Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 195 // Week 31 // 2020

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By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello!

Welcome to another edition of Saturday Pentacle.

If you have been reading the newsletter from some time now, you’ll know, I’ve been learning a new language!

This weekend will mark the 30th consecutive Day of my language learning and oh boy! let me tell you, making the learning like a game where daily playing it and making a streak, makes it so much fun. It changes the way you think about learning. My favourite language learning app – Duolingo has done just that. I think that’s the reason I’m able to stick to it. Sense of competition between online peers and rewards/trophies, that too has it’s own advantages.

I hope this learning continues and I finish the course in the coming few months!

Coming to some mental clarity talk, it has become really like a mental block to create or work on something new in these trying times for me. I’ve even been struggling with my own podcast since a month where I have a few episodes sitting in my editor window and I just couldn’t move an inch further.

To resolve this block, I talked to a couple of my creative friends, re-read a few chapters from the book – The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Set on my computer for some more blocked sessions but finally, I got through some editing and about to finish the next episode. Creative work sometimes become so hard that it’s even hard to explain.

Anyway, moving to the book reading/listening progress, I finished the big Sherlock Homes series book 2 finally and started the next two book –

That’s it for the personal updates.

Without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.


Issue 195 // Week 31 // 2020


An interesting tweet —

A Trip across America – Trailer and Crank Story – I came across this twitter thread last week and it made me feel weirdly connected to this old story from 1984.

How this guy (back then a kid) and his family embarked on an epic road trip across America. A lot of emotional moments and some funny ones in this travel memoir of sort.


A ad which stole my heart (specially with it’s video editing) —

You Can’t Stop Us – This new Nike ad is on another level of editing. Even though I loved the emotion in this ad but the editing! that stole my heart. Check it out!


A video I learned from

What We’ve Learned from Write of Passage – This conversation between my favourite online writer and Twitterati (David Parell) and his business partner (Tiego Forte) was a class in its own way. They discussed how making their online class about online writing and learning about the whole process of how to improve their students’ experience, changed the whole game for them. Really interesting conversation if you are interested in online course creation and more.


Music I re-listened to —

Michael Kiwanuka – Cold Little Heart (Live Session Video) – This 11+ minutes Michael Kiwanuka song was on repeat this past weekend. This song touches a nerve suddenly right in the middle of the song and then you can not stop playing it again.


Quote which I found meaningful –

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.

— Marcus Aurelius

Before saying “see you next week”

I’m really excited to share the new Lifestyle Architecture Lab interactive community on Vibely app! 💙

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

Why vibely? Basically it’s a place where we want to make the group and our content interactive. There are daily interesting challenges like –

  • Reading for 1 hour everyday and posting your progress
  • Doing one act of kindness every day
  • Journaling prompts for you
  • Travel writing for 500 words

and more such creative challenges.

It’s a really fun place to be. You’ll get gamified rewards and recognitions for completing the challenges. We are trying to make it a safe place for all the like-minded people to join in the self-growth journey. If you are already working on your passion projects then you’ll get all the support you can and no bashing or judgement for being who you want to be.💡

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

P.S.: Our Facebook group is not going anywhere, we are just adding an interactive branch to it.

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.


Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 195 // Week 31 // 2020


What to do Next?

If you are not signed up to my email list, go ahead and do it right now so that you don’t miss any new weekly SATURDAY PENTACLE post and more interesting emails on Lifestyle Design, Productivity and Creative Entrepreneurship. (plus new podcast episode announcements).

Just enter your email address below and click “Subscribe!”

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Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 193 // Week 29 // 2020

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By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello!

Welcome to another edition of Saturday Pentacle.

Last week was a reflection week for me. I conducted a half-yearly review of my yearly goals. As it is important to work hard on things you care about, it is more important to reflect on your progress in short and medium periods. For me, these periods are weekly, monthly and 6 monthly. It made me rethink about course correction and realigning my energies towards things that actually matter.

Otherwise, it was a productive week for me on the work side, on the creative side it was more of consume week than create. Next week is going to be a create week more than consume.

Coming to the book reading/listening progress, I listened to the Sherlock Holmes some more this past week and finished the Atomic Habits –

  1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – 75% done (Audible)
  2. Atomic Habits by James Clear – 100% done (Audible) – This audiobook is like a page-turner version for audio (I don’t know if there is a specific word for it for audiobooks, let me know in comments if there is).

That’s it for the personal updates.

Without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.


Issue 193 // Week 29 // 2020


An new material I’m exited about

Pentadiamond – A new addition to the carbon family, Pentadiamond, is predicted to be light like graphite, hard like diamond and semiconducting like silicon.

I can’t even imagine, how many use cases are there for this kind of material. I’m excited to think about – how it might be used (i hope not as a weapon).

Here is the original research publication link.


A poem I loved —

I would like you to be still! read by Eva Green – I recently discovered the Eva Green has an Instagram page and man! isn’t it filled up weird but fresh stuff, I hadn’t been exposed to before.

This is Pablo Neruda’s poem “I would like you to be still!” in Eva’s brilliant voice –

The poem and the narration both are wonderful.


A show I loved

Homecoming – I was excited to watch the Season 2 after an amazing Season 1 with Julia Roberts as the protagonist. Homecoming series is about how a private company authorized by military runs a program to make the PTSD veterans forget their past. But it becomes much more than that eventually. It’s a great drama and the way it is shot, kudos to the DOP.

I loved the season two as well, even though the protagonist is different in this but she’s a refreshing change.

You can check it out on Amazon PrimeVideo – Season 1 | Season 2


A Podcast episode I re-listened —

How to Become a Psychedelic Therapist – This episode of the Tim Ferriss show was amazing. Marcela’s story, the conversation about the psychedelic therapy and MAPS were out of the world.

A must listen. This was the second time I listened to it this week.


Quote which I found meaningful –

Once we let go of every thing, everything remains.

The Minimalists

Before saying “see you next week”

I’m really excited to share the new Lifestyle Architecture Lab interactive community on Vibely app! 💙

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

Why vibely? Basically it’s a place where we want to make the group and our content interactive. There are daily interesting challenges like –

  • Reading for 1 hour everyday and posting your progress
  • Doing one act of kindness every day
  • Journaling prompts for you
  • Travel writing for 500 words

and more such creative challenges.

It’s a really fun place to be. You’ll get gamified rewards and recognitions for completing the challenges. We are trying to make it a safe place for all the like-minded people to join in the self-growth journey. If you are already working on your passion projects then you’ll get all the support you can and no bashing or judgement for being who you want to be.💡

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

P.S.: Our Facebook group is not going anywhere, we are just adding an interactive branch to it.

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.


Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 193 // Week 29 // 2020


What to do Next?

If you are not signed up to my email list, go ahead and do it right now so that you don’t miss any new weekly SATURDAY PENTACLE post and more interesting emails on Lifestyle Design, Productivity and Creative Entrepreneurship. (plus new podcast episode announcements).

Just enter your email address below and click “Subscribe!”

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Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 189 // Week 25 // 2020

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By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello!

This past week had been a rollercoaster again for the entire nation. Sushant Singh Rajput’s death came as a real shocker. An actor who was doing so well, or so we thought from the outside. He might have been doing well on the monetary level but at an emotional level apparently he wasn’t.

It was a shock to me personally as well, as I liked him as an actor, his movies like Kai Po Che!, his portrayal of MS Dhoni (the ex-Indian Cricket Captain) in M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story and many more. He would get into the character so much that you couldn’t tell him apart from the character he was doing. Plus he was a really intelligent human being, his keen interest in astrophysics was really rare to see in any of the Indian Artists. In fact, he was one of the person in my interview dream guest list for my podcast. Gone too soon. I surely am going to miss him as a human being.

On the other side, tensions on Indo-China border are increasing day-by-day. I just hope things settle down. But if chinese forces keep on intruding, I don’t think India will stay with hands folded. War is the least we all want at this moment, where we are are in the middle of a historic pandemic. So I really hope that things calm down on border and China gets their shit together now. It’s high time.

Coming to the book reading/listening progress, I moved forward on below books –

  1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – 40% done (Audible) – I was on a binge listening spree on this one.
  2. Atomic Habits by James Clear – 25% done (Audible) – finally started out on this book, I really wanted to read it since it launched last year. So many insights. I’ve been following James from 4-5 years now and love his actionable writing.

No progress on below ones this week –

  1. Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway – 20% done only (Audible)
  2. Breaking Smart: Season One: How Software is Eating the World – 70% done (an amazing book recommended by David Perell) (Kindle)
  3. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – 50% done only (Kindle)
  4. Truck de India – 20% – (Kindle)

Current Yearly Tally – [Yearly goal – 24]

Read – 6 | In progress – 6 | Pending in Reading list – 4 | Yet to discover for reading for yearly goal – 8

That’s it for the personal updates.

Without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.


Issue 189 // Week 25 // 2020


An event I’m looking forward to

WWDC 2020 (Virtual Event) – For the first time in the history of Apple, WWDC is going virtual this year due to the Pandemic. I’m so pumped about this virtual event. Updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS are awaited. I hope they live up to the expectations of customers’ feedback.

Not sure if they’ll be launching any new hardware in this event. But big software updates are for sure awaited. Fingers Crossed.

If you are as excited as I am, click the link in the title to go to the WWDC page, for following up on updates and on the WWDC days the event can be tracked here.

WWDC 2020 (Virtual Event)

A podcast conversation I loved —

Ali talks to his roommate Molly – Ali Abdaal is one of the rising YouTubers who talk about productivity and lifestyle design. In this video he has a conversation with his long time friend and roommate Molly, where they talk about Molly’s cancer survival, being a doctor and going through the situations to be where they both are.

I resonated a lot with this video’s realness and totally recommend for watching –


A video which made me understand things at a deeper level (after Sushant Singh Rajput’s Death)

Parents Who Have Lost a Child – Call it serendipity or something, the below video surfaced on my YouTube feed after I had been hit hard like others (after Sushant’s death).

I was amazed at the ease with which some of the parents spoke about losing their child. It shattered my heart to listen to the mother when she was telling the story that how his son was sitting on the dining table and crying in front of her maid (caretaker) that “Mom, I’m Sorry”, “Mom, I’m Sorry”. Then he jumps out of a high rise building and dies.

But listening about their pain and how they have gone through it all, made me realise not to take things for granted. I felt grateful in a weird way.

Check it out.

P.S.: If you are someone who’s in depression and can be triggered to see people talk about suicide in detail. Please don’t watch this video.


Music I’m loving —

The Important Song (Live) by Joe Anderson – I stumbled upon this song via an Instagram Story. This is from a 2009 album from Joe Anderson. He put out an important topic in the son literally named “The Important Song”. The idea is brilliant.


Quote which I found meaningful –

Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.

― James Clear (Atomic Habits)

Before saying “see you next week”

Here is the latest story from my Lifestyle Design in Action Story Series where Tanistha Arora shares her story. Check it out if you haven’t –

and if you haven’t checked out my podcast episode yet with Shashank Murali (Co-Founder and CEO of Tapchief), then what are you waiting for! Check it out now. Here is the YouTube link –

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.


Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 189 // Week 25 // 2020


What to do Next?

If you are not signed up to my email list, go ahead and do it right now so that you don’t miss any new weekly SATURDAY PENTACLE post and more interesting emails on Lifestyle Design, Productivity and Creative Entrepreneurship. (plus new podcast episode announcements).

Just enter your email address below and click “Subscribe!”

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Living the Middle Path

Taking control of your life is in your own hands. When you are self-aware, even the tiny moments of deep clarity change the course of your life. Suppressing your emotions is not the right way of clearing them up, rather consciously going through them, observing them and resolving those tough moments is something which is a long-term solution.

This story is from Tanistha Arora – one of the strong women I know, who has been a great student of life, studied life sciences in her academia and subsequently holds a degree in Law. She’s worked with the National Commission for Women (NCW) and while working there she has handled cases of many abused women who had been through rape, sexual assault or were suffering from PTSD. She shares how that whole experience shaped her and a subsequent journey inward, kindled through meditation, inspired her to drop her blooming career in Law and how she embarked on the journey to fulfil her life purpose.

She’s a prolific writer and documenting her journey and I hope this story will inspire you.

[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]

Enters Tanistha Arora

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

– Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

When Nelson Mandela was confined in the prison during the freedom movement of South Africa, he was internally struggling to find his true self. The poem became his lifeline and my journey also revolves around this.

Just for the background- I completed my under graduation in Life Sciences, graduation in Law and worked with National Commission for Women (NCW) for a year (although I no longer identify myself with such an introduction).

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#22 – Shashank Murali (Co-Founder and CEO of TapChief) – Building the Future of Work

Shashank Murali
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In this episode, I’m talking to Shashank Murali who’s the Co-Founder and CEO of TapChief. TapChief is an Indian Start-up which aims to build the future of work with it’s focus on Solopreneurs and the gig economy. A freelance professional can register on TapChief and can access thousands of projects to choose from and TapChief handles all the things around this and help the freelancer earn well.

Shashank is a BITS Pilani Alumni. Like many tech founders, his journey also started in the hostel room of BITS Pilani where he created the early version of what today is TapChief.

In this candid conversation, we talk about his journey and how TapChief started out from his hostel room and has now become one of the top Indian Start-ups and is having 1 Lakh plus professionals on their platform. How BITS Pilani shaped his thought process. We go deep on TapChief’s focus on people with Attention to detail and empathy. Their goal of getting 2 Million people to the platform and much more. There are a lot of nuggets in this episode for anyone who’s aspiring to start a company or a start-up which is looking to level up.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Shashank Murali.

Links and references from the episode –

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Yoga – A way of life

Designing your life around your passion and what you deeply resonate with, is not easy. Making difficult career choices, making life choices which may sound naive to the people around you, not being able to see the light across the tunnel, but still being hopeful and moving forward in the dark. That’s what it takes to follow your heart.

It all comes to what matters to you. Is it a stable paying job where you feel discontent? or Is it working on something you truly believe in and practice yourself, the thing that makes your heart happy!

In the middle of the herd, there are always exceptions, the moonshots, the crazy ones, the ones who take that shot, which most of us are afraid to take. Leaving the stability and going for that alternate lifestyle which makes them feel fulfilled. Starting a company, Building an innovative product, Starting to Coach etc.

This story is from Priyamvada Mangal, a Freelance Yoga Coach and Journalist from Mumbai, India (Instagram).

She is a certified Yoga Coach and has been working to introduce Yoga to more and more people as a way of life, with her coaching. She is also a prolific writer with her writing pieces published in The HinduThe TribuneManorama etc. As a journalist, she has worked with names like Mumbai Mirror and Firstpost. She’s worked on many photojournalism projects, her photography portfolio can be found here.

Since leaving her full-time job at a big media house couple of years back, she’s been working freelance and is well on the path of financial freedom. She usually provides one-on-one Yoga coaching, but now since Covid-19 hit all of us hard and restricted us inside the boundaries of our homes, she has started teaching Yoga online.

In this piece, she’s sharing how she first got introduced to Yoga and shares about her transition from a traditional journalism career to the freelance writing and Yoga Coaching. She also shares the Yoga way of life that changed her lifestyle and how she’s helping others now to discover this alternate way of life with her Yoga Classes.

[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]

Enters Priyamvada Mangal

The first time I did yoga was when I was 13 and visited the yoga institute for a children’s camp, since then I have been doing Yoga on and off but I never really made it a part of my daily lifestyle until 2018.

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Craving – The state of mind

The most important thing we can do for our well being is to build and maintain our energy. As per my own experiences and what I’ve read in one of the classical books like Laws of Success and even in the works of modern writers like Darius Foroux, our whole energy is the addition of the three different types of energies –

  1. Mental Energy
  2. Physical Energy
  3. Emotional Energy

If any one of these energies slips through the crack, then everything goes for a toss. So our main goal every day should be to build and maintain all these different types of energies. But as we know, as our day passes by we start feeling depleted by one energy or the other. So how to keep these 3 energies sustained in our body?

  1. Mental Energy – Mindfulness practice is key for this. Every day, sit quietly for some time and meditate. It can be any type of meditation – Mindfulness meditation with an app (like Headspace) or Mantra based meditation like Transcendental Meditation (TM) etc. When we sit with ourselves, it gives us clarity and we can look inwards. Doing Journaling is also a great way to clear up your mental mess and find clarity. After waking up if you write a few pages of whatever is there on your mind, maybe your previous day’s thoughts or anything which is bothering you, write it down and you’ll immediately see the shift in your mental state towards clarity.
  2. Physical Energy – This is mainly about eating clean and exercising. If you eat good nutrition and exercise every day. It’s a sure shot way to increase your physical energy which then sustains throughout the day.
  3. Emotional Energy – Last but not least is emotional energy, which is one of the most important aspects of Homosapiens’ well being. One can maintain their sanity if they keep healthy human Interaction. Sharing your thoughts with others, laughing with them and keeping in touch. All of this increases our emotional energy.

But there is an amazing co-relation between all these 3 types of energies. To elaborate more on this subject, I asked one of my expert friends – Bhupinder Singh Budwal from Navi Mumbai, India, who is the founder of The FnF [Food, Nutrition, Fitness] Coaching. Bhupinder is a certified Nutritionist from the Institute of Nutrition and Fitness Sciences. He’s also Meta Health certified Practitioner. He has been able to integrate Food with Emotions (one of the 3 types of energies I described earlier), helping clients to use food to heal their health issues and injuries.

Bhupinder and I have been in touch since past 3-4 years as he’s also a passionate runner and part of the running community in Navi Mumbai.

In this story, Bhupinder shares how his unique theory of working with emotional aspect along with the nutritional aspect of well being started and how he further connected the dots of Food Emotion Therapy (FET) – a therapy invented by him which has made his coaching very unique and started benefiting his clients pragmatically.

P.S.: This story is edited for better readability, keeping the context of the story unchanged.

[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]

Enters Bhupinder Singh Budwal

Being a Nutrition Coach since the past 5 years I wanted to go further to provide value with my coaching. I was teaching about mindfulness, nutrition and exercise to my clients. But I knew a piece of the puzzle was missing.

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#21 – Aditya Kalyanpur (World-renowned Indian Tabla Maestro) – Taking Indian Tabla across International boundaries

Aditya Kalyanpur
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In this episode, I’m talking to Aditya Kalyanpur who is a world-renowned Indian Tabla Maestro. He has trained under the Tabla Legends Ustad Allarakha Khan and Ustad Zakir Hussain. Since his first appearance in the Wah Taj! ad in the 90s where he played the Tabla along with Ustad Zakir Hussain, to now when he has become the Tabla Maestro and taken the Indian Tabla Classical Indian music art form across International boundaries. He’s played along with the Indian Legends like Shivkumar Sharma, Amjad Ali Khan, A.R. Rahman, Rahul Sharma and western legendary artists like Katy Perry, Herbie Hancock, Larry Coryell and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones to name a few. He also popularised the colourful Tablas. He’s wearing multiple hats at the moment, founder of 2 music institutes in the US and a non-profit in Mumbai India which helps out kids with Cancer.

In this conversation, we talked about his initial journey, his time with his Gurus, his creative process, how to perfect your craft and much more.

It was amazing to talk to Aditya jee and I hope you’ll love it too.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Aditya Kalyanpur.

Links and references from the episode –

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Following your heart, going all in and building a 6 figure business

In today’s digital world, we have organically learned to live with technology. A word like financial freedom used to come from people who were nearing retirement or were retired already.

But today there are cases when even a 20 something old can also become financially free.

What? Is it even possible?

Yes! It is. You need not even be a rich brat to achieve it. With technology surrounding our lives, we have almost become cyborgs in a way that we can’t even remember general knowledge questions which we used to, a decade ago. Somebody, asks a question, Google pops-up on our screen immediately. The transition to this dependency has been so organic that we don’t even know when we entered the event horizon of becoming machine dependant and now there is no going back.

There are of course dark sides to technology – Uncontrollable Artificial Intelligence, People exploiting kids while they are online, online frauds and much more.

But there is a sunny side to it as well – Technology can liberate humans of today with just access to an internet connection. One can start their own creative business with a website, a YouTube Channel or a course selling platform.

Today’s story is of one of those people from Mumbai, India – Sumersingh Rajpurohit (Instagram). 25 years old, he is financially free and running his YouTube Channel (Last Moment Tuitions) which has around 474K subscribers (at the time of writing this post – Apr 2020) and he’s built a business around his educational YouTube channel – LastMomentTuitions.com. Both of his ventures are earning him a combined revenue of 6 figures+.

P.S.: This story is edited for better readability, keeping the context of the story unchanged.

[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]

Enters Sumersingh Rajpurohit

I was in my final year of engineering. Everybody else was searching a job and I was confused because I had two options —

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#20 – Stuart DaCosta (Music Composer and Bassist of The Yellow Diary Band) – Making Music, Touring with bands and co-creating 6+ million view songs

Stuart DaCosta
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In this episode, I’m talking to Stuart DaCosta, who is a music composer and bassist in the band The Yellow Diary whose songs like Na Tere Jeha Hora Disda and Rab Rakha have been rocking the charts since the day 1 of launch. I absolutely love this band.

Stuart has been in the indie music scene in India from a long time. He has played in various bands like Something Relevant, Baycity Lights etc and then eventually made his way into The Yellow Diary. Which is now signed by Sony Music India. On the side he’s also working for bigger projects with his music production company – Salvage Audio Collective and have worked with films like Gully Boy which had chartbuster songs.

This is an episode with which most of the musicians might resonate. A lot of tidbits for musicians. But for everyone else also it will be a good episode and teach you if you keep working on what you love with all your passion, you definitely will get there.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Stuart DaCosta.

Links and references from the episode –

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