i i had uh written about this colleague of mine a dear friend deepinda singer i don't know if you've heard of him uh a very very uh interesting story in fact that's been uh and i wrote this about i think six seven years back um he got shot uh while uh we were operating in the northeast in assam and then he recovered and then we went into cargill and uh came back from cargill and then he was shot again and cumulatively uh he had about seven uh bullets in his body in the space of about uh three years two and a half three years wow um and of course the second time around uh the doctors told him that he'd never walk again and how this guy then switched track he he of course could uh continue in the army but that's not what he wanted to do you know special forces and cutting-edge soldier he doesn't want to be sitting behind a desk peddling files that's what he would do if he were so he decided to


he would do if he were so he decided to quit and then he went in uh from nothing so he's from the sonic school sunday school riva and he had nothing in his life other than forge and then sf right and that's what he did and at 32 33 or something like that he decided that he has to carve out a fresh career for himself he did not know what that was but he decided to give it a shot so he asked around people told him about uh mba mba karna if you want to you know so this guy decided to take the cat he's prepared for a year while on the bed uh could not walk could not move um he gave the cat uh he got a call from i am a b c and l wow went to ima talked that place came out now he's with microsoft in the us wow that's an example of special forces yeah exactly exactly moldable absolutely so the adaptability that you will never ever give up no matter what no matter


will never ever give up no matter what no matter what circumstance you're thrown into you will find a way to land on your feet and work your way through right and i understand that there's a sense of brotherhood when there's that five-man unit six-man unit i've heard this from both captain drago and major jacob i'm sure even you would echo that same thought so so if you see a teammate who's gotten hit what's the whole mindset of the team is there like more anger is there protection towards that guy what's his mindset like when he gets hit yeah of course there is there is emotion it's never easy to see uh uh somebody that you're working with it's it's brotherhood right i think you use the right term it's uh it's it binds people in the team stronger than how uh families are bound right it's it's a very very strong intense binding and in fact this is the thing so once i uh hung up my uniform and transitioned to the to the


hung up my uniform and transitioned to the to the corporate world uh this is what i've been trying to do of course it's a very very difficult process because the the mitigating circumstances in both situations are they're completely chalk and cheese right totally different but the operating philosophy is this that you know you look at your own life you go out party with your friends you enjoy uh there's something that brings you immense happiness that lasts for a week a month a year a couple of years but 20 years down the line you might not quite remember that but if you're put through an excruciating a life-threatening situation with three or four other guys which has dramatically altered your way your thinking uh it is it has pushed you to the brink of knowing whether you'd live past this or not that's something that will not you will remember every every uh instant of that event in chronological sequence 20 years down the line and that's exactly what this happens so the the


that's exactly what this happens so the the bottom line is this that teams tend to do well when they are put through stressful conditions situations that's that's the glue that binds teams together and that glue cannot be shaken off even in the corporate world absolutely absolutely so uh well let me qualify that uh like i said the mitigating circumstances are different if that is going to be for a higher cost for a cost larger than just the money that accompanies it yes if it is not i'm not too sure um when you look back at your military career right is there one story that um kind of rings in your head one story i can never bring it down to one story a couple of hundred stories i mean we would love to hear you know at least if you could shed light on some of them i think that's something that will stay with the audiences forever yeah okay so um yeah i mean i so i told you the story of sanger uh right and


told you the story of sanger uh right and incidentally single story has been picked up by the film world and they converted into a movie uh zidki jeet or something like that quite frankly i i was very uh upset with the way the characterization has been done and the quality of this thing so if i were to put the lone survivor and zitki jeet you know chalk and cheese right so here was a beautiful story that it quite did not kind of uh come across on on on the on the screen the manner that it should have and but anyway um so that there is this this is a story that uh i'd like to share about uh when i did my probation right so typically the probation uh is 90 days and on the 89th day there is something called uh the escape and deviation exercise that's carried out this is during training the the probation the probation period 90 day period and that's the uh the culmination so that's the last test so what happens is


so that's the last test so what happens is uh all the probationaries are are broken down into buddy pairs two people and then you're stripped right to ensure that you're not carrying any money with you no water no maps no i mean nothing else except for the clothes that you're wearing so you're stripped down to your underwear and you're checked and then you're allowed to wear your dungarees or your overalls with your shoes and that's it and then you are left off from one point and then you have to travel 100 kilometers on your feet and get to the reporting uh point and there would be ambushes enroute which uh will kind of try and pick you up right so it they're just they're just replicating an escape innovation so you're a prisoner of war in the enemy country you were operating with the team there that you've been picked up and you're prisoner of war and now you are finding a way back from this thing across the border to your own and


from this thing across the border to your own and so there are you know that that's that's the uh play uh you have to make this in 24 hours right you cannot afford to take uh a lift on a vehicle or anything else which makes immediate uh expulsion and uh so that's the thing it's a test of your integrity it's a test of your physical fitness it's your test of sense of navigation uh direction finding and all of that because you don't even have a compass program nothing nothing at all so you do astral navigation and you know the stars through the stars general line of direction and and hope for the best wow um and i'm guessing you climb on trees to like save yourself during for rest like hell no you just lie on the ground wow you just lie on the ground so this particular incident happened uh in deradun where you're you're trans you're transitioning from one side of the valley to the other side of the valley right um so we we went there and my


valley right um so we we went there and my buddy and me a soldier simple fellow and uh he came from the maratha light infantry so did i i was in the numerator light infantry earlier so we both started off and then initially full of josh right you're running in this thing and ensuring that you don't get caught and all of that so you've got to have you climb over two mountain ranges and the reporting point is on the other side so we went through all of that and uh and there was a thunderstorm that night and there's no light and you're climbing up this mountain face uh with water just belting down uh and you're you know holding on to dry drops of grass and branches and stuff like that and climbing and probably if there was light you wouldn't climb that way because you know it was sheer drop but anyway we climbed and we we we did i think about 85 90 kilometers and by then i was i was pooped it was


and by then i was i was pooped it was the cumulative effect of 89 days of of probation related stress it just got to me and i just uh sat down i knew that i couldn't walk a step beyond and i just sat down there and somewhere in the distance i could hear probably three four four kilometers away i could hear a highway kind of this thing so trucks movement and all light you could pick up the thing so i told this guy i said [Music] kilometer and then we'll get off and then last two kilometers will somehow make it we had adequate time up our sleeve your mental faculty start degrading it's an nna go and do it because the the thing about probation is if one of you falters if you don't make it just you getting across the line doesn't help you have to get together as a team right so you pay for the mistakes of your body and that the underlying principle is when you're in combat operations behind the enemy lines


when you're in combat operations behind the enemy lines you need to trust your buddy and you need to ensure that something that you do you're going to the effects of that are going to be felt by the other guy as well right so he said uh so after a protracted exchange i'm just just compressing it uh he told me nice he loosened up and then uh the last 10 kilometers he pushed me carried me cajoled me pulled me did all that it takes to get me across the finish line and this is the enduring part and and you know so i have been to his house uh in himachal i have spent uh two nights there i've attended his wedding these these are these are things that you never forget right these are just carry forwards that uh and the binding is so strong that uh when you're in a combat operation and the bullets are flying and yet you know active firefights there are no words exchanged and there are no uh formal declarations or uh protocols that


are no uh formal declarations or uh protocols that are signed but i know that if i get hit that this guy shamraj is going to pick me up and get me home i might not be alive but my body will come back [Music] and i don't have to tell to him either he knows kisab whereabouts you know so this is the kind of binding that that is over over uh continuous exposure to to stressful combat situations that just binds teams together and this is not about two people it's about five people it's about 10 people so the camaraderie that exists in a in a special forces unit far exceeds what happens in a regular unit and what happens in a regular unit far exceeds what happens uh daily life in in life in general yeah if i may ask you a story from you know the active uh an active combat situation but uh yeah so i think i could uh speak about and i've spoken about this in in a couple of tedx talks that


this in in a couple of tedx talks that i did and all that uh one of the things that stays with me is how unprepared you are for your first real exposure to active fire right so you the amount of firing that we do with the ranges in preparation is just phenomenal hundreds of thousands of hours of firing incessant firing that happens and yet uh in that first exposure your senses get dulled right you know you're not still operating on on peak the same because the fact that there is another guy across who's firing back at you with the intent to kill you is is something that kind of uh dulls your senses and you take a little bit of time to uh get accustomed to that so um this is in in kashmir in kupwara there's this place called the lolap valley lula been incidentally very interesting uh side story uh lulab is a small little valley uh near kupara uh near the line of control um the guys in the sf


the line of control um the guys in the sf uh or at least in my unit we used to call it the land of love and beauty l-o-l-a-b we made an acronym for it in land of love and beauty because the sweetest apples grow there in the whole of kashmir the girls are the prettiest and the fiercest of militants from across generally come and tend to rest here and typically there's always this uh this uh struggle between the sf teams who gets to operate in low lab right so everybody's wanting to operate there because land of love and beauty so uh it isn't lulav and uh i remember this thing because these two guys were and uh were my lead scouts so we we go in a certain formation when we're going up um the hill deep thick jungles and then suddenly from the left uh 11 o'clock area right uphill there's a burst of fire uh typically you can make out that it's an ak-47 burst that you know it's just


an ak-47 burst that you know it's just opened up and these two guys and these two guys were battle hardened veterans right they've been in a lot of uh uh of firefights for me this was my first exposure to a live firefight although you know this is uh almost um four years of uh soldiering where you're not seeing and uh just about i think four months of uh having completed my probation and getting into the sf so an sf soldier generally is exposed to any amount of fire fights so this was my first and uh so we you know it's i think muscle memory you you lie down and you know get hit the ground and then try in this thing and these guys went about the drill in perfect sequence right they know exactly how to do it and all that and i was behind this uh there was a fallen tree trunk and i was behind uh the tree trunk uh but my entire body was not fully behind it was uh kind of you know picture


fully behind it was uh kind of you know picture position so a part of me was exposed and then this guy he suddenly gets up uh puts one hand on my collar and the other hand around my midriff holds my dongry and just flips me just using both hands it just flips me across so that i'm coming to the side and for about 30 seconds i don't quite understand what the hell is going on right and it's only then that uh i understand that this guy actually got up exposed himself to fire he did not end and engage me in a conversation because there was so much of activity that is happening dust was getting kicked out and cacophony of this thing fire happening returning fire and all of that uh rocket launchers going off and all that he just got up and picked me up so he exposed himself and when we got back i asked him well let me use another uh name i i just told him lakshman as a kyunkya why the


him lakshman as a kyunkya why the hell did he do it so he smiled and he told me saab karwai dusa ulta if you were in my position wouldn't you have done it so in that in that 30-second frame he did it out instinctively because he knew that this guy is my team and he can't afford to be hit and he he it did not enter his brain that he could be hit too so and instead of getting into a conversation and that uh the entire activity happening for two minutes he took a seven second eight second ten second uh exposure to pull me into this end so these are the kind of stuff you know and and it teaches you so many things there are so many managerial uh management lessons in that right uh on how to do what to do and and stuff like that maybe if you could highlight another story which would highlight another management lesson maybe that you learned about leadership through action so um from my earliest childhood uh memories i was always


from my earliest childhood uh memories i was always the kinds who would have these uh fears of falling you know of uh a dark uh deep hole that it's got no reference point and you're just falling you know there's no context it's just that somehow in your conscious subconscious you're just falling and uh you know you you'd wake with a start uh suddenly um and um and you realize that if you know everything is good you're safe and stuff like that so i would there was no rationale to it i would have these uh these uh nightmares on on a recurrent basis and it just happened through my younger days uh through adolescence and teenage years and all of that and then i volunteered for the sf and um completed my probation i had gone for the for my parabasic the parachute jumping uh this thing so i remember this uh incident so well it was in october 95 and i was standing uh inside an an32 aircraft with the the the rear ramp of


an32 aircraft with the the the rear ramp of the aircraft pulley pulled out and you're standing at the edge you're the first guy to be jumping and the line of 10 guys behind you soldiers and youngsters from my unit and so the typical how it works is the the uh n32 is a military transport aircraft and it's like a think about it as a tin uh can right and there are seats on both sides facing inwards right and the rear ramp operates like this so when when the when the stick is ready to be thrown out of the aircraft people who are jumping it's called a stick so there's 10 12 14 people so one side gets up faces out towards the rear of the aircraft and there is a jump master who's standing there and controlling the entire activity and there's a red light and a green light in front so when the pilot is ready he aligns the aircraft over the drop zone and then he gives the red changes to green and


and then he gives the red changes to green and the green is the indication for you to jump so i'm standing at the edge of this aircraft uh holding on to my parachute and looking down and it's uh this is the greatest fear that i've known all my life right the fear of falling and i'm standing here and i'm wondering i mean these questions have come to me even earlier but now it's now you know you're on ground zero right you're at the edge of the aircraft and you have to jump and that uh in your deep recess in your mind is that question should i karna hack yeah and then i look across the aisle to the other side of the aircraft where the other line of 15 20 young paratroopers are sitting my unit and those guys each one of them is looking because it's the first experience for everybody all of us have done the basic course and we're coming in the first jump for everybody and he's looking at me into my eyes and


and he's looking at me into my eyes and i know then that if i hesitate now or if i show the slightest sense of hesitation this guy is never ever going to take me as a leader never ever right so if i hesitate now 10 years down the line if i'm to take this guy out into combat if i say that's the pakistanis post up there let's go he's not going to go he's not going to move right so that that was the only connection that was there and then i i looked at them looked back the green light came and i jumped there was no hesitation so some of these things you know it it plays on your mind it kind of activates that trigger and the trigger is not something that can be uh justified or uh cannot be expressed there is a certain mental level and there are there are tripwires there that are just hanging there and you do quite don't know where the tripwire is but it's that external trigger that uh is caused that


it's that external trigger that uh is caused that makes you cross those uh those lines once you jump what was in your head when so nothing because once you jumped because you see the there's another story that every paratrooper will tell you the the first jump is not the scariest actually so just give context on what paratrooper is okay a paratrooper is a guy okay the the smart guys are the ones who fly the aircraft the paratroopers are the stupid guys who jump out yeah so all all special forces soldiers are paratroopers and then there are regular paratroopers also who are not special forces but are regular paratroopers so paratroopers are generally guys who are delivered into battle from air so you use a parrot parachute to descend into battle that's the definition of a paratrooper you were you were saying something about jumping out yeah so the first jump is uh although i was scared shitless you know the first jump but the second jump was even worse and this is something that


second jump was even worse and this is something that applies he equally people might not be the braver ones may not be as scared as i was uh but the second jump is is uh more worrisome is more scary because you now you know the sequence of what happens once you exit the second time you know exactly what the sequence the slip stream hits you you go into this thing and the panic and they were gone that can that happens yeah yeah it does but it's a very very safe activity in fact uh it's safer than crossing the average street in delhi mumbai uh so paratrooping and soldiering very safe activity um do you ever have any interactions with wild animals yes uh um a number of them uh some of them are bearded and carry weapons from across the line of control but the four-legged varieties also uh honestly i'd love to hear about both kinds but uh let's go with whichever one you pick yeah um so this is very very interesting uh so a story


so this is very very interesting uh so a story about my own unit um so there's a officer in our unit from the northeast right so um fantastic well decorated officer daredevil so just a bit bit of context here before i give the story is that uh in the uh in the army in general the commander of uh of a united subunit is called tiger whoever is a senior most or the established leader is called tiger so that's on your radio set and uh even otherwise it's referred to as tiger so the commanding officer of the unit is a tiger the company commander is a tiger there are four companies in a unit in a battalion so each company commander is a tiger of his particular outfit then there are platoon commanders one rung below so the entire hierarchy so each each of these each of these subunits has got a leader who's referred to as a tiger so we we were it is snowbound uh in kashmir place near tandar um


snowbound uh in kashmir place near tandar um ahead of kufara very close to the line of control in fact almost on the line of control so we're out on a mission we're climbing this mountain and we were in let's say about at least three to four feet of uh standing snow wow so it was uh very hard very steep incline and the standing store doesn't make it uh easy at all so we were struggling and uh it exacts a tremendous amount of your strength right so um this guy this this manipuri officer was in the lead and so suddenly you can make out on the radio set because there's a distance and in the night right uh so he's he said halt way quite this thing on the radio set so you suddenly take position because that's the classic the thing of there is some trouble ahead or there is he's picked up some movement that requires investigation or he suspects something happening and all that so so he's and then there's there's quite because


so so he's and then there's there's quite because then you don't get into conversations right we everybody is just silent and observing and you're hearing and your eyesight and everything you get out your night uh binoculars and stuff like that and you're trying to identify what where so you don't ask any questions or you don't get into a speech on the thing because everybody just want to keep all their peripheral senses working overtime so there was a period of quiet for about uh probably a couple of minutes i guess and then there was absolute pin drop silence right and uh so then some somebody on the set asked him waikiawa snow leopard out there and it they're in face to face so that guy's also wondering what the hell is this guy doing out here so you know and then uh there was about 20 minutes of of an extreme situation because you'd never know it's a cat in the wild right and snow levels are way bigger than people think yeah yeah it is it is


bigger than people think yeah yeah it is it is it is so then there was a quiet for about this thing no moment everybody was just frozen and then after some time you could pick up on the uh on the night vision that the outliner the thing that guy also halted so there was a there was a face off for about a a couple of minutes and then the guy decided to break contact and go so under moonlight and it was a i guess it was a half moon or something like that the the beauty of nature right and that people go to such great extents to see seeing it in the wild was an amazing uh experience yeah fantastic experience like any uh what's it called wildlife photographer would have killed two oh yeah absolutely absolutely and virgin snow right absolute virgin snow and this guy on a perch uh right was there ever sense of okay it might pounce out yeah of course okay so the the guy who was about uh probably uh 10 15 feet away from or


about uh probably uh 10 15 feet away from or probably lesser i have more i don't know a couple of feet away from that that guy was like andy you know we're calling him on the set and he's not answering i also want the audience to keep in mind that you guys are fully loaded with weapons probably yes still a daunting absolutely element of so we have our weapons loaded the round in the chamber the the lead scout and the officer they have their weapon on off safety so you know the first reaction can be in milliseconds right so all three of them have this thing so the rest of the team generally has the safety on so you need to switch off the safety and then only you can fire but the rest of the the the scouts and the first officer they always have uh their weapons on ready so they can fire but then again you know you don't want to involve yourself in this unless you're there's a direct attack on you or something like that that


a direct attack on you or something like that that becomes the same because these are these are magnificent beasts and endangered species and you know the ability or your the opportunity to actually see them at such close quarters beautiful so it just stared down yeah yeah yeah and that's it for like a minute it was just staying and then decided over here the sf are not worth it [Laughter] um what's the kind of vibe you get from that magnificent wild animal and i'm dead sure that's not the only wild animal you've seen you might have seen probably bears or something also on your yeah not me personally this is my uh only experience with her with a four-legged wild animal what did you pick up from like seeing it there in terms of i mean well at that point in time the thing was more whether will it attack will i mean what do you do so constantly the thing that's running on your mind is if something were to happen how do you react what do you do you know so


do you react what do you do you know so and and that's that's something that uh we are trained to be doing right so when you are walking uh and a lot of my friends make fun of me now even now so even when you go to a restaurant you sit in a restaurant you want to be scanning the environment you want to be seeing who's where is what's somebody doing where is the exit so the first thing that i do and many of my colleagues and you know friends in the sf do is that when you reach some place you identify the exit first what are the alternate exits what are the ways to get there who's who's where so your general awareness it's it's a it's a mind mapping that happens almost uh instinctively you know you map this and this there's this it's fed into the background and then you get on with whatever else you're doing drinking or eating or whatever else other terrorists also well trained of course are they at your level of like well um technical


are they at your level of like well um technical proficiency might certainly not uh be i mean well i'm talking of the average joe i'm not talking of uh there are outliers on all of these but the technical proficiency will be pretty low right but it more than makes up for their uh the ability to give up one's life god right that's the motivation the motivation levels are are different right so uh from that point of view i think it's it's you need to be giving the devil his due uh and you need to be aware and you need to be prepared that here is a bloke who doesn't mind giving up his life and then you need to be prepared to be dealing with that eventuality something i have loki picked up from both you and major jacob and captain raghu for that matter is that the army teaches you to read human beings very quickly like if you're interacting with someone outside the army you can pretty much scan that person i don't understand how we


much scan that person i don't understand how we all do it but i can see that you'll do it i should be honest with you that i don't think i know the science behind it but i think you're right that you know on a very intuitive level you learn to pick up uh whether this guy is what is this guy about i think on a but i i don't know the science behind it yeah honestly don't know the science behind it do you want to hear it from the layman's perspective sure uh whenever i ask an army man anything about anything um you guys describe it in a lot of detail so i think it's it's primarily observational powers that's the muscle that gets worked in your training uh this observational power doesn't get worked in any other industry to some extent now i because i teach communication skills in my videos i'm forced to do the same uh at a certain point i switched from fitness content to like communication skills corner my lens of the world


to like communication skills corner my lens of the world changed for the sake of my writing but you guys have to do it as a part of your job like right from day one um well that that's uh actually news to me um probably you're right and not probably i think you certainly are right but uh i think i need to you know to to think a little deeper about this uh because i really haven't applied myself in on that level but you're right observational thing you we we do we do tend to scan the environment and categorize people on a very subconscious level right yeah not not a judgmental way just like it gets worked out right right coming back to the wild animal conversation so um i'm sure you've had like you know close encounter with say a terrorist so from a human being's breakdown what do you think is there in the terrorist side is it like completely rewired is there like nothingness what are they thinking about well um like they say the only good terrorists


about well um like they say the only good terrorists are dead terrorists right so and that's the principle that we operate with in the asf that you know uh but there are occasions where a guy puts up his hands and you know uh decides to surrender and then you know the the rules of engagement changes so uh a humane approach is always centric so having said that uh there are there are instances when we have interacted uh with people who have put up their hands or decided not to the one of the striking things that comes very clearly through is the sense of indoctrination clearly they've been fed right but the has been fed in such such a precise and a very concise and uh with intent that that's his altered reality that he his reality has completely changed the frame has changed completely for him and therefore his belief system is altered in a manner that that propels him drives him to do irrational things uh because he believes that uh you know 72


things uh because he believes that uh you know 72 virgins waiting in heaven for him or its nearest equivalent uh that have been force-fed into him over a period of time so to deconstruct that is not a it's not a very easy process because to de-radicalize him a guy who's gone that extent to get him back into this thing is it i'm not saying it's impossible but it is an extremely difficult process because at some form it has touched his soul it has touched us in our uh in our uh uh systems right and he he uh is vibrating to that uh altered reality so to re-alter that altered reality it's not a very easy process and i believe it's not a very uh sustainable process either so it's it's a difficult uh proposition you spoke about terrain you spoke out where you saw the snow leopard could you describe like one the most beautiful place you've seen on any of your adventures as a part of the special forces and two the


as a part of the special forces and two the most difficult terrain that you've come across with the most challenging uh well from uh let's tackle the beautiful part of it first uh a lot of people who speak to me about uh about uh gulmurg and soneberg and you know all these pieces and how beautiful it is i really feel for them right because they haven't seen the beauty so uh in the uh or the name of the place so this place is called indra bhek it's called ib right it's very close to the line of control and i can i recall that a couple of my friends uh uh you know my ex-colleagues who uh been with me there and we've just we just go gaga over that place i haven't seen such such beauty in its raw pristine form even in the best pictures of austria and switzerland and it's just hauntingly beautiful it's just hauntingly beautiful the sad part is that uh at least 99.9995 of our population can never get there right


99.9995 of our population can never get there right and probably that's why the beauty is still being preserved that's the other side of the story but uh it's hauntingly beautiful covered in in it's a typical postcard that you see from switzerland and austria and one of these uh flyers that you see amazingly beautiful no wonder the park is wanted so badly it's beautiful it's just hauntingly beautiful and we spent so many nights out there uh just on the on the fresh snow on the virgin snow and just lying up there night sky just looking at it and just in in wonderland right because the sky is so beautiful no pollution absolutely zero pollution and uh the the sights around and this is before uh mobile phones and digital cameras and all had actually made uh imploded the way it has but uh it's the frames are there in the mind unfortunately i can't replicate them on digital space no no um and what about the most difficult well difficult uh cargill for example


most difficult well difficult uh cargill for example brutal terrain how do you do really no not me personally but my team has been there but uh uh the northeast um it's another form of uh difficult terrain right the jungles of of assam of mizoram is terrible it's really uh it's energy sapping it it just kills you uh in a completely different format right it's like because it's hot it's very hot it's very humid extremely humid it's energy sapping completely in fact uh if it's okay with your runway i'll i'll record a story you know it's a beautiful story please i'll go for it so uh sometime in the mid 90s or was it late 90s 97 98 uh somewhere around that time frame uh is when the u.s special forces the green berets and we started this uh this number of cross trainings so they would come across one of their uh detachments they call them oda's operational detachment alpha uh of the green brace they would come down and train


of the green brace they would come down and train with us one of our teams would go uh out there and train with them so the uh the idea was that uh to increase the interoperability between the special forces because you know it was a more strategic this thing of developing uh competence and capability in a in a larger time frame so it started somewhere in the mid late 90s and i remember one of these things oda 152 from osaka i'm sorry from okinawa in japan so these guys had flown in and uh and that was the first time that our guys had got when i say our guys i'm talking the average soldier they had got exposure to be dealing with uh the sf or the the american special forces and it's uh it's true typically many of them a large proportion of them are all beefcakes right very well built and you know really muscular and visually they're very imposing and the fact that they have a lot of technology at those times i remember these guys used


of technology at those times i remember these guys used to have this very natty little briefcase like uh stuff and they'd open it out and a small antenna would flip out and they would be on satcom with uh they're seeing their base in okinawa or uh in in the us right sitting in the middle of nowhere in mizoram in in the jungles in uh this place in in assam they would have rapid connectivity so both from uh from a visual standpoint their personality and their this thing and from the technology that they were bringing in their weapon systems and all that uh it was uh it was intimidating for our guys right so our guys are typical ram or sham from the the village stock right and uh who typically scrolly uh you know lean and mean no no uh no meat and muscle on them but very uh extremely enduring their endurances power is phenomenal and they were in awe of these guys you know the first time gori chamblee and technology and beefcake


first time gori chamblee and technology and beefcake like personalities and all that there's a there's a little bit of intimidation that was happening i could read it in their eyes you know these guys are wow so over a period of time you break eyes and you start interacting and you're you're firing together you're training together and all of that so these uh training modules are generally about uh four to six weeks and uh about eighty percent of the time you are doing uh classroom based training when i say classroom based in the open there are no structures or rooms but it's all out in the open but it's squad post training right familiarity with each other's weapons their procedures and stuff like that that's that's how we did and then it ultimately uh rolls up to a field exercise right where the training is put together they're formed into teams and they go through a field exercise a tactical exercise so we went through the training and now people started getting a little more comfortable with


and now people started getting a little more comfortable with each other and you know all of that and then um we went in for this field exercise where it was uh a 72-hour operation so there were five or six such teams that were formed each of them about six eight guys and they were left out into this thing this is in in mizoram the jungles of mizoram and so they are self-contained and once again you know it's small teams operating behind enemy lines that's the the scenario and when they go out they're self-contained so they carry their water they carry their sustenance for whatever 72 hours 96 hours something like that and these guys uh they all carried their chocolate bars and energy bars and you know uh mineral water and stuff like that but you know it can it can last only for so many so many hours and uh we went out and uh the first 24 hours went by the 48 husband by about 48 between 48 to 60 hours they ran out of their chocolate bars and they're this


ran out of their chocolate bars and they're this thing because it's energy sapping right and the water and this thing they it just dries up your body and that's when our raman sham they would pick out their jungle hats and the same stream in which uh you know buffalos are bathing or you know uh the all insects in this thing they would just flip the water to one side and strain out through a capra into their water bottles and pop in a water cleansing tablet in that and drink no problem whereas our man when the once the his mineral water is uh is run dry or his chocolate bars are up and he abner ram and sham can operate with that sukhapuri and kastapuri and mirchka singh and whatever something like that he can operate there are no problems and then 72 hours to 96 hours later many of these guys had to be picked up and brought back wow so that is the resilience of our average soldier and this is not true only for


our average soldier and this is not true only for the special forces infantry units are and you know our guys are very very hardy extremely hardy extremely resilient and can take punishment of the kinds that other people cannot cannot endure captain raghu spoke a lot about siachen on the show he also said that there's way more intense places than sea agency is considered the mainstream intense place so what are some of these like examples of these places it does you know operate in kargil also brutal you mentioned cargill as a pretty brutal terrain but what is the brutality of it brutality well uh raghu is right the siachen is hyped up is hyped up probably for good reason maybe with intent probably by default you know either end of the spectrum and there's a lot of romanticizing that happens uh associated with the name because you know there is a certain element of uh of recollection right that happens when you mention a name but you take any of these uh this


a name but you take any of these uh this of these areas in in the forward areas right the galwan incident that happened uh the northern edge of uh pangangso the lake the rain there is very harsh extremely harsh right uh the it's it's almost similar to catching except you know you don't have that kind of snow snow doesn't fall there but the temperature and the chill uh windchill factor is similar if not uh probably a little worse out here the ability to be able to withstand those climatic conditions and operate be able to operate in that kind of an environment is very taxing on the body right and the the logistics and the operational issues that go into uh turning over the troops in contact with the enemy you know uh enemy facing thing is humongous it's just absolutely humongous i don't know if you recall and had written a piece on this i think it was in the mumbai mirror hanuman tapa do you recall that story of that young boy um who had


recall that story of that young boy um who had got trapped in a avalanche right yeah and he was pulled out about um i think six days five five days or six days later and he was he was still alive uh brought him back but unfortunately he passed away imagine the kind of effort that it takes to to be working under those conditions where right uh a single helicopter that goes up can carry no more than one jerry can of fuel fuel is the lifeline right you have about a hundred and twenty uh guys from the same from hanuman tapas company of that particular unit that go in and are digging with their hands uh boulders the size of this room probably blue eyes right going at it with hammers until more specialized equipment could be flown in because you know like i said a helicopter can lift just one jerry can equivalent of of load uh that's about 20 liters of fuel and the kind of stuff that is required to be put together to get the entire uh


to be put together to get the entire uh sustenance operations that uh go the logistic chain that goes through to keep those 120 guys intact right phenomenal it's just phenomenal it's and it's only the army of the navy or the air force that can that can carry out something like this to just get those 120 people to risk their life because it's still an avalanche prone area 10 of their guys are buried down under right they don't get any esops they don't get any additional pay they don't get any pf additional nothing it's just the fact that one of their own is buried there and they need to pull him out and they just put everything into it right at the cost of losing another 20 men 30 men it it'll do whatever it takes to get that one guy out the chances of of one person [Music] staying alive uh three hours after an avalanche reduces by about fifty percent right from three hours to nine hours that reduces to about 85 percent so


nine hours that reduces to about 85 percent so it's only a 15 chance that you'd find him alive and yet pumping in 120 guys who are volunteers each one of them as a volunteer to go there and dig and actually extract him that calls for something so that's that's a kind of uh effort that's the kind of uh of intensity with which uh people work and it's such a pity that you know the guys are not uh and yet it's the same uh same guy who when he comes out of the army he's just employed as a guard standing outside that's it that that's the extent of his uh office capability that is recognized by the world outside yeah i want to highlight two things before we move on to the next question the first is that we need the listeners of the podcast who've listened to it till this point to share this particular piece um what cers saying will kind of happen through your effort podcast spread by uh word of mouth and uh i i kind


by uh word of mouth and uh i i kind of one of the intentions with uh starting this podcast was to change culture fortunately i have friends like manish pandey a common friend he's very driven about rebranding the indian army so he was someone who nudged me to do these army cell podcasts and i've enjoyed it because that's the second thing i want to highlight my second uh main point that i'd like to bring across is as a podcaster your job is to deep dive into someone else's head and i've deep dived into like more than 100 success so-called successful people's heads you know what society considers successful and when i speak to army personnel there's a very different energy there's a different approach about life there's like a very meticulous approach about life like as in if you're given a task you always break it down to more than the abcs of things i think the average efficient human being breaks it down to the abc's you guys will go to the


to the abc's you guys will go to the core of even what's within the a the abcs of just the a and the abcs of just the b so uh that skill can be translated into any industry basically uh and it's it's a very useful skill for the startup world for the corporate world where um okay then that's the other thing about the army you guys also very action oriented so you won't just break down the abcs of the abcs but you'll break it down for making your process a lot easier for the whole team there's a again the teammate mentality this efficiency mentality i think it'll slowly get discovered by the masses even with this podcast we have people from big corporates who follow the show we have you know entrepreneurs who follow the show and these kind of people need to leverage what indian army veterans have like learned through their career so i personally see it changing so it's just about taking the voice out there i do so too i do


the voice out there i do so too i do so i completely agree it's a well i think it's uh there is a time dependency here right and uh uh a podcast such as yourself and you know a whole lot of other uh such engagements help to bring this this feature to light yes and uh it's an education in a in a slightly different dimension right that uh there is this uh this uh uh quantity that is available uh that represents a certain quality and uh you might as well uh try and take a look at it you know how did you figure okay that your time with the special forces is now up and now it's time for a new innings in life like what was your mindset back then yeah uh transitions are always different right it's always difficult you you you are in a certain comfort zone you are confident of what you're doing there is a certain mindset that's been shaped over time uh so all of that right uh i'm just reminded uh so i got this


uh i'm just reminded uh so i got this cousin of mine who's uh much like yourself he's an entrepreneur and he's done very well in life extremely successful so he switched uh from uh he was a very successful i.t uh entrepreneur he set up his own company and scaled it to amazing heights and then he shifted focus about i think about a decade back eight nine years back uh he's an engineer and a uh mba he shifted focus completely he got a ceo to be running the company uh hands-on on a date on day-to-day basis and he switched over to uh to genetics to biotech and stuff like that right and this is just from the time when the the reading of the the genome genome sequencing it just about started right this is the time that he switched and he was so enamored by the entire thing and you know and he's now set up his own like five years ago this is about yeah probably slightly more not five years back uh if i remember


slightly more not five years back uh if i remember right well i won't i won't have that i guess because that would be out of my depth so i wouldn't i won't hazard a guess there but anyway uh so a very successful guy so we were and we're very close so we have this regular conversation so whenever he flies in from the states we would hook up and you know catch over a couple of drinks and just speak about left right and center so i think uh it was in early 2000 to uh thereabouts so one of these conversations he had just flown in and uh we were having a drink and yeah so what's happening with you so i said i'm in uh kashmir so he said uh so he asked me what i'm doing and i try and tried and describe it to him in some shape and form uh so he said okay so have you thought about a life beyond the army i said life beyond the army so yes okay so what are you doing


the army so yes okay so what are you doing after this where do you go so i said i've i should be going in for my staff college exam and then hopefully get to do the staff course i don't know if you've heard about the staff called the different services staff college in uh wellington in nilgiris uh that's supposed to be the stepping stone for uh higher appointments in the army okay so i said i hopefully i should clear the exam and go for the staff course and thereafter i said okay then what then i said you know a couple of years i'll be good to command my unit become a full colonel command my unit he said then what i said then what so that's when he asked me have you ever thought about life beyond the army i said no not really he said why why why can't you think of him and do this for 10 12 years whatever why don't you think of something beyond the army so i said look it's a it's a stable lifestyle


i said look it's a it's a stable lifestyle it's a it's a secure environment and you know so he said you're in kashmir you are out in operations probably uh 6 to 12 times in a year and that's what you intend to be doing for this thing and each time you go out there you're putting your life on the line there's a risk to your life so you're telling me that you're willing to take a risk on your life but not willing to take a risk of stepping out and doing something different and it hit me like a ton of bricks not because i wanted to do something else but i said you know despite all of this what i'm doing my little world is just this and i'm not really able to comprehend or fathom what lies outside that little bubble and i thought that was a little it it kind of shook me up and uh and then i thought you know i must start thinking about uh life beyond uh serving the army serving the country is


uh serving the army serving the country is a privilege er it's a fantastic experience that i've had so far but why not and that's that's when the kira first entered my mind i wouldn't call it akira um so after i finished command of my unit and i thought and although i was doing very well in the army i thought this is an appropriate time because my kids were also coming of the age when they were getting in the 10th and 12th standard and i could never be there with them when they were navigating their way through then but i thought you know now i should give them a little time and opt for some stability so these were the kind of factors that played in my mind uh you know when i when i decided to make that switch it wasn't a comfortable decision at all and there was a lot of soul searching that went in uh and a lot of my course mates actually told me there's a product you know because you you've done all the all the


you know because you you've done all the all the hard work right uh or to use that term they said good night and now it's time to you know enjoy the privileges but uh i thought you know you there had to be a balance somewhere in life right you can't just be going on the path well that's that's how it appealed to me so many of these factors just came to play and i thought you know now it's a a reasonable time to having served the army for 21 years to step out and do something different and see how the world outside operates and probably be an example for the rest of the army i'm not too sure about that a lot of my youngsters on my team and you know outside will say oh god no i mean not everyone but i'm sure there's you know that maybe there are certain people in the army who are considering that life outside and there's a lot of value to be added to that world outside i can at least talk for the startup space


outside i can at least talk for the startup space in india people in the startup space would readily lap up people from the army once they get to know about the brains uh that are available certainly i i think uh like i mean probably at the cost of reputation but like i said you know there's a lot of uh uh of uh latent talent that's available and i i identify that as idle capacity right and let's take this pandemic for example right it's it's about uh the ability to sit down and think through and see how things are going to roll a couple of weeks down the line couple of months down the line couple of years down the line and being able to put in place processes and systems to be done and the uh the average uh uh army officer is very well trained to be doing that that's his bread and butter and so much of competence so much of of uh expertise that has been picked up along the way it's just just rotting away with uh people


way it's just just rotting away with uh people not being able to exploit it so if you had to highlight like the difference in mindset of an average person who's not gone through the whole army experience was someone who has what are the advantages here which apply to the corporate world to the startup world to even the world of leadership and motivation training you know what can the army actually bring to this world well i i really won't generalize it to say that you know these are uh two separate buckets right and there there's a lot of overlap that happens right uh it's essentially a question of let me let me put it this way that there are two or three things that actually stand out right number one is that are people able to correlate and identify with a larger cause in the army in the special forces specifically and in the larger army as well there is a cost that you're you are fighting for that you you're serving right and the ability to paint that picture at


serving right and the ability to paint that picture at the at the strategic leadership level whether it be in the army or the corporate world to paint the picture that this we are actually part of a larger cause right it's not just the greenbacks or the the money the the cash flow alone that counts it's an important uh part don't don't get me wrong i'm not suggesting that you know cash doesn't play a part of it at all it's an important part but that ability to correlate it with a larger cause and this is something that you know the likes of of bezos and uh uh microsoft and yeah elon musk and all these guys have been able to paint that the the larger picture and the ability to gravitate people towards that cause and be part of the process that drives that change right and that's that's i think a very very important process so if you've been uh wearing the olive greens in your earlier avatar or or the the whites and uh the blues for


or the the whites and uh the blues for my navy and air force counterparts there's an alignment there that automatically kicks in so they know that the alignment can so you don't need to paint that picture for them the ability to correlate that is very is much easier but having said that uh it would be an insult to the intelligence of so many of our youngsters and so many of our people out there to say that they require specialized training in that these are all very instinctive these are all very intuitive so a person will very quickly catch on if there is a if there's a feeling that this is a cost beyond right a larger uh cost that's being that's that we're working towards uh but also uh probably on a counter-intuitive process um is also the fact that uh uh there are there are ways to channel that energy right uh now it need not necessarily be that uh uh you you have uh uh a certain uh microsoft or amazon or a google that needs to come


microsoft or amazon or a google that needs to come together and paint that picture it this intuitive process you know is bottom up rather than a top driven or let's say it should meet somewhere uh midway it's like basically they kind of bring that team player spirit oh absolutely absolutely and i don't know if you've read this uh book uh team of teams no i haven't it's a brilliant book it's about the armed forces no it's it's about uh it's about how teams small teams and he's just picking up the uh uh the idea of the special forces which operate on small teams and uh he's he's talking about a situation in a wuka world where uh the the basic premise changes so dramatically and so rapidly that you need these small teams to be collaborating with each other and not drive teams so large that they fail to start functioning uh together which is the big problem i see in the corporate world at least from the outside that it's not agile that's why


from the outside that it's not agile that's why there's room for so many startups to come up in this country today absolutely and uh this is once again uh i don't remember i think it was in uh malcolm gladwell in outliers who he talks about this that typically the moment a team size exceeds somewhere about 150 or so then you're no longer you're sacrificing uh efficiency uh i'm sorry the other way around you're sacrificing uh creativity for efficiency you you are efficient but you're killing creativity because teams don't collaborate you know the team becomes so ungainly or unwieldy that they have no ability to be a transaction or everything is actually on a transactional level yeah yeah right krishna i feel like that there's maybe like 10 more podcasts in you but maybe for this episode we should just stop it here leave the audience with you know just a trailer about everything you bring to the table i also feel the world of the internet hasn't discovered all of


the world of the internet hasn't discovered all of you yet so this is just the first piece so some signing off note like from you like just for the world or the just for the listeners who've heard the podcast till this point something about the army well uh the army is a fabulous organization uh it is in fact one of the uh one of those organizations which uh if i'm given a chance and probably sounds dramatic but uh given a chance it's an organization i'd love to serve once again right going into the future um i don't see too much of a chance happening uh in this lifetime because i think i've run my course but uh probably you know it's it's a beautiful organization it's structured so uh phenomenally well and uh it's been uh an organization that has delivered time and time again right when every single take this pandemic for example when everyone's back was to the wall the clamour that started is let's give it out to the army and they will bring


give it out to the army and they will bring it back on track when the bridge in matunga was it or where did it collapse on that uh bridge in uh on the railway tracks it collapsed they brought in the army so you know it's it runs again and again and again because there is a set there's a belief system and uh which which ensures that you are able to consistently deliver uh dip irrespective of the circumstances around you reliability well adaptability flexibility 10 more podcasts with you sir thank you for being on the runway show today thank you i really enjoyed the podcast thank you very much i'm glad so again just the beginning just the beginning with this one thank you thank you that was our episode with colonel subin balakrishnan if you enjoyed it make sure you like it make sure you share it with your friends remember guys as sir said the indian army isn't out then mainstream media as much as it should be out there the american


as much as it should be out there the american army spoken about so much even the british army spoken about so much and here we have an army that's widely respected all over the world an army that is considered to be one of the most efficient one of the most deadly armies that's what this episode aimed to do there's no conversation with a former army person or a current army person that i personally don't gain from that i personally don't learn from soldiers are just built differently they train to think differently i hope it's made you think as much remember to follow the runway show on spotify with a spotify exclusive now every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this was another incredible indian army themed episode of the ranvi show lots more coming your way do let us know by commenting on social media by sending us your dms tell us which other indian army heroes would you like to see on the ranvir show and


would you like to see on the ranvir show and the ranveer show hindi we'll try our best to bring them to you guys if you enjoyed this episode hit thumbs up share it with your friends jai hind happy independence day [Music] you


a guest on the runway show today is the brains behind some of india's most successful businesses he's one of the most renowned business and corporate coaches in the country and i'm proud to say that he's also one of my oldest mentors in life dr radhakrishnan pillai returns on the runway show today every conversation with him is always a learning process for me he's someone who's a social observer he observes society he thinks about it and he's also a polymath so he applies his knowledge of all those other subjects and tries for lack of a better sentence predicting the future of the world today's theme is the life within and after the pandemic what's the world going through what's the world getting prepared for where's the world going what are the opportunities what are the challenges going to be like and at its core how do you make the best use of your time spent at home your time through the pandemic your own productivity levels that's what we're talking about today every


levels that's what we're talking about today every episode of the runway shows a mentoring session for me but this episode is an actual conversation with my true mentor dr rkp remember to follow the runway show on spotify whereas spotify exclusive now every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world loved by bosses brought to you by airtel extreme fiber where we tried decoding productivity in the new normal with growing needs due to work from home the super fast 1gbps internet by airtel xtreme fiber can handle up to 60 devices at the same time so with that get ready to hear from india's top business minds about their stories the struggles and the bosses this is dr radhakrishnan pillai returning once again for beautiful episode of the ranbir show [Music] dr radhakrishnan an all-star of the runway welcome back thank you so much for once again having me on this home show i would call it yeah you were first in the episode in many ways you


you were first in the episode in many ways you were what led to us starting the podcast when you had been the last episode of something called the inspiring interview series that we had done way back the first time you and me had ever met always learning from you sir uh one thing i've gotta ask you is um what's happening in the world right now because you hear people talking about how vaccination drives are going to bring the world back to what it was i've got a lot of friends who are saying you know they've got the double vaccination like they're fully vaccinated but they're still getting covered and they've had like i have a friend i just spoke to him last night intelligent guy software engineer in silicon valley um he took the vaccine everything and he got a horrible case of code like two three weeks ago like as bad as anyone else he was like one step short of being hospitalized my point of saying that is no matter how many vaccines come out


that is no matter how many vaccines come out like vaccines are definitely needed as like a shield to safeguard you that's the best that the human race has been able to do in this phase but in saying that considering the possibility that this whole covet situation work from home uh the pandemic situation is going to maybe be there for the foreseeable future five years maybe 10 years what's the world looking like sir so first things first i think we are going through a massive disruption yeah and it's going to be a new world order and when i say new world order i'm not only talking about social behaviors the way we think the way we interact the way we deal with ourselves and outsiders so three data points number one um the world will communicate differently it's going to be real time everywhere so when we heard this word called as live you know especially when i was a child and it meant some live television program maybe a cricket match happening in one of the


maybe a cricket match happening in one of the world can you believe it do you notice this that everything is live social media is real time it's life so what's up is live i'm thinking something it's happening live so this whole communication is real time and multiple first data point our communications has already changed second thing that's going to happen is going to have a new economic world order okay i know of girls who are not even in the college in schools and i'm sure you also know many of them who are earning crows of rupees so that's something we should know that the world order will go into a different phase of economy and knowledge economy is going to be a major factor look at by jews or any of the educated companies so they're out right out over there but they don't know what you're doing and the third and the most important data point is our families are getting disrupted maybe a new family order would come in think about it joint family to nuclear family but how do you


it joint family to nuclear family but how do you become two individuals i'm not saying good or bad but definitely it's going to be a new way the generation will move forward so i think pandemic and the covid in respect of whether we find a vaccine or no i mean let's let's go positive about it so all bad things end at the end of everything you know we're going to see the way human race will think ideate communicate travel totally different and it's not going to be different only it's going to be a multiplier effect so i think let's utilize this in the best possible way so i think it's very important to know that you know pandemic has the bad sides of it you know people have lost jobs people are not able to stabilize themselves you know suicide cases to combat me you know but the reality is that if you can think about the opportunities that is coming up in the new world order i would call it a social order everything is going to


would call it a social order everything is going to be an opportunity but you need to study it think deep and write the way again the new world order one of the early business lessons i ever learned in my life is if you study like the massive businesses ever you know they're always built around some sort of a disruption yes something happens in the real world maybe some new technology comes up maybe there is a new wave of human thinking and the businesses that are built around that become the the long lasting business yes a great example of this i think you had taught me in 1915 when cars over invented there were three families could you like just share that example on this absolutely i think this is the henry ford era yeah so henry ford uh supposed to be the mass producer of the t model but let me tell you this that henry ford wasn't the only person making cars so they were you know if uh if i were to read it right now more than 500 companies in the same


it right now more than 500 companies in the same era but of course ford became the face of it so if you look at runway is face of indian social media the youth and there'll be a few of you are among the top but you know the thousands of them who are part of this whole big revolution that's happening so i think we are in that phase once again what happened probably in the 19 early 19th century or 20th century as you call it about the automobile revolution the ideal revolution happened in my generation you know maybe almost 21 years ago the y2k generation then the social media revolution with because uh i think people figured that internet 2.0 is where humans interact with internet 1.0 was just websites where you go see different websites cartoonnetwork.com and yahoo.com and some cnn.bbc.com and now suddenly mark zuckerberg came and said no let's make these human beings interact with whatever is happening and that was the big wave and and here comes a very interesting


the big wave and and here comes a very interesting point it's also going to be spirituality 2.0 okay okay now that's where probably we don't realize it it's happening very much under current because of the pandemic a lot of people are facing mental health issues or challenges but what is interesting is that people have also started thinking the difference between being lonely and enjoying solitude okay so when you're lonely that's a mental health problem but when you want to be in solitude that's a spiritual solution uh i have a mentor called zakir khan yes he's a stand-up comic but he's also an intellectual he observes the world and he had a very nice modern take on spirituality he said that these are all psychological solutions for human beings uh problems and probably our ancestors are ancient we looked at spirituality with that light this was their therapy yeah so we keep talking about like even i'm going through therapy right now it's helping me a lot but for them when there wasn't


me a lot but for them when there wasn't this concept of therapists they would turn to scriptures they would want to uh things that their ancestors wrote in books uh keeping that in mind so i want to take the conversation to this three versions of a human being theory so they say everyone has three versions of themselves one is what you present in the professional environment one is what you present in the like social environment and one is what you present uh at home yes you know there's like three versions of you your friends your professionals and at home but because of the pandemic now there's no social environment yeah yeah yeah and you're left with two versions of yourself the home one which includes you being alone and you being with us okay and your uh professional self yes uh so i think that's actually a big like stark change in human being that's what we can anticipate the question specifically sir is about productivity you know because i feel like everyone's in this strange zone especially when last year


everyone's in this strange zone especially when last year pandemic began people figured that oh if i just work for five or six hours that's good enough compared to the nine ten hours you're putting in an office your effective work is five to six hours of work so say you begin at nine am you can actually finish all your work by three pm yes max four pm five people and you have the rest of the time to yourself um but people are still kind of gauging how to understand how productive they're being everyone's confused and this has led to a phenomenon called languishing okay this is what like uh western media calls it keeping languishing in mind the question is so like uh maybe the first question to you is on a personal level how do you measure your productivity and the follow-up question is how should one measure their productivity okay so i have very clearly sorted out myself in my life i've been very very happy in that first level of productivity is outside and the second level of


level of productivity is outside and the second level of productivity is inside so i have a measurable tool for that so let me start with outside because the world understands me more from outside so for me how much do i write is a measurement of productivity i'm an author that's what the world knows me for all my channel care books you know with the pandemic i have written 21 books on chanakya four to be released yet but you know i write every day i write for newspapers i write for children's magazine i write poems if i don't write and i have a measurable tools and i need to write at least for two or three hours a day and i do that consistently including research articles the second is the inside way of productivity and that's you know calmness non-reaction and maturity to everybody around i mean there are many measurable tools you know i got some 20 data points of what i call myself as productive but the two of them very prominently is the kind of


two of them very prominently is the kind of writings that i do and i do that consistently and the calmness that i have that have been growing internally yeah i think uh it's really cool that you split it into two thought processes because one is very subjective to what your profession is yes you know okay how much how many uh pages are you writing every day i'm assuming yes for me it's it's it's a little random it's depending on my own energy and my own creativity on the day and i'm not able to quantify it yes but that second point you spoke about is what i find very interesting and because we're seeing so many rise of mental health issues all over the world here's an exercise that's helped me as well you basically very strongly try scanning your own emotional processes and you try instead of okay so everyone's got emotion and then there's a response to that same emotion okay the emotion could be anger something happens wrong at home lots of people are fighting


happens wrong at home lots of people are fighting with the parents nowadays if they're staying with the parents it's just generational gaps all that so anger will rise in every home because you're confined in that same space with the same people can you take a step back from your own anger gauge it and decide your reaction after gauging it versus keeping your observation very close to your emotion seeing the emotion right and then using that emotion and reacting wow so it's called creating distance between your perception and your uh emotion pretty much i read an interesting article from a scientist and believe me he's not a spiritual guru he's an absolute scientist who works on the brain and he said death is not real it's only a mental concept at the level of consciousness if you go into the level of consciousness you will not understand what is birth or death so let me put a very straight question to you do you remember when you were born does anybody remember it's a concept that has been told by


remember it's a concept that has been told by somebody they put in a date and a time and told you but do you remember that when you actually came into the world when the first time so actually speaking when we say we are not born it's true at the conscious level you don't remember your birth and funnily you will never remember your death you died previously you remember that you were born this life unfortunately what is happening is that we are working at a level only at the external or you know dimension i'm not telling that external dimension is not important because that's how you uh interact with the society but having two goals measurable for yourself i think for each person you should have two goals whichever profession you believe in whichever path you have chosen measure it outside if you're going to be in olympics better go for gold but that's one measure but the other measure is also saying that have you evolved consciously with your consciousness and saying that yes i need to get


consciousness and saying that yes i need to get deeper and if you're able to connect both billion you will be happy inside and successful outside yeah yeah uh the consciousness goal or the spiritual goal uh as we call it uh i think i think the world is waking up to spiritualism and successful thoughts yes uh primarily because the world always begins in a selfish place and if you really deep dive into spiritualism you'll see how much it benefits your mind your perception of the world and therefore your career and every other aspect of life your empathy your relationships etc etc coming back to that that same concept of creating distance between your perception and your emotions yes so i personally feel that when we're talking about productivity from an internal at home perspective if you feel that as compared to this time last year so say you're in we're in august now august 2021 in august 2020 did you react more was there more anger was there more anxiety versus this year or you feel


there more anxiety versus this year or you feel your karma you're taking some time and one step away from your emotions uh one step away just to kind of give yourself some time and gauge what's happening in your head if you feel you're doing this more often it's a great measure of internal productivity yes and that's what the world really needs right now yes all of us are at home and we have access to the world only through social media only through content but there's this whole internal kind of cocktail of emotions going on we're scared about what's happening on the outside we're scared about our own family's safety we're scared about our own professional futures yeah all you can do is learn to be calm because that calm and that kind of stilta that zen mentality will protect you in all those others yes say you have some professional trouble the ability to stay calm will get you through that professional trouble so your family has some trouble the ability to stay calm will get


some trouble the ability to stay calm will get you through that trouble yes so it's very important to give yourself these brain exercises right now and you don't i mean obviously meditation will help a lot in creating that distance between your perception and your emotions but more importantly it's about you being conscious about working on your brain if you don't want to meditate right now don't brightly start being conscious of gauging your own mind and seeing how it reaches absolutely maybe our generation is seeing such disruption for the first time yeah and that's the way we look at it but if you go back into human history there were many disruptions world war one and world war two i mean just imagine this you know india of course was under the british rule at that particular time but look at the whole europe collapsed yeah okay at one point you know hiroshima nagasaki bombing how many how much time it took for them to revive and come back yeah okay and maybe you go back into history there


yeah okay and maybe you go back into history there will be many other you know maybe kalinga war in chanakya's times as we call it you know post chanaka time the whole thing was disrupted and you know everything think about it it's not a mahabharata war let me put it that way think about it the best of the warriors of all places coming together killing each other total destruction but i always remain uh remember this ramayana you know incident right you know after uh one of these big wars that happens one of the vice person tells this you know thank you for the war and people are blaming you know each other and they're trying to find out the reason why because a new world will get created a new world order will get derived from this ashes that has come out from this fire you know only thing is that since you're going through the fire there's so much of heat uncertainty but let me tell you life is beautiful yeah and we all will go through this churn and of


and we all will go through this churn and of course the corona may not end as you rightly pointed out the thing is that you know nature knows that at the end of it maybe we'll develop natural immunity beyond just you know the vaccination but the world will go and we'll only become better a respite of this corona so because the theme of today's episode is specifically about productivity yes people's mindsets um very simple question for you and this is a question probably that i've forgotten how to answer because i've just been so much on the floor with careers since the age of 22. how does one stop procrastinating there are two types of procrastinations one is one-off second is a habit so let's say you know i'm not in a mood today and i'm supposed to do something and i said broadcasters you know i'm not in the right frame of mind i don't have the energies to do it that's fine but it becomes a habit over a period of a time no


becomes a habit over a period of a time no no calculation and all those things then you keep doing it then it's a problem coming back to your question about how to stop procrastination two simple formulas very very simple formulas reward and punish your mind okay so many people are not even about the day you are aware of it said okay mind is your best friend or enemy talk to yourself make some schedules i always say you know this one month or a uh 21 day formula maybe long word so that every day i will get up at four o'clock let's say i'm just giving an example or maybe seven o'clock what you do is that you make a log book and saying that okay did i get up at today i don't know seven o'clock great write it down reward yourself second day reward yourself don't get it punish yourself the good news is that as procrastination is a negative habit punctuality and self-discipline is a positive habit so when you're developing you to play with the mind if


you're developing you to play with the mind if it's not listening punish it a little bit it's listening reward it a little bit slowly slowly you'll get into the zone where you'll become self-disciplined okay but also the last point which i want to tell ranveen as far as procrastination is concerned you know uh it's important to also know in life what not to do and that's going to be one of the biggest decisions you'll ever take yeah uh i think the way i look at the same thing you spoke about so is the macro and microphone yes so macros what you spoke about in the end which is that it's a very simple piece of advice but select a career or a role which you really enjoy and uh in that kind of a case you won't need motivation because when you have a very clear end goal then motivation will find you you you'll wake up with that fire of like going down that path you've chosen often procrastination is the outcome of you being on


often procrastination is the outcome of you being on a path you're not supposed to be on often not always but often like i love my job i love every aspect of it but there are days where i procrastinate a bit it's okay once in a while it's okay in the swami vivekananda put it nicely if you're inspired you will do it better than yourself yeah 100 because you're given external energy you'll be able to like see patterns that you probably wouldn't enable yes you bring creativity and feel fair to yourself absolutely so i think motivational could be external inspiration is internal yeah also keep in mind the micro perspective on procrastination uh there's a rule that i followed since childhood but i didn't know that i was following it later in life i spoke about it in motivational talks and later on in life i came to know that there are motivational speakers all over the world who've spoken about this rule earlier yeah it's called the five second rule so basically if


it's called the five second rule so basically if you're watching tv but you know that there's some work to do you're playing a video game you know that there's some work to do um you give yourself first you give yourself a five or ten minute window you say okay in the next five minutes i'm gonna go in the next ten minutes and you try kind of disciplining yourself within that window wow but if you go beyond it say you look at your watch and you know 15 minutes have passed now i'm beyond the 10 minute mark then you have to go in a slight red alert zone where you have to do a countdown to five so freeze that moment and tell yourself that if i continue watching tv or playing this video game beyond the count of five it's going to affect my career badly or my purpose badly versus if i get up and get my task done then that's going to affect my career positively so you go five four three two one and put pressure on


go five four three two one and put pressure on yourself through that count get up or stay and have it affect your long-term career but often what i've seen is only the first two or three times of doing this is difficult the more you practice this the easier it becomes and the long-term effects are that you're actually able to kill off that habit of procrastination use this a lot in college where i wasn't enjoying what i was studying i didn't want to study like engineering because this is the way it was being taught was road learning base which is not our engineering should be taught but if you have to pass your exams you have to follow these kind of games what that's the other thing that engineering college or say education that maybe you're not enjoying does for you it puts you through that you know that that intense zone of doing something you don't enjoy which i have been told is the strength of indians all over the world yes that we will put ourselves into that grind


yes that we will put ourselves into that grind yes um maybe it's an outcome of you know an old school education system so many of the kids aren't enjoying the way things are being taught but because they put themselves through this now they can put themselves through anything anything it's like getting into the bombay local trains yeah yeah that's a that's a completely apt example if you can travel there you can travel anywhere in any condition 100 it you know you know when i look back at college when i travel in that local train it made me so tough it made me so tough mentally that um you that's one of the gifts of growing up in this city yeah um there's there's there are curses there are lots of blessings professionally one underlying blessing is that makes you a tough person so but the follow-up question to this whole section okay it's about um slumps in your professional life lots of people in bombay in the rest of india have lost their jobs so


in the rest of india have lost their jobs so anyone who's basically lost the businesses be it the restaurant industry or other industries which were dependent on a footfall or anyone who's just in a dark place professionally what do you have to say to him so i think it's a very very important question let me answer it first pre-pandemic okay i'll tell you post pandemic or what we are going through right now there was an hr research human resource so professionals contributed very interesting research and the insight was everybody will go through minimum three career changes in their lifetime so shifting of careers two three times is very normal now coming back to the pandemic you don't even know the profession that you had it's going to be the profession of the future initially it was maybe shifting from one company to another but you were known for a certain skill but you didn't have to reinvent your own skill maybe get into a different space altogether but let me start with the spiritual answer swami


but let me start with the spiritual answer swami tejama ninja in my mission one of my gurus here he said something very nice suppose you're walking on a road and you know towards your destination and suddenly you find a road block slum and you're not able to move forward maybe that road was not meant for you and i can tell you hundreds of cases where that initial phase you feel you know i've given up everything for this particular career path maybe i educated myself i took loans and suddenly nothing's going to happen but you just wait for some time maybe we'll take you to different path altogether i'll give you more personal instance you know i was a very very high flying professional till the year 2000 okay and you'll be surprised that you know educated mba worked with mark uh masqueraders who i worked with sachin tendulkar we were the company which actually made him one of the richest sportsmen in the world and the owner of that company just died in a car


the owner of that company just died in a car accident and i was out of job okay not that i was unproductive the company had to wind up and you know you just go back and wonder what's going to happen but that's the point where you take a break with yourself a problem in life is we want always the next activity the moment this activity ends why can't we take a break with our souls and it so happened with me that you know this many people call it in-between jobs in fact that's the most beautiful period of your life but we don't take in the right stride so if you're going through this slum where you lost a job or something has hit maybe your boss has decided to chuck you out that's okay but don't start looking at another job without analyzing yourself so it's important to take a break you don't have to get in the next activity or the next job immediately give yourself some time now you'll be surprised you know i was totally trained


be surprised you know i was totally trained to be a working professional and then you know and suddenly in this break and you're 2000 i go to kumbamela and then you know a new direction my life comes in and then suddenly i'm into a business another disruption comes in my life and i was a very successful entrepreneur by the way you know i have a company called atma darshan traveled a lot took more than 30 000 people to see india and suddenly another thing hits in and i'm into the chanakya path so what happens at every new path you don't know what the next that's where uncertainties but you know you need to give that break unfortunately in during those uncertainties people commit suicide that's what's happening with the restaurant industry i understand you know i mean so many restaurant people whom i know you know because many of them are from some of the communities that i know the banter community specifically you know it's so sad and i'm saying that you know


it's so sad and i'm saying that you know just give yourself time i understand the pressure the financial whole thing but it's not your problem it's everybody's problem so i think it's very important when you have a slump in a career take a break i'm not telling you know become lazy or you know it's important just take a break i'm telling you if you just calm down yourself for a week i mean that's the minimum that you can give yourself right and of course we have a discussion very open-ended description of their family and friends i can tell you one case it's an inspiring case that's a particular person i'm talking about pandemic he lost a job okay and he was committed to the company for 20 years and that company not only winded up the industry winded up but this guy is such an inspiring guy he's a set of tkr i mean fine let me give a break myself he went to somebody and they said you know i'm looking out for new


and they said you know i'm looking out for new career opportunities can you believe this this person got a job in a software company but it's not technically educated but as a part of the senior management team to manage like this yeah so he said yeah i may not have the technical skills of software but i was hired with a higher salary for something which was so natural to me which i never knew yeah so it's important to know that yes if you have a slump just give your time of course on a very practical side i would say that you know go and learn new skills invest and a lot of youtube videos and you don't have to if you don't have a few lacks of rupees to invest on a edutech course or something like that's fine but you know you can have the basic skills and try it out you know life is all about experimenting again and again and again yeah um you know i'd like to highlight human skills you as like the core skill like if you don't


you as like the core skill like if you don't even want to learn coding specifically or if you don't want to learn video creation specifically which are very kind of uh elaborate skills just learn eq learn how to manage human beings learn how other people's heads work absolutely you know we had a we had a subject in engineering you know it's called the communication skills i'm asking who's recording this communication whatever it was a communication system um and everyone knows that when you're a student you know that yeah communication skills matter in life but i don't think they understand the degree to which youtube yeah yeah um so i remember just at the start of beer by says i used to go up to people on the road and begin conversation and it was difficult in the first few times then it became really easy after maybe the third day of me doing it it was like second nature i didn't know it then but it was giving me play intense training for my business career because that's basically what along with communication


business career because that's basically what along with communication skills you develop something more unique confidence no then empathy yeah the first conversation we had ever like when we met each other for the first time you highlighted the significance of being a polymath yes polymath absolutely and in my in my heart i always knew the significance of it but because since i was a kid different subjects interested me video games interested me as much as history did or maths did uh but when then i hear it from you you know i look at you i've always looked at you as a mentor right from the first time we met so when your mentor tells you something then it sticks in your head yes um again you apply it in business you applied in your career it also makes you a very interesting person you enter room and people find you interested people just want to hear your thoughts on things um so it's just again consuming podcasts as well as creating this much content is just the biggest gift of my life it's not


just the biggest gift of my life it's not the money the fame it's all this knowledge that is thrown like a bomb on me every every week there's like three episodes we're recording every week four episodes we're recording i can't even articulate what it's doing to my mind on the inside wow yeah like i'm i'm not i'm very conscious of the fact that i've changed over these last two years because of these podcasts um you know i'd probably like to end this particular episode because i know that this can go on forever it should go on i'd like to end the episode by just highlighting the fact that um i was considered very stupid in school in college you know there was a phase was considered stupid in school i started studying in the nine standard because i realized girls like it when you study and you get good months but up till the eighth i was always told that i'll amount to nothing and uh after 11th and 12th i did well so i did well


and 12th i did well so i did well from ninth till 12th standard very well near the top of the class always i stopped starting an engineering college again and i was always told by all my professors that i won't amount to anything so four years of your life you're listening to that it really affects your own outlook on life and i entered the professional world with a serious lack of confidence like i really thought that i'm not gonna amount to anything in life because all my professors a lot of my relatives told me that you know you're in a very dangerous spot you're not doing something conventional you're not good at studies you're not and i just like went for it you know when things aligned because i kept that i kept that thirst for knowledge alive which became really alive when we started the podcast and that's just taken my career to some other level like um it's opened up doors because i can hold conversations with people from different industries i can hold conversation with the


from different industries i can hold conversation with the biggest bollywood producer or harsh marijuana or yourself and that's opened up doors for me the reason i'm highlighting this is two things one is i really want people listening to this to believe in themselves and understand that even if people have called you dumb all your life or incapable all your life if you just have that ability to want to learn things curiosity that's all you really need in life in fact i want to highlight what you rightly pointed out just because you're a bad student doesn't mean you're a bad learner yeah okay so so our education system is actually an examination system just because you're not able to produce what the teacher or the education system wants you to learn and reproduce you are categorized as a bad student but i've seen this that you know i'm learning from everyone you know and unfortunately what i learned from everyone is not actually asked in the question paper so i think one of the greatest skills that all


so i think one of the greatest skills that all of us should have in respite of the education system what marks you're getting is to be a learner and i think this particular career that you have chosen has helped you to be a more learner are you giving exams on this it doesn't matter i mean that's not what you want to do but keep your learning curve high even if your education is formally over yeah otherwise you'll stagnate in a career also yeah i you know i keep learning learning and i formally keep studying that's that's my interest area but i think what you directly pointed out now being a youth role model somewhere we need to go back and say keep learning and there are so many avenues a podcast a youtube a book out over there or maybe just a conversation with your daddy at home yeah 100 be a learner not just a good academic student yeah yeah i'll probably try retaining things you know be a good listener you don't have to listen to everybody but when