If not business, I like spending my time on 3 other passions. In this podcast, you'll get to know about the other sides of me.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Freedom Business Podcast, your host, Siddharth Rajsekar here.
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Speaker 1: Great to have you here. This is where we are
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Speaker 1: going to be talking about how we can redefine our
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Speaker 1: education system by building vibrant learning communities. Take your knowledge
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Speaker 1: out of the world and be awesome. Let's get in.
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Speaker 1: So today is day number 13 in my 90 day
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Speaker 1: podcasting challenge. And I thought just share with you, make
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Speaker 1: it more casual, not like a high intensity knowledge podcast
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Speaker 1: is talking about different, different topics. I thought I'll make
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Speaker 1: this more fun and tell you about what helps me unwind,
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Speaker 1: what helps me, what all I do I do to
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Speaker 1: just relax besides work and not just be always work, work,
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Speaker 1: work focused and what are the things that gives me
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Speaker 1: the kicks besides uh you know, building communities and building
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Speaker 1: products and stuff?
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Speaker 1: Uh OK. So as some of some of you may
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Speaker 1: know that I'm a musician, that's my background. If I
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Speaker 1: have to like, go back in time, the first time
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Speaker 1: that I really played a keyboard was when I was
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Speaker 1: seven or eight years old. I remember a family member
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Speaker 1: had a keyboard, they had come home, I was really
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Speaker 1: enamored or it was like, uh I was
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Speaker 1: in shock to see a device like that and then,
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Speaker 1: as you know, touching the keys, feeling this the tones
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Speaker 1: and then it was like a love at first sight.
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Speaker 1: And then ever since I started to play keyboard much
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Speaker 1: in my younger days, uh but when I was 9,
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Speaker 1: 10 years, I started to pick up different books. Uh
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Speaker 1: went to the formal system of learning the scales and
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Speaker 1: rotations and, but over time, over a period of time,
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Speaker 1: I didn't really like the reading notes and playing, I
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Speaker 1: want to play by ear.
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Speaker 1: So I had a book. I still remember long back,
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Speaker 1: it's a pop songs book and I love playing cards
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Speaker 1: for all the top, you know, English songs, pop songs.
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Speaker 1: My mom and dad used to sing at home. Uh
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Speaker 1: My brother is a guitarist, my mom and dad also
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Speaker 1: play guitar, so we should take all the old hits,
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Speaker 1: you know, uh Beatles. Uh you name it like Michael
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Speaker 1: Jackson and all the old songs, Lionel Richie
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Speaker 1: the Melo, the really good pop pop songs that were there.
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Speaker 1: At that time. I used to work out all those
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Speaker 1: chords and I would have the pop songs. But mom,
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Speaker 1: mom and dad would sing, brother would sing, I would
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Speaker 1: also sing and then would play. And the next phase
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Speaker 1: was when we got more into spirituality. I started to
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Speaker 1: learn the Indian percussion called coal, which you might have
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Speaker 1: seen in many of the Hari Krishna Temples in ISKCON Center.
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Speaker 1: So my brother and I, we both play that as well.
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Speaker 1: And I started playing at the age of 10 and
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Speaker 1: later on, you know, just built that skill.
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Speaker 1: I should travel to this temple town called Mayapur and
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Speaker 1: learn from,
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Speaker 1: you know, from some, some of the, you know, best
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Speaker 1: experts over there. Uh I also used to travel to
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Speaker 1: Vrindavan during this, this month called the Kartik month. And
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Speaker 1: uh one of my favorite musicians of all time in
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Speaker 1: the space of spiritual music is a person named a
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Speaker 1: Aindra Das. H e is an American but who used
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Speaker 1: to live in Radavan
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Speaker 1: for more than I think, 40 years and not married
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Speaker 1: uh in the temple all, all day long. He would
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Speaker 1: only be, you know, vibrating the holy names of God,
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Speaker 1: you know, the Hari Krishna mantra and stuff. So when
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Speaker 1: we used to go to and I
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Speaker 1: to look forward to that experience of sitting around his,
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Speaker 1: you know, he will be performing K and so on
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Speaker 1: one side, I had like this western music in uh
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Speaker 1: you know, influence. And I also had uh I used
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Speaker 1: to play in the school band and stuff. But then
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Speaker 1: later on when I got these experiences, it was really different,
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Speaker 1: it was extremely uh
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Speaker 1: soul fulfilling, I should say, and soul touching
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Speaker 1: uh this uh you know, there's a, there's a particular temple,
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Speaker 1: there is gone temple in Vrindavan where they would have
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Speaker 1: 24 hours kirtan. And so they would never stop chanting
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Speaker 1: the names of God. And in the musical form, chanting
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Speaker 1: the mantra and my brother and myself, we would go
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Speaker 1: like at 11 pm in the night when everything closes
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Speaker 1: and there's a small group of four or five people
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Speaker 1: sitting there and just doing
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Speaker 1: and we would go on till morning, you know, like
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Speaker 1: 4 a.m. it would come back and of course, the
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Speaker 1: art and all would start at four. But we would
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Speaker 1: see the opening the brahma muhurta time, the art, then
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Speaker 1: you would go, go back to the room and then
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Speaker 1: crash and sleep and get up in the late in
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Speaker 1: the morning and you do all the other activities. So
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Speaker 1: I just want to tell you that my musical experiences
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Speaker 1: have been pretty deep uh
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Speaker 1: later on after that, you know, so I got into
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Speaker 1: the sound engineering
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Speaker 1: as many of, you know, like when I was 18
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Speaker 1: years old, I left home, I did my sound engineering
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Speaker 1: and because of the experiences of music that I had
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Speaker 1: before that. So right from when I was 10, all
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Speaker 1: the way to 18, I was in all kinds of music,
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Speaker 1: like western music, spiritual music, play in different bands. I
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Speaker 1: was part of the school band. We were the ICS
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Speaker 1: E school band even in school. And I was a
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Speaker 1: keyboardist and a backing vocalist.
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Speaker 1: We, I got the first place, our band got the
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Speaker 1: first place award out of some 50 or 60 se
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Speaker 1: schools all over India. And I was a Kian, I
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Speaker 1: started in Bishop Cottons. So I had had many of
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Speaker 1: these musical milestones and I also won an award called
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Speaker 1: the Peter Coelho Award for music in the year when
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Speaker 1: I was in eighth standard. I do not know the
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Speaker 1: exact year. I think it was 1998 or 1997 if
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Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken.
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Speaker 1: So in Bishop Cotton Boys School, which is, which had
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Speaker 1: over I think 2000 students at that point of time.
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Speaker 1: Uh I got the number one award for music. Um
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Speaker 1: It is an inter house music competition.
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Speaker 1: So when I did my sound engineering, there was a
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Speaker 1: lot of other stuff. Uh I learned the, the engineering
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Speaker 1: side of sound. I learned how to manipulate sound. I
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Speaker 1: learned how to design my own sound. I started to
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Speaker 1: work with, you know, uh what do you call a synthesizers?
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Speaker 1: I'm not talking about digital synthesize. I'm talking about analog synthesizers.
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Speaker 1: Like how do you take a tone? And there are
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Speaker 1: four times four types of tones like a sine wave,
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Speaker 1: there's a saw wave, there's a square wave and a
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Speaker 1: triangle wave and how you can take a wave form and,
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Speaker 1: and manipulate that with filters and combine different wave forms
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Speaker 1: to create different sounds. So I got very deep into
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Speaker 1: sound design
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Speaker 1: and did that for quite a few years. And some
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Speaker 1: of you may know this, but I, I used to
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Speaker 1: teach uh at the age of 19 on how to
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Speaker 1: use digital audio workstations. And I used to teach people
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Speaker 1: how to make music. I'm talking about more from a
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Speaker 1: production perspective. Like there are different styles of music that
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Speaker 1: were there. So it's like how to arrange music. How
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Speaker 1: do you uh mix music? How do you
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Speaker 1: like uh record music in terms of m and even
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Speaker 1: physical instruments. So I learned the ropes over there and
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Speaker 1: I should teach people that. And then how do you
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Speaker 1: edit
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Speaker 1: the music when I'm talking about editing is more like
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Speaker 1: a sound design. So if you have to process uh
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Speaker 1: multiple tracks, how do you process that in the right way?
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Speaker 1: Which plugins do you use? And I was an expert
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Speaker 1: in Midi during my uh you know, sound engineering days.
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Speaker 1: So I should teach people how to use midi controllers,
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Speaker 1: midi instruments, how do you integrate different? And that was
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Speaker 1: a very new topic. At that point. I'm talking back
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Speaker 1: in 2001, 2002.
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Speaker 1: It was just the transition that was happening uh you know,
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Speaker 1: from the analog to the digital world. So what people
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Speaker 1: used to take uh they used to record on analog devices,
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Speaker 1: they were moving to the digital devices and digital audio workstations.
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Speaker 1: And I'm very glad that I was part of that,
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Speaker 1: you know, that transitionary phase in the sound industry because
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Speaker 1: now if you see everybody, like, they make music on their,
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Speaker 1: on their ipads, they make music on their laptops and
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Speaker 1: it's so easy as compared to how to speak before.
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Speaker 1: But I'm glad that I got to see both of
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Speaker 1: both of the worlds because I've done quite a few
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Speaker 1: sessions recording music, even in the,
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Speaker 1: you know, on the side of the analog world on
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Speaker 1: and different kinds of machines and many of my close friends,
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Speaker 1: they are now working with Rahman. You know, my very
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Speaker 1: close friend was part of the Slumdog Millionaire Grammy Award-winning team.
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Speaker 1: And I mean, that was my world. And I also go to the DJ world as some of, you know, I play elevation tracks, music, and multiple things in my, in my events as well as uh I launched that on my SoundCloud channel. But the
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Speaker 1: whole thing is these varied experiences of music
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Speaker 1: have really helped me, um
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Speaker 1: you know, fall in love with sound. And in the 2006,
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Speaker 1: when I got initiated into my spiritual process, when I
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Speaker 1: surrendered to my spiritual master,
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Speaker 1: he gave me the name of uh like normally when
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Speaker 1: you surrender yourself to a particular spiritual process, they change
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Speaker 1: your name or they give you, your name is like
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Speaker 1: a rebirth that happens. So
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Speaker 1: in 2006, I was in my poor, I surrendered to
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Speaker 1: my spiritual masters. Ho Jak Swami, I've been, had been
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Speaker 1: following the principles for many years, you know, of whatever
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Speaker 1: was a part of the process. And he gave me
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Speaker 1: the name Shabda Hari Das. OK. Like uh and if
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Speaker 1: you search for Shabda Shabdahar, I Shabda Harri Das, you'll
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Speaker 1: find my other music, all my other spiritual music, which
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Speaker 1: is uh the name,
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Speaker 1: the meaning of the name is to be the servant
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Speaker 1: of the sound incarnation of God. And that kind of
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Speaker 1: became my path of my life. So 2009, we launched
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Speaker 1: an album, my wife and I called Illuminize. Around 12-13 tracks,
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Speaker 1: we took some ancient vedic text, put that into modern sound.
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Speaker 1: I think a couple of tracks have crossed over a
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Speaker 1: million downloads and stuff and, you know, within the,
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Speaker 1: the particular community that we were a part of and
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Speaker 1: we are still a part of many of them listen
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Speaker 1: to those tracks even till today. And um so I
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Speaker 1: have that side. So what I've been doing, what I
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Speaker 1: like a lot to do besides my work and business
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Speaker 1: is a lot of music
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Speaker 1: now, I don't get that much of time to make
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Speaker 1: music like how I used to. But uh I spend
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Speaker 1: a lot of time, you know, spending time with my kids.
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Speaker 1: Uh Both the boys, both my sons are also having
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Speaker 1: those inclinations. Uh, my elder one is playing, he plays
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Speaker 1: electric guitar, acoustic guitar as well as keyboard. And I keep,
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Speaker 1: you know, I taught him the way that I learned
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Speaker 1: chords and everything else. So he's picking up tunes and
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Speaker 1: playing on his own.
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Speaker 1: And the younger one is getting inclined more towards percussion
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Speaker 1: and drums. You know, those kind of, uh, he does
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Speaker 1: a lot of beat boxing in his mouth and because
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Speaker 1: my wife is also a singer, so she is in
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Speaker 1: the other side of the spectrum. She's like uh carnatic music,
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Speaker 1: classical music. And that is a world that uh I've
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Speaker 1: never gone into, but I really appreciate that world. It's
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Speaker 1: a very,
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Speaker 1: very technical and uh it's a different space altogether. So
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Speaker 1: I think the combination of us coming together as with
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Speaker 1: the musical intonations also have kept our, you know,
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Speaker 1: even our relationship has blossomed beautifully because of respecting each
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Speaker 1: other's musical talents, musical tastes and also exchanged a lot
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Speaker 1: of ideas and we discussed a lot of music stuff.
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Speaker 1: So besides music, the other area, other two areas I
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Speaker 1: want to share with all of you is the area
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Speaker 1: of gaming. So while I was growing up, just like music,
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Speaker 1: gaming has been a part of my life from Sega,
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Speaker 1: from Atari Nintendo, you just name it like, I've just
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Speaker 1: done a lot of gaming right through my childhood. And
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Speaker 1: I felt, I truly feel that
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Speaker 1: if you look at gaming at the right, with the
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Speaker 1: right perspective, it can help your kids improve their reflexes,
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Speaker 1: it can help them improve their skills, it can help
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Speaker 1: them improve their so problem solving thinking,
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Speaker 1: critical thinking. And as I was bringing up both my boys,
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Speaker 1: we've done a lot of gaming together. Even now, we
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Speaker 1: do a lot of gaming together. We just pick up
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Speaker 1: a game. There was one game called Zelda Breath of
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Speaker 1: the Wild. It's a Nintendo game on Nintendo switch. It
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Speaker 1: took us six months to beat that game. It is
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Speaker 1: a quest like a conquest kind of a game,
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Speaker 1: took a lot of time. And then of course, it
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Speaker 1: is a combination of me playing and then giving it
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Speaker 1: to my son, getting him to finish some levels and
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Speaker 1: come back. So even the bonding has been really good
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Speaker 1: because of the gaming thing that we do even till now.
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Speaker 1: And the other area which
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Speaker 1: is uh is something that I love doing besides music
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Speaker 1: and gaming is uh is visiting temples and
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Speaker 1: partaking in any kind of services or activities around temples.
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Speaker 1: So my wife and I we every month we we
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Speaker 1: do like Abhisheka, we give away, we give clothes and
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Speaker 1: you know, Vastra for the deities which were temples that
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Speaker 1: we have a connection with. And every month uh we,
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Speaker 1: we have like our rituals and routines that we do.
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Speaker 1: Uh when it comes to temple visits, temple activities just
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Speaker 1: to soak ourselves in the game. So you would see
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Speaker 1: a totally different avatar of me if you come and
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Speaker 1: meet me in a temple because I would not be
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Speaker 1: wearing dry fits and t-shirts. I'd be in like proper
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Speaker 1: traditional dhoti with tilak and, and all the other stuff. So, and,
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Speaker 1: and I feel that is my true self. That's the
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Speaker 1: real me. Uh This is just the business side of me.
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Speaker 1: I need to just be who I am over here
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Speaker 1: to do what I'm supposed to do. But
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Speaker 1: my core is connecting with the creator doing those activities
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Speaker 1: and uh getting into warrior mode like Arjuna. When he
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Speaker 1: has to get on the battlefield, he wears all his
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Speaker 1: battlefield clothing, his armor and gets to work. But otherwise
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Speaker 1: he's just who he is. So similarly, I'm really inspired
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Speaker 1: by Arjun who when it comes to
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Speaker 1: having an intention to serve in my heart.
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Speaker 1: And uh I switch my roles whenever I have to
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Speaker 1: the role of the businessman, the role of a parent,
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Speaker 1: the role of a husband, the role, the role of
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Speaker 1: a spouse, the role of a son and the role
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Speaker 1: of a,
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Speaker 1: of just being me and a servant of God. And
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Speaker 1: you know, I move into that zone very smoothly because
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Speaker 1: that's who I am. So this is all they are
00:13:36
Speaker 1: all the things that I wanted to share. I think
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Speaker 1: many of you might have not heard about this or
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Speaker 1: you might not have known about this side of me.
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Speaker 1: But now you got to know a deeper side of
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Speaker 1: me which I might have not shared before
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Speaker 1: and all these dots connect. You know, if I had
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Speaker 1: not gone through sound engineering, I would not be able
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Speaker 1: to understand editing and stuff like what I'm doing right now.
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Speaker 1: If I had not understood music, I would not be
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Speaker 1: having both the sides of my brain firing because music
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Speaker 1: is something that helps you fire both your creative
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Speaker 1: and your logical side of the brain. Both left and
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Speaker 1: right brains fire equally when you are into any kind
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Speaker 1: of instrument of music. And I would highly recommend that
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Speaker 1: some of you are more logical, get into music. Some
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Speaker 1: of you are more creative still do music because music
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Speaker 1: has structure as well as creativity in it. And if
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Speaker 1: I had not really gone to gaming from my childhood,
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Speaker 1: then I would not be able to gamify my community.
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Speaker 1: If I had not gone to spirituality, I would not
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Speaker 1: have a spiritual foundation to building a business.
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Speaker 1: So everything, everything matters and all the dots connect. I
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Speaker 1: hope you found this podcast useful and I'll catch you
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Speaker 1: in the next episode. Bye bye.