A fiery Army captain who served in the Indian army for 12 years, then transitioned into working for the government and helped set up the National Grid or the national security grid and then transitioned to the corporate world to help Mahindra and Mahindra and Reliance Industries with the securities side of things. This is the story of Rajoura months time only in the Army. The podcast is long and I couldn't even double half of his career in this one single episode.

He's one of those people who's going to be back on the show. But in this particular episode, it's Anita Z about the Indian army. This one opened up my own perspectives.

Usually when I'm doing these podcasts, they stay with me for about a day, about these three days, I recorded this two weeks back and there isn't a single day since the day we recorded this, but I haven't thought of some of the perspectives Siragusa opened up for me.

Please listen to this one carefully.

It will open up your perspectives, especially about the Indian army, but also about life, about jugaad, about India, the role that the Army plays in your life as a citizen. And it's not just about protecting you from the country's enemies or protecting you from terrorism.

There's a lot more to it. There's not a single episode that we've created on this show that's as perspectival opening as this particular one is.

Captain John Goodman on the runway show talking about his time in the Indian army, his time serving in Seattle and his time becoming the smartest version of himself.

His time spent learning and a lot more, if you want highlights of this episode, make sure you log on to YouTube and search for the runway show clips space. Captain Dragoman, this is the legend featured on the runway show. Captain Robert Dolan, it's an honor having you on the runway shows a great being out there. So I know we are going to record numerous Fargas in the future, but today's the episode where I want to introduce you to my audiences.

We have a common friend. Management has been on the board cuts himself. Oh, yeah. Oh, fantastic episode.

I almost loved episode. Really. So this one is just about your story.

I know he was quoting Munish Bundy and he said that ragazzo was one of the most unique men because he's had one of the most unique trios amongst people from all over the world. And long story short, you've gone from being in the army, serving in the army. You've served in Congo, Angola, Angola. And you've then you've transitioned to working with the government.

Then you've transitioned into a corporate career, you've worked with Reliance, and now you're kind of I would like to call you unemployed and a freelance a freelance motivation spreader leadership coach. Firstly, I want to know about your story right from college.

And then as you go forward with the story, I'm going to stop you where I want to know some more things about you.

Things are done. So firstly, of course, money is extraordinarily kind with his words. You want to share that with everybody.

He also called you one of the smartest and most accomplished people. He's worked. And that's that's that's coming from him as well.

He must have been drinking something or going something that's good anyway, so.

Well, it's a it's a it's not a very extraordinary story in the sense. It's not something that I planned out or something. Life just happened.

I grew up in Delhi and though my parents are from south of India, I was born and brought up in Delhi and. Matter of fact, my name is that I would I still and but being in Delhi, my accent, that people used to mistake me for a job when I joined my battalion that Raghu Rahman begin with, I'm going to be remembered. I'm going to a sense of that. I guess in the Army you get to be Christian.

And that's what happened to me. So I was in Delhi. I was in college. I studied my degree in Delhi University in South Campus, and I had actually no intention of joining the army. There was no I mean, there's nobody in my family, you know, up, down, left, right. So it was more of a certain set of instances which happened.

I don't think many of your listeners would be old enough to remember 1984 when the riots happened in Delhi. And that kind of shook me completely when I saw the carnage that happened the first time, I think. What did you see?

Well, the Delhi riots were pretty bad. And I was actually those days living in a place called My Youth, which was next to another area called to look pretty and to look pretty was the worst hit during at least in Delhi.

So much so that it was mentioned by name in BBC those days that this was a negative.

And then after that three days of mayhem or whatever, I suddenly saw the army come in. The moment Army came, it was like, you know, the storm ending and everything. And everyone became like and for twenty eighteen, nineteen year old boy, that was like, wow, this is the organization I want to join.

And I, I joined the army and of course when I joined it was a very different place because this was in 1986. So 1984 and is what happens 1985 is the process of applying and 1986 is when I joined the academy. So and then about 18 months training in the academy. And after that in 1987, I got I got to stop you there.

Sure. The training in the academy. I'll come back and talk about how intense is it?

Of course, it is intense. I mean, it's intense. You are you're training a bunch of leaders who will have to take troops into active combat.

It's not the art of living. It's the art of killing. So it has to be extremely intense.

You will be the whole training of any armed forces leaders at any level is basically to train them to operate under conditions of high stress and stress where you're likely to lose your life. I mean, they can they can be anything more stressful than that, right? Not losing a job, not losing your loved one, losing your own life. So the training has to be intense to that extent. And there are certain principles of that training pedagogy, which we probably didn't understand at that point of time.

But looking back some years later, and it's ironical that not identical, but very normal that I taught the end of my career as an instructor back in one of the academies. But I was a student. And now when I saw it through the eyes of the instructor, the pedagogy, I understood what was the rationale of each one of those elements of training. Like, I'll give you an example.

There's a great life lesson that also life lesson on looking at training and life lesson on storytelling, by the way. So in the academy, every day you have physical training, one out, one one hour, maybe more than one hour, and you have to realize you seem much lost and all of that stuff.

So this drill, you are like drilled again and again, and every punishment is a form of a drill. So when when you're punished, it is, again, you have to do that. And at that time, we used to wonder why the hell are we wasting so much of time?

Of course, it improves your military bedding and all of that stuff and the way you stand in the way you you can spot a guy usually just by looking at them. And that's OK. But why would you waste one hour for 18 months every day?

Now, interestingly, if you look at it, the rationale behind the rationale behind that is you are creating a body of troops who will work synchronised under one command, not a synchronization goes to such a level that when this body of troops is spread over the parade ground, the parade ground is pretty white. You have about 500 officers lined up in the parade ground.

And now in the guard, commander shouts dynamic. Right, done. When he shouts the name of the person who's standing in the extreme right, he has to turn slightly slower because the time it takes for the sound to reach the last person, he has to compensate for it.

So if he didn't do that, many will see them turning right. You will see a way like that. But you don't see that when you see a drill happening, especially academies like the Indian Military Academy or the India where that is, after all, their officers being trained for the highest level or officer training academy, you will find the move in.

One must like that. And that's when our drill instructors would tell us that in 18 months time, we will force you into a unit that moves at the speed of sound. Now, that's when you understand the intensity of the pedagogy, why they're doing it, they're doing it because they want to form the unit, which is got the margin of error of the speed of sound. Right. So, of course, very tough training.

And on what basis are people rejected from entry into the training process? It's like there is an entrance exam. Oh, yes. On what basis?

Actually, that's a three stage process. It's not just one state. The first stage is a common entrance exam, which is you can apply through NDA, which is after your schooling, or you can apply after graduation. That's a direct entry. And then there are other entries like the engineers who have already done their engineering. They can go in as technical entries and their doctors and all that. They have various different processes. The first stage is a common entrance test, which you have to appeal an objective exam.

I believe it's much tougher now than it used to be when we were. When you're graded on what?

So the common aptitude or rather the aptitude test is just objective test testing you for basic stuff like mathematics, understanding that like any other. It's actually a filtration process. The second stage is these.

So it's a selection interview. That's a three day process, sometimes three, sometimes it's more than three in which you are tested for what they are looking for. Is that what's termed as officer like qualities or in other words, leadership qualities, leadership qualities?

It doesn't mean you ought to be running faster than the others or jumping higher than the others. It means, are you able to take a team of people who may be better than you in many ways and get them to work together? Can you sort of forge that? It's that capability there? Is it black people skills?

It's leadership skills, it's leadership skills. And also there's a psychometric testing. It's a very intense psychometric testing. It's ironical that even I think the police doesn't have psychometric testing during induction, but the army does. So they actually psychometric test people to make sure that they aren't picking in somebody who can, you know, mess things up.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I thought they had someone telling me that in the psychometric testing, the tests, like they'll give you one word, like knife or blood and therefore almost 30 seconds. Is that correct?

So this is by the way, this is nothing unique about the armed forces, the psychometric testing on instruments that are very commonly available and, you know, sort of tested instruments.

So the idea this example, I mean, I'm telling you very, very simply oversimplifying it. The idea is to see whether you have negative thoughts or positive thoughts with that. So you give you a knife. Are you thinking about killing somebody or cutting the rope? The same somebody, whatever it is, that's the way of looking at it. And of course, I know that a lot of applicants and all of them have been coached by various people to sort of artificially give it doesn't work.

It doesn't work because the testing team is very, very experienced and they can figure it out straightaway if you're trying to fake it. So but interestingly, and this is the interesting part that I want to sort of tell everyone who's listening, who's aspiring to it.

So the way the process happens is very interesting. I think it's one of the finest lessons in the HRO that you can learn. I genuinely think it's I've never seen that example in any cockpit, by the way.

So what happens is after the two or three days of your ASSP, so the selection board, all of the cadets or even cadets at that point of time, but all of the applicants, they are taken into the main hall at the end of every one, but they are selected, not elected. You don't know at this point of time.

And then the board president starts reading out the names of the people who have been rejected. And not rejected in this batch, he'll read out a name, let's say I'm just making it up, but Abdulsalam applied and so-and-so got rejected, I applied and so-and-so got rejected so-and-so.

But he narrates that if you get rejected over here, there is a better future waiting for you. Wow. Right. I haven't seen an entire process where you take care of the sensitivity of the person who's not made it.

And then and they'll also say that there's an officer in the batch earlier who made it in this attempt.

So they they they make you feel OK. It's not the end of the world, maybe something else. And then they announce the names of the people who have actually cleared it. So the SSP is a very intense process.

And to my mind, you really cannot fake that process.

You either have it in you or you don't have it in you. And if you don't have it in you, I often tell people apply once it got will get in fantastic. If not, do it once more time because the first time may not have you may not have been in your best order and then do it one more time, but three times if it doesn't, of the cases of people who have done it on the eight or 10, some people who do it on the 11th attempt, starting from India, going all the way up to 40.

But I believe that that process very accurately identifies, I mean, give or take, but broadly identifies the leadership qualities which are required to operate in that kind of.

And that doesn't mean that the people who have been rejected from there cannot be exceptionally great leaders in other spheres. They will be. They can be, and they usually are.

But the point is that what the forces are looking for is very different from maybe some of the other elements and some element, like I'll give you an example, a leader in any other sphere, banking, real estate need not have, although the criticality of physical courage is not that critical.

But in the Army, could you explain that physical physical courage is the ability of a leader to put himself in danger, his physical physical danger. Right. I mean, I'll give you an example. Let's say I was working in an organization where I was the head of security and let's say in that organization that is a major strike somewhere or there is a situation that can go volatile.

Right. It is the leaders physical courage of being present there. I don't worry. Everything will be OK. It'll be fine. Which comes things down so that all all great leaders in my, you know, sort of even nonviolent leaders need to have a lot of physical courage. If Gandhi also the ability to take lucky after Latia requires a lot of physical, you're putting your body in danger. And that is a trait which is extremely important in combat.

I mean, you can't have a you may have a genius of a leader who can plan strategy, but unless he can lead the troops, that will follow him.

And I think physical threat also translates into many other forms of leadership.

Of course it does. Of course it does. Because physical courage is it's not just physical courage in terms of go and face a bullet. Physical courage is also the endurance you how many days you can set. A great example would be prisoners of war who have been subjected to interrogation and they don't lose their spirit. That is physical courage.

Matter of fact, when I did my commando course many years ago, I still remember the chief instructor telling us this, that when the course ended, it's 35 days of 45 days and three nights of pure hell. When the course ended and we were all sitting in that like for the final dispersal lecture, I remember the chief instructor saying that you will never, ever be in your life more physically fit than you are today because 35 days of intense training before the commando goes that you come for the commander, an intense training that happens in Belgaum.

What happens in the course? Could you explain the long story?

I'll tell you what happens in that case. So basically, you realize very quickly that any such course we have many such the I mean, the commando goes and Belgaum, there's of course, that happens in ranty in the CAGW counterinsurgency jungle warfare.

There's another one called Hostile Attitude Warfare School.

These are very, very physically challenging and intense courses. But I think the aim of this course, as the chief instructor pointed out, was not just physical fitness, because he says this. He says that on this day of your life, you're going to be the fittest in your life. After this, you're only going to be true, but it's true. Nobody can exercise routine another day. And that's all you are doing, the commander physically like subject.

So that's not the point of this course.

The point of this course is any time in your life when you're going through a mess, you know, going through a challenge captured by the enemy or being tortured, you must remember that you survived the commandos. And if you have survived the commando course, you will survive anything.

So it is a course on mental training. It's on mental the ability to take huge amounts of mental stress and still be able to function to 50, 60, 70 percent of your normal operations.

So the training is much more focused on introducing shock, introducing fear, introducing trauma, introducing exhaustion, and still getting your mind to solve problems, which is essentially what is often required in combat situations.

So that is the training. And of course, there's a lot of academics that happen. So let me be clear that I was told by my teachers in school that he joined the army to come together with me. Let me clear that up. Matter of fact, I have many friends in the year who very often pull my leg by telling me we do one exam in a year, and after that we never write an exam in the Army. You will do one exam to enter and after that you will be studying a hell of a lot, which is good.

I think it's very good. I think leaders need to be knowledgeable and also there's a lot of emphasis on technology, on leadership skills and training. You're in the army, you're either preparing for battle or you're training. I mean, there is no fighting or you're preparing for fighting. So training is an essential part of that. And that carries through in your entire sort of career. You have various different intervention points. So you will complete like for example, let's say I'm just taking the army because I'm more familiar with the army.

But the same is true for air in the Navy. You will join the Indian Military Academy or the officer training school or whatever officer training academy. And after that basic course where you're being trained across all spectrums of the army, you will be given a particular arm. It's called the choice of Army. You choose an so most people don't know. But the army's consisting of many different units. You know, you have the infantry, the armored corps, the signals, the engineers, so many other sort, of course, and different different lines of look, so to speak.

So based on your aptitude, based on your liking, this is a process of selection whereby you are assigned a particular arm. Now, once you're assigned to that arm, then you are sent for specialized training into that particular discipline. So if I'm, let's say, mechanized infantry as I was, so I have to undergo all the courses of an infantry officer, which happens in most and all the courses of a mechanized infantry officer, which happens in another.

So this is the basic course. But they say, OK, now it's a bit like, OK, you're now you studied in the Film Institute. I'm just simplifying it. And now you want to become a cinematographer. So for cinematography, you will have a very, very specialized course which deals only with cameras, what it involves.

And then you will go for an advanced course in the same subject where you'll be taught how to become an instructor, because in the army everything is taught by the same people. I mean, the army officers who teach the next generation, the leaders will teach there. So I will go back to the same institute where I used to be a student as an instructor, if I'm, of course worthy of being an instructor. So this training continues throughout the career.

So it's a great place to be if you like learning. But if there's somebody out there thinking that if I joined the fight, then I don't have to study it. I'm sorry to burst that bubble right now.

So anyway, so after the training, I as I mentioned, I joined the mechanized infantry and my first stint was in some group.

So I got to tell you about one question.

With the commando raid like you just described, your most intensely in as many as possible, every day is intense with the drills or whatever. It's so basically the commando course, as I mentioned to you, the broad pedagogies that they, of course, take you to another level of physical fitness. They train you on how to operate in small teams. They train you how to pick up skills which they train you, how to work with any kind of the improvisation in the environment, how you can.

Well, literally like beggars like. That man was fine, young man was as well, but actually more to do with not just survival skills, but also the ability to kill. So it's not just about survival in the army. So if you're dropped, let's say, into enemy territory, it's not for you to survive and come back. You also have to create an operation that you have to do something that so it's physical fitness, weapons training. You're trained on different kind of weapons, weapons that you may find with the enemy and all that kind of stuff.

Then you are trained on demolitions, explosions, escape. Everyone is a major part of the excitement. Fascinating piece of the exercise where you are taken away from the academy by choppers and all of that and you are put into enemy territory.

And then from there, you have to find your way back actual enemy territory.

Well, it's not actually simulated. So obviously happened in Ballgown. So you're taking 90 kilometres of it.

But it's almost a simulation because what they do is they take you away and then they release you body. That's another very good learning that happens in the commandos, also actually in the army. So every there's no individual who's ever sent for a basketball. Right.

Always a bare minimum, a bit somebody who will watch out for each other, which, by the way, is one of the main reasons why mental health and stress is also under control or at least better handled in the forces. Because you always have one body and that one body you can confess anything to. The guy knows you inside out. He knows your family knows you have a fight with your wife. It knows everything about you. Right. So so, buddy, your released one by one and this Buddy Bear has to find their way back there to navigate.

They can't use the road and the dog has done in the night.

So you have to rely on and there are several battalions of troops who are deployed in that area whose mission is to catch you. Right. And it's a very fun activity for them because you the guys, they'll get two bottles of something that'll be active about it. So it's obviously not his style to kill you.

But I have to tell you, is almost I mean, it is very dramatic because if you're caught, they take you back to the starting point. So imagine you're ready for the 60 and they catch you in the 48 kilometer. They'll put you back. Usually you don't get caught, but that is the fear that you have in your head. So escape and evasion is a part of the exercise. Then you're taught many other skills in terms of the ability to read maps without a compass, how to navigate without compass, how to move silently, how to kill silently.

All of those things are taught in that course.

So I have to ask you a little dark question, which is like, what is the mental training you're given about death and killing? Like, is there any kind of talk that someone has?

That's a tough question to answer, I think. Well, that is a profession where you are going to see a lot of that and a lot of trauma. There's no doubt and and police also, by the way, police, I think, see more dead bodies, per say. But but it is you're going to put your own troops into danger. So and at times you will kind of be involved in operations where someone else will die.

So. I think now there is a lot more focus on mental stress, the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder. All of these things are now becoming much more understood. I think when we were young officers, I don't think we had even that construct of sort of social came back from an operation. And you were like, you know, in Gita's, which happens in the first before you before you start getting more experienced.

It was much more of, oh, come on, it's OK. It happens when you so it was much more of finding that in the ambulance. This was part of the job and you slowly became sort of accustomed to it. Right. But now I think there is a lot more emphasis in terms of understanding what that does to a mind of a person.

And by the way, these are also the things that are being tested out in your psychometric testing that do you have the ability of suddenly go to pieces or whatever.

It's not foolproof because human beings also change as they will, but it's still a good filter. And so I think earlier it was to that extent, at least from my training, I remember now, I think it's a much more and I don't just mean that. I mean armies all over the world are becoming far more empathetic to fascinatingly. There's a I see if I can send you that link of the it's a promo link for the British army where they are inviting the youth of Britain to join the army and basically talks about the fact that if you join the army, you'll always have someone who can do so.

If you're feeling stressed, depressed, army is the place to be because here we listen to another organiser to give a shit about what's happening in your personal life here. It's important to us. So they are actually advertising the fact that it is an empathetic organisation, that you can build relationships with people who truly will be your blood friends, you know, friends for life. And I think that's a very good step in acknowledging that, listen, these are not automatons.

They're not robots. These are human beings.

And if you ask a human being to do something which is against the nature of what they're being taught culturally and all of that, they will be trauma and this trauma needs to be handled.

So I think now it's much better than what it used to be earlier or that allows me to bring you back to the story. But one other piece, which I think is remarkable, which I think is very important for us to recognise and acknowledge, is that the training in the Army also creates lifelong friends.

Because I always believe that you want to forge a team into a team. You want to form a group of people into a team, just put them through a drama.

It's true, because if I ask you, where were you when 26, 11 happened, happened 12 years ago, you won't remember exactly where you were. You remember who was sitting on the road? Was it when you first saw it on TV? And what happened? If I ask you, where were you last Thursday? You to your smartphone? Because nothing happened last Tuesday.

But an incident which happened 12 years ago is etched in your mind because it was traumatic. You remember the the teachers in college were like dramatic pictures. You remember a traumatic experience. Trauma doesn't necessarily need to be bad. It just needs to be a spike or a dip or whatever.

And I think that part of the training where you become friends with more than 200, 300 officers and more than that, actually, who are your classmates?

And there is a right you have underclassman, I can tell you. So this happened to me recently. I had gone to meet a classmate of mine with a friend in in a place called The Hunt, which is the commando training, one of the commando training centres. So he's from the Special Forces and he's the he was the chief instructor there.

And my friend was with me, was shocked to learn that this officer and me. After leaving the academy, vomiting after 20, 25 years because the Brotherhood was such as if we were meeting every day, not that to my mind is of wealth that is created like practical examples. I I am the local guardian to at least half a dozen army brats who are studying here in Bombay because they have a right over my house because their father and me, because it's almost like and their uncle actually more than one or two of them actually.

I'm supposed to be the local guardian only for the excuse that they're staying at my place when they're doing something else. So it becomes like a family.

And that bond is so valuable. Yeah. Especially as you grow older and older.

That's the real value. I always believe wealth is what you have got left. After all, your money is gone. After all, your money is gone.

What a lot of people got left, that is with goodwill, your friends, your ability to pick up the phone and raise maybe 50 lakhs if you have to raise it just on people who trust you have faith in you. That is real wealth, this money selling. I mean, you've seeing what is happening in corporate and bad companies like we were wiped out overnight. So that is really not well, wealth is that.

And that career gives you a very intense value of that.

Well, I'm sure it's that in other professions also, but nothing like that in the armed forces because of the nature of that.

It's also what I would like to call an enhanced experience of life as in life. So that's life. We are going through regular nine to five year accumulating money, and that is your definition of wealth. But putting yourself through this, we are developing lifelong bonds. You're developing this kind of mental training through those intense experiences that enhances your whole viewpoint on life, not just in answers.

You live you live a more richer life. So, I mean, I use this example very often that if you take your life right now, you're twenty seven years old, take a life and conscious, life conscious life, you'll be remembering what from the age of seven or eight. So let's take twenty years. If I took your life of twenty years and there's a question all of all of the listeners can actually just do this mental exercise and say, okay, fine, if your entire life let's short in a film, in other words, celluloid film.

And we sprung it up in this hall like that. And then I took a pair of scissors and started cutting bits and pieces out of it and stuck it back together. You won't even notice the difference. The last Wednesday was exactly like this Wednesday in the same routine you're doing.

You won't even notice the difference. Now, if you don't notice the difference, you might as have not lived those years, right? So if it is, I can start out with my scissors and you don't. Then you got twenty years. You have lived, the remaining eight years have gone and you're not.

So I think the experience of the highs and the lows, the travel that it involved, the different parts of the country that you see different kind of individuals, that you see different kind of cultures you meet.

That, to my mind, is life. Yes. So that is why travel is such an important form of education, because you are actually interfacing with other humans who are completely different from you, not not in that echo chamber of the same group of people, the same ideas. So I think that is another very, very strong point of the emphasis.

It just gives you a completely and of course, our naval classmates and Air Force classmates. That exposure is also in other countries. They go to other countries interfaced with them. And all of that army also gets but much rarer because of exposure. They usually do end missions or when we go for some international courses. But I think it's an incredible way to live life. Really.

Yeah, so do you I mean, and I have to ask you this because I'm the leader board, Gustl, but what are your, like, intense memories about going into macher like ACRON?

Sort of. I don't want to make it sound as if I believe in a lot of officers.

A lot of my friends also believe that the only true heroes, as we call them, are dead people. Those who have lived through any combat experience. You cannot call them what they've done.

I know that I've done anything, but whatever they have done, it's not nothing compared to the people who actually died. So I think that only the real heroes can only be those who are, of course, unless someone has survived some very traumatic thing.

I think the most intense experience is not so much about.

So I've been in a few situations where once the situation begins, you are like in a daze. It's you're just operating with muscle memory and all of that.

And it is I think the fear is before that, the apprehension is before that.

And I I genuinely think in my case, I can tell you and I'm sure in many other people that I've spoken to them, it's not so much the fear of what can happen to me. I lose my leg when I die and all of that. I think that is a fear, of course, but the bigger fear is that will I be able to. Will I be able to do it? Will I be able to hold the responsibility given to me?

Will I have the courage at that point of time?

Is there a strong sense of brotherhood? There is a very intense sense of brotherhood, and that is why when you're leading them, you cannot be you cannot falter. And your confidence in yourself that parliament will be able to do it when the bullets start flying, what will really happen?

So that bloody of of course, after two, three skirmishes in public speaking, I mean, I'm using a very trivial example, but it's a little bit like public speaking that the first time when you're doing it, it's you are you're scared of what I might do wrong.

You might do a hundred thousand talk.

You still have a light opinion, which you should, because if you don't have, that basically means you get educated about your audience or you're clinically insane. So you you have that, but it's much more under control. So I think that transition from being afraid of a situation to being OK, the situation is dicey, it's scary. Something can go wrong, but Tyga will figure out a way out of it. That is the transition of a leader.

And that is, I think, the most challenging. Transition that leaders have to I had done two to two from that.

OK, so it's not about physical bravado, it's about being accountable for other people's lives. That's a much bigger responsibility, because if your actions cause somebody else's, that you have to face the widows, the orphans of that kid and say, your father was under my command when he died. Right. That burden of command, which you have to bear.

Those are the things that actually make leaders much more afraid. I'm not afraid, but those are the things that we're on a leader's mind. Much more than once, the operation started to blur.

It's just a bloody cheek muscle memory, which takes a lot of training mistakes over the chaos of war. As such a battle is such that you really cannot I mean, as they say, all the best laid plans. They don't survive first contact with the enemy. So I think that's the biggest fear for at least for me it was. And I'm sure many other leaders I've spoken to that will be worthy of the command that has been given to me.

That is so like when that is a situation like the Korean War where the entire armies heads are kind of down towards that situation. What's the overall emotion in, like a young person's life or like and when someone was just begun that and you're like in the Army or even the Air Force, like, is the that OK, this is what my life has led up to. Like, what is this?

I think before the war, I'm not seeing soldiers going to look forward to war. I don't think any soldier looks forward to war because we know what a seven point six bullet can do. We know when you get hit by a bullet, you don't sing a song and you know it doesn't happen. You have any of you been here?

I'm not buying it, but I have seen I've seen people.

And it's it's terrible. It's painful. So I don't think soldiers look forward to war, but all soldiers known that this is the reason why they've been trained. This is this is the it's a bit like you have been training to become, I don't know, a cricketer all your life. And one day you're called to play for the Indian cricket team. You know, the ball is going to come 130 kilometres an hour. You know, if it hits your head, you will die.

But that's what you have trained for. That's what you want to bet. So there's definitely a sense of I'm using the word that a lot of caution, eagerness to say, I want to go. I want to participate in this battle. It's happening. I want to go and participate. And by the way, very common. It's very, very common that when a battalion gets deployed to an operational area like incitation or Cargill officers who are on deputation, who are on some other unit and a comfortable posting, and they will leave that and come to join the unit, they will volunteer to be met.

I don't want to stay in Dili because my partner is going into operations. I have to be with the person. Right. So there is that sense of how can my boys go into battle and I'm not there with them. There is that sense of, you know, that sense of participation.

Is that so? I think. But at the same time, soldiers also know that what happens in Kabul is not what happens in the movie Alosi. It's a very different reality.

And that, of course, I mean you it's one thing to see somebody dying in screen and then another thing when you lose a person, that that family is devastated for the rest of their lives. The wife will have to bring up the children by herself.

The children won't have a father that the financially the family may be in a very, very different situation. So it's a that is a permanent mistake. Mistakes come home in body bags. It's not like this quarter we did not meet. The target will make up for it in the next quarter. This quarter, if you create a widow, she remains a widow for the rest of her life.

So there is that sense of reality, which is obviously not captured in films, but films is for entertainment. So you shouldn't be the only war film that I would say one of the few orphanages I could add is something like Saving Private Ryan that tells you what combat is actually like. Most of the other movies are much more about entertainment than bravado and all of that stuff. So I think soldiers understand the reality more than what people see on in movies and TVs.

And although many people have joined the amazing what Rambo or something of that. But when you join, you see the reality there. And the reality, like any profession, is extremely different from what you see.

Look look at a shoot that happens for a long sequence, right? I mean, if you're seeing a shooting of a song sequence over what it is it takes to get that three minute song, now somebody's watching that they come together. You know how many times actor would have had to do it in the heat and again, repeat again, take after take, and they're exhausted. Sometimes they have fever. They still have to do so. The reality on ground is usually very, very different from what is depicted in an entertainment medium.

The entertainment medium intention is to entertain, not to educate you on reality. So I think that difference is there between the films and what really happens in real life.

Yeah, so like I mean, so in the 90s he was living like I suspect from eighty seven to nine did. What was that journey like. Like what.

Well so I was in Punjab, that was my first posting in a place called Ungrouped and 1987 Punjab was still not out of the woods in terms of terrorism. So there's still a lot of operations, minor skirmishes and clean ups that were happening. So that's what I cut my teeth, so to speak.

My second year was insitute. I'm talking about my combat. So schutzhund was honestly, there's nothing to worry about it. I'll tell you why 80 percent of the army has been in Seattle. And so this whole idea of I was in Seattle, 80 percent of the army has been in Seattle because every year we have six battalion, six to seven battalions there. Every year the six battalions get rotated. We've been there for more than thirty eight or nine years now.

So you do the math, you'll figure it out that by and large, every unit would have been there.

So just for the sake of you type, could you just describe Seattle? Of course.

So Seattle CNN is, of course, known as the highest and the coldest battlefield in the world. This is I'm simplifying it, but essentially it is in the top of the northernmost part of India. You can see it.

And the contention is so what happened is in 1971 when the lines were being drawn, so any one of the last that area, not Seattle, but south of the Hudson, was we had some operations happening there and took in a few places after that.

The understanding that we have is that up to point and therefore to the point on the map and the line there off is Indian territory. Pakistanis interpret that line, there often are different, we see a line there, often we move up north, they move like this. So there is an area which is under contention, which is normal with, you know, bordering countries and especially hostile, bordering countries. It happens.

It is the altitude. They range between 18 to 21, 22 thousand feet, 18000 feet to put it in references to us.

I'm sure many of the listeners might have gone to late and with that headache going to Khartoum, Labasa, 10:00 in the morning and return by 11:00 and then down for two days, 18000 feet, it's like where the posts are, where soldiers will spend anywhere between three months, sometimes six months on top of that post, you know, mostly existing on canned food.

You are very low oxygen, very low. So, again, it's very difficult to explain to people what minus 40 is. The temperatures dip toward minus 40, minus 45. Easy way for you to understand what minus 40 is when you go home today. Put your hand in the freezer of your fridge. That's minus 19.

So if you exponentially double it, not incrementally, exponentially doubled to minus 40, then you understand what minus 40 is and try and keep your hand inside the freezer for about five minutes, not five minutes, and you will realize what it means and then try and visualize people who have to live in that conditions for one year. So that was my sort of second operational denial. My third one was as a part of a U.N. peacekeeping contingent contingent in Angola.

So once I got to tell you about that and I have a couple of questions, the first question is, if you ever meet people from the Pakistani troops, what's the underlying emotion of an Indian soldier like? Is the emotion that this is the enemy or is there a sense of respect that you've gone through?

Probably a battle me and maybe one day we might meet. And that's the first question. And the second question is more about Seargent. Have you seen people like break down there? Like are there mental breakdown? Because that's possibly, at least according to commercial perspective, as most Indians would would believe, that Seattle is the most extreme environment and Indians also would have to water.

It is one of the most extreme environment that I environments which are more extreme than that. Right. There are certain areas like Dyball and several other places where at least in Seattle and I would say that at least the resource, the airlift doesn't work much better. There are certain areas which are and always remember, it's not it's not a set of circumstances which can be compared. Like, for example, if I were to say that serving in Suchan is very, very tough, sewing in a submarine is equally tough while you're inside out, you were just inside the water.

If you got claustrophobia, imagine if you got claustrophobia and you're inside that. And, you know, at any point of time one of these systems fails. I'm in a steel coffin which will go down as it did happen. It does happen.

And so it is not about the temperature.

It is about the the fragility of your life, fragility of uncertainty, where you don't know next three hours maybe you will get hypothermia, maybe you will get pulmonary edema, maybe oxygen will run out. So does that uncertainty, which makes it dramatic, what's the training to combat those situations?

So, of course, when troops are going to any operational area, they are two types of training. One is what we call area familiarisation. So anybody who was being inducted into the and they go through a process, you know, in a place called the base camp. And they are trained for the duration in mountaineering skills, rescue skills, climbing, slithering out to take out people to patrol all of that stuff. They are trained.

And of course, then there's that mental toughness which has been happening over a period of time. And that is also part of training. And you are being constantly, you know, sort of being put through stressful conditions.

That's also part of the training.

So your question about like, honestly, I don't think. It's a bit like I explained this to my friends by saying that let's say you're fighting a court case with somebody, right? Whatever, God forbid not, but let's say you're fighting with the Pakistanis.

No, no. I'm a Pakistani soldier. I'm giving that one example. And let's say you have a lawyer and one day you see your lawyer talking to the opposite party as lawyer and they're happily talking to said you should be fighting.

Now, the Indian army soldier is acting on the orders of the government of India. Like I often say this, the Indian army is the last 100 meters of the government's policy, whatever the government policies. So the government's policy is to support the Tamil rebels, then the Indian army does that. If it is to now say, no, no, we will not support the Tamil rebels to support the Sri Lankan government. That is also the Indian army is doing that.

So it's not acting on its own. It's fortunate that in a democracy, it acts under the direction of the political establishment.

So to that extent, I don't think there's any personal enmity. What do have personal enmity against? I mean, you are an Indian and you will cheer when India fights against Pakistan in a cricket match and you root for India. But if you go abroad and your roommate or other classmate of the Pakistani, you're not going to Islamabad regarding because. So it's not only that, I don't think there is a hatred for the other side.

And I think anybody that may believe anybody who disrespects his enemy is being fundamentally stupid because you may not agree with the other and he may be the enemy, but you can't disrespect if you do that, you will be stupid because you'll make mistakes.

You'll be overconfident. You will think of what soldiers are. I think all over the world, soldiers are equally good.

They are equally patriotic. I don't think patriotism is the prerogative of any army. And soldiers have a sense of honor regardless of the size of the country. So if you take a guy from, say, the Sri Lankan Special Forces, he's as patriotic and as good and as willing to die for Sri Lanka as from the United States SEALs, it's just because US has got a huge budget doesn't mean that their commandos hundred times better than a Special Forces guy from, let's say.

But it's not true and definitely not true. Maybe he may be better equipped and all that, but definitely not randoms of patriotism or I mean, you seeing the Vietnamese beat the Americans, where did that come from? It comes from a sense of awe. The Afghan Taliban have now sandbagged the US. It took us more than, what, a decade plus and five trillion dollars to finally accept, you know, a qualified arrangement which many people might call a defeat.

And so I don't think this saying that those troops are prepared, we are superior.

I think that's very silly. So I don't think there is any personal enmity to somebody.

Yes. Then operations are happening. Yes. In the heat of that battle, there may be instances where certain things will happen that may make you hit that particular unit that you are fighting against.

It does happen. But having said that, I think you may not know this, that in Kargil war there were citations which are gallantry awards, citations that were written by the Indian army on Pakistani officers like testimonials.

Yeah, no, we said they discriminatorily be automation together. That doesn't matter. But I'm happy to talk about the energy. Adam, what he has done is creditable and I am seeing it as the enemy that this guy fought. Well, he he he he did his job as a soldier and a soldier doesn't.

Do you respect that?

Fought well is a combination of your mental decisions as well as your physical value. Both of that.

But that I think physical courage is essential part of fighting.

So if you find a soldier who has fought well, regardless of which I mean, you have to admire not that I mean, I is a good guy is like if you're in a sports competition and let's say you're competing against somebody, let's say boxing, I don't know if you're a boxer, but you've got to be able to do boxing also as part of a training.

You may have beaten that guy, but if the guy made you fight every inch, you have to respect the guy before, not because he made you fight for every inch of it and he probably pushed your boundaries to another level.

So I don't think to answer your question, there is any personal hatred of professional soldiers. There is no personal hatred amongst your enemy.

I don't think so.

Um, so so this is honestly one of the best broadcasts we've had because of the perspective.

Well, actually, let me be honest here. I'm just telling you the stories of other people, and that is why it is so I am the storyteller here. I'm not the one who's the storyteller. So obviously when you tell stories of so many different people who have done it, it will seem to be good. But that's because of their stories.

Is there a sense of life, I mean, for lack of a better word, spirituality within like the army?

Oh, of course. Of course. I think what is spirituality for an army when you know.

So I have to tell this to my. Friends, that when you get posted to the glacier, you become a little more religious and there are two reasons for that. One reason is, of course, you are literally closer to God physically.

The second reason is when your life is hanging by a balance, when you don't know, like look back in your own life, the maximum time you pray to God is when you're in some deep shit.

Now, someone loved ones lying in the hospital.

Someone is no accident. Don't realize something before an exam or you're praying to God bargaining. They've got to get them up, you know, milonga.

Yeah, well, all of that stuff.

So I think in any kind of a fearful situation, spirituality does play an extremely important part. So much so that every army battalion of the world, not just in the Indian army, will have a spiritual teacher, will have like a battalion, they'll be appointed. If it's a Sikh unit, they'll be a guarantee. They will always be like in the US Army. There's a chaplain who will come with you in the battle. Alil is a soldier because.

When you are faced with death, then you have to make peace at some way, and that's peace usually comes with a sense of spirituality.

Don't confuse it with religion and spirituality.

So you feel that presence of God or presence of a force that you appeal to. And you say, please see me through this. Ironically, the other side of the brain do the same that apparently I know.

So, yeah, definitely the days you spoke about before, I did show that that higher force is a part of that days as well.

Of course, it is.

A matter of fact, just before any combat operation begins, any operation before you are being launched, before full fighting begins, before training begins, there's a proper procedure that is carried out, blessings are sought, and you have local guides who are there who are sometimes like these anecdotal stories about, you know, the glacier.

There is a temple which is called the pressure cooker bomb under. And the stories that are heat seeking missile was fired, which went and banged into that pressure cooker and blew that up to saving about 20 people who were in the barracks very close by, not pieces of that aluminum pieces of that pressure cooker that kept it in a shrine and they worshipped me. Now, where did that sense of spirituality come with the piece of aluminium from a pressure cooker? It is a symbolism that this saved lives and therefore that is something that is some power in this.

And you start seeking solace in anything that can give you solace. And spirituality is usually the solace that most humans sort of come to when we are in our time of fear.

I'll give you an example that you must have gone through most people what I went through no more the last time you were an aircraft to severe bombs, not civic duty, when you were like your heart was in your mouth and you were making promises to get out of this alive.

I'll spend more time with my parents. I'll do this. I'll do that. You're bargaining because you feel that my life and that bargaining is happening with whom it's happening. You're not bargaining with your dad or with your mom or with your boss. You're bargaining with some power that you reach out to.

Then you are in deep trouble.

That, to my mind, is a form of spirituality. I mean, you don't have to do it. Only then many people have that famous speech and many people will carry some token, some it'll be some, you know, this amulet or some bracelet.

Someone mother has given them something. There's a lucky coin. What are these?

These are symbols of getting a sense of courage from some inanimate object. But the inanimate object symbolizes a belief that you have that you are God who got to. I'll be safer than that.

It happens again. I just want to add one quick lainio, because we have a lot of spirituality dog on this broadcast online that I read early on in life, fortunately was in one of the spiritual books I read. It's called The Autobiography of a Yogi. So a line that stayed with me was, if you don't welcome God in the summers of your life, he may not be there in the windows to protect you. So it just was kind of a character switching moment for me.

Anyway, coming back to Army Doc.

So I've got to ask you about your time in Africa as well. Also like it when your situation. But before I ask you that, when you're Seargent and your resending, what goes on in your head because you've gone through a really harsh kind of situation, you've put a physical body or mental body through it. So is there a sense of, OK, this is done now let's move on to the next one, like what goes on in an army officer?

Let's head through the journey of his career. Are you thinking about the next mission? You know, are you thinking about your career?

So, see, I honestly don't want to be pretentious to pretend that I can tell you what goes on in army officers heads. I mean, each head is a different head and each head thinks of it in a different way. So I would be very silly of me to assume that.

I can tell you what went on in my head. I can tell you what happened with that. I think there's an immense sense of relief when you end a mission without losing lives, without losing as minimal lifes as possible and achieving the objective. So the objective is to safeguard that sector of wherever you are deployed for a period of one year. And you managed to do that. You make sure that most of your soldiers, all of them are ideally all of them are alive, not injured.

And you have handed over the sector that you've got to the next battalion, which is going to take over in a good state, which means the Russians are stalked and everything is over. You know, it's a bit like I see you are handing over to the next person. You have a sense of satisfaction that I'm living under good conditions. That is the at least in my mind, that was the foremost thing. I still remember my seal when I was going up going to the Internet room.

I think one of my finest teachers in leadership, ironically, was also my teacher in the infantry school. He was an instructor there and then he had the honor to serve with him in his battalion of the battalions of the Indian army, well, active, as it's called, the jacket of regiment. Don't give me rifles, do you come on a different person at the end of it? Of course you do. You come out as a different person.

You come out with a different person as a perspective to life. You look at life differently. You look at what was important. It happens. Let's say you survive a car crash. I'm sure you must have had an accident or survive anything.

You come out as a very different person. You said, listen, I. I was almost gone.

And I need to relook at my life now in a very, very different way, but I'll tell you a story, a very interesting story about this to you know, that, of course, mate of mine, unfortunately, is no more. Tomorrow and tomorrow, and he used to actually say this, he said, so we had another classmate, I don't want to take his name to protect his privacy. So he was when he was in India.

If he's listening, he'll know all my classmates who I'm talking about.

When he was in India, he dived into the swimming pool and his head hit the very good diver.

So you go straight into the bottom and he went unconscious and he was inside the pool. And by the time the instructor got him out and all of that, he was taken to the hospital and he was declared dead. And then again, his heart restarted and all that, and he survived and of course, after that finished his training, came to Indian Military Academy and was one of the most physically fit guys.

But he was very, very, you know, finicky about stuff in life. You know, everything had to happen exactly the same way and very good quality.

But so are you telling me tell him you died. Every day is a bonus for you. Yeah.

You date your life ended each day you are living now is a bonus for you live that day with the gratitude that this is a bonus, which is true for all of us.

It's true for all of us. Just because you've not fallen into a pool and died does not mean that that accident couldn't have happened to them. It would have anything could have happened. I mean, millions of people are diagnosed with life terminal diseases every day.

It's just a lottery that you and I are not in it as of now. It can happen any time. But that attitude to know the fragility of life, to know that it's very, very temporary, all the things that give us joy and value and all of that can vanish like this. I mean, very often people tell me that, you know, I'm very stressed and all of that. And I say one bad one of your reports by mistake is diagnosed as some terminal disease.

They're probably making them do.

So I think we don't need to wait for that to happen to us if we are cognizant of it and realize how blessed we actually ironically, everyone who's listening to this right now is able to understand English has enough resources to be able to watch this, whatever it may be, has enough education to comprehend it.

You already belong to point zero zero zero zero zero one percent of Indian humanity, which has got these planets lined up. Right.

So instead of looking at how many planets are to fall in line for you or me or to be here where they are, I mean, the right education, right.

Family like background. Right. People took a bet on us. Right. People pulled us out of trouble at the right time. So many planets had to fall in line for us to be where we are today.

I think you will automatically feel a sense of happiness because if any one of these planets are moved aside, any one of them, I mean, but for the grace of God, what's the difference between you and a migrant labor who had to walk like 800 kilometres and died five kilometers before he reached his house?

It's it's a lottery.

It's not because you work harder than you. It's probably ten times harder than you.

So I think if we put those things in perspective, I have a theory on this. By the way, have you noticed that all the great religious places. Are located in very difficult to reach places. I with the other, but to that, you actually had to walk up six, seven now. It's actually very counterintuitive because if you're building an institution where you want maximum people to come, you should look at it in a convenient place so footfall will be more.

But this, I think, is the highest form of design thinking. You know, these places which are hard to achieve, hard to reach physically, they serve two or three things.

First thing is you will not go there for Riff-Raff can only examples.

Karabo, you will go there, see the problem. My mother is ill father dying. This that what I'm dying.

We serious problem. Secondly, when you will go through that journey, it gives you a sense of agency which grant my child is suffering from cancer. I'm doing something. We can't do anything. But you're not a doctor. You can't do anything beyond taking the child to a doctor and back.

But you get a sense of agency that I'm putting myself through trauma to assist my child.

Most importantly, though, what happens is during that journey, you listen to the troubles of others and then you realize it's not going to end and I'm OK.

My problem is not that, to my mind, is an exercise which we can start doing ourselves. We don't need life to do this to us. We can do that.

And one of the reasons why I think or one of the ways in which we can get joy and happiness is actually to spend a lot of time with situations and individuals who are much less privileged than us not to get a sense of who he doesn't have it and I have it.

But to get a sense of how lucky I am that what I have, which I'm taking for granted, is something that somebody else is waiting for their entire life and still will not get it.

I want to do that. I think the comparison with somebody who was underprivileged, then you will give you happiness, the comparison with someone who overprivileged and you will always give you a sadness.

That's the rule of life. So I think that's where it kind of helps.

And I'm sure every day in the army kind of helps exercise that muscle as well. I'm just perspective.

It does. And but let me not I mean, it's not like every day in the army or facing combat or it's a dead in the back of your head. But Army, like any other organizations, is got 40 to 50 percent of what you don't see is the regular work that has to happen at all, which just as routine as any other career. So every career have been you ask a fighter pilot, they'll do about 70 percent of the work, which is completely routine.

It's only that percent, which is like just in every profession. You look at the actors, look at what you see is usually not what you get, because what you get is a much bigger buy in with some pieces you like, some peas, most pieces you want. Like the trick is to find a profession where at least 40 to 50 percent of the stuff that you're doing is really exciting stuff, which keeps you excited.

I have to ask you the question about family and then we'll move into your Africa and your. But what's what's like an army of a sense of family? Like, are you staying away for a while? How does that work out?

So once again, I want to, you know, many of these answers, which I want to give I don't want to make it as if it's like you look at Mirchandani, we look at people who are selling thousands and thousands of people who work abroad in Dubai or wherever and from all walks of life who probably see their family once in a year. They're lucky maybe twice in a year.

So this is not a having said that in the army, it's pretty much a given that in 20, 25 year career or whatever time you spend over there, there will be substantial portions of that time that you will spend away from your immediate family. The fortunate part of that is that neither you will be away from your family because you're part of the unit and neither will your family be away from the larger family because she is also part or in case the spouses, the lady of the spouse, is also a part of the larger family.

So, you know, by and large, they'll be looked after. That is somebody who can reach out to one phone call, will make sure that someone will watch out for them and that what we call a regimental spirit or a spirit of spirit, the corps of saying that brother officers, family or whatever, that's a very strong, very strong mechanism there.

So to that extent, I think it is part of the it's part of the career, which is just like par for the course. That's what happens to them.

So what happened in Africa and how was that different like from India? And how did you learn of the know?

This is part of a U.N. mission. Indian army keeps sending troops into United Nations missions. We had actually one of the largest contributors of troops to U.N. missions and very, very well respected by the United Nations there.

How is the Indian army perceived like all violence?

Very, very highly respected army for the simple reason that we are one of the most combat experienced armies in the world. So we have fought in glacial mountains. We have fought in jungles of us. We fought in deserts of Rajasthan. We have fought in amphibians. We got know huge coastline. We know amphibious operations and also and a very, very battle hardened army because not very many armies have been fighting for so many years as India has been. I mean, we've been fighting since independence.

Being battle hardened plays a role in actual combat of cosiness, I think was a strategy as the seasoning of seasoning of troops.

Imagine if you took an experienced crew to go and shoot with such intent and the way they will operate.

Did they not be fazed by it? Take a first person that I'll be all right.

So because doing it for the first time. So battle hardening is a matter of fact. In training we have a concept called battle inoculation where there's actually fighting machine gunfire, all of that happening live, that there's not simulation life. And you are like crawling in trenches under that. There is that simulation, but there is no.

There is no replacement in training for actual combat and I think brusquely said it the best if you watched Enter the Dragon, Ohara comes and breaks the board in front of him and he summarizes it in one lane, boards don't hit back.

More targets don't shoot back when you are in training and then in real combat shoot back. That exposes a completely different side of of combat because now they're shooting back at you. So it's not about your marksmanship. It's the marksmanship while you are being shot at.

So combat experience in soldiering, that is the benchmark. So obviously, because the Indian armed forces have been one of the most experienced in that space and very battle hardened in a very efficient army. The operational level at least, is it like I mean, I'm just kind of going with the stereotype.

For example, in cricket, every cricket team kind of brings an element of their own country into the game. The West Indies brings their relaxed flair and foul. You know, things like the Indian cricket team is supposed to be one of the most intelligent teams. Does that same rule apply to the army where?

Well, I don't know about I don't want to do a comparison between cricket and this, but definitely cultures of the armies are different. By the way, the culture of the Indian army is also a multitude of cultures, a multitude of when I'm saying this, most of the army officers and to a certain extent Army brats will understand what I'm saying. For example, if you are commissioned into, let's say, a certain battalion and want to name it because I mean, people know what I'm talking about.

You are expected to do a lot of mob. And because that's the cultural language of those people, you know, even to appreciate something up, I don't want you to be all good.

So whereas if you get commissioned into, say, the Madras Battalion, you're where you treat the troops has to be very, very different from the way you treat troops, let's say, in a very different culture.

So what's the underlying cultural trade ties, all of these together?

That's a good question that you asked. I genuinely believe this is something that corporations can learn from the. Really, they got. So if you look at the Indian army that a multitude of regiments, each regiment will be at a cost competition army as. What about the troops are taken from a certain area? So you the good Cobie, hardhearted Morato and all of these. And of course, you have all India Cassol. So there are certain but special forces already certain armored regiments, which already my own battalion was already all complete.

But they all have sort of you know, not each one of these regiments has a different culture. They have a different culture. They have a different food, Abitur, different transport and much more race oriented than Battalino, much more white oriented. All of this is different.

Everything is different. The way they dress, the way they talk, the way the orders are passed, everything is different.

But when the chief of Army says Haaften, right, one point five million people neutze fortified in this, there's no debate on that.

So it's a very interesting phenomenon that corporations should study that while you have independent cultures in each of the departments, you can have that. I mean, I worked in The Lancet, for example, the culture of the oil refining. Area is very, very different from the three, still very different from Joe Johns is very different, but there's a common vocabulary. So when the common vocabulary HAAFTEN nobody other debate, it's what they are buying. But it but it's not.

It's one.

So if you are able to create a common operational vocabulary, you can allow a multitude of cultures to flourish because you do need different cultures, you know?

So I'll give you an example. And I think so when I was working with Reliance. You had on the same campus the oil and gas establishment and also you write so very interesting because I used to head the risk and security and you just then and and I joined that.

I was fascinated that if you have to go to the campus, Shardul knows that you pretty much have to swipe your card every bit at every door. You have to swipe the card now. So much so that the security teams used to take pride in the fact that kind of that when people go home, we're going to maybe the bathrooms are going to because it's so ingrained into their head knowing the crowd came and really young.

The average age bet is pretty much your age.

And the young leader and all of that, they found this very, very restrictive.

If I am I in a prison camp, do why do I need to do this every bit everywhere? And it was like that. You don't trust us. You don't believe us. Why do we have to do all of this all the time?

Now, this is clearly a mismatch of cultures and they don't know they are perceiving something as bad because they don't know the origin of the reason behind it. The origin of the reason is oil and gas refining environment. It's a very, very high security environment because the slightest of leaks can explore. The whole refinery has to be I mean, I like I don't know if you noticed that vehicles that go into the refinery, they have special equipment fitted on the exhaust so that no spark comes out your boots.

I check to make sure there are no needles. It's too that there's no question of getting a lighter or anything. No sparking stuff can be getting.

More importantly, as the head of risk of a refinery, I need to know where each and every individual is, because let's say there is a fire and I have to bring down a firewall to protect 2000 people, which will kill 50 people inside.

And I predict that I need to know exactly where each and every person is. Not that DNA, which requires you to put where insurance claim where you were.

Let's say there is a God forbid there is an accident and bodies are burned beyond. The only record is very rare. Right. The only record that you were on that plane and your wife can claim insurance after the crash happens is the passenger manifest. Your dead body is not found. So sorry to be macabre, but that is the culture of origin.

Now it's being viewed by another group as totally like a prison and all that.

It's very important to realize that a conglomerate will have multiple cultures and multiple divisions because the requirement of that job is.

I'll give you an example.

I used to be CEO of a company called Automatic was is now known as First Choice. It was a startup at that point of time. It was all about dot coms and this and that and all t shirts and coming in shorts to office.

Like pretty much your ambience here was like, OK, that's fine. But in fact, it was expected to do that. But then I used we had another company called Myelosuppression Services Group, which was much more about high end security, the men in black.

And there you have to be in a suit on a biologist basis because that's the culture of the service that you're delivering. Right.

So I think organizations can have and as the Indian army has multitude of working cultures and their own emotional cultures. But when it comes to operations, they have one common vocabulary.

So you're going to have multiple cultures so long as you have a common denominator of common vocabulary. I think that's a great lesson to be learned from that.

So while I got that, that's the underlying factor. But in terms of culture, is there some kind of emotion that also ties Indians together? Like, again, I like the only reason I'm thinking of the Indian cricket team is because I can't think of another metaphor to kind of closely related to. But when you think of an Indian cricket team, you think of a great batsman since generations, possibly because, I don't know, maybe something in genetics which makes our reflexes good or we are technically sound or is somehow mobile.

So is there anything that kind of represents all Indian soldiers? Is it the sense of, I don't know, maybe intelligence where people learning didn't consider themselves to be one of the smartest populations in the world?

I mean, it's like many years ago when you went to the US, I've actually it actually happened to me. It's not anecdotal, actually. It has happened to me.

A guy has brought a laptop to me and said it's actually happened to me. It actually happened to me.

So now that's a stereotype because you're known by that student. I mean, I don't follow I'm sorry to disappoint, but I don't follow cricket at all. But I can I can sense why.

So when you are facing six foot six Bullah with one hundred and eighty kilos or whatever, and he's tossing a ball at you at the speed of 200 kilometres an hour, you can't fight that with force. You have to use technique to use that same guy's speed and twist your wrist and use that force to. It's a bit like jujitsu. So if you are not as physically strong as your opponent, you have to use a heightened form of technique, which is basically what the cricket team has evolved into because you can't how your massive fast bowlers who by sheer bulk and size, will propel that ball at a speed you can't.

So you have a technical players will play with the mind of the opponent and play chess with them. Other than playing brute force with them, that's the I mean, of course, I'm oversimplifying, it's not like other people don't have technique at all, but that's how the orientation begins. Right.

So similarly, in the armed forces also, I think I won't say Indian until the Indian army is a broad term.

The Gurkhas behave very differently. Nagas behave very differently. Cultures behave very differently. There's a very different culture. Matter of fact, even in certain operations, there are certain kind of groups who do very, very well because of their inherent you know, the Gurkhas are known as quite warriors and their nonsupport for fighting rearguard battles, which means that, you know, you're surrounded. But they will fight rearguard battle to make sure that Lastman, Lastone Calcio units are supposed to be very badly exploited.

You give them a situation, they will exploit that situation that is the same aggressive, no exploitative. So the same reason why decades ago when you were not even born, you will find a, you know, Sikh Indians in Canada, in Australia, as opposed to American Tenorman America. Once again, that's exploitative nature.

I'm using the word in a positive sense, in a negative sense.

I wasn't very dedicated nor dedicated to everyone is I'm saying that their ability to say, OK, let me try this.

I think I will the ability to go away from family going to foreign lands and experiment over there very, very, you know, sort of an adventure seeking outside my own certain other troops may be much more inward and therefore much more.

These are cultural influences, which is that I mean, you can't expect to lead an organisation in Chandigarh the same way you will lead it in Pondicherry. Many different cultures, many different cultures. And you are expected to be a little. But that and that's that's your attitude and potentially would be much more docile, much more, because that's the culture of the place.

It's not like people are you know, one is superior or one isn't. It is different cultures.

So the Indian soldiers are known for their professionalism. They are definitely known for their intelligence. There's no debate on that. Indian soldiers are feared in many countries that you will see our equipment and you will reverse engineer it. We just do we do that very often. We'll see something. We'll modify it. I don't want to name it specifically, but there are several equipments that we use well beyond the ranges given by the manufacturer, by doing our own modifications and taking it to another level, unite our finds its way into the army.

It, I think, to have originated in the armed forces because when you have to improvise with no resource and your life is at stake, you better invent something and make this not your business as your life at stake. So, yeah, I think those are the traits for which the Indian armed forces are respected all over the world in the armies of the world also. And and of course, there are many other places where we have like we have taken part, the Indian army takes part in international commando competitions and all that where we are usually in the top three.

So it's a it's a fairly experienced and battle hardened army and gets its credit and in those areas and operational excellence.

What was it like in Africa? Was it more of the same? I think it was different.

All UN peacekeeping missions are different then because you're not really fighting an enemy that its enemy. I mean, you're not taking your troops and saying, guys, well, one African is killing another. Why the hell are we putting our nose into it? I think there it is much more about inspiring them with the fact that they are brand ambassadors of India. You're getting the India badge on your shoulder. Everything that you do will reflect on not just the Indian army, but on the nation of India.

And you discover that exercising restraint at times is more nerve wracking than actually being in combat because you have to exercise restraint quite a bit.

Can you use simpler words to explain that?

So normally what happens is you are afraid of going into a battle. Apprehensive about going into battle, but sometimes not launching force also requires a lot of restraint, and that restraint might be more difficult than actually launching adulterants tolerance, saying, OK, fine, it's OK, it's OK.

Let's not let's not react now. Let's not react now. We have to cool the situation down there to bring the situation down, make it cooler, cooler so that the guys are different. You might grit your teeth and be angry at what the other person has said, but you have to calm the situation down.

And so what? What is the context like?

Why were you in Angola when I was part of a contingent which had gone there? And basically what happens is whenever the UN declares a peace settlement between like and Angola was between the ruling government and the rebels, these were rebels of the UN intervention, that is to make sure that both sides are obeying the rules of the agreement.

So there are three components of every U.N. mission. One component is called the military staff officers who run the country because the country has to be restructured in war torn country by Bisley medical aid. All of that has to be the start of who will do that. Basically, it'll be people who will be coming from various different armies of the world, even not even police, because even IBS officers go. You have civil servants who go there and all of that to help set up the judicial system, helps set up all of that stuff.

So these are staff officers who build the country, rebuild the country, help in rebuilding the country. Then you have military observers. The observers role is basically to see whether the rules that have been formulated as a peace agreement are being followed. So they'll report then we have the third component, which is called blue helmets, blue helmets, actual combat troops. Now, these combat troops are sent to enforce, in some cases, if it has to be enforced, the rule of the United Nations, the agreement of the two parties.

So as part of the U.N. blue helmets and thankfully, Angola was not a very volatile situation. There was some, you know, tricky moments, but not not something like, say, Somalia and all that, where the U.N. troops were attacked. They were attacked by the by the rebels and the locals.

But it was a great opportunity to learn from several different armies. Great opportunity, I must say, to.

I think it was in Angola that I really appreciated what Mahatma Gandhi did for our country.

I mean, I find it very weird because what happened in Angola was Angolans achieved their freedom through violence.

They were they were they were ruled by the Portuguese. And I have to tell you that given a choice between being ruled by the British and the Portuguese, the British were, despite whatever they have done, was still not something.

Apparently, that was my because I saw what Angola didn't have, that there was no local language of a country with just three fourths the size of India, didn't have a local language.

They had only Portuguese. And there are no everything had been wiped out.

So a nation that achieved its freedom through violence continued to try and solve its problems through violence.

It became cultural. It became cultural.

I got my freedom through violence in 1975. Now there are two parties. Both parties want to be the rulers. So the title is always just like the for the Portuguese. Now they'll fight each other. And that country had been at war for the next 20, 25 years just recently. It's sort of come down to peace. But 95, when I was there, it was pretty bad.

So very clearly you realize your own culture, the strengths of your own culture, weaknesses.

Also, when you look at it from another person's eyes, when you look at it with your own eyes, you are often not able to spot that.

So you see through the eyes of the others and you admire how I get it. Now I get the great contribution that that mandate to introduce an environment where we are able to protest nonviolently. We're still protesting, but protesting nonviolently vis a vis a country which got its objective with violence, and therefore they had that solution for every problem that they had there. Right. So it was a great experience in that sense.

And was that your last stand in the air? No, it wasn't. Then I came back and then I had another dinner in a suit. That's one of our border areas.

And I just stunned.

And after that, I was posted as an instructor in the American Central School, which is an area where I was working with the young officers who would then be sort of taking their own troops into battle. And that's when I sort of exited from the army.

So this part originally started with the intention of explaining your career. But I love that it turned into an Army special. And I think we'll be doing a sequel episode about what happened after your time in the Army.

So what I would like to end this particular broadcast by asking you about, you know, the youth today. So a lot of people my age who are like in their mid 20s now grew up watching Luck and Luck was a movie that really kind of turned people in towards the army in the modern day.

I have two questions for you. The first is that what is the future of the Indian army looking like like in terms of how are we prepping for their 20s and 30s? Are is artificial intelligence going to be a part of it? Are they more advanced pieces of warfare that are like kind of finding its way into the Indian army? And secondly, why should a younger join the Indian army today?

So let me answer these two questions separately.

So, of course, you probably would be aware, though you may not have thought of it consciously, that every technology that you use today originated from war games. So whether it is laser Internet that you're using and all of that stuff, artificial intelligence, you name it, brawn, drones, everything originated from war. And there's a reason for that. Jet engines, rockets.

When a nation is fighting for its existence, it's obviously going to put its best resources to try and solve the problem.

Matter of fact, the number of technological innovations that happen in the Second World War in terms of the amount that was done in that 40 years, would probably never, ever have been achieved thereafter because that that compelling reason wasn't there to build a rocket right now, to find better metallurgy, to do this, to do that, all of those things.

So pretty much every technology that you see has had its origins, and probably it's the government and the armed forces which actually play with it first.

But having said that, we by the nature of our Teryn. Are a very manpower intensive army has to be because we work very long and very disparate, different bodies, so we have jungles, we have mountains, we have deserts, we amphibian roll.

We have all sorts of island locations that have to be protected, all of these.

And that basically makes the army very, very manpower oriented, infantry largely oriented.

Having said that, the technology is coming in in all of these areas, things like artificial intelligence and all of that have a role to play in certain areas of the army, which is much more to do with intelligence and and big data and logistics.

Also, by the way, logistics is a very, very interesting area and the army, but artificial intelligence is immensely valuable logistics of everything.

In the end of the day, wars are fought on logistics alone. I guess I don't know. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. Let's say that you have a garrison in bikinis right now. Let's say it's an armored division. So they are tanks and they are light tanks and artillery pieces of this that vehicles hundreds and hundreds of vehicles.

Now, if you have to just design the logistic chain for them. Not the vehicles are not of the same vintage, they're not on the same number of kilometers. So it's getting a got not because he got sprocket. Genes can make it clear each vehicle has a record, which, you know, that its maintenance has to be done. This has to be done. That has to be done.

The troops who are posted over there, they might prefer more of the troops will have Russians which are oriented towards Green Berets and this and that they're managing this entire complexity with every vehicle has got its own individual idiosyncrasies. It's not like 40 tanks are bought and given to the parliament together. It's not like all 40 times on the same number of gold. I mean, it's not like you're maintaining a fleet. You I'm in a fleet, but each vehicle in that fleet is a completely different individual and therefore the logistic chain has to cater for that.

Right. So it's a very, very complex. Logistics is one of the most complex sort of exercises in the forces, all forces of the world. And as they say that, you know, the generals fight on strategy, but the field marshal fight on logistics because logistics is what enables army to win or lose.

I and we've seen that in in the Second World War. The German, you know, Eastern Front collapsed because of logistics, not because the troops are not brave or they will not fight, basically because the tanks did not have diesel to run. So without petrol, without fuel, it will not move forward. If your ammunition train does not reach you, you cannot fight. Food does not arrive. You will not be able to sustain troops there. The logistics is the bedrock of something you never think of as a civilian.

You never think of that. How do you think this ammunition arrives all the way up to, Sergeant?

Your vision of the Army is OK, Fidler's brave, intelligent, but it's mainly physical. And there's so many levels of all, of course.

So that's true in every organisations, every everywhere you see a movie, you see the hero doing that, prancing around and all of that, you know, the value chain behind to make that happen, starting with the make up artist.

This, that there are so many other layers which are normal, civilian does not see it, they don't see it. They only see the final product. So that is part one.

The part two. Why should the Indian youth join the army is a very good question. I think I'll answer it in another forum slightly flippantly at that point of time in which I give the same concept that pretty much everything that you are going to learn in management, span of command, amount of troops under you.

What are the like? I'll give you an example.

There's so much time in your life that you don't know about. I'll give you an example. In good old days, the Kings would not keep a huge standing army. There was no point. We're not fighting. They have a huge standing army. So they'll have a small standing army. And whenever there was a battle or a crisis or whatever, but it turned out that our position of from different SUMUS people would come lots of different retailers as they were known at that point of time.

So that's where the votes will be that comes from. Similarly, there was no payroll system those days, so and people's salary would be handed over to the senior most guy, and he doesn't gobble up with the idea that that's where the holder comes from. So instead of the Subedar, if the Subedar could not come, he would send his deputy, Naib Sudhakar, the subinspector. It all comes from that. It originates from there.

So a lot of that lessons which you will learn in B schools, I think are second hand lessons. The primary fountainhead is debt. So one great opportunity is to learn that from the primary function.

And the second is, like I explained earlier, the camaraderie, the bonding and that wealth that you will create over there is again a great thing to possess for life. I I tell a lot of my people who listen that join it for unless you have an option to join for Latinos, you will be groomed from the age of, say, about 20, 25. That's usually the bracket at which people join up to 30, 35. And you come out into the street as an individual who's equipped for handling pretty much everything in life.

And I think that life will throw at you. You will be able to, you know, sort of life will push you in the chest from a 20 floor building. You will stumble and fall on your feet because you have been trained how to do that.

So that's the second reason I would say the third reason is. What happens when a young man or a woman joins an organization, does the NBA joins, let's say, an MNC then than them and see that in this part of them and in that part of them, and then they move from this MNC to another MNC and then in the same place mean even if you chance it is, what is the difference between you living here in Bombay and said other and living in cities that are friendly that are exactly the same thing, exactly the same.

But this is a profession which will give you two to three years of change everywhere you will. You will go to places which will normally never, ever go to. You will see jungles that you never, ever be. And there are places in Sceats in and I'm sure in many other areas where if you go on one day, if you just decide walking and talking, let me walk along this trail or this driving, you could actually be setting your foot in a place where no human being has ever been there before.

But that exposure and that ability to I mean, even when you're under training, the kind of exposure you're given, ranging from horse riding, swimming pool shooting, flying gliders, pretty much everything that I mean, even milliner's can't afford it.

You can't tell my friends when I was studying them, when they got there was not one.

There were two golf courses. And that's really a small town because it had the armored car, regimental center. So they had their golf course and mechanized. So imagine a place where there is so much of golf course that we had to officially detail students today that golf.

So that's the kind of resources that are available there.

And I think that part of your career was that part of your life when you are young, when you can move around, when you're OK to experiment with life, it's a great place to go and to serve there for 10 years. Come back with the knowledge of, you know, what that forces teach you.

Come back with a huge family that exists there and that will always be a family for you. I think those are the reasons why people should join. It teaches entrepreneurship, teaches you innovation, gets you that band of brothers and psyche, all of those things.

And because it is one of the institutions which, like so many of my classmates, became engineers after they joined the army, they came through India, they came through image engineers, jaw signals, and they were made into full fledged engineers, full fledged pilots, full fledged missile pilots.

So these are skills that are life skills. These are not only meant for those were in the army.

I sincerely hope that there's some kid watching this who comes to 10 years from now and says that that one August that he saw you on kind of convinced him to join the army or multiple kids.

Oh, well, I hope they don't come and cast me like it got me. No, no, no.

Like I mean, I think that's the kind of beauty of the age that we live in. Information is this freely available and perspectives are different is also I think I don't know whether we did it on the board before the board, because what you just told me that kids today think differently. I grew up differently. Of course they do.

And I feel that every generation is a completely different generation. So every generation space is different, speed is different, value systems are different. Everything changes. Yeah.

So the final question I have for you again, I want to ask you this as the soldier of all of you and not the culprit and not the motivation people on the day that you're dying, if you had to just flash one memory of the time that you were in the Army, I could be peaceful or violent or whatever it is.

But what defines that? You know, your whole sensibility as a soldier, that if there's one memory that flash in front of your eyes.

Well, it's a hypothetical question, I really don't know what memory will flash at that point of time, but if I were to actually look back at that stint that I spent, then I think it's the most formative, you know, sort of everything that I've learned in terms of the ability to communicate, the ability to lead understanding technology. The fascinating thing about the army is that we don't have the luxury of, you know, 40 years courses, but I'm neutral.

So they'll have short, intense courses where they'll teach you about like sophisticated technology in a compressed time frame and you'll be good enough to operate it and good enough to do, you know, stuff that they've done.

All of that stuff, all of that are skills that are utilized again and again and again. They're all skills. It's not it's not like you learn a skill of how to disassemble a rifle in six seconds. You learn a skill that you can disassemble anything if you put your mind to it in about 10 to 15 seconds and reassemble it back because you've done it with a sophisticated piece of equipment.

Interestingly, I'll tell you something, when I joined my unit at the 22nd Mechanized 22nd Battalion of the Mechanized Infantry Regiment Elite Unit Unit. But when I joined, it was a new raising, was a new nuclearised unit, and this was one of the first three units who were given new equipment, which was the BNP to be is an infantry ICB. It's called infantry. It's a carrier which carries people infantry combat.

So it was a new generation. And because it was a new generation imported from Russia, everything was in Russian, everything. The controls were in Russian, the manuals were in Russian and all of that.

And plus, once they figured it out, they figured out equipment like either infrared night, night vision devices is that they've figured it out. And that gives you the confidence to say that even if it's sophisticated machinery, you allow kids to play with them. They will discover how to operate computers. They will discover how to operate YouTube, they will discover how they will discover it. And you don't need to feel apprehensive. Now, this is a skill set that is good for you for the rest of your life, the rest of your life.

You know, they have to learn. I know this today that if I put my passion to learning photography, maybe in about six months time, I'll be about 70 to 80 percent. As good as. Maybe the best, not the best, but a very professional bodybuilder taking six months because I can learn it in an accelerated manner, that skill of learning accelerated, accelerated learning is universal.

It exist and your ability to transition from one dimension to another dimension because you are able to learn it fast, because you have the confidence that I've learned sophisticated stuff in a short time before.

And it's like the four minute barrier. You know the story, right? So Roger Bannister breaks the four minute barrier for the one mile run, and within months of him breaking it, dozens of people start breaking it.

Why does that happen? Because it's a it is a construct that is artificial in the head. It's an artificial limitation. Once that limitation has been removed, people are going to man. What exactly do you mean? That is very, very important.

The sort of thing I would think about that pretty much anything that I achieved or whatever I am today or originated from that from that experience.

While we haven't touched upon those topics in this episode, and I know that it's not our intention in life, like after talking to have come to know that, you know, someone to Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, the next level of growth money is an outcome of getting you don't financially stable is an outcome of growth, of learning more.

So is it fair to say that the Army equips you as a man to be much more financially stable than you would have been if you're choosing another path earlier in life or rich compared to someone who again, I mean, this is a state of mind.

Yeah. Which is a state of mind, while I understand that. And so let me put it this way, I think.

Not just the army, and again, I want to qualify this and say it's not true for the Army, it's true for all governments, so it's true for all who exist on what many corporate counterparts would say, about 50000 bucks.

How can you manage? It teaches you that 50000 rupees a month is more than enough if you want to be happy about it, right?

And 50 million is not enough if you're not happy about it. So it all all government services, I must say, that they teach that the real wealth is the education of the children, the value systems that they are put in place. And and matter of fact, more often than not.

I've seen more wealth actually destroying things. You know, it's it's an irony that I was talking about it to someone just recently, that when we were young, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they used to be one TV in a house and people used to come from many, many different houses to come and watch the sun for. I still remember when we got to TV and I was in Green Park, we had some family, friends who would ride in a scooter all the way from Narayana, you don't know Delhi.

So they weren't very near each other.

Of course, those days there was no traffic and all that, but it was a ritual that that family would come to our house to watch that Sunday films do not watch the film. It's to most of the films look crappy those days anyway.

It was much more for that bonding, that lunch with dinner who goes up in a year or piratical. They'll go back. There's an energy that you don't need tomorrow school. There's that or not.

That bonding today in one house and four rooms, therefore screens. But the whole intent of having a common entertainment, which you would all sit around and bond. Now I'll explain what that means. Let's say you and I are watching the same episode. Your reaction on that will tell me what you are.

Right. Let's say, I mean, using a controversial example deliberately. Let's say somebody watches together and one person's in particular. What's the big deal in that you know more about that person's thinking? I'm not saying right or wrong, but you know more about that person's thinking. But if he's watching people in one room, you're watching in another room, you never get that interaction.

So actually, plentitude of material assets usually results in poverty of emotion, emotional isolation, nor do you want to call it, but it usually results in that.

So you met on the guy. Brad Pitt said it very well in Fight Club, that things that you own actually own, you end up owning you.

And I think the sooner that realisation comes came and it came late to me, it does come to people, but I think it did come in time for me to take a call that, OK, that's why I left the corporate life, to say that, you know, this is it. I mean, I can continue.

And I was looking for one of the most fast growing organizations in India, which is the hot topic of the next hour.

Yeah. So it was growing and there was great bosses and a great you know, so there was no reason to leave except to say that.

There is something that you need to have which will make you truly rich and that something is enough. You know, I think the lesson of enough about that is a very important lesson for somebody to put everybody to sort of learn. Some people learned early. Some people learned late. Some people never learned.

And they continue to chase objectives and all of that or, you know, actually not even, I think beyond the point.

It's not even material because I'm just thinking that a CEO who makes two crores, if he starts making three crores, will his life religious right is the food is going. You change the place where he is not going to change. What is happening is relatively he feels that I'm now become a bigger person than I was before because I'm being paid more. But is that true? Is that really true?

If what you were doing earlier and what you're doing now is exactly that somebody asked me, you know, I was 54 when I left Ryland's last year. And someone asked me this, that had come on, this is true that many people, many of our colleagues will also tell you this, that the peak earning capability of an individual and corporate is between the age of 48 to fifty five. That's the peak because now you amassed your knowledge.

Build your contacts, Daniel. This thing and this is the time when you should be actually taking a premium on that. And they ask me why we left at this point. This is the time when if I want to go on a bike ride, I can go home. I want to just say, OK, fine, I want to ride to L.A. tomorrow. I know what I can do that.

So this is a time that whatever little I got, I'll be able to spend it. If I continue working for another 10 years, let's say I am as motivated or whatever or not. Somebody else is going to spend it is not going to be me. So why would I not look at the time I have as the most valuable resource there's an excuse me, someone taught me, actually, and it's a good thing for you to do.

You should do it all.

The listeners should do it also. You should buy some marbles, you can use marbles or you can marbles are good, and Sultana like that got about 100 of them or 200 of them, put them in a jar.

Fifty two of them represent one year, 52 weekends in a year. Right. Ten years means five hundred and twenty every week and take out one and throw it away. When you see that jar reducing is the first time you'll realize that the sand. Sand what.

The sand, what whatever it is called, that hourglass, the hourglass clock and is running out. And it's very important at your age because you think you're gonna live forever.

Actually, I thought I was going to live forever, but I was pretty certain that didn't really there's a sense of immortality and all of that stuff. So it's very important to start understanding that the most valuable resource we are left with is the time that we have with us that is left for us and you acquire more material.

But if you are not able to, then it's only acquisition knowledge.

It's I have got this also. I've got that also.

But it's really not something that you are going to be, you know, actually being able to enjoy or use.

Some people are they get their mojo by chasing that, which is fine.

At some point I might say my moisturising my mother is not really I made Ducros more, but the fact that I was chasing it, I think that's a very myopic way of looking at one aspect of life, which is just the material money I represent.

So now I don't know the civilian protocol, but on behalf of the news, I'd like to salute.

Oh, it's all you know, oftentimes people make it sound as if the army is from an alien planet or it comes you have, I'm pretty sure, many classmates, friends who have joined the army.

If you look back at them as a normal guy, you know, very few, very few Indian army professionals have been on board with the Indian. You would listen. I know that's not true.

That's not true. Is it enough of it, which is the reason we started this war? I think I agree with you that.

I think one of the major. Failures, I would say, of the one call it a failure, but it's the fact that the Army's brand hasn't been built in the right way. It should be. It's a very testosterone driven brand. It's a very, you know, machismo driven brand. But that's not what the army is all about. I think the army affects. The Indian civilian far more in aid to civil authorities, rescuing them from floods, keeping the peace, doing all of that stuff.

So I think that part of the army is a part which is not really talking about much more.

So I'm using the word brand in the broader sense.

I'm using it in the sense that, after all, who was the who is the commander of the Indian army, the Indian population.

Right.

So what we do for the Indian population, that's what the army does for the Indian population is something that the Indian population should be aware of. So when we see movies like we and, you know, all of this stuff, that's one aspect of it. That's what we are doing to keep the boundaries safe. But what we are what the army is doing for people inside the country every year, 50000 Germans who have been trained in leadership, who are being trained in handling high end equipment, who have been trained in sophisticated machinery, they come into the city street, imagine the knowledge base that they come with this pool of talent, that they come with you.

You study telecom engineering. So I want to tell you an anecdote. All this telecom that you see, this telecom revolution that happened in India, its origin lies in Army signals. It's the Army's signal officers who came out after retirement. And most of the city was about 10, 15 years old. Even today, you'll find that the whole region is in the army. They come from there and they bring that.

And that's also knowledge that is coming to the nation. Right. After all, you have to remember, it is the most expensive academy in India. You pay for it with your taxpayer money.

So when this resource, after working for 20, 25 years at the age of 35, most of the demands when they come out, the 35 to 40, because they join at the age of 20, that's over 20, 25 years. So in the peak of their life, they are out in the street. They're the huge resources that are available. So I think we need to look at it from all those perspectives also.

Yes. All right.

So if we did that, I think the armed forces would be much I think that's one deficiency, not that one thing that has not happened in India, that the interface between the yet yet. And if that interface became much more solid, which is there in most European countries and all of that.

And there is a reason for that because all European countries, even the United States and gone through an existential crisis during war time, India has never had an existential crisis because even our most pitched battle in 1971, really south of the plateau, there was really no listening.

So because perhaps because of that, we have always had an arms length, which was by design. Also, the word cantonment comes from the fact that you contained the troops of it from the civilian population.

But I think those those paradigms need to change. And I'll tell you why. They need to change. They need to change because 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the battles were fought between soldiers.

Today, with terror and all that happening, they fought by civilians.

That's why I wrote that book, Every Man's War, because it's every man's woman was not a gender specific, but it is every individual's war now because you may not be interested in war, but what is definitely interested in dukedom, right. You may not be interested in terrorism, but they are definitely interested in you. So you can say I'm not interested in you, so don't blow a bump in my head. I don't care whether you're interested or not.

So I think it's very important for.

An average Indian to know about national security, to know about the implications of national security and make right now what is happening in China is going to affect your businesses.

It will affect your business people who want to make investments in India. They'll tell you anything. But then you may you may have an electronics embargo by China. They'll get your cameras, won't run your modems, won't run your phones. So it actually has an application to you directly. So to think that there's something happening in outer space where you know where you are. I think that needs to change. It needs to change quite a bit.

And I hope that, you know, even if this part goes to that point, zero zero zero zero one person getting that message out, that Ivy League job is done. Thank you.

Thanks a bunch. Thank you. Thank you.

Looking forward to having you back to be back here. Thank you. Bye bye.