Kush Dhebar researches, studies and supervises excavations of ancient and medieval Indian
sites of importance. His PhD was a study of the sculptures of grappling and feudalism
of the Vijayanagara monuments. Apart from archaeology, he is a wrestling enthusiast
which he thinks has built more mental than physical strengths in him. How did a student
who couldn't focus on his school studies develop this set of diverse career interests? That's
what this fascinating conversation is about. This is episode 19 of My First Job, the podcast
that covers engaging career journeys and every single one is full of twists, turns and insights.
I am Venu Gopal Nair, the host of the podcast and CEO of Ideascape Communications, an advertising
agency into branding, creative and design. So settle in, sit back and enjoy the conversation
or put on your earphones and pound the pavement for the bucks. Kush, welcome to the show.
First of all, thank you very much for the great introduction. I don't think anyone in
my family would give me such accolades the way you have given. Whatever career I've had,
it's a very short career compared to a lot of people who have come on this show. I'm
grateful for whatever good, bad and ugly has happened. I studied at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya
in Delhi where the school was very compassionate towards my special learning disabilities that
I had. I was actually diagnosed with dyslexia, but it is right now at the age of 31, two
years ago that I was properly diagnosed as a neurodivergent ADHD. For the longest time,
my diagnosis like had been on a completely different tangent. I mean, it's okay. As long
as my school was very good and compassionate with me, they never put any pressure on me.
My parents never put any pressure. The only pressure was ki beta pass ho jaana. I am actually
very, very, very lucky there. Maths was a pressure, but I think my father learned to
be okay with me not doing maths. I had some of the best teachers who sort of were just
there for me and I happened to like them and not the subject exactly. Predominantly, they
were political science, history, sociology, economics teachers. Unfortunately, math teachers
were a lot stricter. And out of that, the history teacher was the most dedicated towards
me, honed my skills. Actually, she passed away when I was doing my undergrad at Hindu
college in history honors in my first year and I dedicated my PhD thesis to her. That's
history, but it's still not archaeology and I learned the difference between history and
archaeology earlier than what a lot of archaeologists do. After doing history at Delhi university
in Hindu college, for a lot of reasons, I realized that I wanted to study things that
are more tangible and my mental state, like my hyperactive brain was never the type to
stay in a room or a library or a classroom per se and just read. So I preferred being
outdoors, seeing things for myself and that's where archaeology struck a chord. The love
for history came from the teacher's attention and she has obviously given you something
that you will treasure your entire life because she's pointed you in a direction that you
know you can keep exploring. And what I was fascinated by during one of our early conversations
is that you told me that you understood that you couldn't focus on a long term. So you
looked at how to build your career around projects. How did that understanding come
about? That's still a work in progress. The understanding came out during the pandemic
in 2020. It's like universe telling me now actually be serious and think about something.
My career started after my undergraduate. I had the opportunity to teach 29 amazing
kids in Seelampur in Delhi. I was a Teach for India fellow. Teach for India actually
gave me a lot of insight into myself. Things that I realized that I'm really good at was
like being with kids, explaining certain concepts, just being out there in the field. I thrived
when I was not in a very structural corporate setup in Teach for India. My manager, she
was a British and she was amazing the way she managed me. For her, she understood me
that let's not make push do things which he doesn't like but make him do things that he
likes at the same time are aligned with Teach for India's vision. So I'm actually very
lucky that I've had a lot of managers and bosses who were women like Emma and of course
my mother. I think my first manager, the first puraskar should go to my mother for being
out there. If you would ask her, I would actually tell her to give me a t-shirt and saying Karya
Pragati Par Hai. I think Emma and then later on, I had a lot of female bosses and I think
I was very fortunate that my first set of classroom was 85% girls students. I think
around them, it used to make me calm, give me that motivation to go that extra mile.
But say if my bosses told me to do that, I would not do it. But if I could feel it, now
I need to do it for my kids, I would definitely do it. So you know Teach for India is a compulsory
two year project. It's a fellowship. So I knew that in 2013, I'm going to get done with
it. Then I did my masters. I was really short. So I will be very honest and brutal about
one thing that I got into Teach for India because initially a lot of people who were
getting into Teach for India were like the cream of the cream of Indian society and really
brilliant people being surrounded by such brilliant minds in Teach for India. It actually
gave me my own identity and even today, most of my mentors are. So I was one of the youngest
fellows in Teach for India because at that time the students, they were still more focused
on Oh, I need a career. I need to go to say McKenzie or a Bain or a BCG or study for
the civil service. Like the aspirations were still very stereotypical. And to be honest,
Teach for India had not learned marketing very well at that point of time. So I think
now they are excellent at it. Their outreach and everything is really good. But during
that time, at least I could see that people who are coming, they did not have that ulterior
motive of getting into say any good college. And even today TFI actually gave me that push,
figure it out, be opinionated. I used to be very vocal with everyone in TFI and I wasn't
fired. That was the first phase. However, the type of experiences I had with Teach for
India, I did not find a couple of my future organizations that I worked for later on to
be as accommodating to me. I would say you can't clap with one hand. I was at mistake
also and I don't blame them to a certain extent because at the end of the day, everyone has
to get their work done. That's when I realized that I should be choosing the people I want
to work with rather than the names of the organizations and the set up I want to work.
Couple of bad experiences at workplaces actually taught me not to go after brands. I ended
up doing masters in archaeology. So everyone from who does Teach for India, they usually
end up doing public policy. During my time, there were people doing MBA and people just
starting their own not for profits or for profit. But I took a completely different
tangent and I was always different. So like it's not that something that anyone was surprised
about. After working in two, three organizations where I was just not a fit for them and they
were not a fit for me, I started taking up a lot of conscious decisions on say calibrating
my expectations, always surrounded by people who were earning big packages and I wasn't.
I took that route and tried to get into various setups where I worked 13, 14, 15, 18 hours
a day. So I realized at the age of 26 that I'm not meant for this. My mother realized
it when I was 28 and my brother realized it now. So like, you know, I mean, it's like
more like a strength and conditioning happening for the entire family. And now I'm at a space
where no one in my family questions. As long as you're doing what you want and you are
on your own, we are happy. What is it that the children were looking for? You were going
from being a student to becoming a teacher. If I had not done Teach for India, I would
have definitely pursued my masters in archaeology. I just thought let's do this two year fellowship
and see how it goes. The fellowship never gave me that mindset that I don't want to
get into archaeology. The universe has its way of working things out. Job prospects,
career prospects or anything monetary is not as rewarding in archaeology. Government being
the sole major player in the archaeology and the heritage sector makes it even hard. I
don't blame the government because our heritage is owned by the people of the country select
the government. Hence the government owns it. Like any other government sector undertaking,
you give a certain exam. So people who are in the system as in ASI or State Departments,
I actually don't see them doing a lot of archaeology. I actually see them doing a lot of desk work.
So the pay scales are not even close to what anyone would imagine. The fellowship stipend
in Teach for India was like a full time salary for most of the people in archaeology at that.
The balance was that bad. I loved archaeology so much that I decided a lot of credit goes
to my mother and my brother. They said that if you have the capability to earn more by
taking your education background and making more money, why don't you do that and do archaeology
for fun and passion. I always wanted to make archaeology a career living out of it. But
to be honest, it was not until now. The first time I was employed as an archaeologist properly
was in 21 in the Department of Science and Technology project on the DNA project of Rakigadi
at Deccan College. Before that, I was so scared looking at my friends around. They are giving
this government exam. They are giving that government exam. At least I can continue that
much if you know I work in the development sector or if I say teach in an IB school or
something. So I was just very practical. Although I was miserable. Every day I wanted to quit.
But I think those eight years after my masters put a stone on my heart and just did what
I did. If I did not have curriculum VT the way it is now, I don't think you or anyone
would approach me. The initial years when you put in the effort, when you're building
your base, your foundations, nothing is seen above. It's as if you don't exist. But the
point is you're learning the most, you're absorbing the most and you're internalizing
so much that once you start taking off, then it's as if people are saying, okay, where
did this guy come from? That is one of the mistakes that I see about people who aspire
to. I'm not saying it's a mistake. Probably it's because of conditioning that they look
at saying I need a very high salary. And after that, the lifestyle fits the salary. And then
it becomes a kind of wheel from which you can't break away. If you don't like it, you
started by saying you love archaeology. So you prepared to do whatever is required. It
took you seven, eight years to get to where you are. But I think that this will really
stand you in good stead. What part of archaeology do you like the actual on-site? There are
a lot of learnings from archaeology. I can't speak. Another thing is that I'm colorblind,
but I didn't know how much it will affect me in archaeology. This is the first time
that I am excavating in Rakhi Gadi. I am going with my batch, my classmates from Bandra to
Delhi, Dehradun Express. And my first experience is two o'clock at night, the train burns.
We are stranded in Dhanu. People die. Two compartments completely burned. That's the
first time I'm like, maybe should I do archaeology or not? Now, fast forward a few days, we reach
Rakhi Gadi, terrible cold, no water, no electricity. You know, like we, I can't even see my food
and I'm so hungry that I don't want to see my food. Let's just eat it and go to sleep.
Then you know, when I started excavating, I'm a juvenile asthmatic and I'm a colorblind.
You can say it was my immaturity that I still wanted to do archaeology. These two things
were big limitations for me. On-site I fell sick. When I was sick, I went to Jind, which
was the closest city because there were no antibiotics available for like 50 kilometers
from the excavation site. So I come back. When we are excavating in India, everywhere
in the world you have to observe is that we get a lot of pottery and Rakhi Gadi is a Harappan
site. And in India, all the cultures, all the periods mostly are identified through
the type of pottery we get. And the pottery is mostly identified based on shapes and color.
Now the color part is gone for me. I mean, it was so funny that I would go to my professor,
professor Shinde, the site supervisor, Nilesh Bhau and Amrita ma'am, who was the other
professor. I actually took a lot of modern pottery to them, ma'am, see Harappan pottery.
And there was a time when all the people were like, you take out the mud, leave the color
work to us. I was literally like using my forearms and you know, taking out all the
dirt and sand. And the other thing is that in archeology, we need to see stratigraphy.
When we excavated trench, we have to basically mark and do some stratigraphy drawing. That
is all either based on color and texture that you have to touch. Wherever I could make out
that the texture is different, I was lucky. But a lot of time I just missed all cultural
layers. I think asthma and my colorblindness studying art history with colored art is gone.
Getting ceramic studies is gone. I actually did not like excavations much. One because
I always kept on falling ill. And the other is people think that we archeologists do a
lot of amazing stuff. We have to stand at a trench and just wait for it to go down.
If workers are there, we have to manage workers. And trust me, it's not a very good thing.
It's very boring. I was at a site at Telangana called Fani Giri recently in 2018 and no antiquities
are coming out from my trench. But I can't go anywhere. I'm supervising my trench. So
there is no cool stuff happening. It's scorching sun. I don't speak Telugu. All I could speak
is Muttham excavate all. Mitty, Mitty, Tee, Yee. The workers taught me certain words.
The reality of archeology is that this is what majority of archeologists face. I mean,
I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn like everything that, oh, I want to find a civilization. I
want to find this, that earlier I used to be very supportive to these youngsters. And
now I'm like, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that doesn't happen with everyone. They
might hate me for the brutal honesty that I put in, but I think they will thank me for
being honest to them because when they actually get it, they're not finding anything. That's
when you said grappling, right? I was a very active person because I was hyper. I got into
martial arts. Then I went to my professor, Dr. Shrikant Ganvir and I asked him that sir,
you deal in temple, temple. You tell me that I can do something like martial arts. Can
I do something? Initially, even he thought, yes, there are sculptures of Vali Sugriva
and some master's dissertation on it. But if I'm interested in something, I like to
go deep down and I don't leave it. I actually figured out through these sculptures of grappling,
I can technically not just be very simplistic that, oh, temple had these sculptures to actually
start understanding India as a whole. That's a complete conversation. I have written a
lot of articles and I'm still working on it. Two best things have happened to me in my
life. One is getting acquainted with children. Second was doing my PhD research. Because
of my PhD research, I started going to an MMA gym. At that time I was young. I was 25
years old for my master's dissertation. So I thought, if you're doing it on a wrestler,
then try it out. And trust me, it's not that good when you're fighting with professional
fighters. Delhi being the place it is, as it is known for its roadside brawls. These
people come to these gyms to make sure they don't brawl outside. So you know inside the
gym, they will go all out. My fight club where I learned whatever little bit of Jujitsu,
boxing, Muay Thai is like my family now. They also learned to accept me. They knew that
I will not come every day, that I will not do everything that my coach tells me. My coach
Siddharth Singh, he knows me so well now. He doesn't judge me anymore. And my entire
fight team doesn't judge me. So initially, you know, when I started training, all of
them are professional fighters now. Our gym has just signed a fighter with the UFC, which
is like the mother load of mother load of mixed martial arts. I mean, that's how successful
my gym is. All of these youngsters, I have seen them, I have trained with them when they
were teenagers. They are more mature than me to realize that Kush, why don't you come
and sit and watch us fight? I was always injured. But then they sort of realized that, okay,
Kush wants to do Jujitsu for research. I don't want to choke people for a living. Even right
now, cross-chain fight club. And then when I was working in Bangalore, I joined another
gym called Institute of Jujitsu. I actually found a lot more encouragement, motivation
and following in the fight industry than in archeology. Everyone in archeology, the ones
who do it, Gadadharibheem, Pehelwan, Malla. Now that people have seen that I've done my
PhD, I've given so many podcasts, interviews and stuff to different places. So now like
people have started taking me a bit seriously, but I'm fine with it. So you said Vali and
Sugriva who featured in your PhD dissertation, how did you go deeper into that? When we see
a temple, most of us look at a temple from a very religious, pious point of view. But
the reality of the situation is that what we define as a Hindu temple today is not the
way it was defined earlier. Temples were centers for power. Temples were landowners. Temples
were employers. Temples were places of gathering. Temples were places of festivities. There
were Kalyanamandapam. There were Bhoogamandapam. They were places for charity. Same way the
mosques are today. There are orphanages running out of mosques, out of churches. All the religious
bodies all over the world under the umbrella of religion, they don't just pray all the
time. They do a lot of other stuff. There is lack of awareness regarding these cultural
processes. I have started an organization myself called Vratya Foundation where I am
writing graphic novels and comics on Indian culture to make our youth understand various
cultural phenomenon. For me, a temple can be interpreted on multiple levels and the
sculptures on the temple. People always joke about Khajurau temples, erotic sculptures.
If you go deep into it, like I have a friend Anuja, then I have a mentor, Devangana Desai
ma'am, who went so deep into those cultures that they were not just erotic sculptures.
They had a lot of significant meaning for the people of that time. They actually symbolize
a lot about the contemporary human behavior and mindset. We have to understand the tantra
shastras. We have to understand the Shaiva agamas, Vaishnava texts. Even Shaiva, Vaishnava,
within Shaiva there is Kalamuka, there is Kapalika, there is Nath Sampradaya. The sculptures
that I dealt with were not just religious in nature. The sculptures had a lot of deeper
symbolic meaning. For example, I did my PhD on sculptures of grappling and pugilism, which
is basically boxing and grappling on Vijayanagar monuments. For my PhD, I went around Northern
Karnataka. I saw Badami Chalukyan monuments. I saw Yadav, Raj Trikot and I saw a lot of
monuments. To figure out my PhD topic, I would have seen around 200 temples for identifying
my area. Vijayanagar was a very unique setup. Again, the universe has its ways. In Pune,
I started doing another martial art because there was no Jiu Jitsu. I started doing Kapuera.
Now Kapuera has its own very symbolic meaning. It is something that is comparable to Kalari
Payattu in Kerala or Chao martial dance of Mayurban Sarai Kela area. We went for a road
trip from Pune to Hampi just to chill because Hampi is known for a lot of other reasons
as well. Once you cross the river, my friends were enthusiastic in that point of view as
well. Just hanging around with them, showing them over like I found out a lot of sculptures
of my topic. Then I did repeated visits to Hampi. Then I decided, okay, let's see more
temples in Karnataka. Then I deliberately took up a job in Bangalore in an IB school
so that I could bootstrap my PhD research. Every weekend I was on the road. I used to
take the Karnataka Sarai Kela or I used to go to Majestic from Bangalore, go all the
way to Anantapur, Lepakshi and roamed around. Not a single word of Telugu, not a single word
of Kannada. I learned what a temple, what a Devasthanam Illidira. I just had to say this
much and people would point and I would walk there. The temples would feed me. I have actually
in my Rayalaseema field work, so Rayachoti, Somapalam, all of these villages don't have
places to stay. At Rayachoti, I did not find a bus to Kadri where I had to see the next temple.
So it was quite dark and the pujari allowed me to sleep in a Vijayanagara temple. It was a living shrine.
The next morning I woke up, went to Kadri, to Lakshmi Narasimha temple. Archaeology taught me a lot of such
things, a lot of life skills. I'm not an excavator. When people think archaeology, the first thing
they are like ek toh hat hogi aur haath mein haath mein hunter and next hand they will either have a
pitchfork or shovel or something. I am not that kind of an archaeologist. Martial arts made me
learn a lot of things. I would actually see that there are certain moves that I'm really good at
and when I'm paring with my coach or someone, I would actually stick to them. Here's when I think
a lot of transference and liquid or fluid intelligence helped me. Applying my learnings
from various other parallel experiences I've had to my other parts of life made me a lot more
wiser and mature. A lot of my friends would say I have a long way to go in these departments but I
think my skills from jujitsu, I actually am not able to apply them in jujitsu because all of my
opponents are stronger than me in the gym. I actually apply them in my career. Similarly,
my anthropological and archaeological fieldwork and experience knowledge helps me to connect with
the fighters. If someone is from Haryana, I can speak a little bit of Bangru. When I was doing my
PhD fieldwork, I went to Kolhapur, I went to Mysuru. So these two places are like hubs of
Mallayudha. I learned Marathi by just going around villages with my professors. I could not learn
Kannada because I think Kannada was a lot tougher for a North Indian like me to adapt to but I could
understand very basic stuff and I could communicate and the best part about wrestling was that in
Mysuru, I met with a lot of Jetis. I was not able to understand. They did the moves on me and it was
really fun. It was not like we were fighting. I would just talk like for example what we see in
jujitsu today is very similar to medieval periods Jambuvanti Mallavidya, Hanumanthi Mallavidya and
again why people call it Hanumanthi, why people call it Jambuvanti. It's not just because these
people were strong but there are certain moves which required the intellect of these mythical
characters. So it is very interesting how grappling helped me understand mythology. It helped me
understand folk culture. Maharashtra and Karnataka were like the hubs. Then I got deeper into local
religious deities. In Andhra, Tamil Nadu, we have Mylar, Mallari and Maharashtra. It's the same.
Okay and then there is Mallanna. Then there are these Khandoba. Connecting with the local people
helped me get better at a lot of things in my fight world. All the fighters mostly don't come
from very affluent backgrounds. To be a fighter, you need to be a killer. There needs to be a switch
in you which when you turn on, you don't think about anything else. My coach Siddharth Singh,
with him, I have just seen so many fighters like seen Afghans, I have seen Iranian fighters,
I have seen North Eastern people. I think they are born with a six pack. You know these Afghans,
these North Eastern fighters, a lot of say from Maharashtra, from Kolhapur and Marathwada area,
their whole background is into farming, hard core physical work. You don't become a fighter by just
watching videos or you know or by wearing expensive trash guards in the dope language. Once the cage
shuts, everyone will know who is a fighter. It's good that I realized that before the cage shut,
so I was safe. The type of people I connected with, I think I was so humbled. My PhD led me so deep
into knowing so many good people who don't even get the type of attention that I am getting right
now, who have fought for the country in the boxing ring or who have represented the country in
Thailand in Muay Thai by abouts but no one knows about them because they don't play cricket. A lot
of humbling experiences through my PhD research. I lived my PhD research unlike what a lot of
archaeologists do or a lot of PhD scholars in general do. I've been very lucky that I have a
very practical mindset in things. So I'm not very connected or invested emotionally into a lot of
things that can be bad also that can be good also. Yeah, that's true. Let's say you look at a sculpture
which is to do with wrestling. How do you draw interpretations because you might have texts which
describe some of the sculptures which are there but the cultural aspects of these images, how do
you begin to go deeper into that? What majorly archaeology deals with is iconography. Just to
give a basic information, a sculpture is studied by an archaeologist as an archaeological source
material. Anything more than 100 years old comes under the purview of archaeology. So an archaeologist
will look at the sculpture as an artifact while at the same time someone from a fine arts background,
arts and aesthetics background will look at a sculpture from a more holistic visual culture
or a popular culture point of view. So they will look at iconometry, they will look at the
composition of the sculpture, the stone used, the type of chiselling marks done, the type of artwork.
They will try to interpret which school of art it comes from. For them, it's a very aesthetic sense.
For an archaeologist, it's not more of an aesthetic object of appreciation. It's more of a heritage or
an artifactual object of human behavior. At the same time, a scrappler will see, oh see he's holding
a necktie or he's holding a single leg. While I was successful in identifying the sculptures from
a grappler's point of view and an archaeologist's point of view, what happened was my PhD evaluator
was an arts and aesthetics person. So in 45 minutes, he gave me a boot camp on arts and aesthetics
during my PhD evaluation. It wasn't a very pleasant feeling when I was getting that lecture
from him. But now I, if I did in hindsight, I'm very, very, very grateful to his hard words.
You know, like I said, Lato ke boot baat se nahi maandte hain. Now I realize how people should
approach sculpture from a cultural angle. It needs to be a very multidisciplinary approach.
You cannot be an archaeologist and not study a sculpture from aesthetics point of view or
historical point of view. There are multiple phases of identifying a sculpture. The first is
identify what is happening. If you can identify the people in the act of grappling well and good,
then you identify what they are wearing, what kind of physical appearance the sculpture has.
The second phase comes if you can identify or place that sculpture in a context. For example,
if it is Vali Sugriva, you know it is Kishkindha Kand of Ramayan. That's your greater. But if you
don't know, that's when the game gets tricky. In my case, the sculptures on temples which deal
with grappling don't find much mention in the Shilpa Shastra. When we look at the Shilpa Shastra
or Vastu Shastra texts for each period, right from Vishnudhar Mottar Puran, Matsya Puran,
then we go to Mayamata, Manasara which are even late and the latest being Shri Tattva Nidhi of
Krishna Rajavode are the third. They are more dealing with sculptures which are religious in
nature. So they compartmentalize them as Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakt, minor gods and divinities,
Sura Sundaris, floral motifs. Then you have to figure out why are my sculptures not mentioned
in the Shastra. It gets tougher. Then you need to understand that okay, now I have to, then comes
the third phase. That is when you don't take that sculpture in isolation but sculpture as a part of
a whole body, that is the temple and that temple is more like an epicenter of the area. Then I will
not look at one particular sculpture but how to study the cultural scheme of the temple. Based on
the sculptural scheme, based on the period of the temple, you will actually have to study local
history of the area. Then slowly you have to expand. Now it depends on your research methodology
and your skill set on how broad you want to be versus how niche you want to be. The thing is in
a PhD, you have to state what exactly you intend to do. For me, what began as a phase one PhD thesis,
when the evaluator evaluated my thesis, I thought that I had covered all the three phases but he
very nicely said beta tumne pehla phase hi kiya and he still awarded me the PhD because this kind of
work was never done before. So I think I was lucky that I was the first one to do it otherwise god
knows I would have been rewriting my PhD thesis today but what he actually pushed me to do, I am
right now converting my PhD thesis into a monograph because apparently every PhD scholar should do that
if they in a rainy day want a job in a university. Pray to god that I don't have to apply for a job
again. Me being practical, you should always have contingencies. When I'm converting my PhD thesis
into a monograph, I am actually taking each and every pointer that the evaluator told me into
consideration and I have just, I mean it's mind-blowing. It's fascinating because the
arts are normally seen as dance and music whereas this is always seen as something physical so there
is no application of the mind here but from whatever you've told me so far, there is such a
wealth of knowledge that needs to be uncovered. That big misconception. You fight and then you will realize there is
more mind than body. Sun Tzu has very nicely said what happens on the battlefield is a by-product
of what happens in the head before that. The type of strategizing, the type of mental preparation it
takes to condition a fighter. When the cage is locked, you have to be so good at what you have
learned that it needs to happen unconsciously or subconsciously. For that, the conditioning of brain
is the ultimate factor. I think physically I'm very fit but the only reason why I could not
take up martial arts even at an amateur level, I mean I still somewhere regret not being able to
fight and I tell my mother this enough but main reason why I haven't become a good martial artist
in my eyes is not physical, it's mental. I did not have the maturity and the sincerity to put in that
much effort. Mentally if I was strong enough in during those days, I don't think anything would
have been able to stop me because I'm really smart when it comes to identifying various moves, I have
a good memory but all that is useless if you are mentally not stable. This has been so instructive,
Kush. It's a fascinating journey. Thank you for coming on the show. The fact that you go deep into
something and you have a point of view that people may not agree with but that doesn't in any way
take away from what you are saying. That is completely fine. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Venu. My first job, the podcast is a production from Ideascape Communications.
Guest relations, promotions and creative is managed by Deepa Ravi with occasional support
by Venugopal Nair. Archiving and technical help is provided by LPS Jayachandran.