Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Narayan Parasuram on Building a Business on the Power of Stories (#016)

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Narayan Parasuram on Building a Business on the Power of Stories (#016) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I have grown up watching the film.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: The songs, there are eight songs in the film.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not one romantic song.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: That is another pet peeve of mine.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: That in spite of being a music director for more than 30 years, I did have made romantic songs, but they never found a found the light of the day.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: My songs are about crows uh hunting for food and you know some uh lizard losing its tail and some poor within something is there that is catching up with me now.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hey everyone, welcome to a new episode of Contra Minds.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Vignesh Paminathan and I am your new co-host.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: We have an awesome conversation lined up for you, and I'm incredibly excited to be a part of this journey.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Vignesh.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Hello everyone.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: In this edition of Contra Mind, we are in conversation with Narayan Kar.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Narayan is the co-founder and creative director of Kurity Tails Company.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Narayan is someone who done many times.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: He is a music composer, a film producer, and a teacher.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: He is also one of India's finest storytellers.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: We discussed his journey and the lessons he learnt in setting up the Kovedy Tales Company, the challenges he has faced as an independent movie producer, and how we need to really rethink the value of traditional institutions in India.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: So without much further ado, let's get into our conversation with Narayan Parshram.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Narayan Parshuram, for uh joining my podcast.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's an absolute privilege to have you as a guest.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thank you very much for joining in and talking to me today.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Namaskaram to you, to everybody, and thank you so very much for even thinking of me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: The privilege is entirely mine.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, thanks Narayan.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I just wanted to uh you know, when I was really looking for some guests and uh researching about people, what I what interests me the most was you are a you know IIT metallurgical engineer, you did your MS in mechanical engineering, uh you actually are a publisher, you are a music composer, you are a film producer, uh so you have you've got a diverse set of interests, and uh I think that's really what uh impressed me the most.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I just want to, while we keep talking about it through this podcast, I just wanted to start off by actually talking about your early childhood where uh what is it, what was it like to uh you know start off as an engineer and then suddenly you're shifting to become a music composer to a film producer to actually understanding sound engineering?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's a completely 360-degree shift in what you you are doing versus what you studied, right?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: So was there any triggers and moments which where you found your passion and you started shifting what you were meant for?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: And is that something that happened in your life?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: You said correctly, you know.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: It has actually been 360 degrees because you you I've come back where we started from.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because um you know the other day I was doing some kind of a workshop, in the sense I was attending a workshop where the speaker was asking us to try and uh remember our very first memory.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting you asked me this question.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the very first memory I was digging back, digging back, you know, was actually listening in my house to uh MS Gopalakishnan.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yudayama He used to play the violin that way.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then listening uh that is my first memory, yeah, Swami.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So now uh that memory is etched.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: That is the first thing that I remember.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And very often I find that uh everything else that happened has actually happened because of that.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of teachers in my family.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: That is another memory I have.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember any time when in my even from the time I was my memory goes back.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Some teachers used to always come home to teach my brothers, my sister, Amai also, you know.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we learnt part, Maranagam, um, you know, my sister used to learn dance, violin, you know, as our uh Ramakasha Sharmasar used to come home, Vyusuburman Sar used to come home.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this was the it was very natural for uh this was for me, I thought this was like breathing, you know, this is what everybody does, you know.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, uh when I think back now, yes, you know, on paper, uh I'm not uh debunking any education that I've had.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I have a lot of regard to every teacher.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I certainly feel that uh, you know, I go back to I think it was Mark Twain, you know, who said this that uh, you know, you can go, please go to the best schools and colleges and everything.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: But don't let them come in the way of your education.
• 5:25
  unknown: You know.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: So my parents, not because they had read Mark Twain, but they uh all our parents in that culture in my leave was always that the real education happens from your environment, the the life situations you are immersed in.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, school also, you know, not take.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the kind of um uh abrogation to the school that happens in education today, that I think is a little problematic.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning everything you expect a child to learn from school, including language, including uh you know your uh very, very fundamental, even ethics and things like that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: A child goes to school at 9 a.m.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: and comes back at 6 a.m.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: 6 p.m.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about natural.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So even though I went to the schools and my our party class never stopped.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have a SSE exam the next day, maths exam, if my party class on Wednesday, I remember now remember to stay at Wednesday 6 o'clock at Krishna Murti Bhagavad's house in Ramasadhan in Chambur.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it uh you go to the class and next day you write your exam.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I would like to very in all humility submit that I was actually, you know, the in in in science I got the highest in Maharashtra board 149 out of 160, one uh 149 out of 150 those days, physics, chemistry, bio 350, 50, 50.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in maths I got 147, I think.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I really think it is it is because of the particles and Murphan class.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot put my finger on it, but it was it it was also responsible for that.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So coming back to it was but but was you know, I mean it it had it coming back happened in spite of me and not because of me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: So so how was it uh like going to IIT, uh uh learning metallurgical engineering, going to the US, uh you know, doing your MS, and suddenly uh you know you become a film composer, you you know, you start taking interest in design, in sound engineering.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh very, very interesting takeoff points to your professional life, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: So therefore, how did how did that happen?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: And uh is that something that uh you learnt by doing, or is it something that uh you know the uh life situations as you say taught you?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, there's no uh ambiguity about it.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was the latter, you know, the life situations, because uh we were not for us the we were ne we I never knew the concept of arts, science, music, engineering, you know.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was all one, if I can use a very modern word, a knowledge crucible.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everything was part of that.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So uh when uh and also please remember, you know, it is very different from it was very different times from today, where for example, I wrote JE exam, because everybody wrote JE exam.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Some 2,000 people out of some five or six lives get in, you happen to get in.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I would be not being you know uh not being honest if I were to say that I had planned to become a metallurgical engineer.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And since if you don't pardon a little bit of a docity, that I I even now remember, you know, Vignesh, that when I went to the counseling, see I got what they call a telephone number rank in JE.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning I got some, I think the rank was 1200 or something.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So my sister, and I got very good marks in 12th.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you could get electronics in Vijay TI types, you know that.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, what do you get in?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: So my uh uncle used to be an IIT professor, so I have been going to IIT Bombay to visit him since my first ended.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there has been an impression.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: My sister was uh gave me this advice, she told me go to IIT Bombay irrespective of whatever you get.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that was the kind of yardstick at that time.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when I went to the counseling session, you know, you have to remember it's not days of Google, okay?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So uh counseling they will explain the departments what this means.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I was listening there for around almost half an hour, and I was wondering, am I in the right room?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because you will not believe it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I actually thought it is meteorological engineering.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, oh actually the metallurgia, you know, he's talking about uh, you know, the iron ore and extraction and everything.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to with all uh you know with all gratitude, you know, accede to the fact that as I said earlier, they have all happened in spite of me.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is not that I designed to be a metallurgy.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you that is what you got.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then you study, you you you you do your you know, you know all the tricks, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: By the time to pass exams and everything.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And in Indian universities, especially, it is uh in in in institutionalized education.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about non-institutionalized.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: In institutionalized education, uh if you know the tricks, and I really knew the tricks very well.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: In school I had mastered it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like always like first rank, second rank, first rank, second rank, first rank, first rank.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I was necessarily the best student in the class, but I knew how to write exams well.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: My brother, elder brother, who's probably you know thousand times more knowledgeable than me, he used to always get like you know, not really such great ranks because we had cracked that, as we say.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I did, I actually passed out of uh uh IIT Bombay, I think in 1988.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And here again I must uh accede that uh you know a lot of my own music uh uh you know uh sadhane actually happened in my hostel four.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when somebody asks me, you know, did you study in IIT Bombay?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I said, actually I studied in hostel four, which is in IIT Bombay.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh you know I grew up in a family where uh my my brothers and sisters were all very accomplished musicians right from the age of eight they were performing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my sister used to play violin, Sri Ram, you know, Parshuram used to play the violin.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: He started playing at the age of eight.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: That was the thing, and I was playing like an addendum, you know, oh the fourth child, something you have to give him, so they gave me a gutam, and I was playing the ghatam along with them.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh having been there in that situation, uh suddenly when I went to the hostel, it was your independence.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of uh start finding your own identity.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I used to practice a lot of vocal music there, you know, whatever Krishna Murthisa taught me, my Sarali Varishes, Alankaram's.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Something in me I just found a lot of joy in that.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier, probably I was doing it because my parents were sending me to the class, and after the class, my father used to always guarantee us you know idli sambar at Saroj Hotel, you know, you know, coming back.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the carrot, you know.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: But when I came to the hostel, I realized I really don't need that carrot.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And another thing happens in IIT.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in Tamil there's a phrase, no, Mukilater Rajatla Murumukan Raja, you know.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that means Andome Karna Raja Voltana, which is Kai Kernet is that I used to sing, and uh you know, IIT gave me a lot of vow.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my god, he's like so deadly, deadly like that, you know.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that was also very positive for me because I realized that earlier I was always known as CP Cub High.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: CP was our name, CP Narayan, C P Vishanath, C P Sri Ram.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And even in SIS college, where I did my 11th and 12th, I was always CP Cub High.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: So when I came to IIT, fortunately there was no legacy of my brothers in IIT.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I became suddenly CP, and you know, so interesting.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then of course, you asked about my Sajan abroad.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I it is again part of the flow.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Unlike today, where children are very, very knowledgeable, you know, where they what they have to do and everything.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: We really couldn't care much.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was, yes, during my IT days, very, very important education I had is that I used to, those those days there were very few recording studios in Bombay.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Everything was obviously you know analog, right?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to go to uh just to get inside the studio, I used to sing chorus in many film songs.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was very fascinated by the process of recording, by film music, you know, so many instruments and everything, you know.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I used to sing in the chorus with many people.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I used to make a little money, bunking all my iT lessons, by the way.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So uh uh I used to go to Mehaboop Studio, Sunny Super Sound, then there is another studio called Film Center.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you count, there were only four or five studios in Bombay that time.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I also have played Murnangam in you know that uh Ram Lakan song and everything.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I was never going there to become a musician.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: For me, the fascination was oh my god, I'm in this place where you know sound is being recorded, and and I used to read some magazines, I used to see these massive mixers and all that, and then when I go to Mahabhut studio, there are just four knobs.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine Lakshmikan Parallel used to make all that phenomenal music in just four tracks.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, today we have unlimited tracks.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you had to perforce get it right.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: If one mistake musician makes a mistake, the whole recording has to be stopped, and they will all really look at you with the ultimate coolness in their eyes, you know.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So when he says one, two, one, two, three, four, pa! You know, it's that it was like, oh my god, I better get this right.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that uh fascination with sound engineering and recording came there.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually chose a university which had a uh, I mean, I didn't go to California and study sound engineering.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Audio Institute of America had a program where it was like a satellite.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Clemson University had a satellite studio where if you work there and do and clear their exams and of course do their courses and all that, you get a degree.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I chose a university like that, you know, all manipulation, all fully, and then uh I got a scholarship for studying my uh mechanical engineering deal.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that and I was working in a radio station called WSBF Clemson there, where that is where I learnt a lot of recording.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: But at Clemson University, I learned probably one of the most important lessons of my life because all the tricks that I was doing in India, you know, they were helping me clear my courses.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I finished all my courses in six months or something, you know, much before needed.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you had to do a research project.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there all my tricks failed, you know.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a wonderful guide, a very young man, he was a gold, he was he was a Yugoslavian, Dr.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Misha Gruzic.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Grujicich.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he was a gold medalist from MIT and all that, and he was like this driven man.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when I saw the disappointment in his eyes, you know, with me as a research student in metallurgy, I I remember making a resolve to myself because that was so unnerving for me that he was disappointed in me.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And yet he couldn't do anything, he couldn't stop my scholarship because scholarship was given by the university and I had fulfilled all the university requirements.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: That day I made a resolve that at least for one year can I become a sincere engineering student.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in that process, working with him very intimately, you know, Sadhgati to him, he passed away last two years back.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I realized, he made me realize that there is as much ecstasy in Martin City transformation in alloy systems as it is there in uh Hindolam Ragam.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: This was a very major fixation I had in my head thanks to IIT adulation.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: That, oh you know, this guy is doing some music and all, he must be very great.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: So then, of course, I came back to India and I think I've rambled a little bit, but No, no, no, that's great.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh enough to pick up content which is very interesting actually.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um I want to ask you this whole thing about uh karate tales.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, it's a very interesting thing you've done for 25 years, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: So the mission of karate tales from what I see is learning language uh was a very big thing.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: You started it off as a you know, as a book, as an audio and things like that, and then it moved to something else.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: But uh but clearly uh very interesting to actually I heard the conversation uh you know with uh you know with uh Vishunath and everybody really talking about the fact that language learning in Daravi is where uh is where this thing came about.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you are the creative director because you are you are actually building the rhymes, and you know there are there is Gulzar there, there is Nazura Dinshah, there is Vidya Balan, a whole host of people really giving voice over to the various characters.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: So uh clearly Karedy Tales is almost like uh uh I would say uh out of the 15, 16 innovations uh of language learning in the world, karate tales is actually one of them.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: So uh what is it that uh what is it that uh you know you found what you what what are the things that you did to build it?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's a whole methodology that is there, which is you know, there is a story path, there is a music path, there is an action path.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: And there are multiple, you know, tracks that you do to do language learning.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: So uh did it come because you know uh you had this interdisciplinary learning that helped you do karate tales the way it is today, uh, because you know you just can't do publishing and not know music, and if you know music, you may not know publishing.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, how important is this interdisciplinary learning which was there for the success of karate tales?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and just to add to that, I'd like to say that I am one of the beneficiaries of karate tales.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I clearly remember the Ramayan version that you guys put out, and I think it was at Girish Karnat.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's had a lasting memory for me.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Young Hanuman.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I remember those, and I think another thing I would like to ask is what are the origins of karate tales to even begin with?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's a that's what I would ask, yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'll tell I'll take Vignesh's question first.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so when uh when I I came back to India in 1991 and I started my you know, quote unquote.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had this I'm a very filmy guy actually.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I may not look like that, but I'm very filmy.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I started my struggle, you know, sending my cassette of my voice samples to music directors and all that, and all that and all that.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, let me tell you a small piece of trivia, it's a little embarrassing trivia that in 1992 I actually sang for Salman Khan in a film called Chandramukhi.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Not this hit Chandra Muki, not Rajini Kanth or Mohandal Chandra Muki.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Big film, Sri Devi and Salman Khan.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that also happened by accident because I used to do something called dummy voice singing.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, you know, our great uh SP Balosar Bunam Sar used to sing for Salman Khan.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So because it was not digital recording, they had to record a dummy voice for the shooting and all that.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So many of SPB Sar's songs, including songs from Mandasapnapna and all that, I have sung the original, you know, for them to shoot, you know, and the thing.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think what happened with this Chandra Muki thing is that I think they forgot to dub two songs.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in his voice, because he used to come with a briefcase, come to Bombay for two days, you know, record some 30-40 songs and go off.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think they probably forgot, you know, as an oversight.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, in the cassette, then the name still comes with Balusar's name, but actually I have sung it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why am I telling it now?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling it now because when the film released, you know, the music director told me, very big music director at that time, talk.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he told me that Narayan, three months.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you see where you are.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And well, I was on clouds.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Don't worry about a name and all that.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: The film released, and even till date, it is the biggest flop of Salman Khan.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: It sank without a trace.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, I didn't go around saying I claiming credit for that.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I just left it as.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: So many of the things that happened, you know, I was doing, you know, the D that was a channel called DD Metro at that time.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know it is there, it's not there now.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Adur signature tune, you know, and all that.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I used to do all these things, ads and everything.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I used to also at the same time teach in Somaya Engineering College for my livelihood.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: I used to teach metallurgical engineering.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there are many people in IIT who tell me that, you know, hey, you know, you have wasted your metallurgical engineering degree.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell them, darling, you know, I have taught metallurgical engineering for six years in Bombay University.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I doubt whether anybody in IIT in my class has spent even, you know, uh one day with metallurgical engineering after they graduate.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: They all became investment bankers and all these kind of things.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, you know, dare you not you know tell me that.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the as I was doing all this, there was a time when all of us were in the US, my entire family, and then I was actually the first to come back.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, my parents were visiting and they were back here, they were based here.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was trying out all this.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: In uh uh 1995, my uh Vishanath and his wife Shobha, who's a writer, and who used to work with the you know visually impaired, she has a degree in special education and all that.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So she they came back to Pune.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: So she was uh teaching the visually impaired children in a blind school in Pune.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh she wanted, you know, Disney used to have these audiobooks, Rappenzelle, Ginger Breadman, and all that, you know.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So she wanted she felt that how can I use this for the children here?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is the contextual thing was not happening at all.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't know what fall is, they don't know what is poo, you know, Vinnie the Pooh and all that.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: So because I had some access to studio, she just sent me a script and she sent me one Disney cassette.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a Rappenzal that she sent it to me.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: What Disney used to do, they used to take the soundtrack from the film, then they used to edit it, and then they used to take stills from the film, make it into a book.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like a reverse, it was coming from the film and something.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I saw that and she said, just go to some studio that you have.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's how easily we are recording today, you know.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is so mind-blowing, really.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Those days, her main concern was how do I record the story?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not well, how do I just record it?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: So she told me, she sent me the script and she sent me that cassette also.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Then I told her, Hello, if you really want a child to sit and listen, you know, if I am going to tell the story, it's not going to work.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, half an hour if you have to make a child sit in one place.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that is when you know we uh approached in a very then Vishnuath felt that well, if you have to do a production out of this, you know, we have to invest some six, seven lakhs in 1995.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was certainly a significant amount.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it was at that time that you know uh we felt that uh can we start a company so that we can make the money out of selling it commercially, you know, through people like you, you know, who paid for who are currently dads, you know.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that was how it uh that was a genesis.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was not at all, I would be again being very dishonest if I say that you know we had thought about all this.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: But for when Nasirudinsha came, and but there was no Indian audiobook to fall back on.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And also because it was created as an audiobook, right, not from the film, it gave a lot of bandwidth into how we can you know space it out.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if you listen to the Blue Jacal, first audiobook that we did, Nasirudinsha starts by saying, he yawns, it was the full moon night.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: That is the pace in which he narrated the story.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because the child has to read along with the book.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course, you know, the way we knew we added background score, we had a added songs to it, and it was all in English.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one of the biggest influences I've had was you know in Shel Colni.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we used to have this Chakyarkut every December.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Chakyarkut is a you know, Vignesh is a very traditional storytelling tradition.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where one man, it was Chakyar Rajan, he's a very great man, he is no more, he used to live in Shell in Chembur only, not in Shell Koloni.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: One man used to play music, sing, narrate the story, do sound effects, do stand-up comedy also, because he will suddenly he will be talking about some nuance of the Bhagavatam, and then suddenly he'll find one guy in the audience and he'll pick on him, and he'll like be really like you know, behind him, and audience will be in splits, you know, because that guy is picking on that one guy, you know.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: All that was immersed.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it'll it'll go from you know a time era to current time, he will like just render time irrelevant in his narrative.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, and every year we used to hear at least 10 to 15 or 20 uh storytelling sessions of his.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: So all that was what was like, you know, at a subconscious level, I'm sure, was the you know, yardstick to create this.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when Shoba wrote a song and uh she said, you know, that all the animal, you know, with that blue jackal when he gets into the die, you know, all the animals think he's come from the heavens and all that.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a point where they all bow low to Chandarava, touch his feet, and said, and then she wrote something.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord O Master, we salute you.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: You and we have never seen anyone quite so blue and all that.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the only way we knew to make song, I'm I have I I know nothing about Western music or I have not even heard too much of Western pop at that time.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we sing in our own ragatri, oh Lord O Master, we salute you.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've never seen anyone quite so blue.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh King Umana Kobadesha Venein Vibhav to you Raja.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is how we sang that song.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And when people heard it for the first time, they were like, Oh my god, what have you done here?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you sing an English song.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to very instantly, yeah, this is how I sing English.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: We sing English.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when it actually reached the stores, you know, Swami, my God, you know.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I remember that we were not, we had no infrastructure, we had no business background, nothing.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: We made, I think, uh uh 12,500 copies of the book, two books and one audio cassette.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: One side was one story, blue jackal, the second side was the foolish lion.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Why we made 12,500 copies?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I have to sell it at 168 rupees, I have to work backwards.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: What is the quantity I have to print?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was printed on art paper.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I never knew that children's books is not printed on art paper in India at that time.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: We never knew that.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: But we said, all right, let us do this.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a karke, karke.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's a where you know sometimes when you don't have an experience, it can be your biggest asset, you know.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh after making all this nice packaging, uh I was going to my friends, like Rhythm House, Mr.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mahmoud Karmali, you know.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: He would have you know, iconic rhythm house.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there were very few stores, only physical stores, crossword.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they were all they had not seen something like this, you know.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But then they were very reluctant to keep it in the stores.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to the biggest uh book distributor in our country, India Bookhouse.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Mirchandanis were owning it at that time.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I met I remember Padmini Mirichandani in Nariman Point, and I gave her this, and at that time she said, you know, Narayan, these things don't work you know in our country, you know, it's not it's too eclectic and all that, and all that.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, please at least listen to it and then get back.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: So uh she actually called me after one week and said, My God, it is mind-blowing.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it is so amazing.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, you know, songs and look at her packaging, look at her printing, you know, and there are such colorful illustrations in the book and all that, all that, all that.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: She says, Narayang, it's great.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: We may even be able to sell 500 copies in the first year.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I had in my go-down in Jalkolni 12,500 copies left.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I told Vishnuad, I think we have committed absolute haragiri.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that is when we decided that okay, the only way out is to ourselves do it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because those days, or even today, actually, book distribution doesn't exist in our country.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It is more of book wholesaling.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, people come and pick up the books.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we for the first time, you know, I we used to go, I had one salesperson in Bombay.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: We used to go put up a stand, you know, put up our posters.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: There was no obviously, you know, there was no social media or anything there.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Used to hang our product.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I even now very distinctly remember in my landline in my shell colony house.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: We were still in the I still was staying in the shell colony house.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I get a call from Mahmoud Karmali.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Naran, uh send me ten more of that.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was Diwali Day in 1996.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: He said, send me 10 more.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: This was the person who told me that he will he will that this is not going to work.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was hanging on his things, and I told him, please go.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it sells, please give me the money.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, don't worry, please, please, please.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: But display is important, it should be seen.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: So he told me that uh he was able to sell.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had given him 10 pieces.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: So he said 10, and then he ordered 50.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had no, there was no company at that time.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: But that it was all done.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: I had some some music proprietorship concern I had called Sky Music International or something.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we were doing it under that.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then we found that uh you know we actually sold 12,500 copies in six months.
• 33:29
  unknown: My God.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe this?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is all Devigam only.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to even uh attempt to take credit for this and the ownership that the audience took here, we have not spent one rupee on advertising on marketing because we didn't have it, not because we had any funda about it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: We just put in the store, there was no company.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Vishunath uh he was working in Thermax at that time.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I remember he was still working in Thermax International when we were doing all this, you know.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So then after uh one year they started asking for more.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, we had not, we didn't have a business plan or anything.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: So then, okay, now we have to make more.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we again went to Nasirudanchai, again narrated two stories, and then it was not an inexpensive affair, okay.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because we were because again, because of our lack of understanding of publishing, if you notice every publisher only takes the publishing rights.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is the model all over the world, whether it be Harper, Penguin, or the copyright is always with the author.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because their model is that they will pay some advance against royalty, some thousand, two thousand rupees to the author, and then they will print 200, 300 copies of the book, put it out, and like this, they will have some five, ten thousand titles.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the model, and it was a brilliantly working model.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Here I am going on one banana in the market, you know, saying that you know, is kokarido, iskokarido.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we decided that whenever we will do this, uh we will not we obviously cannot make five thousand and ten thousand titles.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let us invest in it such that it is actually all the copyrights in all the technical stuff belong to us.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was no royalty or anything like that, because it was outright payment.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And all of the narrators, I remember, used to tell me, yeah, I want our company to survive.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Please don't pay us so much.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to feel that I am getting a favor from them again because there was no precedent to this.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that is how the cardit tales, the audiobook uh thing started, and then we had Saiy Jaffri, then we had uh as Vignesh pointed out, you know, Giresh Karnad, uh, we had uh Usha Utup, and then then we all left our response.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was still working teaching in Soma Engineering College till 1996.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was teaching.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: So then we said this this is a this seems like something very powerful idea, you know, and people are taking ownership.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: I remember at some point in time, not then, that there was a massive crash in the stock market.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you know, and interestingly, the recording studio I used to work was a place called Sound Company with a very great iconic uh he's a he's my guru in sound called Prakashati.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it used to be just three two buildings in Bombay Mutual Chambers just next to the stock exchange.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, that is a trivia.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: But one day what happened was that when the stock market crashed, the headlines in Times of India was karate tales, colon, bears huff and puff at the stock market.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: It had nothing to do with karate tales, it had become synonymous with a bear, you know, and uh I immediately called up Vishnu.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, this we should take the times, guys, to court, what nonsense, because it was a very negative report, you see.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then he told me, Hare, you you have any sense or something?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is the biggest, and it was the front page of India.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: What more branding do you need?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I would submit, like to submit here.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Then we had a lot of legalities, you know.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we entered into a license deal with Times of India because they also there are a lot of Me Toos also in the market, you know, but unfortunately, they didn't focus on the product.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Then we ourselves felt that when there is no second product, we are the ones who are going to suffer.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because the customer will see, why should I buy his credit deals only?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if the category grows, then there is hope for us, you know.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: So literally, so literally you opened up a category called audiobooks in India.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you know, again, the concept of storytelling always existed for more than you know 10,000 years it has been there.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: We have documented 3,000 years of storytelling tradition.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I would I would never even say that you know we started the category, it is always existent.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we we brought it out in a in a in a format which was probably the timing and probably also the uh you know the way the audience took.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: I can never ever uh you know it boggles my mind to even try to see how the hell are we still around after 26 years.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because believe me, it is not a uh profitable business.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is not designed to be that way, you know, because it is a very you have to work very hard to sell even you know thousand copies, two thousand copies.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is not something that you can just, you know, at a big bechnapratosko.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: So then of course a lot of great things happened, you know.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: We started publishing audiobooks for adults, Wings of Fire, you know.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hidalam, you know, I remember that uh Abdul Kalam had written that book before he became president.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have heard of Wings of Fire, no?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: So Abdul Kalam had written that book, and there was a company called uh I think Universities Press, which had published that book.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um audiobooks, by the way, are very big in the West.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you go to Frankfurt Book Fair and all that, I mean they have an entire you know podium which is only for audiobooks, you know.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: But their idea of audiobooks is actually the the written word is replaced by the spoken word.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: In our case, and and they all have to be very neutral, and they should not make be like uh even a slightly dramatized version.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is for convenience if you listen to it in a car or you listen to it in a uh, you know, that was the purpose.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: So BBC, which used to publish a lot of audiobooks, had approached universities press.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I even remember the gentleman, great man called Madur Eddie.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was the running university.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to take the rights of Wings of Fire.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: So Maduro Reddit went and told Abdul Kalam.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, he had just become the president, you know, saying that uh, you know.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, like in all cases, the rights was with the with the author, university's press had publishing rights.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he said BBC wants the audiobook rights of this and all that.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should give it to them because it will be very good.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then Abdul Kam tells, you know, in his own accent, you know, there is one company in India which makes audiobooks called Kuradi Tales.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: They went, I have heard it with some children.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Can you ask them if they're interested?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: My god, is it?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe this for me?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: It came to us like a haluwa on a platter.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Can you ask them if they're interested?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, believe me, when I read the book, I was quite taken aback because it was it was extraordinarily ordinary.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: The language, almost to the point of why is he not saying anything in the book?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very to the point, it had that quality, and in this, we did we interspersed it with another genre of you know taking scriptures from all cultures in India and making them into small, small songs, and uh that book, you know, in the publishing industry, let me share with you a secret that uh generally, if you sell around uh 3,000 copies, generally, in those days, it was considered a bestseller.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: We sold six and a half lakh copies of this wings of fire.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Six and a half lakh lakh.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: From the period, those days we used to reproduce the CDs, you know, we had to do it was CD.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: By that time it had CDs already come.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Wings of Fire we also published his book in cassette.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I remember our CDs were manufactured in a plant in Vikrowli in that Godharich compound.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sony had a replication plant there.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: So according to Sony's own statistics, you know, the largest manufactured CD, audio CD, audio, from 2003 to 2008, across all categories of films, all everything was actually wings of fire.
• 42:36
  unknown: Okay.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again for wings of fire, we have not put a single ad, nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: It it the ownership came, you know, pharmaceutical companies, uh, so many.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: I never even knew there is something called corporate sales.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I didn't know.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly I got a call from uh German remedies, I remember, first, and they said we would like to buy 3,000 copies of a book, and we would like to put a logo somewhere, you know, somewhere.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: I never knew this these kind of things existed.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, how can I say that I'd planned it?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, so the question that I want to ask you, Narayan, is the importance of storytelling.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh uh it's it's an art, right?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: To do the storytelling.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, what do you think uh is the tips or tricks or you know the fundamentals of storytelling?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Because what you keep on telling me in this conversation is people started owning it.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we didn't try to push it in uh into their throat, right?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, there must be a certain art of storytelling that must have caught people's imagination, and therefore, if I were if you were to look back and say the fundamentals of storytelling, what are the things that should be there which you know, people then start owning the story?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I can only say in hindsight.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I can do an analysis in hindsight.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: Which is okay.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is basically I felt that you know um coming back to that whole knowledge crucible idea, you know, I have always maintained this that uh we have um in the last 200-300 years, we have always extricated different gunas or attributes, and then we have looked at it looked at them as parts.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Parts are very important.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: The parts only make up the whole, correct?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it is the whole that also makes the parts relevant.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: So when we when we look at the something like, for example, uh uh a storytelling that we do here, everything is there in that literature, imagery, because the child is also looking at the books.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: And believe me, they are still images, they are not moving images.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can talk at length at how powerful are still images vis-a-vis a moving image.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, still images are really still images, they really impregnate you.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um then getting a good voice actor, and as we call Nata, you know, in Nata Samaratam, we it is there, you know, you the person who tells the story is very important.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is not necessarily important to have multiple voices and all that, but that storyteller.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a Sutradhar.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Karadi is only a storyteller, he is not part of the story, and he's actually telling the story to a monkey, a little monkey called Mira.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so the so somewhere I think when the stories were written, you know, primarily by Shoba, she developed two alter egos, you know, the alter ego of the grandfather for the child and the alter ego of the child.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Mira was a child, and karedi was like the grandfather.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of socioeconomic situations also existed at that time because the grandparent was becoming slightly rare in homes in India.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: See, when we grew up and all their grandparents were there in the house.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we really didn't need karate tales, right?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were telling us all the story.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that somewhere it was like uh time pe aya.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yes, when you talk about storytelling, again in hindsight, if I were to analyze, uh music is very, very important.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in fact, I'm given to believe that you know the sense of hearing is the first sense to develop in the womb.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: And also when you know the prana leaves us, there are still senses that are working.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm just telling you second-hand information, and but the sense of hearing is the last to go, you know, and you know about Ashtavakra and all these, you know, who have imbued everything by hearing, you know.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the art of listening uh with the music and not separating it from the uh stories, somewhere by that time the film music also had come, wherein the songs became again a part, independent part of the story.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think when you tell a story as a whole, you know, uh everything will actually fall in place.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we don't even need music, you know.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, if you ask a child to tell a story, if you listen to him, he will always tell the story that with sound effects and with like you know, music, if he's he has that, he will never just read out a book.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I am not a very big fan of only reading.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that is again extricating one aspect, one guna of storytelling and presenting it in isolation.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Storytelling, even in physics and you know, even in all the modern sciences, you know.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Have you heard the story, Vignesh, about uh Einstein when he got a Nobel Prize in photoelectric effect?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Shall I share it with you?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: Please, please, please.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a true story.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: Einstein got Nobel Prize uh not for uh relativity.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: He got it for something called the photoelectric effect, where he was explaining how light light behaves like particles and not wave.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier it was wave particles, you know, to explain reflection, refraction.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're like particles of energy, for photons.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, and you know, he got you know H mu is equal to lambda and all that stuff happen.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then you know he was a Jew.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he had when he went to Coronel Warner and all that, he was like really, you know, attacked.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one hand you were saying light is a wave.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now you are saying it is a particle.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Make up your mind, you know what it is, you know, all that.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: So he was facing all these barrage of allegations that this guy is a fraud and all that, especially in the US.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: So in one such interaction, when he was again facing this barrage, because you cannot answer this question, he went into the green room, came out, started playing violin.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the audience was not comforted.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: They in fact got even more agitated.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: This guy is adding salt to injury now.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then Einstein said something for which I think he should have actually got the Nobel Prize.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: He said that the nature of light, to explain the nature of light using the medium of language alone is like measuring the thickness of a blade of grass with a foot ruler.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to have an instrument that has got a least count small enough to measure those nuances.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: And language is phenomenal, but in the least countries to get that attain that least count, you have to go beyond language, and I think that is where visual imagery and oral imagery become very, very critical.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: And somewhere, you know, and we all know this, it's not some rocket science.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere in our storytelling traditions, have you ever heard uh anybody?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I always tell this to people that look, it is not my fundra, it is Sri Krishna telling this in the Bhagavad Gita, he actually says that's what it's called Gita.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: It is not called a book, it is supposed to be sung and told, it is not necessarily meant to be read.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: So storytelling tradition arrives there here.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: So in Kardi tales, when you when you put everything together, of course, within because now it is not one-on-one, it is like you are addressing you know a very huge spectrum of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and if you have to address them, you would try to arrive at some kind of a mean, you know, neutral accent.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if you notice all our, even if you notice Girish Karnad, uh one of the parameters we had is a neutral Indian accent.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be correct.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: So then we had all these uh uh I think primarily in in karate tales, in storytelling, there is much more.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: In karate tales, there is visual imagery, oral, what you consume, that both back up the narration of the story.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it is no really no rocket science.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: It you just have to make sure that and the the songs cannot be separate from the story.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if we listen to a story like the foolish crow, even when the crow is looking for food, the crow is singing.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: She looked left and right and up and down too, hoping she would find some rice, a fruit or two.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Lucky was she for some roti she saw being made by a granny on a sunny veranda.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, roti is my favorite.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost lunchtime.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: I swoop down and get it and eat it with some lime.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is a song.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's no Janam Sanam Janiman.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, in fact, I think I think that was my fondest memory of karate tales because I think it was a whole body experience.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: So if you look at reading today, people either use only their eyes to read or they use only their ears to listen.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: But I remember as I think a six or seven year old when I was listening to karate tales, I would be on the floor, I would be reading the book, the cassette would be playing, I would be listening to it reading along, and there was nothing to distract me.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: So there's almost a whole body focus sort of an experience that is also happening, which made it very interesting because I wouldn't get distracted to do anything else at that time.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was completely yeah, because that's the power of storytelling itself.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, the reason why we're spending time on this, Narayan, is that today you do storytelling with your presentation.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: You do storytelling with uh, you know, in in meetings, you have to do storytelling to motivate your employees.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: You have to do storytelling about your product.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_03: Now imagine the fundamentals of storytelling actually are these.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how do you build a whole body experience?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: And while you may say it is basic, but the truth is, how do you embed uh the music with the visual imagery, with uh how you express it, how do you really bring it together?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: To me, that is the art of storytelling, which many times get missed, right?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Correct, correct, correct.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: See, even when we made the animation episodes much later and Disney, it was a matter of great pride that you know uh Disney wanted to take these and make you know moving images.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: It also coincided with the time when the physical books and you know were were were facing a challenge.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: This was around in 2008.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember at that time uh when Disney was wanting to take these, uh, at the same time, if I have to if I have to make uh any visualization of curry tales for uh television or something, you wouldn't need phenomenal budgets.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that uh we did was, which obviously we didn't have and Disney was not giving it us also, that we said, okay, if if I have hundred rupees for that, we will spend 80 rupees on the soundtrack, 20 rupees on the visual.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: The logic is today, whatever you see, you're actually listening to it.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: That is why, you know, the uh this is a this is this is if you want, it is a little bit of a if I can even stake claims of something because I was very audacious about this.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because my visual artists and everybody, it is not anything personal with visual, you know.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just saying that you know the whole universe supposedly started with some bang, right?
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it is the the oral sensibility is far more primordial than whereas you know if you go to school and all today, the first thing they ask identify color, identify shape, identify something, you know, animal and all that.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is all skewed towards the visual.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think it has happened very recently, 100-200 years.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have not paid attention, we have not paid attention to smell here, you know.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Haldi Abna Hinka ky smell hai, if you tell you know, that is not part of our uh growth.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: That is why, as Vignai said earlier, it was a complete thing, sensorial thing.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, I this is my answer to all the visual artists.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: What do you the eye is only an instrument there?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: The visual happens inside the head.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: There the brain does not know is this audio or visual or something like that.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: I said, So don't transfer your inadequacies here because yes, if I want to make a phenomenal experience, like a jungle book, like Disney's jungle book, fantastic.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: Spend budgets lavishly on visual, very important.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not taking it up, but if I have 100 rupees only to make it, then the uh you know 10 rupees spent on the soundtrack is equivalent to you know 10 times the amount that you have to spend it to create the same visual effect.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when we did this, in I remember the second season that we offered to Disney, uh it was on actually very limited animation.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: We hardly spent 50,000 rupees within the animation of a half an hour story.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: The soundtrack was on 6-7 lakhs.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: This from the Villyu Ridmi series that came much later, Little Vinayak, uh Boy Who Drew Cats, you know, where we had more of the contemporary narrators like Vidya Balan and Javed Jaffri and all these guys.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had Rahul Rabid also narrating stories, Bhamani Rani.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there I remember when I presented this to the Disney for the second season, uh I thought you know.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: So all these experts, visual experts who are sitting and watching it, and at the end of it, none of the changes that they asked me to do was in the visual.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because they actually thought that was animation.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because the dots are joined inside the head, they are not joined by the images.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that is very fundamental that uh when you asked me about the power of storytelling, you're so right.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think from our uh infant to our last moment we're only telling stories.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's a brilliant, it's a brilliant example of you know it gets connected in the brain.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and your storytelling has to have components of each of these, is really what you're talking about.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh which brings me which brings me to the animation movie that you did, right?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, you know, uh it's uh it's an amazing thing where you became a film producer, you went out and started doing this movie, which really got uh a lot of attention.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: So talk to me about working.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: See, one of the things that I find is when you work with uh you know people, uh you're working with a visual artist, you're working with a uh you know uh narrator who's you know who's giving you the voiceover, there are multiple challenges because the quality of those visuals in the uh in the movie when I saw was absolutely worth class.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, stunning colors.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so you had the visual image, you had the music, you had the story, but the important point is you have to bring all of them together to build a successful animation movie, right?
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, it's almost like that's the way you work in at work, also it's like that.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you have some great guys, but if they don't work together, you don't build a great product, right?
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, how did you get all these people to bring them together, give them a common sense of purpose?
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you are talking about a Nazuruddin Shah, you are talking about a Girish Karnad, you are talking about a Vidya Balan, and all of them have their own viewpoints about creativity, right?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, which means that how do you really build that?
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: And how did you how did you go about doing that project?
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: See, to be very honest, in you know, um uh earlier also I had worked on another film as hired labor, as a music director, in a film called Jajantaram Amantaram.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've heard of it, it was very long back, 2000.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very successful film, financially, very big success.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that year it was the third largest grossing film, even about Chalte Chalti and everything.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, what happens in our country, uh big again, it's not a dig, it's not a complaint at all, is that when you do create content for children, even though business-wise, actually it can be the most commercially viable, somehow there's no perception about.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have to come and tell Swami like this, you know what, we sold six and a half like you know what I have to keep telling this, I've been doing this, and not with a sense of any kind of uh uh any any kind of denial or any kind of deprivation.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying it because it is my duty to tell it.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when when we have been blessed with so many things, I should also tell that you know it is it it is a very viable thing to do, but that unfortunately has not happened.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was we were not the producers of Jijantramantram.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's a very great guy called Sri Palmarakya, you know, you must be knowing iDreams, and you know, he was he was an amazing producer because he couldn't care two hoots about returns.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was an investment banker, you know, SS Kantila Lishural and or SSKI, and you know that share can.com.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: He just loved kids, and he just said, Okay, this guy can have done a lot of music for children, get him.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was he was like that, and he spent a lot of money on marketing because he was just not interested in the returns, you know, and it was anyway.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: The returns in the budget was pittance, you know, compared.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know how that phase was, you know, 1998 to you know, it was a very robust phase in the financial world.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: So even in Gopi Gavya Bhagavad Jaya, I was hired as a music director by Children's Film Society of India.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, it is produced by Children's Hill Society of India, and they got uh you know, Shilpa Ranadi was earlier illustrated a lot of credit books.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: She had already illustrated books like that, and she was she's a she is according to me one of the greatest visual artists in the world today.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll be very honest, you know, because there are no two ways for me about it.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean she's not famous or anything, that's because unfortunately she's still in IIT as a professor, and but she was uh uh she again focused the whole budget of the film was four and a half crores, or even less actually.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: An animation feature film, the budgets are normally minimum budgets are over hundred crores.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: So Unka Log and they had also done Shilpa had done the character design for the carry detail's animation episodes also.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we fell back to the same thing that you know she asked me to you know take care of the sound and the music and the whole soundscape of the film.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at that film, it is the character design that is the Pradhanya, not necessarily the animation.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: Animation is great, but the animation is only stitching it together, you know.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: Animation per se is not the dominant uh attribute because come on here.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, ekto hai, we just don't have the wherewithal for that.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: So CFSI made this film and I used to watch.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: And can you imagine, Swami, look at how I was the chosen one for this.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: I used to use Gopiga and Bhagabine when I used to take some classes, the original Satyajidra film, as a textbook for background score in films.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, is it?
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is an iconic film, it's a black and white film, you know, and it is it is still there on YouTube.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, those who are listening to this should surely go and watch it.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is an outstanding piece of work.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, it is also Satyajitare's commercially most successful film, is Gopi Gain Bhagavan.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the story was written by his father, Upendar Ruha Chodri.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Satijidare made this film.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke with Sandeepre, his son, before the film was released.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Sandeepre told me in the interview that uh it was he, you know, he was eight or nine years old, and he used to tell his father, you know, your films and all I cannot see.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: He had made Pathir Panchali and all these things, you know, and he says, Your films and all I cannot watch.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: So Satyajitra says, Oh my god, my own son is you know things so low of me.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what if one Oscar was Kalarnakha?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that is when he decided to make Gopi Gan Bhagavan for his son.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was revealed to me by uh Sandi Bray.
• 1:04:30
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: In indirectly, he was selling boss gopi gangbag man is because of me.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: He was selling.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: He is of course a very senior filmmaker now.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when CFSA asked, and it is a story that is full of music.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Gopi Gain, Gopi Gavaya, Bhagabhaja.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you ask any Bengali or for that matter, any avid filmmaker film watcher in India, it is one of the cult films.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I have grown up watching the film.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: The songs, there are eight songs in the film, not one romantic song.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: That is another pet peeve of mine.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: That in spite of being a music director for more than 30 years, I did have made romantic songs, but they never found her found the light of the day.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my songs are about crows uh hunting for food and you know some uh lizard losing its tail and some Pur Vajan Mam, something is there that is catching up with me now.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: So when uh this film came to me, the biggest of music editors, contemporary, some of them were Bengali also, you know, they were like outraged.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: How can Narayan get to do this film?
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you are, I remember one very big music editor calling me, you know, and saying that, you know, Narayan is like, you know, I really wanted to do this film, yeah.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I really so badly want to do this film.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, Gabas, chun chun kemilta sabad me ko.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that is how I got this film.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very, very the film happened very beautifully.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: Everything fell into place.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: The singers, the musicians, the visual artists, Elam, everything just fell into place.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when I saw the film on the big screen, it was like one of the most amazing things that I've experienced.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was lying in the attic of CFSI.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because CFSA does not have a mandate to release films.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: They only have a mandate to make the films.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's very stressed.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, is it?
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they don't have a mandate.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: They will release it somewhere, they'll show it on Durdarshan or something.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, I mean, Durdarshan is great, but you know, I have seen the best films on Shankar Varnam and all I've seen on Durdarshan only.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: So they will do that.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: But again, to create the perception.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I went from one studio to the other.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: We bought the rights of the film, marketing rights of the film, current details.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: So though I was involved in every frame of the film, uh, you know, at the time when we were involved in the film, we were not technically the producers.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: So even the sound design, for me, it was a new thing because an animation film, how do you do fully sound?
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: How do you add sound effects and all that?
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, they couldn't afford a full-time sound designer.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had to don that role also, perforce.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: And again, CFS still has that notion.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: The film is three and a half crores, their budget for the music will be ten lakhs.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: See, you cannot break that thing, you know.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it is the children's filming.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, yeah, and take some keyboard and do something, and you know, honicker.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was telling them it's the other way around.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: For an adult, I can get away with any nonsense.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: For a child, he will be brutally honest, he will just catch you.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: Just dish out some.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that is how it happened.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to a lot of studios, I went to Disney's the world, I went everywhere, and the film had by that time gone to a lot of festivals and was getting so much of the appreciation of the film was so unanimous.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Unanimous it was.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was no there are no two opinions about it.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: New York Film Academy, everybody, Miyazaki, one of the top most iconic filmmakers of today, said that this is among the top five animation films he has seen in his lifetime.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe this?
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the film is lying somewhere, it is not coming out.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I am going to studios because see the fact of the matter is no animation film in India, feature film, has even made a semblance of a break-even.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: Forget a prophet.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: So why will somebody come forward?
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so I remember showing it to the big guns also.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: Somehow I went because the thought of me actually produced becoming a co-producer was didn't even cross my mind.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was going around Nare Pari the Pari, you know, see this, see this, see this, see this.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one day I went to a very close friend of mine.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: He was from IIT.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the dot-com boom.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: Some 500 crores or something he had got.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I met him accidentally, you know, in uh in I remember in some in Lower Parel somewhere, in his office.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and then he said, Come, come, come, CP, you know, come to my office and all that.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Boss, you're a he's an iconic man.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then he asked me what he's doing, and then my agenda at that time was only GGB.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he has a son.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: Then he said, Naran kyaya to batchonka picture.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: You are making children's films.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, No, you know, just watch the film.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I sent him a link of the film.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he had just returned the previous day after watching Incredibles with the son.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, Yeah, watch it with your son.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you see.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then I remember I came back from there to Kanjurumark station and I'm coming back home.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then as I'm coming back home, he's calling me, same deja vu of the Padmini Virchandan.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Naran, what is this here?
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: My son is glued to it.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: He has not asked me to buy the incredible CD, you know, Daddy, just get the CD for me somehow.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Watching it again and again and again and again.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Then I thought my life job is done.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest investor said.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then of course, we are trained, you know, as companies to look at precedents, to look at, you know.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So he was shocked when he saw.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Because you have to put at least four and a half to five crores to release the film.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no animation film in India that is made, you know, anywhere close to that on box office.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is also a reality.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So he started, okay, let us start forming IATK, alumini, this, that.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I just said that that is not the way I want to go here.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then one light bulb moment happened.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I said, why am I not why am I going around to people?
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So Appa and Amai had a house in Chambur.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: By that time they had just passed away.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it came up, and you know, it was Appa had put it in my name and all that and everything.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And none of my brothers, nobody was really interested.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So after we settled that, I actually sold that house to raise, uh, to put in money to release the film.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had only not out of any martyrdom.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_01: I had only one thing.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: This film has to see the light of the day.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And believe me, Swami, that has been such a big thing for me.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Long way from recovering, okay?
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Still long way from recovery.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if somebody were to ask me to do it again, I said I'll do it again.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing that saddens me is that this film should have got a bigger producer.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but I did work for two to three years to find a bigger producer, but it was just not there.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But and I also know another thing about this film is that even today, you know, Z Fi is showing it, and they are all paying the money and taking the rights of the film.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's no revenue share and all that.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's there on Z5, it is there on I and 10, Epic Channel, and everything, all non-exclusive rights.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I get a very, very, very current kind of a feedback, you know, saying that it is very intimate, it is very personal.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: They are all really forming a bond with the film.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know who has produced it and who is the actor.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: There are no famous voices in it or anything.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: But press response, my God, press reviews are so amazing for that film.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the only film that has got four stars or something that yeah.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I said I have to release it in at least hundred theaters in India.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is the largest release for an independent animation film in India.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is that yeah?
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I spent, I'm using the word I, you know, deliberately, more than 2.75 crores in just marketing it.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is a pittance, nothing you can burn 2.2, you know.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that was all you had.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I spent that and uh I had put holdings.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had put 45 holdings in Bombay on Western Express.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just my brothers and all thought this guy has lost it.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've got Guzal Sub to, you know, do I use all my contacts to you know launch the trailer of the film, put half-page ads, and even today I am very proud to say there are there is no other logo in the film other than CFSI and current details.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I had that good sense at that time that the recovery of this film is not going to happen because whenever you put a logo, let us say any big company, you have to hypothecate the rights in lieu of the marketing support.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I said this film is a lumbiries ka goda.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I may probably recover after ten years.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I had that good sense somewhere, and it came and we released the film.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: The first show, six percent opening it got after spending all this money, six percent.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_01: That means if there are 100 seats in the theater, there are six people watching the film.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thursday, Amanora Mall in Pune.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Nowadays in Bookmash, by default, you have to go through Bookmash.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can get all the screens, all public domain.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Houseful show.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_03: What is that?
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Houseful.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Our city in Pauai had only one show, 11 o'clock.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_01: They started 11 o'clock and 6 p.m.
• 1:14:42
  unknown: show.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is all happening in the Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday belt.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, word of mouth spirit.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, Swami, I have to tell this and put this on record that the Indian film distribution business, theatrical, is designed to be a losing proposition for the small producer.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the film has had 45 household shows till date.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, not because of that two and a half crore marketing, sadly, because of the word of mouth.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: But to sustain every show, because the agreements are so ridiculous.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I there is no concept of negotiating an agreement with Inox or all the big players, right?
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to sign it.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who's this guy?
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So because I want my film to get released on Friday.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have to make sure the shows actually happen.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: My digital you know, DCPs, you know, they call it digital cinema package.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: The hard disk has to reach all these shows theaters, and it was a it was a phenomenal experience for me that I am actually doing all this first hand.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I am finding that after the first week, household shows are increasing in Bangalore, in Hyderabad, in Delhi.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: But out of every houseful show where the collection is close to around 22,000, the net returns that I was getting after paying all the charges, and they have hajar charges, KDM charge, in the charge, email and party.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: To send an email, they have a charge.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to send a key by email, you know.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they charge 1000 rupees for that.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Every theater charges this.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting a return of some 1200 rupees or 1500 rupees for every household show.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_01: How can this be sustained?
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember a theater in Chennai removing the film because they were asking me to pay a virtual print fee, even though I had already paid them.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_01: They were asking me to pay a virtual print fee because apparently that is also there in the contract that if the film does not get a certain amount of collection in the first week, even though all the risk I have taken, right, it does not get a certain collection in the first week, second week, third.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So today, if a shooling is released, let me sum it up, it will not work because it has to work in the first three days.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Shole also became a success after second or third week.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: But for me it was a cathartic experience because the film actually got released, and uh it was not seen by animation community or anything like that, it was seen by um.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have a video of public responses that me and my salespeople used to actually go to the theaters and record on our mobile phones.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were there was sheer ecstasy after watching the film.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the children, and of course, it continues.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, it is like when somebody calls me a film producer, I kind of squirm because I don't think I'll ever make another film again, because that is not what my intent was.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: My intent was just to make this see the light of the day.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_01: But who knows?
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, one thing, Narayan, is that you seem to have mastered the art of storytelling, right?
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Because be it this movie, be it karate tales, uh, be it uh you know uh the various uh skills that uh you know you've built to tell the story, uh you seem to have done that.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_03: So when you look back when when we really talk about for me, this episode is becoming more and more about storytelling, right?
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, which is very important.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think uh uh you know if I was doing analytics, I think I still have to do storytelling.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_03: So therefore uh data is there, but I just present data in a boring format, it does not work.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I think for me, you know, if if you were to look at it and then say the animation, the color, the music, the uh, you know, the way the narration is done, I think this seems to be the real essence of storytelling.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_03: And how you bring it together means that you need to have a sense of all of this when you start doing something, right?
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_03: And therefore, do these skills need to be uh you know groomed?
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_03: You you need to have it in your blood as you as you really move forward.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_03: I think this is very important, is what I feel.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Vignesh, oh yes, yes, yeah.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Vignesh?
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I think the analytics point that you made is very interesting because it tells you the it tells you how to actually look at the same point in two different ways.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_02: One is you need some you need some storytelling or story creation skills to understand what the data is telling you.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And you also need some storytelling skills to present it to other people so they understand the context.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's number one.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And number two is uh even the way that we sort of understand how traditional storytelling is being used, we are using, I think, what is only on the surface of its true potential.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're trying to jazz up presentations, we're trying to jazz up uh you know public speeches, etc.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_02: But I I think at the heart of it, stories are the power to actually create uh a cult like moving, if I can say so.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, if we were to take uh a very interesting example that I always like to refer to is uh the story of Newton and the Apple, right?
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_02: So if you really know the story of Newton and the Apple, right?
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Newton didn't discover gravity because an apple fell on his head.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_02: That story was actually created by Russo to actually tell people that gravity as a force existed always.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know this.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, but if you go into the theoretical explanations of gravity, the common mind would not understand.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_02: So when Russo actually went and uh discovered or read about this, this is how he communicated to people.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a another way to actually create stories.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And which gets me to the J.R.D.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Tata uh currently tale episode.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because when we look at entrepreneurship and founding companies today, right, we always look to the Steve Jobs' and the Bill Gates of the world.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And let me be honest, that there is a cult-like movement around these individuals, and and in my opinion, quite well deserved because it's amazing, it's an amazing accomplishment to actually build these sort of institutions.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_02: But who are our local heroes is my question.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, before you admire Ronaldo, you always admired the guy who played great football in your building.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_02: You're too young to even Google Ronaldo, you don't even know how to spell his name.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_02: But you knew a guy in your building who played very well, right?
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but so I'm I'm sort of really under trying to understand what is the next wave of this to come so that our own stories are sort of protected and also promulgated across uh across the board.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I do not know.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is no question because I mean of what you say, because what you said you hit the nail on the head.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I would like to you know go a little back to what Swami Nathan Sir was asking us about how do you groom this.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I have this theory, you know, I have gone to the best educational institute in the world.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_01: IIT and you know Clemson University and Audio Institute of America.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Then I came back and then I taught in Swami Engineering College, which also is a very good college.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Then I later on I taught in IIT And it took me, you know, almost it is only it took me many years to realize that all the education that I have has actually come from non-institutions.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason why I'm saying this because today for me I'm almost like an activist of this.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because all our efforts, budgets, finances, what the government does, everything is going to the institutions.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it is not true only for me.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Many of my alumni colleagues they don't like me at all when I say this.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I ask them a simple question.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: The most excruciating examination, entrance examination in the world is actually IIT G.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So IIT picks up students, not necessarily the best students, students who have this aptitude for logic, math, and science.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_01: You pick up these students, you take the ultimate filtration process, whatever you have, and you pick up the students.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_01: They spend four years in IIT.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Then they go out, and I did a study on this, and on average in the last 25 years, 92% of those graduating.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm using IIT as an example because it is considered as a premium incident.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying it's true for everybody.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_01: 92% of students who graduate from IIT work in areas where they have had no education in IIT.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Please try to understand this.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: This even the beneficiaries of the non-institutionalized education, like Nadella and all these guys, they will not say it aloud.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I do not know why.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is very typical of I would like to say India.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have not seen other parts, but when I went to the US, I find out how come these numbers are exactly the opposite, Swami.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard of a guy, maybe a rarity, somebody who does mechanical engineering, metallurgical engineering, DS or MS in that, he'll be working in that industry.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Correct?
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it, and this is all happening on the taxpayers' money?
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: 7.5 lakhs per student per year.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_01: 33% of the higher education budget in our country, is the data two years back, goes to the IITs, which cater to 1.2% of the students.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And out of this 1.2%, 92% don't work in the area where they have education.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a joke, the educational institutions in our country, with due respect to the teachers.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Teachers play with, I'm talking about the idea of an institution.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_01: How many of the students of let us say somebody like a Balamani Mami in Bombay?
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_01: 80 to 90 percent of our students are actually making money out of their music, living out of the I'm not saying money, living out of music.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_01: You take our in fact, all this is actually now the churning has already happened now.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_01: We are we are seeing it all all around us today, you know, in India, is that people are realizing more and more that I am but say accept karna.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I am an IIT alumni, you know, I can walk through my entire life wearing my IIT t-shirt and my badge.
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Even today you will find a lot of the CEOs and all, you know, they'll come, they'll bring them to the IIT hostel.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is the last crazy, you know.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Then the wives are not particularly fascinated because they know whom they're married to.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I was quoting a very interesting statistic recently that the number of IIT Bachalog who even aspire to go to the IITs is very minimal today.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because they think if the highest education institution is resulting in you know, so the we have given over, maybe because is of a lot of you know uh things that have happened in the history that we want to go to an institution.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Shankar Mahadjan's mother, Shankar Madhyan was my benchmate in school.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_01: He used to always come home, you know, he used to get because I was his first ranker and he was his 35th ranker, but we were the best of friends, and he was like singing like amazing that time also.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_01: He was a student of Balamani, by the way.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh his mother will still tell me, until 10 years back, because I was her role model for her son to be academic, first rank.
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_01: CP Kunjam, you know, that is our fixation with institutions.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was telling, mommy, are you kidding?
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_01: You do even know how big he is.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_01: She has no idea of how big his son is, you know, because that are our yardstick, those are our yardsticks.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if I if I I would like to submit that this nurturing happens to everybody, because we are all born in an immersive environment, and that is actually what Karadipath does.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you touched upon Karadipath earlier, is that there is no word meaning.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: There is no one rule of grammar being taught in the class.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_01: You immerse the child in the stories.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the child does not know action, path, music, path, and yes, you have to structure it, you know, so that you are able to deliver.
• 1:28:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's a delivery mechanism that you do work.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_01: But for the child, he is just having fun in the class.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_01: He is immersed in the language.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_01: That is why a child in Dharabi speaks five languages.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the child who goes to school speaks one language today, English.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, isn't it a fact you tell me?
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_01: A child in Dharavi who does not go to speak school, most of them are from Andhra Pradesh.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_01: He speaks Telugu.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of Biradhar is also Tamil, he speaks Tamil, Marathi, Hindi, and also English, because of all the child labor things that are happening there is perforce, you know, he knows how to you know write a register.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_01: He knows that.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he knows that all these functions because he's immersed in the language.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, if I got contradict that with somebody like me, I learned French for four years.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was Maharashtra State number one in French.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_01: When they when some French embassy or some counselate or something called me and they asked me to speak in, of course, I cannot speak in French.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I only know how to crack the exam in French.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this is what is happening to language learning in our country.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Again, very badly institutionalized.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it is a double-edged sword because you know how do you, you know, elementary schools are the most are the biggest vehicle for education.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, government schools in especially in rural India.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_01: But my only submission would be that don't hypothecate your entire uh education to the schools, to the institutions.
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_01: So all of us, if we just look around and build our own skill set, at no point am I even implying any irreverence to the individual teachers who set examples for you.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_01: I also consider the people who ragged me in the hostel as my gurus, you know, because they broke a lot of myths for me, you know.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so the educational institution is doing whatever education by accident.
• 1:30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I'm putting because a lot of I saw the following that you have in the corporate world, and I'm I really want to pose this question.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_01: For me, this is the biggest agony that I'm having through is and fortunately our prime minister is recognizing this, but it is very difficult to change it.
• 1:30:25
  SPEAKER_01: He was very enamored by the IITs when he came in.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_01: He gave the smart city project to IIT Bombay.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know that?
• 1:30:32
  unknown: I don't know.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_01: You have to hear of smart city projects, massive, massive projects.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the project to design Bumbai, Mumbai was given to IIT Bombay.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_01: IIT Bombay, again, not taking away from personal excellence, has also designed the junction that is there outside the IIT Bombay main gate.
• 1:30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Have you been there in that junction?
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_01: You have seen that junction?
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is the most chaotic junction I've seen in the world because I do not know when to cross the road.
• 1:31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just ran up running, somehow crossing the road.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know what is coming from, where, where the dividers are.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is because somewhere when we bring people together and work in a committee kind of a situation in an enterprise that does not necessarily have accountability like a private organization.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_01: My job is not at stake in IIT.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that somehow neutralizes my own intelligence.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is my submission.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that is why I would like to uh so uh I just wrote one letter.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_01: That time I had access to Manuhar Parikarji, I have to mention.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_01: He is the person actually who started Karadi Path.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: In the year 2001, there was no Karadi Path at that time.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_01: He had lost his wife.
• 1:31:53
  SPEAKER_01: He had a son who was not even going to school.
• 1:31:55
  SPEAKER_01: He had an elder son also, he had his younger son had not even started going to school.
• 1:31:59
  SPEAKER_01: I get a call on my newly bought cell phone, you know, and I thought it was a prank call saying I am the chief minister of Goa.
• 1:32:08
  SPEAKER_01: My son is reading your books, reading your books, and he's not even going to school.
• 1:32:18
  SPEAKER_01: I want all my children in Goa to read.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Can you come and meet me?
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Who is that?
• 1:32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I actually disconnected that call thinking someone of my friends is pulling me.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Those days incoming was charged.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I know calling.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Then he again called and his office called and says, give us a time.
• 1:32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So even till date, the Karadipath program after for all these years through all the governments in Goa has survived, being renewed year on year.
• 1:32:51
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, only last year I requested them, please make it a two-year term because this is getting too excruciating, you know, to form, you know, fill up your things.
• 1:32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So finally they made it.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when they gave this, and he was on IITN also, and it turned out later that he was from my hostel, you know, in metallurgy.
• 1:33:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, again, he is one of the people.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Has he done anything related to metallurgy in his life?
• 1:33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Can you deny his contribution to our society?
• 1:33:13
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I have I have got through JD, I have to do my engineering, things like that.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even though his skill set, his uh his uh gunas were in some other uh realm.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that is why even when my nephews and nieces study today, I tell them that if you want to be a writer, spend those four or five years learning writing.
• 1:33:39
  SPEAKER_01: How dare you think that I can just go and you know do hand waving when it comes to singing or writing?
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be as meticulous as you're learning metallurgical engineering when you're learning writing.
• 1:33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Why why why this you know hierarchy that you have put?
• 1:33:52
  SPEAKER_01: This I can wing it, that I have to study.
• 1:33:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so educational institutions.
• 1:33:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember through him had submitted just a one paragraph letter.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can edit it out if you think this is not appropriate.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had submitted a letter, it was not reaching our prime minister.
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to Manor Parikar and gave him that.
• 1:34:12
  SPEAKER_01: He said earlier, this is all too big what you're saying.
• 1:34:15
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Write me one paragraph.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote one paragraph, and I would like to tell you what that paragraph was.
• 1:34:25
  SPEAKER_01: At that time I was a faculty knight.
• 1:34:28
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:34:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know that we have we have interacted several times with that.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote a paragraph saying that uh this is I put a student to do this research.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Students are very good in that, uh, IIT students going and collecting data and all that.
• 1:34:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote this paragraph saying that the average distance between the place of residence and the place of work for an IIT faculty is 800 meters.
• 1:34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Average distance.
• 1:35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yet 83% of the faculty come to work in a car.
• 1:35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then the department that was given this job of Smart City was a department called Industrial Design Center, designed IDC Jurva.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_01: I put another paragraph.
• 1:35:21
  SPEAKER_01: The average distance for an IDC faculty from the place of home to the place of work is 500 meters.
• 1:35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Some number was there, around 500 meters.
• 1:35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yet there is only one faculty in IIT who does not in IDC who does not come to work in a car.
• 1:35:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was me.
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Can you trust this institute to do anything smart?
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fact, it is not an opinion.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to believe it was an 8750 crore project.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was cancelled.
• 1:36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am not saying because of me, but I would like to believe that it had something to do with that.
• 1:36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because the legacy and the halo and the entitlement that we have given to educational institutions, especially the premium ones, I am saying this not out of any bitterness, but I'm saying this because it is actually destroying the kids.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_01: You go to Kota, you go to all these places, farmers' children.
• 1:36:25
  SPEAKER_01: One girl actually asked me when I said this openly in some IIT forum.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you mean to say that I should also be a basket weaver like my father?
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I said, yes.
• 1:36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Make it financially viable.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Who told you that this job is lower than that?
• 1:36:47
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever tried to weave a basket?
• 1:36:49
  SPEAKER_01: My god, it is such an intricate thing to do.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Bamboo technology in Europe is massive.
• 1:36:58
  SPEAKER_01: She actually asked that she was a basket weaver's daughter.
• 1:37:01
  SPEAKER_01: When she asked that question, the whole audience applauded for her.
• 1:37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do you mean to say that I should study basket weaving?
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I said yes.
• 1:37:12
  SPEAKER_01: In the hierarchy that we have put in our children's minds.
• 1:37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what is happening yesterday.
• 1:37:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is all coming out now.
• 1:37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hierarchy has been blown to smithereens.
• 1:37:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 1:37:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, Narayan, one second.
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's very interesting.
• 1:37:27
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 1:37:28
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to add something which I think is very interesting because the contrast that I'm actually observing is that most people are actually confusing trade for craft.
• 1:37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you were talking about people who learned music and became 80% of them ended up becoming musicians, okay, that's because they were passionate about that craft and they wanted to do that for the rest of their lives.
• 1:37:51
  SPEAKER_02: But when you look at people who go to a premier educational institution and then go off and do something completely unrelated to what they've trained for, it's because they perceive those institutions to be tools to actually learn a trade.
• 1:38:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then they actually don't complain about it because they know that we have expectations to fulfill, people will trouble me if I don't do this, etc.
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_02: etc.
• 1:38:12
  SPEAKER_02: So they fulfill those obligations and then they say, Ah, now I'm free, I'm going to do what I want.
• 1:38:16
  unknown: Correct.
• 1:38:17
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I agree.
• 1:38:19
  SPEAKER_02: So is that the fundamental problem?
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Is my question.
• 1:38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why why is it that uh you know I think that uh my son or daughter uh should get a degree, this whole hierarchy of engineering, art, sciences, you know, commerce.
• 1:38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Who built all these hierarchies?
• 1:38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, when you have icons, and it is I'm not trying to be idealistic.
• 1:38:44
  SPEAKER_01: When you have icons in my father's time, you know, earning a living was a big deal.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_01: It is not as easy as it is today, right?
• 1:38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Today, you know, somebody like Vignesh can take it for granted, earning a living.
• 1:38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Those were the times when you could not sustain monetarily a family and everything.
• 1:39:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not pointing a finger, but what I'm saying is we have to be awake to the we are to that is the very important point I said, Vignesh, is that even though they sent us to the schools, they didn't have that expectation.
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_01: My Ahmed had no problem when we started creditors company.
• 1:39:20
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, when they taught us part, and their expectation is not that we should become you know livelihood musicians.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, my fervent prayer to a young parent today, and you are right, it is the parent, it is not dressing because we put the pressures, you know, you should study computer science and not aeronautical.
• 1:39:37
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe computer science is all the first hundred students you go to computer science, last students used to go to aeronautical?
• 1:39:45
  SPEAKER_01: That means you are putting in the person's head that you know you're creating these hierarchies.
• 1:39:51
  SPEAKER_01: I would even say intentionally.
• 1:39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Earlier IITs used to say that it is being done in unintentionally and all that.
• 1:39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because that is the most viable profession, right?
• 1:40:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you get you know, that is the lowest hanging fruit, everybody goes.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I always ask this question.
• 1:40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Again, coming back to IITs, how many entrepreneurs have you generated?
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hello?
• 1:40:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, you have generated workers, you're not generated entrepreneurs.
• 1:40:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I think the most important thing, Narayan, that you are talking about is if you are a if you are in a if you're learning something, I think the question that you asked is very interesting is what are you learning from non-institutions?
• 1:40:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, to me, that is the core of what we are doing.
• 1:40:35
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:40:36
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so therefore, what are we putting our children into people who are non-institutions which are being taught?
• 1:40:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the bigger point that Vignesh was making, which is the fact that are you educating the person for a trade or for a craft?
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Craft can become a trade.
• 1:40:56
  SPEAKER_03: Craft can become a trade, but but when you think of it as a trade, you never make it your craft.
• 1:41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 1:41:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I I beg to differ because if you see, especially in rural parts of Araga, you know, a basket weaver is always very integrally tied to his income.
• 1:41:11
  SPEAKER_01: He may not be a very big uh you know businessman or something, but the income like farming.
• 1:41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Today, when I go to IITs, you know, when we were studying, everybody was from the school English-speaking metro areas.
• 1:41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Today, all the children who are coming to IITs are all coming from farmlands, and they are the first people in their village to ever have got an engineering degree and all.
• 1:41:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is the profile.
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that for me is very saddening.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was not saddening for me to see my friends, it was not really, I was not needed this.
• 1:41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Today I see, and then they actually put a benchmark, and one kid actually told this to me, and I cannot refute that.
• 1:41:47
  SPEAKER_01: He told me, because after he's a farmer's son, he was from Baster, you know, a small place.
• 1:41:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he said his father is a farmer, and when I was giving this, I was having a conversation.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You know, sir, he called at that time Professor Narayan, he said.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_01: He was then working, after that, he was working in Morgan Stanley.
• 1:42:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have made in six months what my father has made in his lifetime.
• 1:42:19
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot deny this fact.
• 1:42:21
  SPEAKER_01: How can I deny this fact?
• 1:42:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is very easy for me to sit in a nice Powai house and say that everybody should.
• 1:42:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I will never advocate this to let us say my you know, home helps child or daughter.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_01: I will never say, don't go to school, don't go to IIT.
• 1:42:37
  SPEAKER_01: That becomes a matter of survival.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, where I would like to slightly nuance Vignesh's question is that when you talk about trade, for me, anything that you do for survival, you have to just accept it.
• 1:42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 1:42:51
  SPEAKER_01: But when you are having an option and when you are having that uh, you know, then it is actually stupid not to take that leap of faith.
• 1:43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you're 54 years old like me, you realize that I I you know that the money is not really, it is not some ideological money.
• 1:43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Really doesn't matter.
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_01: It is what you did that I was getting 20,000 rupees, yeah.
• 1:43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Saw me until 2008, until our first investor came.
• 1:43:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were I was taking 20,000 rupees home as a salary in curry details.
• 1:43:23
  SPEAKER_01: My friends were probably making 100 times that amount, my colleagues who studied with me.
• 1:43:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it never even entered our head.
• 1:43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because what can be greater than doing what is number one in your DNA and what is you know that you can actually see the you know impact on.
• 1:43:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, which is the point and that is also true of finance.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_01: When I said Morgan Stanley, I'm not saying that is not a uh great thing to do, it is of course a great to do.
• 1:43:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is so much of when I talk to you know my investment consultants and I sit through the meetings.
• 1:43:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know how much I've talked now.
• 1:43:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just shut up and listen there.
• 1:43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because half the models they're saying, I don't even understand what they are saying.
• 1:44:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have to learn there.
• 1:44:01
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of sadhana there also.
• 1:44:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not taking away from that.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm saying is this hierarchy is my problem.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, but I but I think the most important point that you're making is uh you know that non-institutions uh you know where you learn a lot from has to be embedded in your learning process.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think that is the bigger point that you are making.
• 1:44:26
  SPEAKER_03: And when you actually said where did you get your storytelling skills, you actually are saying the reason I'm now having a living and probably I'm successful is because where I learned from non-institutions.
• 1:44:38
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I would also add that I think Narayan made that point at the top of our conversation, which is he said that he sat in those music classes that were taking place in his house.
• 1:44:48
  SPEAKER_02: He had if a normal if you look at school classes, right?
• 1:44:53
  SPEAKER_02: You're having history class, you finish history class, and you say that hey, there is an optional geography class if you want to sit, the kid will run away.
• 1:45:03
  SPEAKER_02: But you have to have some amount of innate interest also to sit and sort of listen to things that you are actually interested in that actually stimulates your thinking.
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_02: And which is where I want to ask a question that were those experiences where you were learning, uh you were sitting in on say a party class or a violent class or um, did that sort of stimulate your interest in lifelong learning?
• 1:45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're learning a lot of things which are not connected, which are in a system they are connected, but as practices they are siloed, right?
• 1:45:34
  SPEAKER_02: So so how did that contribute uh to your interest to actually keep learning things and upgrading your thinking, whether they are mental models or whether they are new critic and whatnot?
• 1:45:44
  SPEAKER_02: How would how would you think about that?
• 1:45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very incisive.
• 1:45:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but there's only one answer for that.
• 1:45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that how good you happen to be?
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_01: See, I grew up in a family where I was with actually superstars.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my brother was performing at the age of eight and everything.
• 1:46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Brothers, both of them.
• 1:46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is the beauty of my Krishna Murti Bhagavad.
• 1:46:12
  SPEAKER_01: He has taught Sri Ram Vishunat, my mother.
• 1:46:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's why if you come to my house, the first thing we'll see is Krishna Murti Sar's photograph.
• 1:46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why I will tell you.
• 1:46:24
  SPEAKER_01: At the age of six or seven, Krishna Murti Sar told my father about Sri Ram, look, I have finished teaching him whatever I know.
• 1:46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Please take him to this person now to study.
• 1:46:42
  SPEAKER_01: The same Krishna Murti Bhagavad.
• 1:46:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was, you know how it is, Sarli Varshaya, Janda Varshaya Lankaram, all that he taught me Sri Gananatha, the first Gita.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_01: I started in second standard Vignesh.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_01: My first Gita happened when I was in sixth standard.
• 1:47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Until my tenth standard, till he moved away from Bombay, I had to I was still learning from him because there was a lot left for me to learn.
• 1:47:13
  SPEAKER_01: The point I'm making, the teachers in the non-institutions did not apply the same yardsticks for different students.
• 1:47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Today, if you go to a class, it is not the fault of the education system.
• 1:47:29
  SPEAKER_01: They have to apply these yardsticks.
• 1:47:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, as Einstein has said, you know, if a monkey is, if an alligator is measured on its ability to climb a tree and a monkey on the basis of how it is going to swim, you are gone.
• 1:47:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that is the that is the fundamental reason why I'm saying institutionalizing education is actually going to be disastrous.
• 1:47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we are seeing it happening, you know.
• 1:47:56
  SPEAKER_01: See, and fortunately now, many other things that you're learning, it has started with finance and investment banking and advertising and marketing, which became very lucrative professions.
• 1:48:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's why they went there.
• 1:48:07
  SPEAKER_01: When other professions become lucrative, people will go there too.
• 1:48:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I were to look at our own history, you know that better than me, that you know we come from a tradition where you know, if you are a singer, you know, you are looked down upon or a musician.
• 1:48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was not financially viable.
• 1:48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Today it has become financially viable, everybody wants to sing.
• 1:48:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the thing is, moment you make something, economy cannot be separated from uh you know all your uh you know wannabe ideologies.
• 1:48:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is very critical.
• 1:48:40
  SPEAKER_01: So today Javelin Trab becomes gets the highest point, everybody will start doing that.
• 1:48:47
  SPEAKER_01: But natural, and that gets so inspiring, yeah.
• 1:48:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the English the person in the channel is asking the question in English and she is feeling skirmish, not the guy answering in Hindi.
• 1:49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the change of balance now, you know, because he is the superstar.
• 1:49:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the moment our icons change at a macro level.
• 1:49:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I I do not know, I really hope and pray that uh let the institutions get whatever money they're getting.
• 1:49:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to deny them that, but there has to be uh uh some kind of a uh survival mechanism for the people who are actually running non-institutions.
• 1:49:31
  SPEAKER_03: See, I will I will put it I will put it another way, Narrat.
• 1:49:34
  SPEAKER_03: The way I see it is what you think is lucrative when you are actually graduating to what you think is lucrative when you are retiring.
• 1:49:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, actually there is a very big difference.
• 1:49:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:49:51
  SPEAKER_03: So in my view, uh you know, people take the wrong uh decisions when they are actually graduating.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_03: And and therefore, what happens is that many of them face the midlife crisis because they are not learning actually.
• 1:50:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:50:08
  SPEAKER_03: So therefore, the impact of that lady who says, you know, oh, or the boy who said, you know, I've in six months I've I've earned more than my father.
• 1:50:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:50:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm saying he has to run a marathon in his career.
• 1:50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:50:21
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, and that is when he's going to realize, and uh, you know, and it is for him to realize it.
• 1:50:28
  SPEAKER_03: But the way the way I would say it is, he would still earn more than his father if he made it a world-crass craft.
• 1:50:36
  SPEAKER_03: Be it finance, be it uh be a basket weaver.
• 1:50:40
  SPEAKER_03: Money is one thing.
• 1:50:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think money is an outcome of something, but still that craft makes the most important uh you know decision.
• 1:50:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that is very critical because I have seen people who say, Oh, I'm a great computer engineer.
• 1:50:53
  SPEAKER_03: Suddenly, when it moves from uh mainframe to uh you know uh you know PC computing, okay, the person has not learned the uh language, okay, and he is left okay, he's left behind.
• 1:51:08
  SPEAKER_03: So therefore, computer science alone uh you know is not going to see you in the next 40 years or 50 years of your 30 years of your career, okay.
• 1:51:18
  SPEAKER_03: But it is about how you solve the problem behind computing that's going to solve for your life issues.
• 1:51:26
  SPEAKER_03: But but but you are taught how to program, okay, but you are not taught why you are programming.
• 1:51:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, correct.
• 1:51:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I think that's the critical problem.
• 1:51:38
  SPEAKER_03: So when you actually say storytelling, in my view, the reason why you tell stories very well, okay, yes, yes, of course, there is a certain metallurgy process, thinking that the math thinking that is coming in, but I think you have combined the art and science of storytelling.
• 1:51:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, there are many people who do the science of storytelling, okay?
• 1:51:59
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't bring in the art and science of storytelling, which is you know what you talked about, the you know the the music there, the way uh the narration is done.
• 1:52:11
  SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, why would you why would you go to a gulzar?
• 1:52:13
  SPEAKER_03: Why would you go to a Nazuri Dinsha?
• 1:52:16
  SPEAKER_03: Why would you go to uh Sayat Jaffri?
• 1:52:18
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you why do you go to Burman Irani?
• 1:52:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, because they say it with that passion, right?
• 1:52:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and then there is a there is a soul in the dialogue, yeah, okay, which a gulzar does.
• 1:52:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so suddenly you realize that gulzar has seen four generations of movie making changing, but gulzar is still relevant, yeah.
• 1:52:42
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 1:52:43
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so therefore, the why of programming versus I know how to program is the real problem.
• 1:52:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, non-institutions probably teach you that better than institutions, is my uh is my understanding.
• 1:52:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way I see it.
• 1:52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect, and and I would and that can also extend to the same thing that I said that the moment you measure you know in individuals in a general yardstick, even in IIT or whatever, you know, people I know that if you clear JE, talela thuk, you know, because you are good actually in those three things math, science, logic.
• 1:53:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but that is not the only thing.
• 1:53:21
  SPEAKER_01: So when you apply the same yardstick for every kid, you know, it never happens in the US.
• 1:53:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very sorry to say this.
• 1:53:28
  SPEAKER_01: In the Western institution institutions are I gained a lot from Clemson University.
• 1:53:33
  SPEAKER_01: I learned for the first time in my life, I learned metallurgy there.
• 1:53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because they instill in me that what I said earlier, that there is as much ecstasy in maternity transformation as it is in Indulam.
• 1:53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because you do, just because you clear courses, you're not going to get a degree.
• 1:53:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:53:49
  SPEAKER_02: And and the other thing which is interesting that you said is that you know they're just good at those three things.
• 1:53:54
  SPEAKER_02: That point you said, right?
• 1:53:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's a very interesting quote.
• 1:53:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know who it's attributed to, but it's it goes something like you know, most people attribute uh the limits of their understanding the limits of the world.
• 1:54:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Very true.
• 1:54:07
  SPEAKER_02: So because I'm good at A, B, and C, I can comment on X, Y, and Z.
• 1:54:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's no correlation.
• 1:54:12
  SPEAKER_02: But suddenly some people feel that they are very entitled to do so.
• 1:54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Which obviously they are, but is there any validity to those claims?
• 1:54:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is what I think that made me reflect on.
• 1:54:23
  SPEAKER_01: So totally.
• 1:54:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I so I think the important thing is you started off somewhere, uh, there was an environment, there is an environment which actually taught you something.
• 1:54:35
  SPEAKER_03: You were then put in a situation where you used these methods and then you went out and uh you know did something and you may you you you know you you did something very, very uh different and uh beautiful.
• 1:54:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, in my view, I am actually, you know, the way I am seeing this episode, Daran, is that I think Vignesh even said it even before we started, which I think is very interesting.
• 1:54:58
  SPEAKER_03: He said, you know, this is about the power of storytelling.
• 1:55:02
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, that's what he started.
• 1:55:03
  SPEAKER_03: I asked him, he said, have you prepared for it?
• 1:55:05
  SPEAKER_03: I said, yeah, I'm I'm looking at all the, you know, in fact, I I wrote this.
• 1:55:10
  SPEAKER_03: I know uh, you know, I wrote it we have been discussing this, but I wrote this uh today, which said that you know, at least Vishnuat said this.
• 1:55:18
  SPEAKER_03: When you teach a word, thinking gets impaired.
• 1:55:22
  SPEAKER_03: When you teach meaning, comprehension is impaired.
• 1:55:26
  SPEAKER_03: When you teach grammar, the natural way you speak and the syntactical understanding gets impaired.
• 1:55:32
  SPEAKER_03: And Karadi Path's learning is actually the opposite.
• 1:55:38
  SPEAKER_03: I don't teach you the word, I don't teach you the grammar, but you know, I teach you how to crumple a paper.
• 1:55:45
  SPEAKER_03: The person picks up the word called crumple.
• 1:55:48
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so in my view, I think that is storytelling to me.
• 1:55:54
  SPEAKER_03: Correct, correct.
• 1:55:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, because then I'm I think there is a body, there is an action, there is a learning.
• 1:55:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think the way you you are going to do it is what you learn.
• 1:56:02
  SPEAKER_03: Very true, very true.
• 1:56:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought this is a fantastic quote, uh, and to me this is quite shocking, actually, because this is really what we we do every day.
• 1:56:11
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't notice that even I was shocked when you quoted actually.
• 1:56:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it is true, it is very true.
• 1:56:17
  SPEAKER_03: And and and we we we have it every day.
• 1:56:19
  SPEAKER_03: I I and I I know a word, but I don't know anything about it.
• 1:56:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:56:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think we we are taught comprehension in English without actually having comprehension.
• 1:56:29
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:56:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so therefore, the the path that karate karate tails took to actually build this learning methodology, okay, I think has got fundamental uh you know implications on how you learn itself.
• 1:56:44
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 1:56:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, which is why you loved metallurgy when you went to Clemson and not at IAT.
• 1:56:49
  SPEAKER_03: Very true.
• 1:56:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:56:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so therefore, to me, I think that's really critical.
• 1:56:54
  SPEAKER_03: And the faster we adopt this and don't go by the standard uh you know uh you know generally accepted learning principles, like gap if you went to college, generally accepted learning principles.
• 1:57:08
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you go to IAT, you do this, you go to the premier institution.
• 1:57:12
  SPEAKER_03: But get your children into non-institutions.
• 1:57:15
  SPEAKER_01: Very true.
• 1:57:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, keep them in the institution, but you know, teach them a whole set of non-institutional learning so that you then build this interdisciplinary thinking.
• 1:57:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's very, very critical.
• 1:57:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and just to add to what you know was just said, I would also say that storytelling, again, in my opinion, goes both ways, which is it's not storytelling, it's not something that somebody does for you or to you, it is what you do for yourself as well.
• 1:57:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're oh my god, so beautiful.
• 1:57:43
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're reading something, you're hearing your own voice in your own head, you're imagining the same worlds that are being created by the author for you.
• 1:57:51
  SPEAKER_02: And in from my if I'm talking about my childhood, you know, those books like Amar Chitrakatas and your tintins and your rastrics and uh your karate tales had actually got that going.
• 1:58:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't see the immediate payoff of that storytelling for yourself when you are 6 to 10.
• 1:58:09
  SPEAKER_02: You see it 20, 30, 40 years down the line when you're able to connect with people on certain emotional levels because you're seeing how many stories have actually affected the way you actually process information.
• 1:58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the way you think, as you say, yeah.
• 1:58:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it is very, very, very well summarized, I would say.
• 1:58:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I uh one of the other things that you said, you know, a little earlier about this trade and craft, you know, is also not so uh simple as I try to make it.
• 1:58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that uh I would like to emphasize that both are very critical.
• 1:58:49
  SPEAKER_01: It is not to put one down, you know, and so the trade and the craft, or rather the other way, craft and the trade, because craft precedes a trade, right?
• 1:58:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I ha have to be given that same reverence.
• 1:59:02
  SPEAKER_01: Even now, if you go on my profile and everything, I still write my profile as salesman at curative tales.
• 1:59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Creative director is just in my bio data, you know, because when you sell something, you know, I have gone to each of the stores putting up the stuff.
• 1:59:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've every time I see a person buying credit details, which has not been very often.
• 1:59:21
  SPEAKER_01: See, one thing is you see the data, but when you go to a shop and see somebody picking it up, looking at it, those days we used to have buttons, opening the button, taking it out, seeing what it is there, and you know, just trying to imagine what is in the cassette, no sampling, correct?
• 1:59:37
  SPEAKER_01: Audio sampling.
• 1:59:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll put it back.
• 1:59:42
  unknown: Right?
• 1:59:43
  SPEAKER_01: You see that also, and then when somebody says, you know, and then somebody, another person will come to the shop, you know, that because somebody has told that person about it after going through it.
• 1:59:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is why this whole thing of being a salesman also is very close to story, is actually storytelling.
• 2:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, and when I even today, of course, today I will not have, but you know, we have our eight o'clock meetings with our sales team, you know, after they return home and all that.
• 2:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: And normally I hardly speak in this sales meeting, I just look at hear their stories.
• 2:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all that kind of a thing, and you know uh how they handle different situations.
• 2:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a trade part of it, right?
• 2:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to, you know, so it there is as much uh what do you say, beauty and reverence I have for that.
• 2:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I do not ever imply that trade is less, you know, because if it is not a trade, how will you survive?
• 2:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and there is a very, I know of people I have always been very enamored by people who today they will be selling, you know, uh software and tomorrow they will be selling a detergent.
• 2:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: And how they can you know find the joy and growth.
• 2:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can never do that.
• 2:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I would like to sell something that I really am very close to my heart and all that.
• 2:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that guna of being detached from what you are selling and just focus and just like selling is my is the selling becomes your craft actually.
• 2:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly, exactly.
• 2:01:21
  SPEAKER_03: So the one one question I wanted to ask you recently, you released the audiobook of JRD Tata, right?
• 2:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: Where uh you know uh so what kind of storytelling did you add to that?
• 2:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh which uh you know which uh was your creative idea to really bring out the greatness of J.R.D.
• 2:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: Tata.
• 2:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh you know, I remember that when there was a gentleman called R.
• 2:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: M.
• 2:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lala, who was the chairman of the Tratary, he has written the book actually.
• 2:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's an original book called Beyond the Last Blue Mountain.
• 2:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big book, big fat book it is.
• 2:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: So uh uh we approached him because after we did Wings of Fire, then we did Experimental Truth and all that, I felt that, you know, we felt that you know the one of the biggest contributors in our you know, all that I have tried to say, you know, JRD has already done it.
• 2:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how how what an elevated man he must be.
• 2:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when Nehru bought over RD, I'm sure you know the story, you know, the price at which he bought the entire company, and at that time it was among the top three airlines in the world, Tata Airlines.
• 2:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: The price at which he bought the company was less than the taxes that JRD had paid.
• 2:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe this?
• 2:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: And JRD would look at his uh you know, look at his sense of there's no words, he also became the chairman of the company of Air India, he was the first chairman of Air India because his thing was completely uh you know seva at that level.
• 2:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: The first IT company was by JRD in India, 1965 was when uh uh Tata TCS was uh was was formed.
• 2:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so what do you take and do with the story?
• 2:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when I read that story about he was born in France and then he he died in Geneva, and in the middle he was here in India, and it is JRD is only representative of that way of thinking, right?
• 2:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: From Jamchadi Tata and you know the whole including to our present Ratan Tata, you know, it just boggles my mind as to uh JRD Tata never owned a house.
• 2:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: He lived in a rented house on the Tata Trust, and he was getting a salary till his last date.
• 2:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: So when you ask me how we reinterpreted the story, for example, there were there was in the in the introduction, there is a very beautiful uh passage that he writes you know about the principles of corporate.
• 2:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: And here you're talking about a very successful corporate guy, okay?
• 2:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: Principles of corporate uh responsibility, and uh you know, do whatever that you find a sense of purpose.
• 2:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of sense of purpose he imbibed.
• 2:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then when uh he passed away, there was uh there was absolute stun in the nation, apparently, you know, because just what all he has done is so mind-boggling, and with such a sense of, you know, take it, take this, take this, everything was like that.
• 2:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: No sense of doership, which is what is advocated in our Upanishads.
• 2:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever there should be no sense of doership, he embodied that.
• 2:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there was one uh you know, because he was most associated with the airlines, he was India's first licensed pilot and all that.
• 2:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: We interspersed this with a lot of beautiful things like there was a Kabir Doha, Gagan Ki Ot Nisanaebhai, Dahinesur Chandrama Bhai, Tinke Beach Tikhana Bai, Gagan Ki Ot Nisana.
• 2:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: Gagan Ki Ot means the edge of the sky, which is obviously not there.
• 2:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is my dream, you know.
• 2:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then there is a very beautiful hymn that was very close to his heart all through his life, which he reveals in that book.
• 2:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Abide with Me.
• 2:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: Abide with me, Abide With Me.
• 2:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a hymn.
• 2:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, uh when I heard, when I read that hymn, you know, it reminded me of you know the very great composition in Sunadavinid, Devadide Deva, Sri Vasudeva, that that song, where it talks about this idea of non-doership, selflessness, at the same time, the element of surrender.
• 2:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 2:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a very popular hymn.
• 2:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to churches, it is sung very much.
• 2:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh but the situation here was out of the context of the church.
• 2:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was discussing this, and Bhumani Rani is very uh close to all these things, so I said that I wanted to make it, I wanted to Indianize it in the sense because I am now catering to an Indian audience, and I am catering to an audience out of the church context because the power of the words that inspired him, you know.
• 2:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hold thou thy hand with your open arms, you know, when I come to you finally.
• 2:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when even when he breathed his last, he asked that somebody narrate it.
• 2:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if if this has got to be something that inspired him, so I had the you know libera choir, because uh you know it was already composed by another gentleman 150 years back called Walter Scott, you know, he had composed it as a hymn.
• 2:06:49
  SPEAKER_01: So my logic to Brahmanirani was this the person who had written the hymn, 100 years later somebody composed it.
• 2:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: So 150 years later, Naran Prashanam can also compose it.
• 2:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was my logic to Brahman, and he accepted that.
• 2:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: But out of reverence, I just felt because I got to Libera choir in Vatican, Libera Children's Choir, to sing the first few lines without any shruti or anything.
• 2:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: They just sang it in the church and they sent it to me, and I was it's a very heart-rending song, and then children from India were singing it, you know.
• 2:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: Abide with me, abide with me, oh Lord, with me, abide.
• 2:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is an Indian context because we're not talking about any particular philosophy here, we're talking about something that is so universal.
• 2:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, JRD, even as I'm talking now, I mean I'm wearing a full shirt, I get goosebumps.
• 2:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: In a map, what a person.
• 2:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing the way you told the story about JRD Tia.
• 2:07:56
  SPEAKER_03: My god, I think it's it's been beautifully explained, and uh, I really loved the way you interpreted the words with music again.
• 2:08:06
  SPEAKER_03: Again, look at the way you brought the story together.
• 2:08:08
  SPEAKER_03: Again, to me, I'm seeing a common thread in how you are telling stories.
• 2:08:13
  SPEAKER_03: And if Wings of Fire was actually doing six lakh copies, I'm sure this is going to do 12 lakh, right?
• 2:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because uh that's really the way the story is being said, and I I do hope that uh you know it it just sees success.
• 2:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 2:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I also hope for me so more than success is for me today.
• 2:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: What is giving me a major kick in life or major you know validation, so to speak, is dissemination.
• 2:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so when one company just recently called me and they asked me to make that JRD into the same thing, into because it's a long book, it's one hour audio book.
• 2:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: So can you make three, three minute segments of that?
• 2:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and give me a synopsis of that.
• 2:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: So they will send it on their uh WhatsApp.
• 2:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they paid me very good money for that, you know, and they said that they will send it every Monday.
• 2:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was called Monday Musings.
• 2:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, what a wonderful thing.
• 2:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: You start your Monday working week with something that JRD has from a part of his story.
• 2:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that disseminated then I think I gave them a license for one lakh uh you know users, you know.
• 2:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: So uh he tells me in fact they took it, this was published some time back, so I give the term of that was six months, they just renewed it for another six months.
• 2:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: That they can, and I am very copy-left in that sense, you know, in the sense I say that you take it, you you give me something that validates the and you know, so that I can also do my business, but after that, please disseminate it, no upper limit.
• 2:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, e clagdo, duralak dhu achay, you know, you spread it, and just because somebody he is not impinging on my business anyway.
• 2:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: That is not my business audience, and today, my god, the way the whole market is opened up, many publishers call it the dead end and all that.
• 2:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: I say no, just wait and see now what happens, how content gets disseminated, and how you have to now struggle to make your business models work because the sad part or tragic part today, it very is very uh is very shocking.
• 2:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is that nobody is really making any money out of the content, right?
• 2:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everything you have to give it free, of course.
• 2:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: There will be some ad coming in the middle and all that.
• 2:10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So many of the young kids who are making content, you know, whom I which I see, they are going through a very, very trying time, far more challenging than what it was for us.
• 2:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Far more challenging.
• 2:10:35
  SPEAKER_01: How do I sustain myself while making this content?
• 2:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because everything is anyway free.
• 2:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I tell them evolve a model.
• 2:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Even today, GGB has never been given free anywhere, correct?
• 2:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: But give it in such a way that it is a win-win situation for both of us.
• 2:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Don't sit and say I want to give 120 crores for this.
• 2:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Go take a walk, correct?
• 2:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because I can go on some other you know, hacked site and watch GGB.
• 2:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I I am I am of a very firm belief, and I am uh proof of that is that the audience in India is extremely honest.
• 2:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Even the pirated stuff, he will buy it from Kurva station, pay 30 rupees for that CD.
• 2:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Correct?
• 2:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is because like outside consumer station, you get wings of fire.
• 2:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: I actually saw that wings of fire our audio book there outside consumer station.
• 2:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: My first thing was to what are we doing out of it?
• 2:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously pirated, it is not taken from any distributor.
• 2:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: This was the days when CDs were working.
• 2:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I saw wings of fire CD in out one hand, I was thrilled, the other hand, because somebody pirates your stuff means you have arrived, yeah.
• 2:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the second part is now why am I not there in the consumer session?
• 2:11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have assumed that that is not my audience.
• 2:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is my problem.
• 2:11:52
  SPEAKER_01: The same mistake I made in CGB.
• 2:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that the animation students and the animation people and the animation this and animation that are going to watch the film.
• 2:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, it was not they who watched the film, it was just kids, some parent watching it, liking it, and not looking at it as an animation film, but looking at it as a as you rightly said, storytelling.
• 2:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let me go and experience this.
• 2:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because we extricate, that is why no animation film in India has ever worked.
• 2:12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're still looking at it as an animation film.
• 2:12:25
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to look at scurdy tales as a music album, it will not work.
• 2:12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 2:12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Narayan.
• 2:12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 2:12:40
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• 2:12:48
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• 2:13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for listening and stay safe.