Onepod Podcasts

Vikram

Wait, I have a question for you. You mentioned something about this magical $3.85 check. Did you cash it yet?

Subu

No, dude, it's actually still sitting and staring right here. I mean, it's just, it was sitting in front of me for a good two or three weeks, and it started annoying the heck out of me. So I just put it under a pile of papers and it is somewhere is lost under a heap of papers. So,

Vikram

that's your insurance for not having it land up in the diaper pail again. A bunch of papers.

Subu

I got it. Okay, you know what? You? Good you reminded me of it. Because I think today's the day I'm going to put it on my list. If I do this one thing for today, I consider that an achievement.

Vikram

The bank sent me something saying like, Hey, you closed your account, but we held on to some of your money. So here is here is the money and one some interest back with it. And I got the check in is like $20 is laying on the dining table. And I come in yesterday, and my younger one is trying to make a paper rocket out of it. I'm like, no,

Subu

Actually twenty bucks is quite a bit. No, I would, I would, I would protect that check with my life

Vikram

I'm like, that's $21.60 you should not touch it. It's where he unfolded and straightens it out. So it's not a paper rocket right now. So if I don't take care of my $20 Bill and your $3.85 cent bill, it's going to land up in a bad place.

Subu

Done deal that's going to be my task for the day.

Vikram

So yesterday, I finished listening to Andrew Huberman's podcast about time restricted eating and fasting, right. So I've been trying it for the last couple of days. And today, I have not eaten anything yet. And it's like 11:15 Oh, wow. I had a cup of black coffee. So it's like a completely empty stomach podcast regarding. We'll see how it goes. If I start slurring, you know

Subu

Yeah, actually, the thing is that, I mean, once you get over that why? hump, which I think happens for me around eight in the morning, if I don't eat between that 8:00 to 8:30, that window, then I'm actually pretty good until lunch. I don't really feel hungry. Yeah, for a few hours. And in fact, it's almost like my energy sort of peaks back up,

Vikram

I'm trying to keep this whole eating thing to within eight hours a day. So the 16 hours of fast and eight hours a day, supposed to be great for like metabolic health and gut microbiome and you know, weight loss.

Subu

When going to work was still a thing. Doing this intermittent fasting was much easier for me at that time, because I would just wake up and then you know, have a shower, get ready and this drive to work,

Vikram

Oh you have too many snacks in your house.

Subu

But yeah now we are now I mean, now that we are working from home for the last year and a half. I mean, you wake up in the morning, you're just bumming around work, you know, walking around the kitchen doing nothing. And so the pantry sort of talking back to you saying eat me

Vikram

up and wander into the kitchen every now and then trying to eat something. I don't have that problem. I've never been much of a snacker anyway, so I never,

Subu

I'm also not much of a snacker. But the problem is if there are snack, they will be snacked upon.

Vikram

I think long definition of a stacker is you can snack?

Subu

So I mean, if there are no snacks to eat, then I'm actually okay. No, I don't. I don't have a hankering for it. It's just that when it is around, I mean I am not at rest until that snack is done and dusted.

Vikram

I don't know how much is going to help. I'm going to go drink a ton of beer after this probably so it's all destroys everything.

Subu

Okay, so hear this out, okay? When we were in college, they were at least two people who used to ask me weird questions all the time. Right now. For example, there was this one guy who borrowed my control systems notes, because he missed class for a day. And this was obviously 2002-2003 where Google and Wikipedia and things like that were not really a thing internet. Internet wasn't the way it is today. Right? So textbooks and the notes dictated by the teacher in class were really the main source of information for your exams. So this guy borrows my control systems book and then the next day he returns it back and he tells me dude, Subu do you think about sex a lot? What How did you gather that from a control system note book, right. And then he's like, No, your handwriting is otherwise garbage. But you're what when you write a y, the letter Y, it's very flamboyant. It has a long tail. And that is an indication that you think about sex a lot. Here. I don't know where he got that from. But yeah, so that's what he gathered from my control systems notes, right? That's what I mean by weird question. So the other weirdo was you

Vikram

What? Yeah, I stand against his accusation. But okay, tell me why.

Subu

Okay, let's go through this. And then you can decide for yourself. So when we were in IIT coaching, when we were when we were in 12th, it was three of us who used to sit on a bench me, you and this other friend of ours called Arun we called him Biggie. And this was a physics mechanics class. And the teacher was drawing all kinds of weird pulley configurations on the board and trying to, you know, and asking us, Hey, what is the friction at this point? I'm like, man, who the hell cares about this pully? There are five police. Nobody's ever gonna build a setup like this, right?

Vikram

You're not wrong.

Subu

And my head is already in, in a rut. And you are sitting next to me and asked me dude Subu write the number zero. I'm like, I write the number zero. And then a few minutes later, you asked me, Subu, write the number zero again. And I'm like, okay, whatever, dude, what a nerd. Okay, fine. I'll just play along, right, number zero. And this went on for a few days, right? And then, at the third day, in your asking, you asked me to do the same day, and you're asking Biggie also do do the same thing. Like, write the letter O or write the number zero, and so on. I'm like, You know what, I can't deal with this anymore. What the hell's wrong with you? And then like, you know, have you observed that when you write zero on Oh, it's always anti clockwise? I'm like, Okay, I mean, so what? And then you figure that you are different in the sense you try to in the clockwise direction. So that was the whole thing, right? I didn't think much of this. But the next question you asked me, it was a little more profound. And it's actually it was in my mind for a while, because he came up one day and asked me, dude Subu, which language do you think in I initially wanted to just brush it off? Because I thought it's one more of your write the number zero.

Vikram

Hey, wait, wait, let me stop you there. Okay. So it's not weird that I observe people writing zero anti clockwise or clockwise. But, but immediately when people go to the southern hemisphere, they go flush the toilet and watch that the water go the other way around because of Coriolis force. So that's totally not weird. Anyway, that's so it's okay. I explained it by Coriolis force. Coriolis force makes my hand go one way or the other. Let's try the experiment. We'll try again. Anyway, continue.

Subu

Yeah. So you come up and ask, dude Subu, which language do you think? Right? And I didn't think much of it. I said, Yeah, you know, whatever. We all think in English, don't we? And then I go back home. And then I realized that man, your question wasn't so obvious. Because when I was looking at my mom, my mom used to work in the bank, and then she's counting some stuff. And she is counting loudly in Malayalam. Right? So it is clear. I mean, I wouldn't I would never do that. My dad, his inner conversation is in Tamil, and my mom speaks to herself in Malayalam, oh, all of us, lots of brother and I, obviously, our inner voices in English, and my mom's is different, and dads are different because of the way they grew up in the place they grew up in. And that's when I realized that there is a lot more to this whole, which language do you think and because, sort of sat with me and I've, I've observed this around me since then I see these differences, where my mom, for example, the way she perceives things is different in a way because you know, the language she's thinking is in is not English. You know, and sometimes when someone says something very, say, philosophical or very complex idea, she thinks for a second and then asks me, can you just say that in a way I understand it, because clearly she is doing some sort of translation from English or something else, right? In a way she can understand it. And then she's like, wait a minute, what this person said it's somehow not making sense to me. And then I sort of translated for her I said, Hey, you know, this is what he's saying. And I mean, if this is some sort of a philosophical thing and then if I say it in a different way, in a way she understand say in Tamil or whatever and then she's like, ah, then she gets it.

Vikram

Do you think that language that one thinks in affects how they perceive something?

Subu

I think it does, because there have been some studies okay. Where in some of these tribal languages say like, you know, the tribes of Australia and about genies and things like that, where they have found that certain words which which imply emotion, right, they don't exist if you say anger for example, I'm this is like a total example, obviously. So it's like the word angry in English. You know, it evokes some emotion. So like, you know, we all get angry. It's almost like saying that the word anger does not exist in this tribal language. and because of which those people don't get angry. Okay? I mean, I'm obviously giving anger as an example. So but it has been proven that since certain words don't exist in a language vocabulary, the way people behave the way people think, the emotions that their minds go through is different.

Vikram

That's nice. That's interesting. I believe there are a lot of words also in German, of which I know nothing about. But I've also heard that in German there are these words that just describe certain feelings, or certain situations and consequences that just can't translate into English in any way. Right? I guess we have words like that in our language as we speak to like in Tamil and Malayalam there are words that you can't really translate into English. And that may be how you know perception depends on the language you're thinking.

Subu

The point is, a word usually has a certain connotation. Take this word, 'Kanjoos' in India, the Indian in Hindi or the word I mean? It's, it's it's Hindi, but then everyone uses it doesn't matter across India, across whatever state you're in the word 'Kanjoos' used to call out a person who is like a miser. But the point is, the literal translation of, of the word 'Kanjoos' to English is miser. But for some reason, when you say a miser, it doesn't give me the same connotation as the word Kanjoos. Yeah. Then I thought, you know, what could be what is a more appropriate translation of Kanjoos in English, right? And the translation I came up with was Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck or Uncle Scrooge. So in order to elicit the same connotation, as the word Kanjoos does, like in English, I think Uncle Scrooge is is a better translation,

Vikram

it word doesn't really fit in a sentence, however, right? You can just say, look at that Kanjoos fellow over there or something, and they're like, oh, that fellow is like completely Kanjoos. It doesn't translate the same way as saying, Oh, that guy is like a complete miser. I mean, I guess it is. But it doesn't give you that, like, the connotation right? Is not there in the sentence, right?

Subu

English essentially, has always been our first language. But when we are all talking to each other, at least 20% of the words are some Indian language, our vocabulary has become this mixture of English and other languages, to convey what we are thinking, you know, I'm using these words to make you feel in a certain way, my idea is most effectively conveyed in this mixture of Hindi, Kannada and English. And that's what we've sort of arrived at.

Vikram

That's how we all speak in a way. Actually, this reminds me of like, in school, we studied a lot of Hindi, whether he liked it or not, of course, I didn't like it. But one thing I took away from that whole experience was like, when we went through those books, or the stories or whatever we read in Hindi, at that time, it was very evident, that this particular story or book is best done in that language, right? Like it has a certain richness to it, when something is read in a language it's meant to be read in. And that is the essence of language, in my opinion, at least to me. And that is why I feel so sad sometimes that I really have no idea of all the awesome literature that's written in Spanish, Russian or French, you know, like the outsider, Albert Camus book, The Outsider, was written in French, originally, and I read the book in English, obviously. And it is such a powerful book about the mind of a guy who's about to face execution, this inner turmoil just before his day of execution, up to the point of it, and it was incredible in English. And if it was in French, I can't even imagine how much more awesome it would have been or how I would have appreciated it. And since we both watch a lot of anime and you know, we always watch subtitles, right? We never watch English dubbed you know, we watch English subbed. And I guess the feeling of the anime comes real to us when we hear Japanese even though we don't understand any of it. But the emotions are so nicely conveyed when we see subtitles to a movie or anime that we are watching. And it's so much better than totally good.

Subu

That's a good example. That was a great example. Actually, I can't stand dubbed anime.

Vikram

Yeah, it's terrible. And remember when you go watch the subbed one, and then you watch the dubbed one, and you're like, Oh, this is this is like, you start to cringe immediately. You can't you can't second more you have to shut it off immediately. So that's like the power of language that can have on somebody and you don't even know the language. That is what is so amazing about that.

Subu

I came across this in in a Lex Friedman podcast, where he says that some of these Russian works by Dostoevsky these works hit their works have been translated to English But some of these experts, they take sometimes over a year to arrive at the final translation, it's easy to convert it to English words, but then that doesn't do justice to the original idea the way it is conceived in Russian. So in order to translate it with the meaning and to make you feel the way a Russian would feel it while reading it, you know, your your AI and your machines may not be able to do this as such as yet at least Yeah, you need a human to feel it. This translation English conveys the Russian equivalent much better. And you know, that's how it is done.

Vikram

That's right. Remember, like earlier earlier you said, how we speak like a mixture of languages. I was thinking like, is that true? With what I do? In general? Yes, in colloquial speaking, even when I speak in Tamil, I do use a lot of English words, but I am actually quite capable of speaking entirely in Tamil. Like when I speak to my grandparents, I was always like a favorite among my cousins and everybody who went to like grandparents house, I could communicate with grandparents almost entirely in Tamil without using any English words. I think I got to this point because even today, I when I speak to my mom, I speak only in Tamil, I quit. My dad always spoke English. But with my mom, I only speak Tamil even now. And when I didn't know a word for something, I used to go ask these people like, hey, what's the word for this? And I built my vocabulary up that way. But I think it consistently came from these people in my family talking to me in that language. In contrast, my wife's Sam's Tamil speaking is not even close. She's, she has so many English words in it. And I make fun of her all the time about it. And in colloquial, language, especially in Tamil Nadu or things like that, this is called 'Petering'. I don't know if you know it's "peter addie Kiriaa" means right. You're petering the thing, like I don't know why it's like it's related to Peter. Right? Why is it called Peter? Anyways, this one story I'll tell you is super funny, because this happened when I visited like San Jose, where you are some years back, we were talking about our kids are all young ones. And, you know, they they, you know, had they had this baby talk, right and there's a word for that in Tamar is called Marlay. Okay. And I told Sam, it's called, you know, this guy's Meireles, you know, very cute or whatever. And she's like, what, what did you say? Maralay? What does that mean? Like I told her maybe talk, you know, it's like, no, it's not true. No way that you're making it up. There is a word for that. You're making it up? Like, no, I'm not making it up. Alright, let's ask Subu and his brother in those guys know this language too. So I come and ask you. Hey, Subu, what is Maralay? Like, you're like, straight up? Like, I don't know. I don't never heard of it. Okay, fine. He's usually not supporting my case. Let me go to his older brother. Maybe he knows something. I go to Arun. I don't. What is maralay? Like? Oh, it obvious? What is it? Like what's obvious about it? It means "no rain". What the hell. Why is he? What is the mean? No rain he's like "marai illai". Oh, maray means rain. Okay. Illai means no, not there. He's like marai illai means, no rain, like, Dude, that's not what I'm trying to say. And Sam's like. See, I told you that it's not a word. You're just trying to make me look bad. Anyway. So this is what comes down to it's like, a lot of times we are not exposed to the vocabulary of the whole language. Because, you know, all our parents also speak English. And then we just switch to that language. It's convenient. And we do that with our kids these days, right?

Subu

There is something to it. I mean, we don't necessarily need to clean up our English and change the way we talk. I don't think we should necessarily try to polish it up in a way because at least when we are talking with each other, when a word from another language is more appropriate, I mean, it conveys our idea more effectively. I would like to think about it as we are enriching our English with these other local supplementing, supplementing or bringing new words into the dictionary, essentially, right?

Vikram

There are words that are incorporated into English from our own languages. Yeah, like this mulligatawny soup. Have you heard of mulligatawny soup? Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. It's basically molaga thanni soup, which means like chili water soup, which is what it is right? So there's that and there is Moringa which we refer to as Murungakka. There are words that are made that have come into English from other languages and that's totally fine.

Subu

So I guess we Vikram and Subu enriching English since 1984. All this was about out past. Let's come to the present now, in the last few years, especially after Having a kid, you know, at least once a year, I have this pretty dire existential crisis, right? I don't mean this very lightly. What I mean by existential crisis is I find a need to figure out, you know, where I come from what it is to be alive, especially now that, you know, we're in our late 30s. And we're sort of coming up on our half life. You know, I think it's, it's very human to question, wait a minute, is this all there is to life. I mean, I wake up in the morning, I get my kids ready. And then I go to work, I put up with the politics and all these people at work, then I come back home, I'm exhausted, and then I do a few things. And then I go to bed and it repeats, the whole thing repeats again, right? So I think it is, it is only human, for me to feel this way. This sort of man, is there more to life, where do I come from, and then I mostly interact with friends who live close by and my parents. And as kids, I used to hang out a lot with my cousins, my uncles and aunts, and that has sort of gone away, all my uncles and aunts are pretty old now. And I rarely speak with them, I am just in touch with maybe one of one occasional uncle or something like that. So I know this, this existential crisis sort of leads to a little bit of an empty feeling, saying, Man, I kind of feel like when we were younger, when it came to relationships, and meeting cousins, and uncles, they, our lifes were rich in a certain way. And I have essentially let that decay, and I have not stayed on top of it. And I have lost a certain richness in life. Now what is happening is I'm sort of digging through once again, because you can see my parents are old, my uncles are older, but they're all still alive. And while all this is happening, I have this need to sort of dig up all these old stories and figure out a little more about not just me and my parents immediately, but also where my parents come from, and you know, what were what was their life's like, and about, you know, their cousins and so on. When we were young, I sort of I didn't appreciate this enough, every time we when we went to a different city to meet some cousins or some uncle, then if we went to say, Madras for a week, we would spend most of the time just visiting other cousins and other relatives, right. And as kids, this was very bothersome thing. Like Dad, Mom, you just want to go to the beach, I don't want to keep going and meeting these old people. But fast forward, now I have this appreciation thing, man, that is actually good. I'm glad we my parents sort of did that against our will in some some ways, because some of these cousins, I'm still in touch with, I'm not necessarily in touch with them. But I have the ability to get back in touch with that.

Vikram

That's pretty good, right? I

Subu

mean, I can find them on Facebook, Instagram, wherever it is, in my journey, or in my quest to figure out more about my past and my parents past. I think the fact that I know, three or four Indian languages is making it a lot more easy. And I think that is where knowing these languages in some level of proficiency, right? Not saying that I'm extremely proficient in any of the languages for that matter. Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, or Kannada or whatever it is, but I know enough, and I'm proficient enough with all these languages that when I am trying to explore the meaning of life in looking back at some of these old Indian textbooks, and all of those philosophies, which I'm really enjoying now, knowing these languages, is reducing the barrier, and it is being really helpful. And I think that is where I really feel that these languages have sort of been a gift in a way. Nice. So for example, right? I mean, if you remember, this was something that you told me a long time ago, when when your cousin was getting married in I think this may have been like 2002 or 2003. Our first show was at her wedding. Yeah. I don't know if you remember, it was just me, you and Bhaskar who went and played up some music. I remember. On one of the days you came back to me, dude, aSubu. All my uncles, everyone was there at the wedding. And we sat down and we drew up the whole family tree. Do you remember that?

Vikram

Yeah, that's true. Actually, that document exists. Going back 400 years, I think in my family, few people who sat down and charted everything down for the last 400 years. When I look at that whole thing, I go like, Okay, wow, I'm just a small piece in this whole big picture here. And look at all these people who have lived before me. It's amazing. I barely know even two levels of that, right? I mean, I hardly know like a small circle of that thing. Something I did many, I would say like say six, seven years ago is my grandfather who was alive then I told him one day, I don't know much about your life when you were younger. By the time I knew him as my grandpa, he was already in his at least 50s or 60s. I mean, what happened for like a half a century before I was even there, what did my grandfather do? And he was actually the chief engineer in Tamil Nadu and respond For almost all the bridges built in Tamilnadu, today, he was the chief supervising civil engineer. And he started writing emails to me. And he was very tech savvy. He started writing emails to me like every week about what he did in his younger days, I still have them.

Subu

Oh, wow, man, you have never told me about this. This is a wealth of information. This is great.

Vikram

Yeah, it's amazing. He explains like how his children were born, how he got married, how he moved between cities for jobs, how he finished his education, and all this stuff is like amazing information in time and era that was not even possible to imagine today, because this was still in British India, right? Yeah. So that's an really nice thing to see where we come from and everything. I fear now, actually, that my kids now being American citizens will not have that deep relationship to the past, and you know, where they come from, or anything like that. Because to begin with, we don't even speak the language at home anymore. Our kids understand Tamil, they don't speak back. And this problem I think a lot of immigrant parents will associate with, but I have seen kids who speak their native tongue very well, at the same age that my kids are speaking English. And I think that comes from parents consistently speaking to the child only in that language. Because looking back at my own past, the reason I know Tamil as well, as I do today, is because my mom even today speaks to me only in Tamil, it's not that she does not have proficiency in English. She is very proficient, this kind of consistent speaking is the only way kids were very willing to learn new languages, and it comes so easily to them, right, compared to us, but it's up to us as parents, I think

Subu

you're right. I mean, we have to do right, by them. And like I'm telling you, right? I mean, these languages have been a boon. Because I don't think it is unreasonable to imagine that when when my kid is in his 30s, he's going to have similar thoughts. I mean, I think it's a very human thing to figure out where you're coming from, and, and if I can imbibe him with, you know, whatever language skills, and I think it will help him figure out those answers for himself a little more easily.

Vikram

Now, in my household, you know, the adults all speak the same language. But that's not the case in your household, right? So you have like, two parental languages in addition to English, that your son can get a hold of and learn. Right? So that means that each of you probably have to speak to him in your own languages. And he gets to learn two languages, which is nice.

Subu

Yeah, it definitely is a challenge. I mean, like you're saying, right, I mean, in a household where both mom and dad speak a language. I mean, even there, it is generally hard, because the kids are all speaking English in school, and they also develop an accent. So in my household, Tamil is my mother tongue. My wife's mother tongue is Hindi. So it's definitely challenging. I mean, we got to see how it all turns out to be. Languages are obviously easier learned when they're younger than as an adult, Kannada, one of the languages which I most frequently speaking, it's, it's not my mother tongue. It's just happened because we grew up in Bangalore, and I sort of picked it up from playing with friends in the neighborhood. And you know,

Vikram

actually, that's my first language I spoke. I did not speak my mother tongue. I did not speak English. The first language I spoke was Kannada. My dad always grew up in Karnataka. So Kannada was okay. And he knew Kannada. My mom didn't. So whenever I asked for stuff as a kid, she had no idea what I was asking for her while she tells me the story even now, one day I go and ask her for a 'Dimbu'. Like what what's a Dimbu? What is this? I don't know what a Dimbu is. So she carries me and takes me to every room in the house is like, is this a Dimbu? This Dimbu? Is that a Dimbu? Finally? I'm like, Yes, that is it. Turns out it was a pillow. So that's how she learned Kannada actually, somehow through me she learned Kannada. So it's kind of cool. Yeah. But although in your household, you have Hindi and Malayalam who speaks Malayalam in your in laws anyway.

Subu

So my my, my my wive's dad is a Malllu. Her her mom is a Punjabi. So you know, when we were when we were dating, and when I was quoting her at that time, I mean, my Malayalam is still pretty rudimentary. I understand it perfectly, but I haven't really spoken much of it because my mother tongue is even though I was born in Kerala, my mother tongue officially is Tamil, right? So my Malayalam, I mean, I could understand it all. Your tongue needs to roll and you need to practice that in order. So I knew the words but I still have to think or construct the sentence in my mind in English. And then I sort of speak out the whole sentence in Malayalam. That's how it works when you sort of know language. So for example, as an adult if you learn Spanish, initially, you are still thinking in English and you're trying to translate it to Spanish before you speak. I tend to do that when I speak Malayalam.

Vikram

Don't you see this pattern when you speak to your parents, for example, when I speak to my mom and the way she phrases, English sentences, I can tell are from Tamil grammar. And I can see that the in Spanish speaking to you where they speak it in a different order of words. And it's clear like the grammar is carried over and influencing your English. But anyway, go on. Yeah, yeah,

Subu

when when an idea is complex enough, she's probably constructing the sentence in Tamil and then you know, your subject and your predicate is all backwards. And then that's why it all seems off and you're doing it the other way. You're thinking English and you go the other way, right? So then I went through this exercise, I decided that look, I'm going to talk to myself, I'm going to force myself to speak in Malayalam. So I was forcing all my thoughts in my mind to be in Malayalam. If you rewind 10 years ago, if you were my roommate, you would hear me speaking to myself in Malayalam every time I was taking a shower. And you probably would wonder what's wrong with this fellow? So and I was doing this because I was engaged to be married, and I wanted to get better at this language so that you know, I can start speaking to my father in law. I didn't get very far with that, by the way, it was it was extremely tedious, he find you have to force myself to think in a different language.

Vikram

Did he find out?

Subu

He's like, Yeah, he's like, You know what? You just stick to English. It's okay.

Vikram

But did he know if your whole attempt?

Subu

No, no, he doesn't hear, he'll hear our first through the pod.

Vikram

That's fine way to tell him I must say, I want

Subu

to go back to the whole wedding. Right. I mean, the whole family tree, you know, these weddings were generally I would consider them a happy time. Going to a wedding was always I always concerned that a lot of fun because you weren't going to a new city, and all your cousins from all over India are sort of coming over right? I realized, I mean, what a difficult feat that is, I mean, so if you are the parent who's organizing your child's wedding, you know, you would back in the day, I mean, 80s 90s, whatever it is, I mean, it's not just a Wedding, wedding, Upanayanam, like thread, thread ceremony and things like that. I remember my, my dad and mom, they had these old address books with yellow dot pages, they obviously held on to these address books from when their parents gave them. And they would write invitations, right, to people all over India, like 300 - 400 invitations, which means like you send your 300 or so invitations, when the whole household comes, you're really talking about 800 900 people at the end of it. Basically, when there is a big event, like a wedding, like a Gruhapravesham, like your housewarming ceremony, so our parents would basically they took it upon themselves to dig up past relationships, people, they may have just met once, but they know they are related to them in some way. Like, you know, they may be their mom's cousin's cousin or something like that, right. And they would send out these invitations. And the the amazing thing is they had their address and phone numbers. And they and this is before email and all of that, right, you're writing all these invitations. So sending out these invitations itself was a big thing. But the even more amazing fact was that these people who lived in Delhi, and you know, some all different parts of country, I mean, would actually come and some of these people were like in their 70s and 80s and are walking around with walking sticks, and they're really old. And back then I mean, the 80s and 90s You know, air travel was always like a luxury, I mean, the the main way of transportation is by train and train from Delhi to Trivandrum would take like four days, five days to come, I mean, and in the sweltering Indian heat that no less, right. And so these, it is amazing that all these people would come. And they would, and obviously, it would have been two or three decades since my parents saw them and they would come and introduce themselves Oh, you know, I am so and so. And then he literally announcing and said You sent me an invite invitation. I'm here.

Vikram

Yeah, that's amazing. You see that the value they placed on social interaction, like for a wedding, it's something you have to go for, there is no two ways you it means you travel for days each way you do it. And that was the value they placed, even though they did not have modern technology. You know, all these things, I think makes us kind of insensitive to the value of human interaction like we can always get on the phone, make a video call now. And we see each other as if we were there. I know it's probably brings the world closer, right? But it's somehow

Subu

In a way it makes the people apart.

Vikram

Yeah, it makes you insensitive to what value there is to actually being there in a place physically together. Of course now the pandemic has broken everything and at least thank God we at least have like devices to communicate with these days, that aspect is already always there. But it's amazing the kind of thing that people would go through to meet other people back in the day.

Subu

Yeah. And so every wedding, right, I would, I would look at these grand moms who would be you know, crouched over. And really, they can barely walk a couple of steps, but they've traveled a long distance to be here. And I've always thought, you know, what is the motivation? I mean, why they're doing it, I sort of, in fact, I may have even made fun of it in my mind, you know, kind of saying, What's wrong with these people for, you know, doing doing this crazy thing? Because in the back of her mind, I think, man, nobody cares about this granny. I mean, like, she's, why she's struggling and taking all this effort to come here. But now that I'm older, and now that I'm, you know, I've been thinking about where I come from, and so on. I can, I can see why she did that. I mean, she's probably 94 or 95. Maybe this was in her way, she knows this is her last leg of her life. And this is one opportunity for me to go and see my people once again, if you listen to stories from people in their deathbeds, all that they talk most people talk about is I wish I had fixed this relationship. I wish I had spent more time with this person, it all sort of comes boils down to relationships and, and those things so maybe this granny who was in her 90s, she made this journey because she's like, I get to see, my grandchildren may not appreciate it. My great grandchildren may not appreciate it, but I want to see them all one last

Vikram

year. Yeah, that's great. And then when we remember that moment that we met him, yeah, although we didn't think of it much at that time. Much later in life were like, oh, yeah, I remember that one time we met that person. Yeah. Couldn't do that again. Haha. You know, it's like, so you value it at some point?

Subu

Yeah, I mean, now that I'm thinking all about all of this, right, I have a, I kind of feel like I have a renewed purpose. I mean, there are a lot of cousins, we're all very close. And we spend every summer vacation together. These people are, you know, somewhere in France, Germany, different parts of India, and different parts of us. And, and they all have kids. So technically, they are cousins of my kid, right? I think I need to do right by my child and, you know, grow those relationships again, so that he can meet his cousins. And he may not think about much of it in his teenage years and in his 20s. But if we keep visiting these cousins, at least once in a while, and it's not so hard to get to France, and Germany and things like that, it's sort of a good vacation in a way, I will leave him with these threads that he can pull on. I mean, when he's having these ideas in his 30s and 40s.

Vikram

That's nice. That's nice. It's very hard for me to do that. Because I my cousin's do, you know, live in the United States and worldwide too, so that argument definitely holds on my end, too. But both my wife and I are single children. So automatically, there becomes this barrier that they don't have cousins, my kids will not have cousins, because we are single kids are our own. I guess it's up to us to you know, make sure they have family ties in some way. And I think it's important to keep,

Subu

as you know, soon to be elders in our own families in our own family trees. Right. And we assumed to be elders, essentially. I think it's important for us to wear these shoes, like leaving these threads behind for our children because amongst my uncles and aunts, like my dad's older brother, okay, so we would call them periappa, or doddappa. So my dad's older brother, he's a pretty charming character, right? And he, my dad is sort of an introvert. But my dad's older brother, he is he loves talking to people. And he has done it all the way into his 70s. Right. And let me tell you, to what extent he has done this. And I really appreciate that he's done this, all this while because in 2018, we went back to India, once we found out that we are expecting a child, we made a trip to India. And then in in one of these trips, we went to Coimbatore to meet my my periappa, right? My uncle, my dad's older brother, every time I meet him, he always tells us great stories of the past. Everything I know about my dad's mischievous childhood is from Him. Because every time we get together, it's lovely. It's such amazing stories. So when we went to Coimbatore, in 2018, my uncle took us to the house that he and dad grew up in and were like, where my dad's dad grew up in, right, this was in Palakkad, which is in Kerala. And he took us to the house. He showed us hey, this is the this is where my dad's dad grew up. My granddad grew up and this is the courtyard where they used to own an elephant. You know, this is the piece this all of this used to be paddy fields which have now homes and it was incredible, actually, I mean, visiting all those places, and I couldn't have help but feel there is the certain vibes that you get a certain vibrations when I'm when I'm standing in front of my, when my ancestral home essentially I work for somebody else lives there now it's been sold long ago, there's a very weird feeling of I'm a part of the soil here kind of thing. There's a certain it's very hard to explain that this sense of belonging, and it manifests as tingling down your spine, saying, Man, I'm here. And I think it's just such an incredible feeling. Right? So I just hung around there, you know, it was it was

Vikram

salmon finding its way back. Up river finally home.

Subu

Yeah, yeah. And so we went, we saw this home, and they stories about how they own this elephant and things like that, at some point, you know, after independence, you know, you a lot of people, it was common to sort of own elephants, and along with the farm fields and things like that. And at some point, you know, it became too expensive to own these elephants. And then you would just go and give it or donate it to the temple. And then the royal family sort of takes care of them. So from there, we walk down the street, and we my uncle says, Hey, let's go meet this person. And we go to this person's house where he's 97. His wife is 94. Okay, and they still they've been living there for like, forever. Okay, in that home. I asked my uncle so who's this. I mean, who I've never seen, you've never told me about this person? Who is this? And he tells me that this 97 year old guy. He is the brother of the priest who presided over his wedding. Wow. Okay. Okay, so he really takes making relationships to a real extreme. So then we knock on the door, we go in, and then my uncle introduces himself and then they remember him dinner? Yeah, come Come sit down. And we had lunch with them. We just showed up unannounced. So my uncle has sort of kept these relationships from from when he got married, when when in the 70s and this 97 year old man, we go and meet him. And I was like, Man, this is just this experience that that experience was truly priceless. Amazing. Yeah. So it's great. I mean, so the role that my uncle played, in a way, it's like a lesson to me, I want to be in some capacity like him, I want to be like this. Like this basket of memories, it doesn't matter. Maybe my children will not care about these memories. But I wanted to be out there. Just like your granddad's emails, because it may matter to him later on. And if and when it does, it is. It's a truly enriching human experience.

Vikram

Yeah, it really is. The last stories of the past things we will ever know. These are all things we should somehow keep a tab on and people are the best resource. It's not like you can read a book and yeah, so gotta stay in touch with these people. Makes our own life way better.

Subu

Yeah, keep in touch with them and become those people for the next generation. More importantly, is what Yeah,

Vikram

we should wrap this up. Come in, I break my fast and drink my beer.

Subu

That's a no better way to break up.

Vikram

I guess I shouldn't have the beer first because I will probably crash immediately. I better eat something.

Subu

Thanks for listening. You can find transcripts and show notes at www.halflife.show.

Vikram

We'd love for you to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. And also write to us on Twitter @halflifeshow

4: Languages and Lost Stories