systems okay that's it um you're right that first computers beat chess but they did it in a different way i mean nobody referred to computers 20 years ago as artificial intelligence they were that was seen as something science sci-fi and slightly futuristic what they meant was that a computer can do something better than you can do and it does that not by being intelligent in any way but for the problem to be reduced into a small number of steps that it can do very efficiently so this was generally the term we used was brute force computing and computers are killing us this is a important remember computers were killing us uh even 15 years back or 20 years back um but at the same time about five years ago we had the sense that computers have gotten as strong as their they're going to get and they have hit some limits and from now on they will not discover anything really new inches and they're already beating us bit like a car you think well it can run faster than


a car you think well it can run faster than any athlete and so what we know that it's got whales and it's got uh engine and it goes like this and that's it but then these neural networks started coming in uh the concept is different here you don't have a programmer sitting and programming the weight placed just they give it the rules of the game and they let it play against itself they just leave it they're playing against itself obviously if you do this at your in your house it'll take a million years you know but it uh they were able to do this and it played i think 44 million games in four hours wow and then it's literally like a child uh it's born it let's say a child can walk it goes it tries to open the door hits the advance okay thinks that that was painful i don't do that again then it hits the wall okay that's also not a good idea then eventually by trial and error it'll find the doorknob it'll pull that


error it'll find the doorknob it'll pull that oh that's how the door opens then it remembers that don't knob good hitting head on wall bad and then it goes to and goes okay so uh literally that's how neural networks learned how to play chess they just played chess over and over again and the good idea is there were more neural connections and the other ones uh the bad ones dropped out so and the remarkable thing is not only these neural networks were as strong as the previous generation in fact they were stronger they were able to beat the previous generation but they were showing us interesting new things and the reason was that because we had not told um them what we thought we did not tell them we think the queen is worth so much the rook is worth so much the knight is worth so much and the square is important that's good because we don't know what we know and how can you tell someone what you don't know literally that's the problem for humans


don't know literally that's the problem for humans trying to uh explain chess or any subject a lot of it is intuitive and there is no way to capture that so that's what's happening for languages same problem when you try to program old-style computers and teach it language and we took our grammar rules and we put it in code then well you saw the result it was ridiculous now the thing just analyzes billions of lines of language of text and guesses that oh this connects with this this word comes before this if this word comes after this it means this it generates its own set of rules and it speaks it better and better and that's a little bit what happened and it's uh it's fascinating uh the new stuff that we're learning in chess because we're learning new stuff all the time um yeah and it's a sped up with artificial intelligence yeah artificial intelligence is something that just fascinates me to another degree i went to engineering college didn't enjoy much of the subjects


to engineering college didn't enjoy much of the subjects but in my last year i had nnfl which is neural networks as a subject and it just blew my mind away in terms of okay wow technology has come this far so for someone who doesn't understand neural networks works is basically what sir said that you need some engineer some programmer to put in a lot of data about a subject into the neural net and then the neural net kind of looks at all of the data scans it and tries understanding patterns for it for example if you want to predict the weather in 2000 june which hasn't happened yet at the time of this recording so the way a computer will do it is it see all the weather reports from right up till like 1970 till now and it will try spotting patterns okay when the pressure was so much when the temperature was so much uh on this this this day if monday it was so much tuesday it was so much wednesday or so much it's likely


was so much wednesday or so much it's likely that thursday it might be this much why do i believe that my results are the way they are on thursday because i've seen the same pattern happen in 1974 so that's how neural networks work then after a point because of feedback loops they combine possible patterns and come up with even more accurate patterns but the core idea here is as we are going forward in the human story as we are going forward in terms of time artificial intelligence is becoming stronger and stronger in the world and it's going to take away jobs it's going to do a lot of uh la flas it's going to do a lot of uh it's going to create a lot of intense situations for mankind which people don't understand yet are you fascinated by ai so it is very interesting and i look forward to seeing the problems it solves i mean every once in a while they'll say they correct the maths problem they have a physics problem and simply by looking at


they have a physics problem and simply by looking at the new yeah um i once read this thing about intuition i read that what is intuition okay so there's two ways of looking at it one's the spiritual aspect that we hear of that you have a sixth sense you have a gut feeling you have a voice from the universe or a voice from god telling you what to do but the actual biological form of intuition is that um it's basically your brain circuits doing pattern recognition again you you probably your brain has the capability of remembering everything it's ever seen in its life and uh if you're put in a situation where you're going to be accessible to some form of danger or you're going to be accessible to some form of joy your brain is able to like recognize that from a past pattern now depending on how much your brain's processing power is how much rest you've given your brain how much you've worked your brain how much you've meditated that's how fast you'll be able to calculate


meditated that's how fast you'll be able to calculate these patterns so intuition also has a kind of uh mathematical format to it which i believe comes alive because of ai which is what you said the beautiful aspect of ai is that it'll see stuff as it is and it might correlate things that you never thought were correlated exactly and i always like to say in chess that uh it's probably true for other subjects that intuition is just work that you forgot you did yeah so i read on your wikipedia page actually that you really enjoy spending time in places of worship temples quiet places is that true and did it like recharge your head a lot [Music] it's partially true but uh of course when i'm traveling then it depends whether there's something nearby i wouldn't say that i make a big effort to go to um you know a quiet place uh to meditate or something like that but i like to go for nice long walks in any town uh if they have a nice park


in any town uh if they have a nice park just to go round and round because i find that very peaceful and it's important because there are a lot of thoughts in your game i should have done this and i wish i had done that and all this stuff is sitting inside your head you walk for an hour it uh it slowly goes away and then your you come to terms with it and you come on so i do a lot of that um i used to go to temples quite often when i was young but um obviously i'll go if it's there but otherwise you have to manage got it um so then before we head into our final round of this podcast which is the round of the q a from the twitter verse it's the fan questions i'd probably love for you to highlight you know some key aspects of your lifestyle when you believe you are at your chest peak you know like when you believe that okay those were my years where i was like the murderous chess player so


where i was like the murderous chess player so what were aspects of your lifestyle from then you know was there anything you did to take care of your brain power your brain speed or just you know how you highlighted uh your mental state of being as a big weapon for you so what was something you did to kind of massage that i think the most important thing by far is good sleep sleep is our way of coming to terms of the previous day saying yes i can learn something from it but now is not the time uh the time is it's we put it aside we'll focus on the work tomorrow and then at the end of the tournament i'll see what i can learn so you're not saying i don't nothing more here but i will return to it later but if i on monday i keep thinking cursing myself for what i should have done on sunday then i'll lose monday as well so yeah that's that and sleep is very important but then uh good sleep is even more important it's


but then uh good sleep is even more important it's it's one thing to sit and roll in bed and toss and turn and feel and not able to detach yourself from the game and actually have a full good night's sleep so the important things then became being tired enough to fall asleep and really get a good night's rest and also to distract yourself so during evenings i don't get a lot of work done mainly i'll go to the gym thing then come back shower and hopefully i'm tired enough after dinner that i'll just collapse and fall asleep and so that's the idea is just to sleep better or i'll another way of relaxing is i mentioned going out for a walk or watching something totally different in longer perspectives even if i have a month or two without tournaments the first four weeks i won't even look at chess because it's important to it's more important to want to work on chess than to actually work on chess after one month i'm actually hungry


work on chess after one month i'm actually hungry for chess again and that helps a lot whereas if right after tournament you start working it doesn't so this process of managing your [Music] passion for the game i mean it it flows it goes it ebbs and flows and uh when it's going down it's better to not fight it and let it go to the thing and then you come back so rest and detachment from the game is very important and then it's even better if you have other hobbies other things that you look forward to because then you can actually do something when you're not looking at as opposed to staring at the wall so that that sort of thing was the kind of and it was also important for me not to have to have a peaceful tournament situation atmosphere i mentioned earlier i don't like situations where i'm arguing with half the participants and things like that so if i have a good friend i'll talk to him if i don't i'll just avoid them that


him if i don't i'll just avoid them that way you know it's not bad it's just non-existent so we live with that and this attitude my best tournaments almost all of them was when i was sitting there and i was only focused on what i wanted to do on the chessboard and i was not worried about this so that i was not fighting with anyone i was calm i would enjoy my game then i would come back home then i'd enjoy dinner and then we'd watch a movie and then go to sleep and you have this pleasant feeling of going through a life without conflict and uh and if you don't lose a game then you feel that even more so that's a very that's those are the keys to my best years for sure okay uh so i have to take you to the round of our twitter verse these are all the fan questions sent in um okay manish pandey he's from our team he asks what inspired you to get to the top that's something you and


you to get to the top that's something you and i would like to know like i'm sure that you had moments where you kind of felt like giving i'm talking about the time you were a teenager so you know you knew okay this is my likely journey but you must have been demotivated at some point so was there anything that kept you inspired not particularly i there was always something left to achieve so i would try to achieve that and if there was a setback i would just try again and if it all felt very natural it because my maybe that's something that comes naturally in chess because you'll almost never have a long streak you'll have wins and losses and wins and losses so you get used to that um and at every stage i it was always one step at a time every stage i would think what's the next thing i need to do i mean my childhood dream of course to become world champion but that was something far away so it's only when i got really


something far away so it's only when i got really close to becoming a world champion that i spent energy trying to think about to do it and in those days i didn't have to find a lot of tricks to motivate myself i think when you when you when you're doing something for the first time you don't need to put in any effort to motivate yourself second time is harder because you've already done it and you know you've done it and so it's not you're not that excited but uh for the first time it was not a big problem yeah as steve jobs said when you have a vision that's crystal clear you don't need motivation the vision just pulls you so i'd probably echo that okay so next question is from chandra kiran the basic question is what do we do as a country at a grassroot level to ensure that more people in india embrace chess as a serious career and the second part of this question is what kind of branding or marketing do you do you


what kind of branding or marketing do you do you wish that chess should have in order to increase popularity and exposure okay one of the things we already do is to have chess in lots of schools you know i ran a program with nit many many years back we put chess in a lot of schools and the logic was very simple that children who play chess a couple of hours a week often find it easier to tackle other challenging subjects because chess is a little bit difficult you um you're motivated by the reward of winning in the game and yeah you learn some skills and then you find it's easy to transfer to i don't know maths or physics or whatever and on top of that it the more important thing is it taught you that uh decisions have consequences uh you make a move you can't take it back and if it if the boom loses then you have lost and you know doing that a few times so some very healthy things like that you learn with just and probably that's


things like that you learn with just and probably that's the most natural way connect with people in with students in college schools and colleges and try to get them to play the game more but what we found out last year and by the way the one good thing for chess from the pandemic was that a lot of people have been wanting to launch us uh so what happened was that for many years we were struggling to reconnect with people and then last year they just came in droves [Music] just online chess boomed by [Music] 5x6x i mean the numbers just went up skyrocketed up and after that there was this netflix series on chess we also had unbelievable like 70 million people watch that show and so on and it turns out that a lot of people who who needed some way to connect with chess and an excuse to connect with chess and some free time and last year they had all of it and so uh it was very good but um yes if uh to the extent


very good but um yes if uh to the extent we keep growing the sport then hopefully we'll have more sponsors more branding as he mentioned but i think we're already on that cycle and the question is just how to grow it have you heard of my friend samaya raina he's uh and he's a youtuber uh yeah i'm sure you've heard of him so he's he's doing a lot to bring back chess to the mainstream uh love how he's just taken his passion and made it a part of his online brand so i think the world needs more samaranas in this on this planet yes well he's what he's done is uh maybe taking away some of the intimidation in chairs a lot of people used to feel intimidated by chess and okay he's sitting there he's bantering around and in the meantime maybe there's a little bit of chess happening and so well it's a formula that has worked very well so good good for him what's your advice to samiraina i don't


him what's your advice to samiraina i don't have much comedy advice for him but [Laughter] but his chess i don't know where to begin [Laughter] sorry bro uh so anyway um but okay in terms of do you have any message for samiraina's audience who is fascinated by chess what's what's your take on that like you know will we see more grandmasters come out of that audience yes eventually i mean everyone starts with baby steps and i i'm happy that they're engaging with jess in a format that's comfortable for them and i hope that they will some of them at least will get the bug and play even more yeah beautiful though okay shivamanand asks there were many chess players who could not sustain ability as they aged so what's the secret behind vishwanathan and so adapting to changing times and being relevant to the game as modern masters emerged so i think the question is probably about your reinvention through the years and your own kind of hard work behind the


years and your own kind of hard work behind the scenes maybe or if you'd like to add any other aspect to that so i think mainly it's because i'm not very dogmatic i'm fairly flexible so if something works i'll do it and but one day if it doesn't work i don't have too many hang ups and dropping it and trying something else so this is very helpful in chess so when especially when computers and then a i were rewriting all the concepts we had to learn a lot of stuff but first step for us is always first an acceptance that you we want to change and the second thing is to shut that voice inside and say let's be quiet and see what we can learn rather than try to give our old views um so willingness to learn new things and in order to learn something new you must be willing to accept that you don't know it very well so i'm generally quite good at this i don't have too many you know scans of principle on how


too many you know scans of principle on how i play chess and things like that i'm fairly flexible um i was willing to learn and i was willing to take risks again and um most important thing probably is that i just uh i enjoyed playing and that's the biggest motivator to get me going god um okay so nikhil has asked a very elaborate question nikhil goud 444 um it's an elaborate question about you analyzing your opponents and the capability while playing like how do you know when to attack defend or just play strategy oriented games uh but i would actually like to rephrase his question as what you understood about psychology of human beings or of your opponent so how did you and what did you understand about the way human minds work and were there any kind of intimidation games that even you played of course well we're all always trying to play intimidation games most of the time you intimidate someone with your good moves and so most of it is quite


your good moves and so most of it is quite legitimate and normal uh if you're a strong player and you can sense your opponent is not as strong and you make your moves more and more confidently it has an effect on them because you know that when you felt it from the other side so that's a natural thing another thing is to find that everyone has some kind of weakness some anxiety some quality that when it erupts then after that their game becomes very unsteady and they can lose very fast you try to provoke that again you try to provoke it through moves so coming up with unexpected moves or focusing on their weak areas or something like that generally what people do well they're confident they can do well because they've had positive reinforcement so they will continue to do it well and of course if your sensitive or very touchy then people will keep on insulting you and nagging you because they know it works and you know it's a bit like school what they what did they teach


a bit like school what they what did they teach you in school they said when the others tease when the other kids tease you just ignore them because after three minutes they get bored in school it works very well of course i i succeeded with this as well somebody would tease me after two minutes i realized they got bored and they moved to the next kid it was responding it's a bit like that in chess also when somebody tries to try a trash talk or whatever uh it doesn't happen during the game but it happens before then you just uh you ignore it and you try to come up with uh good moves the next day and you're fine and and that's it i found that it was not good for me to try to win psychological battles with my opponent because i mean non-chess ones because it made me more uncomfortable than it made him so i stopped can you give us some masala trash talk stories sir um [Music] there was an opponent called kamsky who was


there was an opponent called kamsky who was quite a bug bear for many years he was um [Music] his father was quite paranoid and his father was constantly afraid that everyone else was ganging upon him so we knew it would annoy him so much and his father would be sitting in the audience trying to guess what every so if i walked on the left of kamsky he would think what is he what is he trying to signal to my his opponent and if i came in from the right what is he thinking so after a while we realized we could just stand there keep our eyes looking mischievously around walk a little bit unsteadily do something then do something unexpected we knew it would drive him nuts and of course we were not coming we were not signaling anything but we never drive we drove him nuts and we did it all the time um i i don't think i've done anything uh that i would be ashamed of uh you know not anything that actually disturbed my opponent


you know not anything that actually disturbed my opponent but [Music] sometimes when you play fast when your blitz i mean your opponent spends 20 minutes on a move and you just reply instantly these things have an effect they find it irritating so all these things you can do but uh i'm like i said i i was a very well behaved uh guy and i try to avoid i try to avoid fighting with other people but did other people try trash talking you yes they did and then i found a good method which basically my school listen like um two months before a big match i would just not read nhs magazine so they're just insulting me in these just by exams i'm not reading them then two months later i'll open them and see oh they said this stupid thing about me but then in the meantime i have i already beat them in that tournament before which they were trying to upset me so it didn't matter essentially i understood that uh there were a couple of players


understood that uh there were a couple of players there was one dutch player who was who likes to keep on needling people but i realize his needling doesn't affect anyone because he doesn't back it up with good moves i mean even in chessboard if you don't back up your trash talking with good moves it makes it rebounds on you people just laugh at you even more so if you're going to trash talk someone you should be very good i mean because part of trash talk people that was different uh because people were actually afraid of his moves as well uh but most people when they do it it backfires badly do you follow any other sports like do you watch any other sports yeah i watch football i watch tennis and i'll follow dozens of sports i'll watch a bit of cricket i'll watch badminton you know follow the results follow people that kind of thing do you see parallels i mean i'm sure you do but could you highlight some cool parallels that you see between say cricket


some cool parallels that you see between say cricket and football with chess like you know what kind of mentalities are the same um you you can see that um in cricket the clearest thing is just the sudden drop in performance when someone has been their equilibrium has been disturbed um you know when they sledge each other or they they pick up a fight on the field or whatever and then if you don't have the discipline to just pull back very often your level can drop right away equally you can backfire for the other team the other the guy gets so motivated he uh gets sixes but you know it's not a sure-fire thing but can happen or in many sports there are rivalries and the rivalries exist not because there's something wrong with their sport but it because they have a prior relationship and this old history is playing in their heads and that is why they the same problems happen again and again the same mistakes happening again again and again and you can see that pattern consistently even


again and you can see that pattern consistently even i would always assume that in team sports it shouldn't happen because the blame is distributed but even teams have their traumas like i'm sure some football teams carry the trauma of some champions league match or something for decades afterwards even though half the team was not there then but it passed on like like the history of a country it gets passed on for them and so on so yes the parallels are there all the time do you support any football club like is there a football club of your choice uh real real madrid i was living i was living in madrid for 16 years so i had to pick up you can speak spanish yes we can both speak spanish i mean we lived there and we're quite fluent what's your take on virat kohli what do you think of him as an athlete well it's uh i think at some point as you said he made the jump from a very good cricketer to an exceptional one and it's always


cricketer to an exceptional one and it's always nice when somebody first of all makes this jump when somebody feels the need to make this jump because life is already it seems very good for them and they start giving the impression they don't care but then they pull them themselves together and really work on every aspect of the game and look paid off a lot for them i mean i remember especially the attention used to give to fitness and how that benefited from that and so on yeah yeah i think every sport has those kind of uh athletes you know who aren't born with everything but who kind of build it up over time like through a work ethic through discipline and that's probably the big gift of sport according to me to the world that it creates inspiration for young kids who probably not going to become athletes but they will carry that inspiration into other domains of life yeah uh that what's worth having isn't he is never going to be easy yeah 100 if i had to if i had


easy yeah 100 if i had to if i had to ask you like out of all the cricketers that we've had in india whose personality is the most similar to how yours was when you were competing like you know like could you pick any one athlete and you're like okay this guy's brain was like similar to my brain i don't know i mean when i was young i grew up with people like sunil kawaska and kapalde and it was atirah and later on of course sachin and at least there's one aspect that i recognize that sachin also likes he steers away from some things and he goes for others and generally he seems like me quiet in he's not you know plunging into every area of discussion or every topic he stays away and i also have this habit so maybe it's something that i recognize lippy sharma asks about your secret to your concentration concentration focus uh do you have anything you'd like to highlight that you haven't already sir um so i'll


highlight that you haven't already sir um so i'll tell you the concentration you concentrate better on things you like that you find interesting things you don't no great secret uh [Music] you know it's much easier to concentrate on a movie than your school homework and so we all know this but in chess what i found that if there are i'm having problems in some areas then i need to make it interesting for me so that i will concentrate better but how do you make something that you don't like interesting for you well you find something within it that can be interesting so even if i'm doing this badly but i'm going to try to do this one thing better tomorrow let me try it and then i work on that area and i have a thing okay this time must remember the same as remember this remember so the next day when i get to that position i think what are the three things i wanted to remember okay and briefly my concentration has gone up yeah got it that's that's


concentration has gone up yeah got it that's that's basically it i i think uh even chess players cannot focus on what they're not interested in so there's no way to force your brain ah all of them slightly eccentric like i know you said that you know it they can be eccentric behind the scenes but do you think there are eccentricities to being a chess player i think chess players seem eccentric because they misunderstood they but because i'm a chess player myself i cannot i cannot see it i mean i know people who uh just players who think a lot about the game but because i also think a lot about the game that doesn't come across as strange to me um but most chess players are very normal i don't think you you would meet a lot of chess players and if you don't know it to advance they played chess you would not realize but the eccentric ones really make the news and then where people think everyone is like so that's the that's the key um


is like so that's the that's the key um god it's not like uh all chess players are like that but the ones who are like that get noticed a lot so you know morphy you know these people they these stories about them get written 400 years afterwards umang kelani asks some childhood habits that have helped you in your career anything you've retained from your teenage or childhood that helped you carry you through well even when i was very young i used to bite my nails that's not but i don't think i should give that too much credit um generally i'm a nervous person i like to fidget and move my finger here and scratch my nose and this and that but i think he's actually asking for some secret tips let me think of something important i i generally trust my intuition [Music] there is a reason it's your intuition and you should at least give it a fair hearing maybe that's and from the time when i was young when i trusted my intuition much more than


was young when i trusted my intuition much more than i do today but i still uh sometimes you have a gut feeling you you should go with it let's put it that way can you elaborate on what your thought is about intuition in general like how do you look at it do you look at it as some external voice do you look at it as pattern recognition again what do you think it is well it's pattern recognition even an external voice it's a kind of pattern recognition um but what i said about it being work that you forgot that you did is that in if you put for instance if you give me a book in the chinese language i don't have any intuition i can look at it 100 different ways but i don't have any intuition if you give me a book in a language with a script similar to a language i know then i'll have some intuition and so i think it's the same a chess that when you if you've seen a similar position before you'll have some


you've seen a similar position before you'll have some intuition for it if you've never seen anything like it you probably have very little and whatever little you have is from the general board itself so i mean the way the pieces move even if not the specific area and so i don't think intuition is something that pops up um i think intuition is entirely developed if you walk if you walk to your office every day you'll have a very good intuition of how to get there so the main road is blocked you'll have a good sense of oh i think this should work or that should work it's like that you get better at intuition probably people confuse talent and intuition some people genuinely have a some things come easily to them and they're hopeless in other things so finding out what you have a talent for is [Music] is very good as a career choice but i don't think uh intuition is an inner force at all it's developed got it vishwanathan and so thank you for being


got it vishwanathan and so thank you for being on the ranvir show uh before you leave i would just request you to leave the youth with one piece of advice whatever you've learned from your own life uh if you just had to give one very general statement to a young ambitious kid what would you say i would say find something that you enjoy doing and do it [Music] these life is quite hard to do something you don't really enjoy doing and a lot of the hard stuff doesn't feel so hard if you enjoy it so my best advice is just to find something you really like doing vishwanathan anand sir thank you for being on the runway show honestly i was a little intimidated by this particular episode but the moment i saw your smiling face that intimidation died out really appreciate you being on the show sir thank you so much thanks randy it is a pleasure being here thanks to your audience glad you enjoyed it sir thank you so much that


you enjoyed it sir thank you so much that was episode with vishyana ladies and gentlemen i hope you enjoyed it as much as i enjoyed speaking with him often maybe every five to ten episodes i end up talking to a legend from a particular industry on trs and the common trait i see is humility if you had to learn one thing from this man other than how to constantly work your brain how to constantly be a learner learn humility from viswanathan anand that was the episode of the ranvi show for today just make sure to follow us on spotify because we're now spotify exclusive podcast every episode available 48 hours before the rest of the world gets to view it where is it available on spotify more stellar episodes like this coming up for you we've got a crazy lineup for vrs [Music] you


at the time of recording this intro i've just finished off my sushant dev geeker podcast it's just some conversations you have in the year you're like why haven't we had you on the podcast earlier why haven't we spoken earlier this conversation isn't just about the lgbtq community or sushan's story or the story of how he turned into drag queen rani kohinoor this one is about confidence this one is about overcoming your own self-doubt this one is about overcoming all the insecurities that the world has told you that you should have if you want to feel fueled up if you want to feel some positive fire inside your heart this is the conversation for you i'm proud of this piece that we've created as a team on the runway show remember to follow us on spotify we're a spotify exclusive podcast now every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world and for now this is one of our flagship episodes of the entire year on


of our flagship episodes of the entire year on the ranbir show [Music] yes welcome to the runway show thank you ronnie kohinoor yeah welcome to the ranveer thank you i've been waiting to have a conversation with you because i'm i'm such an admirer thank you you know i'm a fan means it does mean a lot um people know the media side to your personality they know your achievements i don't think they know what happens in the background and above all i don't think they know your story right from the time you were discovering yourself in your childhood your teenage um we were just talking before this in my very peaceful meditation room which i love i'm so glad you came down to this space um we spoke about how the world has fast forwarded in the last two years because of the lockdown in every aspect people's relationships are fast forwarded yeah culture yes all that uh how's your lockdown been let's start there it's too a-rated no but uh or the lack


it's too a-rated no but uh or the lack i think of um but i think that it has been very revealing uh it's been very empowering uh also because um it gave me so much time with myself and um allowed me to realize that i don't have to adhere to what people's narratives about mia which which which were what which were basically to adhere to heteronormative uh outlines uh as somebody who identifies today as non-binary and trans i was always you know a little skeptical and scared to speak about me being not male or female and it always scared me because of the depiction of uh queer people transgender people in media because we were shown in a very bad light this is the 90s kid a new speaker yes and uh it was very traumatizing i i didn't have the assurance that i could have um an equal life uh equal opportunities i didn't believe as a kid that maybe i might have respect i might have a family that accepts me and


respect i might have a family that accepts me and um so for me it was a little uh it was more internal conflict because uh it wasn't not necessarily the outside world was not as bad as i thought it would be because it was my inner saboteur that was speaking and it was coming to the fore um but then when you know i saw all of these things happen in pop culture and mainstream media and films uh i felt a little like bad but i also knew that this is not what i want to be and can you like highlight that a little more deeply like what did you see in pop culture especially growing up versus what is the reality yeah i think that queer people were always made to be the laughingstock uh off of in a film characters were dehumanized actually um and i really didn't blame the character the actors that played the characters because uh for example there were people like bobby darling that that you know uh has played so many characters and we've seen


know uh has played so many characters and we've seen her in so many films and you know a lot of people used to say a lot of nasty things to her and she didn't have a choice where were the scripts you had scripts that uh were were celebrating toxicity when it whether it was patriarchal toxicity or toxic masculinity and you were objectifying women you were dehumanizing transgender people and somehow in the 90s it was celebrated yeah you know and i'm gonna be like very upfront you yeah as a boy growing up watching that yeah uh you kind of normalized it growing up as well yes yes i remember like it took me i think up to my teenagers to understand these concepts yeah pre-teens um you know i was i was a part of the narrative the part was i was a part of the narrative which is why i had to be very closeted uh you know although i was uh no closet could uh you know okay all this fabulosity it


could uh you know okay all this fabulosity it can't but the thing is that i had to also be a little on the back foot because i felt that if i came out more in the open in my teenage in my early teenage i would probably be attacked i would be um bad things would happen to me what was going on in your head as a 10 11 year old i really honestly thought that like if i come out as uh you know gay or if i come out as trans a trans person i'd not even imagined that i would be non-binary like i didn't even know what the concept was because there was no conversations like this and this is this is so beautiful because this conversation will reach so many kids that have this dysphoria or they have this sort of conflict within themselves we didn't have people to look at and listen to and and all that we could see was you know these characters that were depicted by queer people but like and even heterosexual people even men


people but like and even heterosexual people even men portrayed them so badly on on in the films so i honestly thought that would if i had to choose a career like this which is why i honestly did not even think that i would be an entertainer performer or a singer or an artist actor nothing i wanted to be a psychologist because i wanted to study why people would think like this about an entire community why do you think that is though why did why was the narrative even there i think it's it's it's uh heavily to be blamed on people's misconceptions about entire communities and also completely disregarding the fact that there are so many intersectionalities uh between you know you could be gay you could be of color you could be of a certain religion you could be of a certain gender and you could still be queer and or of a socio-economic status nobody talks about all these things and these are realities people with hand like you know people who are specially


people with hand like you know people who are specially abled or uh you know visually impaired or uh hearing impaired and could be queer nobody talks about these stories and they're real stories and for a very long time we didn't talk about impairment at all like or we didn't talk about uh you know um you know anything apart from the binaries at all we didn't talk about transgenders being human at all we made it look like you know they're part of the circus they're they're going to be there to maybe be made fun of that's all and we could not see a transgender person in a film and that depicted conditioning social conditioning was terrible and we've been conditioned to believe that the only job trans people will have or queer people will have is either you know begging on the streets sex work throwing themselves at you know random men and i don't think that that depicts the entirety of an entire community you know and also my sisters who are on the


you know and also my sisters who are on the streets today the blood or for all of that is on our hands because what have we done to help them we have not educated them they are they have two hands two legs they have their they have the capacity to work and be productive members of the society yeah why why then are they on the street you think it's easy like i'm shocked that people think that that's only no a trans person can't be a doctor a trans person can't be a teacher trans person can't be a pilot can't join the army can't you know serve the nation can't be a single actor i'm like where is this coming from because an artist is an artist a doctor is a doctor the doctor may be straight gay transgender later but first they are a doctor yeah i i also feel like gen z is changing this whole narrative yes i i think that that's because they choose to educate themselves because our education system if you go to see we still don't have


system if you go to see we still don't have a lot of conversations in schools and colleges about do you think i'll change in the next i think it will change in the next two three years i hope it does i mean education is happening through youtube kind of yes yes and i hope it does because i see a lot of parents that um have now stopped worrying about lokia it's like that the parents are like yeah my child has to be my child first and gay transgender black white pink later but first they're my child my father said this very beautifully to me he said you're not my gay child or my straight child you're my child and it ends there it starts and ends there i don't need anybody else's opinions about you to tell me how to raise you yeah and i think that now more parents are becoming like that speaking about your childhood uh i'll tell you what happened in my head when i was growing up when i was 10 i realized oh my body


up when i was 10 i realized oh my body is changing what is happening why am i feeling like this when i look at that beautiful lady on screen so what is what was your story was your version of it and how are you equating it out in your head when see i feel like you're a pretty self-aware person i'm pretty sure even as a kid you were relatively more self-aware than the average kid yes i was which by the way is your strength it's gotten you the way you're a psychologist no yeah that's why i studied the human beings it's natural but that's the also the reason when i i said it's all interconnected because i wanted to understand how people could be so cruel to an entire community how people could think like this about someone it really in you know interested you had any fear yourself about growing any fears i have so many i told you i was scared that you know if do i have to also get on the street do i have


have to also get on the street do i have to also sell my body to earn a meal like that was my self-talk like because that's all yeah as a kid i used to think about these things because i was like wow that's that's bad representation man that's that's not something i want to want to do or be i don't want to be pushed to an extent where i honestly believe that there's not no other options for us you you do know that like i mean i think you're you're considered a role model now for the entire lgbtq community you are you are and um i think that the deal with role models is that role models often need to suffer to be able to create pathways for the people that come after yeah so uh i know you're not and this is what i love about you you don't highlight your failures and struggle as much in the public eye but i know that you've seen some stuff so first of all going out there in the media industry you know


all going out there in the media industry you know you're a psychologist you know all these things what was like some just just for the sake of perspective could you highlight like some really difficult moments you faced early on in your career just for the sake of perspective because i feel difficult moments build character yeah so what was some difficult moments for you yeah like when i'm an intimidating [ __ ] today because i cho i woke up like this you know i saw a lot of people talk a lot of [ __ ] behind me and then i realized that now even today they're behind me you know it's just like if i had to stay back and engage in this conversation with that person i would then have to stoop down to their level and have that conversation with them and i chose to be better i said i'm not going to do that i'm not going to give you the benefit of doubt and give you the benefit of this conversation so i'm going to move ahead


of this conversation so i'm going to move ahead you can keep talking like what what was it specifically you know i'll and as you asked me also um but first how i discovered the previous question i didn't answer that how i discovered i was like you know uh the first time i saw alicia chennai on television i didn't discover anything because of her but good haircuts and wigs i did uh but i discovered that i like you know i'm i'm interested in men not the way my probably my counterparts and my friends were when i saw milin soman come out of the chest of that treasure chest in made in india okay that changed a lot of people's perspectives about themselves about life about everything because milin soman was there like two words to to describe my journey with millen and it's quite crazy because he's a family friend so i could that it had to end there because i couldn't like really do anything about it and you know how old are you huh how old


and you know how old are you huh how old are you then after about six five six years old and i was just like wow like yeah wow it's like what who is this and then i realized it's millions of one and i then realized that you know my uncle used to train him as a he was a swim i was a national level swimmer and my uncle used to train him then my father also trained him for a bit but i was just like oh [ __ ] okay no no no not happening like you know when i grew older then i realized i can't but i always was like you know wow million someone in that that hole that you know she opens the chest she doesn't open [ __ ] he gets out of the chest with this chiseled body and i'm like is this allowed is this allowed it should children be watching this like you know i mean this is too sexy like you know it's just like oh my god and yeah since that so that that's when


my god and yeah since that so that that's when i realized probably that you know i'm not like my friends discuss girls and stuff when we grew up a little bit and the first time when i was six seven years old and so i was just like something happened i didn't know what to term it because at that age you don't know what but something happened i remember very clearly that switch there was something and then when we grew older and then you know how i was in an all boys school uh so for me it was even more difficult to kind of fit in and stuff but i was an over achiever in terms of sports cultural activities i was a sports captain of my school and so when the other boys used to objectify girls and stuff i used to be like you are so disrespectful objectified teachers you know they had the teacher fantasies i used to get like my god like i used to tell uh some of my friends who were you know like tomorrow what do you


friends who were you know like tomorrow what do you call that we didn't know what they were called moves and stuff i was like don't don't judge other people because i start getting sassy on your ass you're finished so i was like don't do that like that's that's probably your mother's age like she's like i'm like what are you all doing like why all then i realized that you know okay then i don't look at women the same way that probably you know that and then there were some kids that were homophobic in terms of i was obviously very effeminate i was not like the other boys clearly okay even back then i was very androgynous and i used to be like i used to make fun of myself like i used to be i am like this that i was the most gay person in the one of the most gay people in the world i had mr gay world india and i represented the country and at least won some awards at it so my thing is that my sas


at it so my thing is that my sas was there only since i was a kid and i was a strong kid so i didn't let anyone bully me you know and some someone tried to come and act fresh and act smart i used to give them one whack because that's why my brothers taught me you know that's one one and probably only you know advantage of having older heterosexual brothers they don't tell you how to protect yourself you know because they're like we are not going to be there all our lives to protect you so you know you know what changed it for me yeah being being a part of the narrative and not understanding queer people at all yeah have you heard this song by macklemore called same love oh my god when that came out it just it changed things for me the video the music i still listen to same love and um it i think i think that's what you need right you need cultural narratives you need music content built around the queer community


you need music content built around the queer community i'm in pop culture like if you can name three people in pop culture today that are openly queer in india and are doing well you won't be able to do it because there aren't enough there isn't enough representation and in five years there'll be an answer to that question there will be and you'll be one of those people well i already know i mean where is this modesty going where [Laughter] but then coming to the the fact that when you asked me what was the journey like for me i went through [ __ ] hold on hold on now that we're speaking about your teenage i was a romantic teenager you know i was so romantic that once to impress a girl whose name starts with an a i took my divider i took i took a divider and i scratched out an a on my try someone said see this is how much i like you yeah oh my god i was also very romantic but like what is what is


was also very romantic but like what is what is love like i understand uh the sexual aspect of growing up okay where all of us are attracted sexually to something yeah yeah but what is the love aspect of it where you're emotionally into someone or you know my parents taught me and my brother uh that love cannot be defined leave love as it is because if i add labels to love that is my perception of love that might not be your perception of love so if i'm going to impose that then you will superimpose your thoughts on love about me it's not fair and love is very pure so for me to say that love i can tell you what it means to me but honestly in 30 years i also don't know because there are multiple facets of love you can fall in love with the person soul you can fall in love with the persons on on a spiritual level you might it doesn't have to be sexual all the time you're not talking all the time you know there has


not talking all the time you know there has to be more than that to a person to be attracted to that person for a longer period of time otherwise then it's just infatuation so for me i think that love for me is my definition of it and uh i think that i love so many things about myself about other people and like i might love five things about you i might love five things about someone else i might love one thing about someone else you know it's like that it but it's very differs from person to person this is good parenting speaking up i'm i'm a mother i have queer children no so also the parenting you receive my parents are rock stars they are rock stars like i can i can vouch what role did they play in your password everything everything i think my parents are the reason that i'm sitting here today with my back straight and the confidence i have is only because of my parents the fact that i have had the opportunity to chase all my dreams is


had the opportunity to chase all my dreams is because of my parents i am because of my parents i would not be or have been here and my father very beautifully said to me that not to me and to me also but like to me just in conversation but to other parents also he says that it is our duty to take care of our children because we brought them in the world they didn't choose to be born to us we brought them into the world so if we don't give them unconditional love and support we are failing as parents what they do as children is up to them that's their journey we can't live our dreams through our children that's not fair you know and we can't expect them to be a certain way because we feel that they should be a certain way you do you and let them do them it's very simple and my father understands that so when people today say and my father 65 he's not young you know he's not like he's not in he's not a


he's not like he's not in he's not a young parent he's been a part of a very conservative very he is he has raised a modern family but he was a part of a very conservative family and if his father was alive i know for a fact that it things might not have been the same way like my grandfather his father might not have accepted me the way my father accepted me and maybe that's the reason why my father believes that he doesn't want to be that father that would be condescending to their child like he wants to be the exact opposite and say that you are my child regardless so my parents and my mother is a diva my mother is the diva so i'm like this classic mix of both of them so i'm very stayed at in some moments like you know very zen and then suddenly i'm like very sassy it's like a perfect amalgamation of both of them and i think that i have to owe each and everything that i am today because of my parents


and everything that i am today because of my parents your confidence and ease rubs off on people like i was having a tough week man like just i mean there's nothing going wrong it's just my own mental health battles kind of working against me after speaking you feel chilled out you know i feel like yeah it's all it's all going to be okay i don't know i think that's just that's the effect you have as a person yeah i guess it's also energies that kind of it's reciprocal let me say that like if i did not feel this energy from you i won't open up also that like i've given some interviews wherein i have been like this yeah maybe yeah why explain explain what you see in the other person which just kind of i don't even probably it's not even something i see it's something you feel it's the aura it's the way you speak to someone it's the respect it's the mutual um understanding that you have that today we're going to have a conversation i


have that today we're going to have a conversation i need to make the other person feel comfortable and in my profession if i was pursuing uh mental health as a mental health professional that's my job but you know even in that's what people say you know about mental health professionals is that even when you know someone's freaking out or someone's doing something that they shouldn't be doing you give them the benefit of doubt yes like they have their struggles so even in our friend circles i'm just like listen everyone every anyone two people are fighting i'm the referee and i'm like stop stop and this and that when but when two drag queens are fighting and i'm the third drag queen if i can't stop the fight i instigate it come on come closer whack each other finish it off once and for all because you all are like like waiting to tear each other's wigs off i'm like oh god so it's like that i take i live off of energy so it's obviously your


i live off of energy so it's obviously your energy if it wasn't great i would have not been like this open and i wouldn't be like chilling and being like myself so that i think is very important yeah i think there's two major pickups for young kids watching this especially kids are going through all sorts of issues right one is the confidence you have for sure this is what you need everybody like this is what you need not just success but just to kind of settle success in the head as we call it actualize actualization i think self-awareness so this this word right self-actualization it took me a long time to understand it maybe maybe till like man till six months back it's june right yeah six months back i was on in the himalayas and it just it switched something in me it made me prioritize my own happiness over my own success over my material success and these last six months have been transformative i've had a lot of new spiritual experiences i met some


a lot of new spiritual experiences i met some saints actually witnessed miracles but see that's that's the entire uh that's it's so unreal and it's so uh coincidental that you were on the peak of a mountain and you understood what actualization is because hierarchy of needs and we've most of us are studied at economic students and economic students economy students and psychology students and you know we've all studied all of that and i think that actualization starts from when when you kind of understand that you're on a journey you when you realize can you explain the basics of maslow's hierarchy of knees just to give some context this is like the free tuition class just just in a friendly way you know yeah so basically hierarchy of needs is you know when you have the you know the triangle where you have the basic needs first which is then you have um you know slightly more secondary needs like when you've when you have made sure that roti is sorted then you have you


made sure that roti is sorted then you have you know your workplace your job your friends your relationships your whatever else and then you know there's i forgot the steps also self-esteem and self-esteem see my thing is that it's it's life it's life the maslow's theory of that hierarchy of needs it just is very self-explanatory he's like that you will think later when all these things are sorted so for me when you know when which is why i want children that are transgender that that deserve at least the basics then they will wake up tomorrow thinking that we want to do better if you're not giving them the basics basic respect that we are not giving them we're not giving them education how are they going to aspire to be actualized because they also don't know what their real selves are but you know what the strength of transgender people is from the outside and correct me if i'm wrong but this is what i've observed that you guys have a very 360 degree perspective on things because


have a very 360 degree perspective on things because i feel i feel everyone has a certain amount of masculine energy and a certain amount of feminine yes yes and for cis males or cis females the whole goal is weight i need to balance out the other half yeah so you might have too much masculine engineering you might realize oh wait let's reduce the mature a little bit and increase the emotions yeah and vice versa but transgender people have like this nice 360 degree perspective i think queer people have that yeah uh is because we've been suppressed so much explain this i think because we've not been allowed to allowed an equal playing ground since you're a child since we are in within families also no we might be different like i'm i keep telling you people that i acknowledge my privilege my privilege is that i'm born to a family that loves me unconditionally and educated me that those are my two privileges okay so i'm not going to say that i'm privileged because this this life that


to say that i'm privileged because this this life that i choose to live is because i worked for it my parents gave me the base roti education after that they said now you know what you want okay we're not going to interfere with whatever but make sure that you're safe and you're not harming someone else with that i went into the world so for me i always always thought that if i can't take this pedestal that i've been given these are very basic things to someone who's like elitist and someone who's more privileged than privileged than me and say that we what privilege are a privilege comes with its own this thing no but you have to acknowledge your privilege say you are because if you're not going to what is somebody who is a lower income group you know someone who is you know below bpl for example below poverty line for that person your life is aspirational if you're going to unnecessarily say that i don't have privileges for them they automatically directly feel attacked they're


for them they automatically directly feel attacked they're like what are you talking you do have privileges probably you've not understood them or you don't acknowledge them i acknowledge my privilege what is the downside of me being queer is i that never stopped me by the way is that i knew i would go into a world where it was not an equal playing ground for me i had to put my foot in the door and say i exist give me a chance my first audition i didn't even enter the room and the casting director had told me you're too gay for this advertisement and it was a toothpaste ad i said but gay people also brush their teeth what is too gay for a toothpaste [Music] what do you mean you're too gay for this so my thing is and i have beautiful teeth and a dimple i'm like are you crazy like you know i used to feel like that much discrimination that much stereotyping that much negative emotions to it i was like where is it


negative emotions to it i was like where is it coming from what that means what conditioning have we given to the society and to the children to to our peers that's when i realized that you know i have to take this pedestal i have to do more with my life not for myself but for that kid watching yeah in some remote village that believes that they're not good enough and they're alone you're not alone no one is alone for for the longest time i used to feel that i'm the only queer person gay person in the entire city in mumbai you know and today when i see people you know today you have the power of social media today you have back then we didn't have we didn't have phones that you could connect us together so you know they were today when we say you know today when i say gen z is privileged is because they have the power of speaking their minds they have the power of creating creation we didn't have that we were boxed and said that


we didn't have that we were boxed and said that i was told this and the same casting director called me five years later when i was booking all the brands whether it was coffee whether it was tea whether it was alcohol it was clothes it was toothpaste it was cars i even though i couldn't drive a car i was telling it why because i believed in myself i said i am gay and i am beautiful and gay and gay also means happy and i'm happy with myself i'm gay with myself so you can't break me and i will make sure you call me i will work hard and i will come back you can't tell me that i can't do it because i know i can you know that's what needs to be out there now he can't afford me only [Laughter] you know i'm like you know this is the power of confidence combined with hard work and and you know just just to any kid suffering in any form yes in any way it doesn't even have to be


yes in any way it doesn't even have to be queer kids even if you're just suffering out of a lack of confidence it's tough being a kid i'll tell you that it's tough being any kid kids are teased for their weight kids are teased for their eyesight kids are teased for being too intelligent kids are teased for everything so my thing is and where is it coming from it's coming from bad parenting also because there are stereotypes that are attached to them like go and play go out and play don't watch tv don't watch like that's the reason why you know team sports we played i was a swimmer i was you know into all of these things group singing in choirs and all of this why because and that reflects on the people we are today i'm not saying i'm holier than dao or holier than this i'm on a moral high horse nothing if i can do it honestly i'm saying if i can do it i have seen so many kids that are


do it i have seen so many kids that are so talented that but people don't take a chance on them i know you have a deep spiritual side so i'm just gonna be straight up with you about this question when we die and say we're reborn right your soul when it's up then the astral plane is in heaven you select the life for yourself you select certain experiences no matter what the suffering is no matter what the journey is you say that okay this is the thing that my soul needs to complete my own journey so i know somebody must have thought of this also right what do you think your soul thought up there and said that okay this is the life i want because you have seen some level of suffering professionally yes what do you think your soul was thinking up there you know i honestly believe that i probably was somebody who was who who was a very wise person in the previous life has carried over yeah and i think that that exp some experiences


over yeah and i think that that exp some experiences from that soul has has come because i was i'm telling you at six and seven i used to be like this is not right this is not done this is this is i used to feel bad that people used to get bullied i used to feel not as bad that i got bullied but somebody else got bullied yeah and there was a time when i bullied someone you know i feel pathetic about it because it's a vicious circle you get bullied you bully someone else to look superior to that person and i felt like [ __ ] when i got then the last day of my school was momentous for me because i won some awards and stuff through school and stuff but i felt like [ __ ] i need to go and apologize to this person that i said nasty things do because it was my insecurities it wasn't his fault you know and i felt bad about that what did you say i said very nasty things about this person


you say i said very nasty things about this person because he joined us in the seventh grade and i was like you're an outsider and you don't deserve to be here and and why was that coming because i was made to feel like an outsider whenever if you pick on someone and all kids pick on someone at some point you're actually just saying the things you say to yourself in private or people you know that people say about you yeah and i was saying exactly what today also people think that i'm an outsider only because i'm non-binary only because i'm not male or female that till today i have to go through till even if i have to get out of the studio i'll be judged so for me my struggles start from the time i open my eyes about the fact that should i wear this to this place should i wear these nails or should i you know do my hair like this it's such basic things with other heterosexual people might not even think of it's such basic


people might not even think of it's such basic things like am i going to be judged for the way i walk the way i talk the way i sit the way there are so many of my friends who work in companies that don't even use the restrooms because they're transgender because they don't have gender gender uh gender neutral washrooms so they hold it in their lunch break they'll go to another you know in into a restaurant or something and so that they're not judged at the workplace these are basic things that we all deserve dignity integrity we have to challenge our own dignity and our own self with all of these things the moment we wake up how how do you like deal with that man because like um you know just uh i feel there was this whole phase i went through where i i was dealing with my own stuff and i said cry my way to comfort and i'm sure you had days later i cried tonight today in the morning only because it was a yeah for a specific


morning only because it was a yeah for a specific situation but i think that it was also pent up and i think that because we put we are so comfortable and we become professionals and pushing everything back in our subconscious that's what i want to know yeah explain that oh i've pushed so much in my into my subconscious which is why even as a mental health professional even if i've got all my degrees and stuff i know for a fact that every now and then and in fact very regularly even we must get checked like even we must go to somebody who can give us uh you know insights into our own being and what we're doing wrong can i give you an insight yes you're you're doing like amazing man like and i just i wish you know i wish there was some kind of a time machine where we could go back yeah and correct things yeah not just for you for like every year but forever and for every kid in general who has faced something absolutely my belief and maybe


who has faced something absolutely my belief and maybe this is overly optimistic but i genuinely feel like the world is becoming a better place it is because it's it's also becoming a better space and place because there's no time to hate yeah there's no time to hit you're so engulfed and so encapsulated in what you do a lot of people told me you know um earlier they used to be racist when i used to go to other countries they used to be racist they should be like how can an indian speak like how can somebody who's gay or trans or uh you know female um expressive indian brown person from a middle family speaks so well how's life because i worked on myself and i can share all of these inhibitions but how are you going to shed all this judgment how are you going to deal with that because i can deal with this the more you judge the world the more you judge yourself as well yeah but you're showing you're basically mirroring


well yeah but you're showing you're basically mirroring you're mirroring your thoughts so i think now people have realized that there's no time for it there's no time for hate in all my videos or all on all my content today there will be thousands of messages that will be fantastic messages but there will to that thousand be five or ten or hundred messages that will be hateful or derogatory defaming disrespectful and i think that's because their journeys haven't started yeah 100 percent not because of us they're coming to terms with how confident you are you can't cannot that whole thing you explain about shifting things to your subconscious mind silence suffering yeah it's something it's happening to them because there have been people who have told me you're not indian you cannot be indian because you're gay i'm like i speak six indian languages i have represented this country my country your country our country at several occasions i have put india on the world map what have you done to sit


on the world map what have you done to sit there and judge my gender and my orientation have you graduated from some university of sexuality or orientation that you can judge me what have you done i pay way more taxes than your entire family alone i'm more productive to this country than you'll ever be so don't judge someone because if i have to get down to being see my thing is i have had to put guards up because i can't let every anyone come and say anything and go away that's not done that's not cool and i don't sit there being bullied in one corner be someone saying racial slurs at me throwing glacier racial that's not happening he's in 2021 now you can't be doing that and get away with it you open the door come say something to me in my house and then walk out are you crazy stay sit i'll make tea for you i want to mix poison in it sit i will give you i'm not giving you gyan also i'm just going to


not giving you gyan also i'm just going to give you a reality check where you stand what are you talking and who are you talking to um can you can you highlight some professional incidents because you know when you were when when you were in your early 20s and you were and you know what like even five five years back yeah things were so different you know there was there was like just judgement there was so much phobia it was i i kind of picked up on the toxicity then because as a newcomer in the industry even i was facing it so and i was a pretty you know standard person like just i didn't have to face uh you know how you highlighted that you wake up with a sense of oh what am i gonna face it i didn't have that i had to just face it when i go into my professional setting right so highlight some of that if you could give us some stories just for perspective this channel that i worked for for three years one of the leading


i worked for for three years one of the leading channels jc general entertainment channel some of the biggest highest grossing shows also i did and uh for them the director the guy in head the guy who was ahead back then were very condescending very condescending his daughter was my fan okay millennial not gen z millennial she was used to send me beautiful messages and i thought i think can't say but like think maybe she was queer or whatever and she used to take strength even if she was not queer she was a fantastic ally okay just like you are and you don't have to be part of the community you don't have to be gay to support gay rights or you don't have to be inhuman to support humanity my thing is that there are two always so you can be straight and support trans people that doesn't make you trans that i want to tell people you're supporting humanity so that girl was like that now father on the other hand was ridiculous like every time and the channel used to


ridiculous like every time and the channel used to book me because i was talented not because i was like sleeping with someone or my father was paying them money or i was doing something like that and you know going around you know warming people's beds that was not happening with me i knew i was tired i was young i was talented i was um i had the fire in me to work i was not like ah it was never like that that's also because my mother was a banker yes she used to give me this percent n percent spend and i was like listen mom like when am i gonna spend this money what if there's no tomorrow she's like just shut up there will be tomorrow and multiple tomorrows where you will not have this money if you spend it all so like that you know all that used to happen with me so this guy used to be condescending he used to say very ridiculous stuff openly in front of the entire team and stuff like


in front of the entire team and stuff like that and for a director to say that that means the whole tone of the shoot becomes not the director of the show he was the head of the channel wow and uh i know what he used to say behind my back also and i had told one of the producers on the channel there was a show it was a dance based reality celebrity show uh i said i want to do this i tell you why i want to do this because i don't want to do the stunt based shows and i don't want to be doing the you know like the isco gali dos kogalido and stuff like that i didn't want to do that because i'm not that person but i said let me show my talent now what is there and you know i mean like you're taking very mediocre people and that's the reason why your ratings are going down like even if you put like a star as a judge and stuff that's not happening like such mediocre personalities


stuff that's not happening like such mediocre personalities why don't you take a chance on me let them be there also i'm not like canceling them but let give me a chance they said yeah but will you dance with a man or a woman your partner will be i said how does it matter how does it matter that is one aspect of it it's part of your format i said why don't you take a chance and be the first country in the franchisee of this show to introduce me as the first person to be dancing with the same gender with with a man for example okay back then i identified as gay as a man today i'm non-binary but back then 2014 15 16 i was i identified as a man so for me i i was like why don't you take a chance no can't happen people will not like it but i said i just did another property a year back and people loved me on the show why aren't you taking the chance no no this that this and something


taking the chance no no this that this and something like that then they had a straight person who dressed up as a woman and performed with another woman that's okay for them why because that man is heterosexual if there is a transgender person if there is a gay person if there is lgbt then they don't want to take a risk what's the risk risk for them no but for in their head this is a risk people will not like it it seems and i said what are you talking about how can you talk like this to me first of all and i said take a chance at least see what if it doesn't happen eliminate me in the first week let me go but give me the chance till date like not they didn't call they called me for some other shows and i said no because i it's just not my comfort zone it's also some things that you know you're just like not why why will you condone something that you're not happy with so i said no to those um


not happy with so i said no to those um i said this is one show you all have been sitting on when are you all going to call me when the team changes when this guy leaves when this one leaves and that one leaves when everything changes that's when you'll call me why can't you be the agent of change why do you want 10 countries to do this you won't believe it in six months uk did it they had the first tv host in the celebrity edition of that show they had the first tv host who was a man who was openly gay and danced with a male partner and they made headlines everywhere and they said such a progressive country so when you have the power to do something in your country and put india on the world map you don't want to do it why because you have preconceived notions and also it's kind of sad that if you actually study ancient history of india we were a progressive country we have always been till the british came and


we have always been till the british came and [ __ ] it up yeah yeah honestly yeah and i don't have any qualms in saying this because what they teach us in our history books is one thing what our forefathers have sorry what our ancestors have gone through only they know only they know what they've gone through so when you speak about this this freedom struggle today for us to just like do you know a flying mention of it and that we're done we do we studied for the syllabus how many of us really get into that and see understand that same revolution is happening for my community today we're asking for equal rights in a democracy we are asking for respect we are not asking for special rights don't lay the red carpet for us don't give us extra salaries give us jobs so that we don't have to sell ourselves on the street do you see it changing i'm not talking about bombay i'm talking about outside i think honestly and i need to give


about outside i think honestly and i need to give this respect to places like chhattisgard like raipur and you know indoor and bhopal where they are actually more progressive than metropolitan cities and states what is our state what are we doing you know it's not center or state for me it is governance whether you are center or state i'm centrist i'm like you do good work great we will clap if you're not doing work how do you expect people to go in and vote and vote for what i voted i've always voted okay i don't waste my vote but then i also take accountability to my for my vote there are so many that is the word on the street if that you want real talk that is the real talk from the community because if i take you to kamati pura today if i take you on the streets you'll cry maybe you'll shiver you'll not be able to stand that but that's the reality where are there opportunities why are they called other gender what


there opportunities why are they called other gender what is other gender it's transgender or it is non-binary or it is you call it what is other it's like you know you categorize categorize what what do you mean by that will i say that if you're male and you do that you'll get offended right or if a woman has to be said if i have to speak to like that about a woman she'll be like what you that's outraging my modesty trans people according to that that bill and stuff that they pass they have to prove they're transgender what do you mean proof you want me to undo myself and and show you that i'm transgender being trans is not just bodily just because i've not undergone surgery that doesn't mean i'm not non-binary or i'm not i don't fall in the trans spectrum am i stupid you think that i'm stupid that i will just go lying around that i'm trans in a society where people look down on you because you're trans where is


people look down on you because you're trans where is your common sense agar for convenience sake i would just like if it was a switch saturday sunday to my transgender because if it was that simple we would have chosen to be heterosexual we are not ashamed of being transgender you are now shaming us for being ourselves also you are asking us to prove our transness who does that but what's the general tangent according to where is this country going i think my country that i know of which was india before before colonialism was the most beautiful country it was the most wonderful nation to live in the richest culturally as well as economically we uh we accounted for 31 percent of the world's gdp okay now that's a lot of money where did it all go why did we allow it to go and why aren't we fighting for it why are we annihilating on basis of religion gender orientation we don't have to fight wars because we are fighting each other it's terrible so i


we are fighting each other it's terrible so i think as people we need to understand that day i heard that you know they are not allowing trans people in the army and that person wants to serve the nation for a thousand men that don't want to join the army or the services if there is one trans person who wants to join now there will be a trans person so my thing is that i think that for my country i can do anything and i will do anything but and i will never speak ill about my country because i know how beautiful it was i know who [ __ ] it up i know who did this to our country and that is a british us but when they left us section 377 hamare rules our we have gone ahead for so many years we only abolished section 377 in 2018 you are conveniently pressing the other gender so that they could not rise up to the same level as male and female because competition [Music] opportunities you are still doing that means you will


opportunities you are still doing that means you will dehumanize someone to an extent where they're on the streets so that you feel good about yourself that's toxic and that shouldn't be allowed and i think there should be an umbrella law in our country that safeguards anybody from discrimination every person should be safeguarded under this law there are certain laws that you know that's another thing that we don't know our laws very well you know and my thing is that this is not a civics lesson or history no no but my thing is that we need to understand that we were a very rich culturally rich country we celebrated transgenders they were considered demigods [Music] how do you sleep at night what's your what's your perspective of that that as in yes they were very highly valued in society but what was the logic behind that i honestly believe that you know as you said very earlier because they have a 360 degree perspective you know whether they were uh in the


degree perspective you know whether they were uh in the king's court or the queen's court kings and queens had different quotes again because of mass toxic masculine it was like the people used to protect the protectors of the queen were transgender why because they had the power to beat a man if any man invaded they would beat them if they were also in the king's palaces they were also in the queen's palaces so they were all in in they had a 360 degree approach as you said so they would give they were the guy counselors the people who used to give them the royal eunuchs they even in the even in the you know the kings and queens even in abroad they had royal eunuchs they used to take everything should i do this should i do that why they used to ask them because they had a multicultural and also like a multi their the perspective was very very 360 degree they had they knew what they were talking about from a man's point of view from a


about from a man's point of view from a woman's point of view if they were fighting a female queen for example if and you are a king an emperor and that she was an empress how can you how can you kind of sort of go around beating her that only a trans person used to tell so they had the order community go and especially the trans people intersex people they were put on like yeah yeah from there where have they gone like why in the modern day what do you think is the application of that i honestly think that trans people are the uh in my in in hinduism and in any other culture you see that you know they depict duality of gender for me that is the the basis like what we call shift that's right is basically the amalgamation of energies that created humanity right some people perceive it as now that is according to also subject to interpretation some people perceive it as gender fluidity some people perceive it as the reason for humanity being born only when male


as the reason for humanity being born only when male and female energy mixes then you can create humanity right we have male and female in us and you all treat us like [ __ ] so you are disrespecting in a way god yeah you're disrespecting that holy almighty and all of that because we are celebrating it we are the ones that are thrown in a condensate tough end for yourselves [Music] colonialization it's culture and content that's going to change things yeah hopefully absolutely hopefully someone will watch this will be a policy maker going forward and i hope so um let's let's become policy maker how cool is it why that's the application of it in the modern day male female perspectives both um i know you're spiritual again and i gotta keep like highlighting that because it's the runway issue uh i know somewhere loki you might even be feeling that nareshwar energy inside you yes is it something you're conscious of and if i if i say the word god to you what


i if i say the word god to you what do you visualize see for me i think um i see god in everyone that's the beauty of it i see god in everything and everyone there's a reason why we are here there's a reason why we're having this conversation for me that's an experience and for me if that's a positive experience and and i honestly think that in our mythology in our history in our culture [Music] so my thing is that i see god in everyone you know and even some of some gods also have made mistakes that has been written about you know that there's a beautiful thing which i have to keep re-bringing into this show god is also a being that's constantly evolving yes yes why do you think god has so many avatars tell me it's discovering itself and also so many facets so many verticals why do you think lord shiva had aardanareshwar also for that matter as as one of the afters to show the duality we don't want to respect that


show the duality we don't want to respect that and we want to say that no transgender is not part of it [Music] yeah it's so strange you're bringing up durga man you know i wear i am i believe that god is in me god is in all of us who are you saying who is not religious what is durga for you for me durga is [Music] epitomizes power epitomizes strength and conviction for me durga is also the name of my drag child my queer child is also durga and but durga for me is every strong representation of women that have fought all the odds to overcome it my mother my gran emotional say it you know all the female strong female characters and and and inspirational figures in my life are durga form yeah same same yeah my sister my mom all of them your sister your mom also for me because they have all gone through [ __ ] that we can't think of they can you can't even think of it i keep saying


you can't even think of it i keep saying this even though i have my that female energy in me i know i'm non-binary i have that female energy i will never be able to go through even a single day what of whom female goes through i got i know that that is why i respect women because women are the creators of humanity without women there's nothing there's there you can't it's just biologically impossible so we all need to respect women and every woman is durga saraswati lakshmi everything for me i feel like um there needs to be more talk about this especially in our country uh you know where we just people are facing all these issues like being marginalized you need to highlight aspects like what does durga stand what is this divine feminine the whole world is highlighting divine feminine what is what is what does divine feminine even mean so on a personal level like i had a terrible breakup two years ago and that led me to just losing trust in women


and that led me to just losing trust in women right and that was my own journey and very soon that started to get sorted out when i i met women who were who had a cleaner heart than the person who had broken my trust women who are more healing than the person with broken trust so it took me some time and i was in i was in rishikesh okay um he smiled yeah i mean who will not smile at rishikesh i was in rishikesh and that whole that whole vacation for me i remember i left i left my house upstairs um and i prayed before i left because i found out something about my ex okay which hurt me um and i was just praying and i got this intuition this particular vacation will be deeply spiritual for you and i went through the whole vacation bits of it definitely were but i didn't find that um i didn't find the answers i was looking for and on the last day we were there this guy comes up to us and says


were there this guy comes up to us and says you know right outside rishikesh one hour two hours from here there's something called the kunja puri mata temple and uh again this is like something uh from hindu culture we have a culture of shakti pete's in this country which are supposed to be like portals of intense divine feminine energy right sounds like sounds like faff when you and you need to experience it it's it's again not a religious thing you need to go there and see what you feel yeah all spiritual places it could be a dargah church a temple they all hold intense spiritual energy and they hold different identities of it yeah um so i i the moment i heard him say kunja puri mandir i was like okay i need to go see it because maybe this is what the whole vacation led up to uh and you usually go to the kanjapuri temple for the sunrise then so we left at 4 am you drive through a jungle you know we


4 am you drive through a jungle you know we reach there and you're kind of seeing the sky is changing yeah you walk up and it's a pretty long walk it was winter so it's cold you're walking up and you're feeling that energy increase you go there the temple is made of like stone it's got like a stone floor you're supposed to remove your chapels it's freezing cold you feel like you're walking on ice but it's purity that you feel walking towards the main center and the main center of the temple they've got this like they say it's a perpetual fire that keeps burning right so the legend of the shaktipeat was that um if you know the shiva shakti story um shivji was married to um a lady who was she was a princess and her family didn't accept the fact that she married shivji because he was an asset uh he was a sage yeah and sages were looked down upon as no no you know he's he's a hermit he wears


you know he's he's a hermit he wears like animal skin and lives in the jungle um so she said you know i don't care and i still want to get married uh eventually her father called her back to their kingdom to for a function and shibji wasn't invited and at the gate of the function they built a sort of murthy of shivji and said that's just a watchman's mother to make fun of her husband oh and out of the embarrassment they say that she jumped into a fire uh and and that's why that's why the word is a whole different conversation let's not even get there yeah no but that's what the word sati arises out of that um she sacrificed her life for the love that she held in her heart when he found out that this had happened he went into his most angry state right and he did the tanda yes he carried her body around the indian subcontinent and wherever her body parts fell uh that's where they say the


her body parts fell uh that's where they say the shaktipetes arose like balls of energy kind of arose there like these yeah i mean you learn something new everywhere and uh i i believe this i believe the divine energy this this particular one uh they said it it it held her heart chakra like a heart chakra and a breast had fallen on the kunjapuri temple um coincidentally heart chakras get broken when you go through bad relationships or when you go through any kind of heart break right i was deeply heartbroken at that point in my life i'm walking up to that central fire and i can i can even feel like how the cold floor like healing me i sat there surreal yeah the pundit's like doing his chance and i went in like this deep meditation yeah i don't know what entered me in that temple i don't know what i went through but i came out healed definitely healed with a certain amount of respect for women yeah i remember going backward just


of respect for women yeah i remember going backward just hugging my mom saying thank you for thank you for going through i it was just perspective yes yeah sometimes these energies hold information as well yeah and i guess uh also it's it's very subjective now this may have sort of evoked that reaction from you or elicited that reaction from you but for somebody it might just be you know something more basic yeah or something more uh on an everyday basis like they might see something and then you know like i have seen a lot of people that um the father is very disrespectful to the mother in the home and the son is feels like okay it's okay to do that to a woman till the time it crosses a level and when the son revolts and says that's my mother you can't do this anymore you might be my father but that's my mother and she might be your wife but that's my mother and i think it's it's very different i've seen that closely very very unfortunately and


i've seen that closely very very unfortunately and and today that woman is like amazing she's like running an entire organization she's built her vampire she's got married again and you know my friend is happy he's married you know my friend so my thing is that like i think it changes for different people differently and i think i'm so happy that you had that uh experience because at least you know that you know that's a possibility and that you can't be broken forever because you will fix yeah you will fix maybe maybe it happened to me because i had to share it through content for all you i think that's the power of content right yeah same love gave me perspective as much as that trip to the temple yeah go go hear same love i'll link it down below yeah oh my god yeah i mean this conversation got way more intense than i'd expect to be wrong but i expected it this intense yeah because i mean you are also so evolved and you've been on this spiritual


also so evolved and you've been on this spiritual journey as i expected it i'm shocked that you didn't expect this i expected a version of this yeah not as deep as it yeah i ended up yeah kind of rise above you know the to dumb it down and you don't have to always like i think personally no no with my content also and also the body of work i have had to dumb it down a lot so i think that when you kind of get into the space where also kind of you're showing this side of me is very beautiful also because a lot of people think that we're only you know the sas and pizzazz and then there's no personality or there is no um honesty to what we do even as queer people so i think that that's great yeah um we have this very loved twitter section okay that's the last section of the show but right before that and i wish we could have spent more time on this particular one yeah but i know that you had