:14:47
  Because it gives them something, it gives them something to put
• 1:14:49
  on their resume. Hey, we did this, you know,
• 1:14:51
  we're trying to do this for this sake, you know.
• 1:14:53
  And like, you know, first of all, who asked?
• 1:14:55
  You know #1 you know, the people, the people that are
• 1:14:58
  living there don't seem to ask if that's if they're, if
• 1:15:00
  they're, if they're living is based on tourism.
• 1:15:02
  And now they can't get that, you know?
• 1:15:04
  Exactly, exactly. And the Pakistani army knows
• 1:15:07
  this all all too well. They know that it's, it's not
• 1:15:10
  just about putting it on a resume, but also the only thing
• 1:15:12
  that will make them look good in the eyes of the public, right.
• 1:15:15
  These because they need a they need a, they need a villain.
• 1:15:18
  And India and these manufactured conflicts constant the the
• 1:15:22
  Pakistani people need to realize that the true villains are their
• 1:15:25
  own military who cannot allow them to, you know, that the
• 1:15:29
  country is backward. It's funny, Effie, when we got
• 1:15:32
  partitioned, Pakistan had the higher GDP per capita Pakistan
• 1:15:36
  had. Yeah, Pakistan got the more
• 1:15:38
  fertile lands Pakistan got. You know, we were, we were
• 1:15:44
  generous in some ways in giving them that.
• 1:15:46
  And they they were, they were wealthier than us when we
• 1:15:48
  started off in 1947. By the time you know these in
• 1:15:54
  the last 10 years, they we've left them far, far behind in the
• 1:15:57
  last few decades. Yeah, they're.
• 1:16:01
  Priorities have been very different from us.
• 1:16:03
  So this is what the Pakistani public doesn't realize that the
• 1:16:07
  military is short changing them. It constantly props up this
• 1:16:11
  bogeyman of India and Kashmir to keep them embroiled in this
• 1:16:16
  nonsense of almost conflict. But it's not in their interest
• 1:16:20
  anymore. Yeah, I, the way, you know, I, I
• 1:16:24
  think, and this actually almost goes full circle at the
• 1:16:26
  beginning of our conversation, you know, the way that you can
• 1:16:28
  kind of get people to get on board with you is either with
• 1:16:31
  junk food or healthy food, right.
• 1:16:33
  And junk food would be to kind of blame someone else and
• 1:16:35
  villainize other people to kind of get people to rally around a
• 1:16:37
  common enemy as opposed to striving for a common good.
• 1:16:41
  Where how do we get everyone to be happy, you know, and how do
• 1:16:44
  we promise a better life for everyone?
• 1:16:46
  You know, and and I feel like you can either run from a
• 1:16:49
  position of be afraid of everyone else and they're
• 1:16:52
  they're trying to get you as opposed to what can we do to get
• 1:16:56
  everyone to be happy and successful and comfortable and
• 1:16:58
  interesting too. Well, yeah.
• 1:17:02
  Interesting. Interesting.
• 1:17:04
  So what's the warp? So this mass, so the mass
• 1:17:07
  execution happened. And what was India's response?
• 1:17:11
  India, it, it, you know, this time it, it was a calibrated
• 1:17:14
  response. We didn't, we didn't go all hand
• 1:17:16
  starting out, but we, we, I think the first significant
• 1:17:19
  decision we took was to cancel a water treaty that we have over
• 1:17:24
  the, in this river that runs through both of our countries
• 1:17:28
  and say that we're no longer, you know, going to uphold it.
• 1:17:32
  So the treaty essentially allowed for a division of the
• 1:17:35
  the water's resources. But now we're like, we're not
• 1:17:40
  going to hold on to it. We will decide how much of that
• 1:17:44
  water we keep for ourselves. We may build dams on the upper
• 1:17:48
  riparians, which is the upper parts of the river, and you may
• 1:17:51
  not get the water you want. So we're like, this is serious.
• 1:17:56
  Because initially, initially it was not.
• 1:17:58
  It was initially an economic response, not a military.
• 1:18:00
  Response. Yeah, it started with an
• 1:18:01
  economic response. And, you know, we as one
• 1:18:06
  politician put in blood and water cannot flow together.
• 1:18:09
  So it's, and I, I think there is a recognition in India, this is
• 1:18:12
  not the first time this is happening, by the way.
• 1:18:14
  This is, you know, terrorist attacks like these and in some
• 1:18:17
  senses even worse than these have happened over a series of
• 1:18:21
  decades, even in Bombay. Bombay is perhaps the city that
• 1:18:24
  has suffered the most. And each time we have tried to
• 1:18:29
  be accommodating. We've tried, we've tried various
• 1:18:31
  ways, we've tried to sanction Pakistan, we've tried to isolate
• 1:18:34
  them in the international community.
• 1:18:36
  We've tried to put them on great lists in the financial world.
• 1:18:39
  But it it has not borne the results we've wanted.
• 1:18:43
  And I think now there's a recognition that it has to be
• 1:18:46
  somewhat, you know, like Israeli style.
• 1:18:48
  We need to show Hotstar and yeah, you know, get show them
• 1:18:54
  that it's it we will hit hard and in all senses.
• 1:18:59
  So the economic penalties obviously were what we started
• 1:19:03
  out with and then they progressed.
• 1:19:05
  And this Wednesday we launched missiles in ballistic missiles
• 1:19:11
  at what we, you know, see as terror camps inside deep inside
• 1:19:16
  Pakistan. We we there were nine sites that
• 1:19:21
  the Army had singled out and on on Wednesday night, we just blew
• 1:19:25
  them all up from within our airspace.
• 1:19:28
  So that that that took them by surprise, I bet.
• 1:19:34
  Yeah, Yeah. There was suddenly all these
• 1:19:36
  videos of like, kaboom, like we didn't see that coming.
• 1:19:39
  And I think we killed close to 100 and 150 terrorists,
• 1:19:44
  including the man. I don't know if you did you know
• 1:19:46
  about Daniel Pearl. No, Tell me about him.
• 1:19:50
  So Daniel Paul was a Jewish American journalist, a very
• 1:19:54
  famous 1. I believe he worked for CNN but
• 1:19:56
  I could be wrong. Who was investigating during the
• 1:20:00
  years of the War on Terror and etc.
• 1:20:03
  He was investigating links in Pakistans Punjab region.
• 1:20:10
  And it's it's over there that he gets kidnapped by Mullah Omar
• 1:20:15
  Sheikh and is forced to confess that he's a Jew on camera and
• 1:20:20
  that he will not convert to Islam and.
• 1:20:24
  Etc. And that he you know that he's,
• 1:20:27
  you know, has time in Israel and and they behead him on camera.
• 1:20:32
  They. Did so recently, yeah.
• 1:20:34
  This was this was many years ago.
• 1:20:35
  It was I think at least two decades ago, but it was it was a
• 1:20:39
  very brutal, brutal killing of a Jewish American journalist that
• 1:20:44
  shook the world. And one of the perpetrators of
• 1:20:47
  faith was actually, you know, part of the, the terror matrix
• 1:20:54
  that we eliminated during Wednesday night's strike.
• 1:20:57
  So, you know, there's a lot of interconnectedness here because
• 1:21:00
  these these terrorists, it's, they don't only target India.
• 1:21:03
  They also look for Jewish targets.
• 1:21:06
  They also look for Israeli targets.
• 1:21:09
  They're also active in Afghanistan.
• 1:21:11
  So, so it's a it's a whole, it's a whole apparatus.
• 1:21:13
  And I think the strikes that we did on Wednesday were were our
• 1:21:18
  response to them. Is there is there concern about
• 1:21:23
  nuclear escalation or is that just Western media blowing
• 1:21:26
  things out of proportion? There always is because we're
• 1:21:29
  both nuclear armed countries they have about.
• 1:21:32
  I'll be scared shitless, right? Quite frankly.
• 1:21:36
  It's never going to happen if you because see, I'll tell you
• 1:21:38
  why very logically, this is what I tell people.
• 1:21:41
  See, when the US and the USSR spot you will you guys were
• 1:21:44
  separated by huge oceans and you know, on different sides of the
• 1:21:48
  world, India and Pakistan share the same land, we share the same
• 1:21:52
  rivers, the same sometimes families, clans, you.
• 1:21:55
  Can't blow one up without blowing both up.
• 1:21:57
  Yes, exactly. It is mutually assured
• 1:21:59
  destruction and it's not as simple as you know.
• 1:22:02
  So Pakistan has actually, you know, it's quite devious that
• 1:22:06
  way. It has developed and I think it
• 1:22:08
  is one of the only countries that has developed these
• 1:22:10
  something called tactical nuclear weapons.
• 1:22:12
  So tactical nuclear weapons are basically bonsai miniaturized
• 1:22:15
  nuclear warheads that they've developed specifically to Jews
• 1:22:19
  against Indian conventional forces.
• 1:22:22
  So because they know they cannot match the size and strength of
• 1:22:26
  the Indian military tomorrow, they're like, if, if shit gets
• 1:22:30
  hits the roof, they might launch a new a small baby nuke on our,
• 1:22:33
  on our forces on the battlefield.
• 1:22:36
  So it's, you know, but The thing is with that.
• 1:22:39
  So that's more likely than like a full blown nuclear exchange.
• 1:22:42
  Yeah, Yeah. So that's that's more likely.
• 1:22:44
  So these strategic nuclear warheads, as they call them, are
• 1:22:47
  more likely than the more conventional.
• 1:22:49
  But the point is that even if they use one of those, the
• 1:22:51
  fallout will be on regions that both of us share.
• 1:22:54
  We both share the same rivers. We both like, you know, when
• 1:22:57
  Chernobyl happened, which funnily enough I had the
• 1:23:01
  privilege of visiting before I got invaded.
• 1:23:04
  No way. Yeah, I was in Chernobyl 20
• 1:23:09
  December Jan 2022, just before the war.
• 1:23:12
  Wow, yeah. So you know what, when Chernobyl
• 1:23:16
  happened in the 1980s, there was a lot of concern in Western
• 1:23:21
  European capitals about nuclear fallout, like the, the winds
• 1:23:24
  taking the, the, the ashes to Paris and Amsterdam and Warsaw.
• 1:23:28
  So what the the Ukrainians did was they dug up 6 feet of the
• 1:23:32
  topsoil wherever in the fallout zone and they they put them in
• 1:23:37
  lead containers to contain the radiation.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah, that's right. So that's to give you an idea
• 1:23:43
  about how you may, there may be a nuclear fallout in one part,
• 1:23:47
  but the effects of it, especially if you share a
• 1:23:50
  contiguous landmass, will be felt by you sooner or later.
• 1:23:54
  So in our case, because we're like neighbors that share so
• 1:23:57
  much you, you can't bomb one side without feeling the effects
• 1:24:02
  on yours as well. And this is this is just the
• 1:24:05
  effects. Of course, India has a policy of
• 1:24:08
  no first use. So we will never be the first
• 1:24:11
  ones to use nukes. But should we ever get the
• 1:24:14
  indication that you're going to use one on us, we have a policy
• 1:24:17
  of total annihilation. So we launch all of them.
• 1:24:20
  You will be wiped out. Really.
• 1:24:22
  Even though it might affect India in the long term.
• 1:24:25
  Even though if so it's called, there's a, there's a fancier
• 1:24:28
  word in international relations that's escaping my mind right
• 1:24:31
  now. It's just 2:00 AM, but it's
• 1:24:33
  called, it's called, it's called, it's called, it's called
• 1:24:36
  like total annihilation or something like that.
• 1:24:38
  So it's not like we will respond in a measured way to a nuclear
• 1:24:41
  attack. If there's even a tactical
• 1:24:43
  nuclear warhead launched there as a small one, We release all
• 1:24:47
  of them. We we let the you know, gates
• 1:24:50
  open that there's no coming back.
• 1:24:53
  Yeah, war scares the crap out of me these days, man.
• 1:24:56
  You know, I mean, when what? You know, I, I, I about a year
• 1:24:59
  ago, you know, actually I, you know, I, I did I tell you I had
• 1:25:02
  a second kid. I'm sorry.
• 1:25:06
  Did I tell you that I had a second kid the other week?
• 1:25:09
  No, I I know it's the first one I didn't know.
• 1:25:11
  Yes, I had a baby girl. I had a baby girl, right?
• 1:25:14
  Oh my God, congratulations. Thank you.
• 1:25:16
  Her name's Ariela, and she looks like an alien still, so we have
• 1:25:22
  to give her, like, another couple of weeks.
• 1:25:23
  But she's so cute. But yeah, it's really exciting.
• 1:25:26
  I'll send you some pictures after.
• 1:25:28
  But, you know, I was going last year.
• 1:25:31
  I was going. I remember when, when I ran
• 1:25:34
  when, when, when it really looked like we're on the cusp of
• 1:25:36
  World War Three, Right. Yeah.
• 1:25:38
  Between, you know, and I was going for a jog one time, you
• 1:25:42
  know, one night when I heard the news.
• 1:25:44
  And I was just while I was think jogging, thinking like how much
• 1:25:47
  it would suck that, you know, if, if, if, if Florida got
• 1:25:51
  bombed, right. And I who in killing myself to
• 1:25:57
  support a family and raise them and live my life and be
• 1:25:59
  productive and do the right things.
• 1:26:02
  You know, I lose everything because of a decision that a,
• 1:26:04
  you know, because of a decision a political leader made that
• 1:26:08
  translated into destroying my life.
• 1:26:11
  I was like, yeah, I just can't. I can't.
• 1:26:12
  Like just that notion itself made me, made it hard to stomach
• 1:26:16
  any kind of notion of war. And I mean, yeah, it really
• 1:26:19
  scares the heck out of me. And it really makes me, I think
• 1:26:23
  I have a different kind of appreciation.
• 1:26:26
  Like, I don't think that you could still take sides and say
• 1:26:31
  that war sucks and shouldn't happen.
• 1:26:34
  You could still say that you have a moral alignment with one
• 1:26:39
  side or another. That doesn't necessarily mean
• 1:26:42
  that it has to escalate to people minding their own
• 1:26:45
  business getting blown up. And that's really, you know, I
• 1:26:49
  feel I've been feeling that really strongly.
• 1:26:50
  And, you know, so when I heard about this happening in India,
• 1:26:53
  just, you know, just last week, you know, I felt very strongly,
• 1:26:57
  just like, oh, man, like, you know, it's so heartbreaking.
• 1:27:02
  And like to hear that, you know, more that's happening.
• 1:27:04
  It's just, it's so upsetting. It's so sad.
• 1:27:06
  It's so sad. Where we're used to it at this
• 1:27:09
  point and. That's even worse, right?
• 1:27:12
  Yeah, in some ways getting numb to war is.
• 1:27:15
  So when you think about terror attacks, I mean, in the recent
• 1:27:21
  past, they have come down to Maldives credit.
• 1:27:24
  He has been pretty good at ramping up internal security,
• 1:27:28
  these lapses notwithstanding. But you know, they're they're a
• 1:27:33
  feature of our lives here. Like for instance, when I have
• 1:27:35
  to use our version of the subway, it's not subway, it's
• 1:27:38
  elevated here. I have to go through Fe a metal
• 1:27:41
  detector and I have to go through a man frisking me on a
• 1:27:45
  pedestal with a point. Yes, so so.
• 1:27:49
  And would you prefer that to not having that security on a big
• 1:27:54
  public thing like, like would you rather that?
• 1:27:57
  Yeah, because I know that I'm more secure, you know that
• 1:28:00
  there's. I think the subways need
• 1:28:03
  security. I've been saying for years, I
• 1:28:05
  think it's crazy that anyone would just walk down a subway,
• 1:28:07
  put $2.00 in, and just go anywhere they want to and be
• 1:28:11
  with the entire world. You know, like, it's scary.
• 1:28:15
  But, you know, like the kind of security that we have for our
• 1:28:19
  public transport, a lot of our public transport, our malls, our
• 1:28:21
  cinemas, they're akin to what you would see at an airport.
• 1:28:25
  So, you know, we, we have to put our things in a tray and the
• 1:28:27
  tray goes through a scanner. Then I go through a metal
• 1:28:30
  detector. And as soon as I emerge from the
• 1:28:32
  other side of the metal detector, there's a man or woman
• 1:28:34
  standing with a wand that will pack me down.
• 1:28:38
  This is this happens every time we enter cinema halls, malls,
• 1:28:42
  shopping complexes, big events, stadiums, and of course, public
• 1:28:47
  transport as well. So this is the reality of our
• 1:28:50
  life here. And, and sure, it does take us a
• 1:28:53
  few extra 10 seconds. It adds an extra level of
• 1:28:56
  complexity and, you know, fast to our lives.
• 1:28:59
  But but I know that it is for our security and, and we live in
• 1:29:02
  a very volatile part of the world.
• 1:29:04
  So I'd rather spend those extra 10 seconds then then getting
• 1:29:09
  blown up. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:29:13
  Oh, man, Oh, man. OK, I want to ask you one last
• 1:29:16
  question. I feel terrible.
• 1:29:17
  I feel bad that it's 2:00 in the morning.
• 1:29:19
  No. Don't be I've been awake for the
• 1:29:21
  last few nights because of all of this and I I mean not not out
• 1:29:24
  of stress, but I, I love collecting OS ink, which is like
• 1:29:28
  open source intelligence and how do you?
• 1:29:30
  Collect it. Where do you get it from?
• 1:29:32
  So there's, there's an app that I use very rudimentary called
• 1:29:35
  flight red R24, which shows you all the flights in the world
• 1:29:39
  live, like on the map, you can tell the call sign, all of that.
• 1:29:43
  So that's one way. There's there's, you know,
• 1:29:45
  certain Reddit forums, defense forums.
• 1:29:47
  So I, I lurk everywhere and try to like figure out the
• 1:29:51
  narratives before they hit the mainstream media.
• 1:29:54
  So that's that's like it's a little quirk where I had but
• 1:29:57
  but. That's awesome, don't you?
• 1:29:59
  Don't feel bad. Is the mainstream media more
• 1:30:05
  trusted in India than it is in America?
• 1:30:07
  Because right now no one trusts mainstream media.
• 1:30:09
  So like everyone has to get their sources from like
• 1:30:12
  literally anywhere. It's so crazy.
• 1:30:15
  I don't think it's reached the American level, but there are
• 1:30:18
  moments and also there's something to be said about how
• 1:30:20
  it depends on who you ask, right?
• 1:30:22
  Like because a lot of the media houses in the past few years in
• 1:30:26
  especially during more these second term, they kind of got
• 1:30:29
  compromised in that they, they they switched tax and are
• 1:30:33
  completely pro government at this point and are very
• 1:30:37
  reluctant to criticize any of the policies that come from the
• 1:30:41
  center. So I think there's, you know, if
• 1:30:44
  you speak to people who voted for that party, they'll be like,
• 1:30:46
  oh, there's nothing wrong. This is oh.
• 1:30:48
  Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, so you know, it's it's
• 1:30:52
  I got. You.
• 1:30:53
  Yeah, I got you. What?
• 1:30:54
  So I saw, I saw one of your stories.
• 1:30:56
  I wanted to and I wanted to ask you about it, about Trump, about
• 1:31:01
  Trump being involved in the ceasefire and that you didn't
• 1:31:04
  seem thrilled with that, right? Absolutely not and.
• 1:31:08
  It just, I would love to, I would love to hear your, your
• 1:31:10
  thoughts on that and why. It just comes down to our
• 1:31:15
  experiences with colonialism, right?
• 1:31:17
  Like we don't we've we've been up lorded over by a, a third
• 1:31:21
  party of a country that had no business being in our land in
• 1:31:25
  our involved in our affairs. So, so that kind of experience
• 1:31:29
  really informs your policies going forward as an independent
• 1:31:33
  country. So it has been a matter of
• 1:31:35
  Indian state policies, see, since the birth of this country
• 1:31:39
  to be non aligned and to, to chart it's own path and to not
• 1:31:44
  be in any block. And this, this is sometimes to
• 1:31:46
  our own detriment, right? Because if you, if you're not,
• 1:31:49
  we, we a lot of our allies are not as vocal about supporting us
• 1:31:54
  because we're not as vocal about supporting them.
• 1:31:56
  We try to maintain equanimity. So the point of all this is that
• 1:32:01
  we, we generally like being independent in how we deal with
• 1:32:05
  things. And it has also been a matter of
• 1:32:07
  state policy for India to keep Kashmir A bilateral issue
• 1:32:12
  between India and Pakistan. As we, I'll be very honest with
• 1:32:15
  you, if yesterday we heard that Pakistan had wanted to do a
• 1:32:18
  ceasefire with us and it had come from the two of us, that's
• 1:32:23
  India and Pakistan, I would be a little disappointed because we
• 1:32:26
  couldn't book their ass more. But I take it, I take it but we
• 1:32:30
  do not like Western countries meddling in our affairs and
• 1:32:35
  certainly not people pre empting it and and stealing credit for
• 1:32:40
  it. And and I think there's also,
• 1:32:41
  you know, a certain dismissiveness in this current
• 1:32:45
  administration and the way it treats this conflict like all
• 1:32:47
  these are just two children. Get over it.
• 1:32:49
  You know, this is not serious because you think about it.
• 1:32:53
  If if 26 people were massacred in Aspen in a ski resort, OK,
• 1:32:59
  one fine spring morning, how? Was it for that?
• 1:33:02
  Yeah. Like America, it, you know, it
• 1:33:05
  got enlisted so many Western countries that had nothing to do
• 1:33:08
  with 911 in its War on Terror. And we'll not get into the weeds
• 1:33:13
  of it, but but when it when it happens to one of you guys,
• 1:33:17
  everybody's supposed to stand up and take no and it's a big deal.
• 1:33:21
  But when it's with us, then it's it's treated with, you know,
• 1:33:24
  short shift and a certain dismissiveness that I've noticed
• 1:33:28
  in the tone and tenor of American statement.
• 1:33:33
  Well, I would like to change that, quite frankly.
• 1:33:35
  I mean, that's why I think it's important to even learn about
• 1:33:37
  this from you and put this out because I think that it's I
• 1:33:40
  think it is relevant. I think it is important again,
• 1:33:42
  even if India and Pakistan keep it between the two of you guys,
• 1:33:46
  yeah, the words to still be aware and to still be aware as
• 1:33:49
  to the value and the history and you know what's going on, you
• 1:33:54
  know? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:55
  The complexities for sure, for sure, for sure.
• 1:33:58
  Is there, are there parts of of Krishma of Krishmere that are
• 1:34:03
  almost like religious grounds similar to the Middle East?
• 1:34:05
  Or is it, is it just based on like where you're going to be?
• 1:34:09
  And again, that conflict between the leadership and the and the
• 1:34:12
  and the and the population. It's yeah, no, it's not
• 1:34:16
  religious. Like I don't think there's any
• 1:34:18
  part of. It's not like the AL Aqsa Mosque
• 1:34:20
  or the Dome of the Rock. There's no religious
• 1:34:23
  significance to the land as such.
• 1:34:25
  It's more of a ethno conflict, the made-up ethno conflict at
• 1:34:30
  this point, because the Kashmiris are are fine.
• 1:34:33
  Like there, there are questions of, you know, devolving more
• 1:34:36
  autonomy to the local government and all of that, which which
• 1:34:39
  India does with certain states, which, you know, lie on its
• 1:34:42
  periphery. But it's there is no burning
• 1:34:45
  demand for secession or anything of that sort.
• 1:34:49
  It's most of that, yeah. So it's more more to do with the
• 1:34:53
  land, but. So how does this so would this
• 1:34:56
  hypothetically be easier to resolve if there was a little
• 1:34:59
  bit less invested? Like what would it take to
• 1:35:02
  resolve this or what does it take?
• 1:35:05
  Oh, that is, that is a great question.
• 1:35:07
  I wish. I wish.
• 1:35:08
  I we don't we we would have all night if we to answer that
• 1:35:10
  question right, That's what. We need, no, I'll, I'll just add
• 1:35:13
  one more dimension to it. And, and you know it.
• 1:35:16
  We're, we're Jews and Hindus. We ask more questions than we
• 1:35:19
  answer them, right. So I will, I will put one more
• 1:35:21
  thing to complicate your brain more.
• 1:35:25
  Kashmir is not just about the land, but it's also the
• 1:35:27
  resources because it's the it's where the glaciers that feed
• 1:35:31
  most of the waters that irrigate the Indian subcontinent lie.
• 1:35:36
  So you know. The So it's very valuable and.
• 1:35:39
  It is very valuable. So even right now when, you
• 1:35:42
  know, I mentioned that economic reaction that we took of
• 1:35:44
  suspending the water treaty, it's connected to that because
• 1:35:47
  we happen to be in the higher elevations, the upper reaches,
• 1:35:51
  so we have control over the flow of water before it enters
• 1:35:54
  Pakistan. So in some ways this is also a,
• 1:35:57
  a water wall, a wall of resources, which is only going
• 1:36:01
  to heat up with climate change and global warming, right?
• 1:36:04
  So that's, you know, another dimension to it as well besides
• 1:36:07
  all the the land. That's no conflict, blah, blah,
• 1:36:09
  blah. So it's it's it's hard to see
• 1:36:12
  more like. That would be, but I feel like
• 1:36:14
  that would be the, the underlying thing to solve,
• 1:36:16
  right. Like if you, I mean, I, I think
• 1:36:20
  money speaks louder than almost anything.
• 1:36:22
  You know, I think that that's, I think people have come.
• 1:36:24
  I think we've come to learn that throughout the years.
• 1:36:28
  But you know, I think that I guess, I guess you think it just
• 1:36:31
  comes, you think that money or like a deal, a fair deal would
• 1:36:35
  just kind of make the whole thing go away.
• 1:36:37
  No, no, this is like, I think in these parts, I feel like in in
• 1:36:42
  the old world, as we call it, like you guys live in the new
• 1:36:44
  world. Yeah, people have ties to the
• 1:36:46
  land, right? Like it's like, you know, when
• 1:36:48
  you talk about Israel as well, there's, there's people that
• 1:36:52
  have been living there for years, decades, centuries maybe
• 1:36:55
  sure as well. There's people.
• 1:36:56
  So there's no amount of money. There's only so much money you
• 1:36:59
  can buy. There's, there's questions of
• 1:37:01
  identity mixed into it. There's questions of nationhood
• 1:37:06
  mixed into it that that money simply cannot solve.
• 1:37:12
  Well, you could try. I don't know.
• 1:37:15
  I don't know. Let's see.
• 1:37:18
  Because if not, the answer is just to keep on doing this, you
• 1:37:20
  know, for who knows how long. There there are answers, but you
• 1:37:25
  know, it's it's also, you know, we may do everything that we see
• 1:37:29
  it. It has died down.
• 1:37:30
  Like if you if you saw a graph of the insurgency or the number
• 1:37:35
  of militant attacks in Kashmir, it has come down over the years
• 1:37:37
  to the creditors, not just this government but previous ones as
• 1:37:40
  well. They have been concerted efforts
• 1:37:42
  in that direction. But like I said, right, the
• 1:37:45
  Pakistan Army needs a it needs to justify its existence.
• 1:37:50
  It needs to justify. Yeah, I understand.
• 1:37:54
  Right. It's so you.
• 1:37:54
  Yeah. Yeah, it's very.
• 1:37:55
  So we may do everything. Right, right.
• 1:37:57
  Like we may do everything right. The population seems to be
• 1:38:00
  enjoying the fruits of India's phenomenal economic growth.
• 1:38:04
  We were just about to see a fantastic tourist season.
• 1:38:08
  But but then now you have these external actors that have all
• 1:38:12
  these I'll intentions against you.
• 1:38:14
  So what do you do about that? Right?
• 1:38:16
  Like, do we balkanize Pakistan further?
• 1:38:18
  Do we do we hit them until they do a regime change?
• 1:38:24
  We don't know. We, we, we want a lot of things.
• 1:38:26
  You ask? We want a very firm response
• 1:38:29
  this time. But but yeah, it's it's, it's
• 1:38:32
  going to take two to tango, as they say.
• 1:38:35
  Yeah, yeah, it does. It definitely does.
• 1:38:37
  I think I will leave you with that.
• 1:38:40
  I think I'll let you go to sleep, but I've I've never why
• 1:38:44
  is there 1/2 hour time difference?
• 1:38:45
  It's like my it was what is it 8 1/2 hour to be?
• 1:38:48
  Different we we had to be different, right?
• 1:38:50
  We were. I guess so we it's cool.
• 1:38:53
  I never heard of not. Be sane.
• 1:38:56
  Sheree, I love talking to you man.
• 1:38:57
  I missed you. Talking to you and we need to
• 1:39:00
  catch up more casually at some point like yes, where we're not
• 1:39:03
  talking about the the the end of the war, we need to be talking
• 1:39:07
  about your kids and your wife and.
• 1:39:09
  And yes, that's right. And Disney.
• 1:39:11
  Of course, of course, of course, of course.
• 1:39:13
  Trey, I love you. Thank you so much for doing
• 1:39:15
  this. Love you.
• 1:39:15
  And we'll talk soon, and we'll do this again, I hope.
• 1:39:18
  OK. Absolutely.
• 1:39:19
  Bye bye all. Right, Bye everyone.
• 1:39:21
  Good night.