I have realized over the process that I love performing. And even if I'm performing, as I said, for one person or no people, it's sort of like a time where I can test out my voice. I can practice some improvisational runs. So to answer your question about the music profession, I do it professionally. I am basically a full-time gigging musician. I perform regularly at clubs, restaurants, private parties, weddings. I have different band projects. So I also, as I said, I write and compose my own music. And I have performed that music in sort of intimate, tiny desk concert type spaces with a band. So there's that band of mine, which I call Anisha Live. Then there's another band, which is specifically only for weddings. And that's a five-piece band. And we perform commercial cover music. And then I also have a third band that I joined only recently. In the beginning of this year, which is a reggae ska band. And that's an eight-piece project where they offered me the role of vocalist. And we are in the process of writing original music. And we perform reggae ska-based music. And at the same time, I'm also writing an album, which I have zoned into wholeheartedly with different collaborative producers and also just through my own compositional and production skills. There were many goof-ups, probably mostly by me, even by the pianist that was accompanying me. I think he messed up one or two songs. But honestly, in the grand scheme of things, that performance to me will always sort of be a very warm, embracing performance where I just felt like, wow, so many people showed up here for me because they actually believe in this crazy decision that I've made. And I mean, my family were there and my brother, at the end of the day, I was like, the show told me that you sounded amazing. So, of course, my family is my biggest critic. So they usually give it to me straight. And of course, my dad's feedback was, you close your eyes too much. From that first performance of engaging the audience more, not closing my eyes, not making a face, because I'm a very honest and authentic person. So, and I have really no filter. So if there were some boo-boos that were made, either lyrically or musically, you could just see it on my face because I would make a weird expression. So even if nobody else noticed it, I would make them notice it. So I've, since then, I've learned many lessons that, you know, fumbles will keep happening. Every show there's somebody or the other. I mean, when you perform with five other musicians on stage, there's always going to be some particular song or some particular part where somebody misses a transition or somebody messes up a chord. But I've realized that really in the grand scheme of things, the audience doesn't care about that. The audience cares about your vibe, your energy, and the way that you engage them. And I think that has been a skill that I've picked up over time and really honed that, yes, I am. And I think it's, I am very grateful that God made me this way because again, I'm quite spiritual in my understanding of all of it, like of this God-given talent of voice that I was given, the fact that I'm trying to be this professional musician, the whole... The whole... The whole... The whole jing-bang lot. I'm like, okay, I've been sent here to be this person. I'm trying to do this. And my job is to entertain you, who's the audience. So whether there's a mess... And I feel like there's beauty in the imperfectionism now. I think five years ago, I didn't believe that. I was so worried about being pitch perfect. I was so worried about not messing up. And still, there's definitely... I hold myself to a very, very high standard, sometimes a bit too high. And I can... I can be very unforgiving when there are mistakes. I have still, even till today, I've had gigs where, like you asked, the sound has gone bad or some glitch has happened where the musicians just aren't vibing with each other because either the sound is bad or the sound engineer is constantly messing something up or one of the musicians is... And it affects me. It really does affect me because if there's a bad show, I think as also the front man of the band, unfortunately, as a vocalist, you take a lot of the heat of those mistakes. So, it still affects me. I've still gone to bathrooms after shows and cried because I get overwhelmed. That's telling of me as a person, though. But I think overall, my shows and the musicians around me and the people I'm surrounding myself with has improved a lot. And I've also found the right people to work with who show up, who are not lazy, who practice before they come for rehearsal. And these are things that I hold now very closely. to the standard of work that I want to with the kind of people I'm working with. So, if they do their part, then whatever those little booboos are, they don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. And that is evident by the feedback that we receive and the fact that thankfully and through God's grace, we are being booked. again and again. So sure. So this new band that I've joined has a very long name. It's called the Princely States Dub Orchestra. And a friend who started the entire project, he's a multi instrumentalist, but in the band, he's a lead guitarist. And he does all that sort of dub and reggae work with his guitar and with his various pedals that he has. So a lot of the those typical reggae delays, and you know, the ska parts of songs is managed by him. So he put the band together. He was an original member of a band that existed before called the Skavengers. And this project is basically a revival of the Skavengers band, which is a Delhi based band that existed before COVID. But a lot of the other members have scattered and the band fell through basically. But this guy, Chetanya, who's the lead guitarist, he has again brought together the revival of a new project under a new name and under a new IP. So I'm the lead vocalist, there is a second vocalist, also in the band, another girl. And then there is a horn section where we have a trumpeter, a trombone player and a sax player. And then we have a bassist and we have a drummer. And there is there are plans to maybe even have a trombone player separately, like a bongo or congo player if we can find somebody, so that the drums and the percussion can be separated. And eventually maybe even a keyboardist, I'm not sure. But I think for the kind of music that we do, this setup with the seven of us is enough for now, or the eight of us, I'm not sure how many we are, let me just count. We are. Yeah, so we are eight right now. And I think getting together eight people to stay committed to a project is in itself a really huge feat. So I don't know if they'll be adding any more people right now. I hope not. Because it's difficult to get everybody together and show up for rehearsals. And all of these people also are very talented musicians in their own right. So they are also working with multiple other projects. And you know, they're working as session musicians in various bands, and stuff like that. But it's a really fun project, I would say because the musicians are all of really high caliber. And as of now, we're working on a lot of successful shows together, all of us, various venues around Delhi. And of course, the guy who's initiating the whole band, he is in touch with a lot of these festival promoters, and he's well ingrained in the music industry. So he's trying to get us all to, you know, these larger festivals and get us booked in various different cities. And in fact, on that note, we are coming to Bombay and performing at the Little Flea, which is a festival happening in October. So at the end of October, we'll be here performing, please come. And as of now, we're performing cover music, but we do our own dub and reggae renditions of the same. So it's, you know, any songs from jazz songs to blues songs, to there's even like Billie Eilish's Bad Guy, that there's a ska punk version that we've created. So that's all good and great. But I think our main goal is to write original music because for festivals, that is essential. So that's what we're going to be working on as soon as I leave Bombay, which is going to be on Sunday and go back and resume work in Delhi. So I always feel like I was born in the wrong country, because I think if I was born in a place where there was Broadway, or there were musicals, I would 150,000% have gone in that direction. I just feel like I'm one of those typical people who has that voice texture and tone also that can sing, those Disney songs, or that can, you know, do any kind of musical work, because I like to prance around on stage. I'm very animated when I perform. And sadly, growing up, there were no opportunities of that nature. It was always sort of separated the theatre work that I did and the music stuff that I did. And somehow in acting, weirdly, when I was growing up, I didn't have the same kind of nervousness as I had when I was singing, which is why I don't know how to sing. I don't know how to sing. But I mentioned that, you know, I used to have this debilitating anxiety when I would have to perform as a musician. And I think the reason for that was that I always looked at acting as a space where you could be one removed from yourself. Because if you're playing a witch or something, you're not Anisha on stage. Whereas if you're singing, I was like bearing, you know, my soul there. So somehow, as an actor, I did a lot of plays in school, I won a lot of competitions, performed with these two ladies, Lucian Dubey and Babal Sabarwal, who were two ladies who would put up a lot of plays back in the day. And I've been a child actor in a few plays, they used to always take Roald Dahl's books and recreate them for stage and I've done two plays with them and in the second play when I was slightly older I got one of the lead children so I've had my fair share of time on stage and again it's always exhilarating to perform I feel like I miss acting actually and somehow I've just not had the time and inclination now to pick it up again but maybe in the future I would like to because I also feel that I have good enunciation and voice and I also have a good throw so I think as a theater actor that is very essential but you need to have that oration ability when you are playing a character but I've honestly not done it for so long that I think I would be really bad and I would need a lot of direction I'd also love to dabble in like a musical or something so yeah I really I enjoy acting and I feel like I get really into the character I love it I love you know doing the whole thing from the lights to the costumes to the dressing up everything like it's a lot of fun and yeah I do miss it and I think it's on me to pick it up again so I remember very few of them but we had this play that we did in grade 12 when we were graduating we had a you know a whole group of us some of my really close friends and we all did this high school play and in that I think I played a character called Lala Lovegood and she was this very flamboyant she was like this hot lady who turns up and then she has a fall on stage and she's you know very flamboyant and she comes in there and she's and it was a funny it was a comedy and it was just so much fun the whole experience of putting that play up was what made I think that play my top favorite acting experience because just the rehearsals the time that we would spend post-school to like hang out and you know I think it was just so much fun to do do our rehearsals and put play together those memories like I think as an actor that sense of community that you get with your fellow actors and all of that time and effort that you spend backstage and in the rehearsals is what makes the show memorable and I also remember that I got to dress up as this very flamboyant I was wearing heels and I was in grade 12 and I did my hair and it was a whole experience of you know getting into character and I think and on the day of the play I made I feel like my character was received well because the whole audience was cracking up laughing so I was like wow I did comedy and that's very hard that was also really fun to like make people laugh and entertain them and also I have to say that I almost feel like I'm one Nautanki on stage also as a musician because I tell a lot of stories and I share a lot of anecdotes and a lot of people after my shows when they come to see my my personal shows where I'm you know a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer my own music that those are the shows where I actually do get to talk to the audience because I've done a few of these shows in collaboration with the various with certain venues that I have worked with to create the show actually where it's sort of more of an intimate engaging show where I want this you know 50 or 60 person audience to really know who I am and how I've written the songs and so in between I do share a lot about myself and most people a lot of my friends have come and told me that you know if I'm a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer I'm a singer the singing fails and just be a stand-up comic and I keep saying I'm not I really can't do stand-up but I do think that I do make people laugh in general with like my stories and my anecdotes and I feel like it's all part of my act I would say without really trying okay um so why did I give up non-vegetarian food um god Nishit it's a it's actually not a very big question at all for me it was a very personal decision and I think it's a very personal decision and I think it's a very personal decision and I really don't feel like I sort of uh throw it on to anybody else I was somebody that grew up eating we used to say this in my house meat ki cheese and my didis at my house would know always my interest was what is the non-vegetarian food item that is there with the typical roti sabzi dal that we were eating and there was never any pressure ever on me I grew up in a household which we ate meat all through my growing up years I think it's a very personal I think I turned vegetarian when I was about 23 or 24 years old the formative years of my life I've eaten every kind of meat that was there to eat and I really enjoyed it I would call myself a complete non-vegetarian fiend if you might like to say so um but then what started happening is that I had a lot of acne issues growing up and um I had PCOD and I had had terrible skin problems which I still feel I do the choice really had to be made I had a lot of acne issues growing up and um I had PCOD has affected anything in the long but definitely it was way worse when I was eating red meat and I found that when I was going to my dermatologist the recommendation always was to cut down on red meat particularly and then also then there was a time when I did an allergy test and I was told I'm allergic to all sorts of things from fish to chicken to everything and around the same time I think uh I also I've always been curious in this spiritual path and um I don't want to talk too much about that because it's personal again to me but um it's a very internal and personal again nobody ever forced me in my family there's never been any kind of push towards anything but uh and I'm not religious I didn't do this for religious reasons but um I did start sort of at the same time as having these skin problems and then first I cut out it was a weaning process I cut the red meat first then I cut chicken and I'm I was a lover of chicken and fish like I love prawns and seafood and all of that so for a while I was just a pescatarian and at the same time then I started watching a bunch of these documentaries which came out like cowspiracy and sea spiracy and all of that and um I mean they really did affect me and I also read a couple of those books that you know became trending at that moment I think I don't know I think the set and setting also kind of pushed me in that direction in a way and then I don't know what happened to me I don't know what happened to me I don't know what happened I think it was like a one-time decision where I was like okay cool let's just try giving it all up and I think I was on a on holiday actually weirdly in Kerala where you only get a lot of meat and fish options and I chose to remain vegetarian as a test to myself that can I pull it off here because if I can pull it off here then maybe I can pull it off back home in Delhi where you know we have access to a lot of vegetarian options and food and um yeah somehow I just have stuck by it and still I feel like semantically anytime I think about food I somehow have memories of non-vegetarian food like I remember brisket that I ate or I remember some pork belly thing that I ate or I remember some chicken tandoori that I've eaten in some you know shack or whatever so I'll never remember like an amazing dal that I ate because somehow that memory doesn't get activated with vegetarian food but what I've realized over being vegetarian is that I feel a lot lighter in my body I think that digest that digestion wise I think I can digest vegetarian food a lot easier and also there's a different kind of comfort with vegetarian food so now when I do think of like a really nice chatpata and well seasoned dal tadka with really nice rice like you know lovely soft grains of rice and a little bit on top and I eat the rice and the dal with my hands in some lovely little dhaba in Goa or you know in Delhi or whatever there's a different joy to that and also I've become somebody who cares about my health and my body and my fitness and um everybody says this that as a vegetarian how do you get your protein um but I do I eat a lot of like tofu I eat dals I eat chana so I feel like protein is coming from there and I don't really feel that there's any lack in my protein because in my tests I'm fine for protein my relationship with food has just changed and sometimes there are days where I'm frustrated because I get the smells of non-vegetarian food and I'm like oh god I'm you know making a big sacrifice or something like that but then the idea of eating something that was living and something that had blood in it and was another living being because I also love animals just like kind of it's more the semantic memory of the smell and everything that does sometimes take me back there but putting it in my mouth somehow doesn't feel I've not been sort of pushed to do that and I'll never say never because I don't know if I might convert again but for now I'm I'm good in this way and I also think I'm doing something for the environment in my own little way so I would rather Nishit find a best of both worlds kind of situation which I think I'm kind of succeeding in finding because I have realized where let's put it this way that I've realized where the money is at in the profession that counts as my dream profession and the money is in let's say corporate and commercial and wedding shows where I have to perform a lot of cover music and it has to be very bam bam bam loud singing and you know disco sets and all of that but as I said before I love performing so for me it's not just about the money it's about the it's not because I've met many musicians that kind of put their nose up in the air and for them personally you know it was a very harrowing thing to do this side of music which is like selling their soul to sing Bollywood and sing commercial music and all of that and there's a bunch of these snobby musicians that you know don't want to do that I'm not one of those musicians I'd rather do that and get paid well and I have found myself a manager who's managing my wedding band hopefully if I can sort of position myself well with the PR and marketing of that I believe in my band and I believe that if we continue to grow in the way we're growing and put in the hard work that we're doing we can earn a lot of money in this profession and for the stuff that is soul fulfilling like the making of the own of your own music or composing my songs or leaving my legacy of songs that I've written that will carry on on the side I don't think I'll ever be where I'll have to worry about where my next meal will come from and that is something that I don't take lightly but since you've asked the question I have to be honest that because I have that privilege I'm actually able to even try to pursue this career because it takes a lot of time to build it's like being an entrepreneur without even having really a product to sell so you're kind of investing and investing and investing there's so much outflow even today in all of the music I make in setup that I'm talking about every week we're hiring a jam pad that is not cheap every week we're meeting nobody's paying us for those rehearsals that we're doing you know I'm hiring a videographer to come and film us so half of my gig money is going and hiring a videographer because now is the day of content and we require that content so you know it's not cheap to do this to be in this profession and I honestly really marvel at the people that didn't have the privilege that I do and who are still sticking it out in this career by getting you know a second job or a third job because of the necessities that they have and yet they have so much talent in music that you know they're doing music as well and there's and a lot of like people I know a lot of musicians I work with myself in that zone so sometimes I honestly feel like you know I've detached from this this feeling that a lot of people in this profession have that you know I need to get success and like I'm not being remunerated enough and I am you know not being like I I'm resentful about where I'm at no because I just feel like listen I can't change where I come from I can't change my privilege so and I'm grateful as hell for it so all I can do is use it and give my best and show up every day and do work that make helps me grow whatever goals I'm trying to achieve and you know keep climbing this crazy mountain of music that I call I think it's like Mount Everest and the peak just never comes but honestly even if you reach you know a certain point on that mountain I feel like you have to look back at your journey and be like cool yeah I reached here and that's enough honestly because I trudged up that mountain and I got somewhere so that's all I can really do and so I've also grown up and I've grown up and I've grown up and I've grown up and I've grown up and I've grown up and I'm also going to just value that it's there and at the same time I'm going to be humble about it and just focus on the process of doing work because that is all that you can do what do I like about Bombay city Nishit really wants me to answer this question honestly I haven't spent a lot of time in Bombay so I will again give you an answer with a pinch of salt but as of now whatever time I have spent and whatever experiences I have had in Bombay have been in a very like small bubble I have been around Bandra and then I've for weirdly for two weeks to about a month I was actually in Thane but I was living with a friend of mine there and I was also doing a little bit of like a project of work on that side of town both of those experiences and this is where Nishit will get very happy with me Bombay has a soul yeah Bombay I feel like the people are somewhat happier it could be that you guys live by the sea it could be that you know the sea soaks up all your energy and you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know bad energies and gives you good endorphins for me particularly when I have explored this Bandra Pali Hill Carter Road area I love as I said being active so I have you know gone for walks around this area I've walked I go every day even today I mean even this trip I've gone every day for long one-hour walks on Carter Road in Jogger's Park and as much as it smells really bad just seeing the sea is an amazing feeling in a hustling bustling city and I think it's a really good place to be so for me like I always think that Bombay is amazing and I think I hope I never have to think this way that Bombay is the city that I never gave a chance to because I have contemplated as you know Nishit coming over here and staying here many times over especially because I am in this profession and the industry is a very well-oiled machine in Bombay but somehow life's waves have not set up the right cards for me and now in Delhi seems like it's going to be a very difficult time for me and I think it's going to be a very difficult time for me and I think it's going to be a very difficult time for me and I think it's going to be a very difficult time for me to you know be like all these things have worked out I have the wedding band I have the ska band I have the producers that I'm working with with whom I'm writing the original music and building the album so for now I think given all of those things and also saving of massive rent I'm still living at home with my parents but I have a very comfortable space I live in the so I have my own room and I have a terrace and you know all of those things considered personal and professional I think it's a very comfortable space and I think it's a very comfortable space I think just the right time to come to Bombay has never worked out so as I was mentioning yesterday that you know if Bombay beckons me and if Bombay beckons me with a little bit of respect like you know you come and you're a big singer now and you perform here then sure I will come to Bombay but for now I think Bombay is always going to be like I'll come for work and then I'll go back so but I do love Bombay and I think there's something special about the kind of people that are here everybody is hungry everybody is struggling everybody is working and yet everybody is definitely slightly sweeter than Delhi the problem with Delhi is in Delhi everybody is on some other level of shallowness only and there's this weird air and energy in Delhi where everybody's trying to be somebody they aren't or they're trying to wear those brands that make them fit in or go towards upward mobility and I don't personally like combine with that ideology very well so Delhi can sometimes become a bit shallow. Okay so my um I was recently in London in the UK to visit my brother and he's to you know quiz games he plays wordle every day he's he plays something called octoturdle or whatever which is basically like wordle into eight or sixteen or something crazy like that and we play all those like New York Times games together Scrabble and word pairings and all of that the you know big games like that. Kids together when we hang out and I'm very close to my brother so when I was in the UK in the summer right now to visit him he had found this game for us to go and play which was to me like a super interesting concept and we actually booked one game and we enjoyed it so much that they had four games in total and we've played three of them more and more games after the first game so the premise of this game was that it's an online you pay online purpose and there's a certain ticket fee and I think they've liaisoned with a bunch of these various movie franchises like the game that we played the first one was the 007 game James Bond and how it works is that you it's all based on the phone and it's kind of like a real life mystery escape game or whatever so it's designed to be played in the city of London and how they do it is that they take your phone number and your email address and then all the communication after you've paid for the game is done on your mobile so what how it'll start is that they tell you a little bio about the game so let's say it's the 007 James Bond game they tell you that you're going to help James Bond he's been kidnapped or something and you have to help him escape the faster you do it the better you can be in their so-called hall of fame but essentially there's no timing to this game you can play and they take your phone number and your email address it takes anywhere from two hours to five hours depending on how slow you want to walk the city and the whole idea is that you get to explore the city while playing this game so chosen a day where we looked up the weather which of course is very common in the UK you want to make sure it's not raining and we chose a good day to go and play the game and they give you a time slot and they they send you a location which is usually like a pub or a restaurant that you have to reach within that time slot so we reached that restaurant in that time slot and we actually found the that a bunch of other you know teams or people clusters of people were actually playing the same game as us so obviously it's really picking up traction and it's it's fairly new this entire game that they designed so we got there and it says that when you're ready to start the game you have to send them the word start on whatsapp which is the whatsapp that they've sent you you know their communication from so when you press start then they send you the next set of questions and that's how the game sort of progresses and in a nutshell in each different location that they send you you have to communicate back and forth with them and you have to provide you know one word answers or two word answers or whatever depending on whatever the question is and depending on how you've solved the clues and usually they've obviously done really well is they've also partnered with these various different pubs and restaurants and shops and what that ensures the shops I guess is that people there's footfalls constantly coming into these pubs and shops and they've also got a little bit of inventory like in the 007 game they had given us a bunch of things like they had a briefcase and a few of these printouts and you know like a compass map and some other kind of coordinates and it was all very exciting and you're supposed to they tell you to go up to the barman and say a particular sentence like bond sent me or something like that and according to that the barman knows what to do and he hands you a bunch of this you know these game materials that you get and once you go through that those game materials then they then if you solve for the next particular task that they give you you answer that task and then they tell you to start moving out of the pub and start to move around the city and the way they basically make you go left and right because you know the the city of London is so well marked that every street has a street name so a lot of the times the clues were actually related to street names or they were related to the street name were related to like a particular statue on the street or you know they'll say go L towards this or go R towards that so you have to decode I mean it's fairly simple I don't think they make it very confusing for people but definitely it wasn't so simple that you know it was seeming dumb or seeming that we're wasting our time there was still a little bit of sort of solvability and a little bit of mind that you had to put to solve stuff and we found that some of the games are a little bit more complex than the other games but all in all what I think their USP was and why we had such a fun day was that what would you like to do when you're you know on holiday in a city you want to go walk you want to explore places you want to visit pubs you want to have you know a drink here and there or a snack and you want to go and explore different hidden parts of the city and the game which I think has a very lovely name is called Hidden City because it does end up taking you to some of these kind of unexplored parts of the London area so it's a lot of fun to play with Hidden City and that was what was the best part of the game because ideally maybe I would never have by foot explored those sections of the city while also solving for a game or playing a puzzle or something so it was really interesting the kind of places where they took us I think the 007 game is a game that I highly recommend out of this franchise because it was the most well organized at one point I remember they send you inside this really bougie and fancy looking hotel and you're supposed to go up to the second floor restaurant and of course they want you to eat and drink there and the way they kind of try to push you to do that is they say oh if you want to take a 30 minute pause and have a snack at this so this bar that James Bond visited then you can press pause and here's a 10% discount on us of course that hotel was very expensive so even with the 10% discount there was no way we were actually going to stop and have a snack there so instead we used our pause button and walked out of the hotel and went to a nearby you know fast food stand and had our snack there but what was cool about it was that we would probably never have entered this very fancy looking hotel and in that hotel what they made us do is they sent us to this restaurant that had an adjacent library to it and one of the the decoding of clues was to find a book that actually had a clue inside it and the name of that book was like an anagram so they use a lot of these anagrams so you have to kind of decode the word and then you have to try to find that particular book in this library and when you open the book then you find your next clue inside it so it was really awesome some of these things they made us do they sent us to a twining showroom which is the tea shop and we had to like weirdos open drawers that had different kinds of teas in them and in one of the drawers was one of our clues so and similarly they sent us to a flower shop and made us talk and it was a lovely and very cute flower shop and we had to talk to the lady who was selling the flowers and to give us our next clue so yeah it was a lovely game and I highly recommend playing it and I hope you guys enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next part of this video like you have you know four three four hours to kill and in the meantime you also want to stop at a pub and you know pause the game and you don't really care about the time honestly you just use it to enjoy the city so that was about the game and about my time in London I was this is a different time now I was there almost over a decade ago when I did psychology at you know Anna Freud's house and I studied at this university called the University College London University and I was there for a long time and I was there for a long time and I UCL but I had a very unique experience of the city because I didn't really study the you know typical London college life because I hardly went to the college campus as I said I was studying in a completely different place altogether from the campus and we only ever went to the campus to give our exams so I mean I think when I look back in hindsight I never actually got a university feel experience and so that is something that you know might have been very interesting to also experience but at the same time you know I was in a house with only 50 other kids because in my course we had about 25 students and then there were only two other courses that ran from that house and it was actually seeped in so much history so Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud actually moved to the UK from Vienna after the first world war and what she did was that she was highly into the this developmental psychology and working with these children who had been affected post-war and she used that particular house where we studied as the place to actually hide a lot of these like traumatized children and also treat them and care for them so it was a really insane thing to study in you know a building like that which was awesome and we also then because we didn't have so much distraction my course and cohort we all just had each other so we actually became really good friends through the course and it was a very global course I met people from Greece from Spain from Italy from Saudi Arabia from from all over the I think there was maybe like two British people in the course was a course that was happening in the UK in London but the only regret I really have is that it was a very short course it was a master's course and it was literally over in less than a year's time because I went in September and by July I was submitting my dissertation and I was able to do it and I was able to do it and I was able to do it and I was able to do it I actually had a visa till January of the next year so I pushed it with my parents and was able to stay on till November of that year so essentially I got about 14 months of study over there and I mean honestly the city for me was really awesome I loved every bit of being a student there it's a very vibrant city there was a lot to do there was good food options and there's good entertainment I think my love for a particular kind of exercise that I now regularly do which is running came and began over there because there was a park next to my house and I used to go and walk there and then a friend of mine started pushing me to run and because the weather in the UK is very windy and stuff like that and even if it does rain you know it's small spells of rain and the summer is really beautiful so it was in during these summer months and we had a very elongated summer in the year that I was there and I was able to do a lot of things and I was able to so I got to really experience London in its complete you know brightness and vibrancy so it was lovely being there and I made good friends and I had a great experience oh god there was so many cuisines because I'm a big fan of Asian cuisine in general so I like Chinese food and I like Japanese food and I like Korean food and all of that and there were a bunch of these places in Chinatown there was a very cute place that a friend of mine a very close friend of mine was studying in London also at the same time as me and it was it became a big chain and now I think it's gone down in quality but it was a place called Tokyo Diner and it serves really good it's really small and cute and there were these little hole in the wall kind of restaurants that would serve because it was a chain back then also and they would serve sushi and you it would it was very quaint and cozy in there and you would sit down and eat it in traditional Japanese style and it was a really good place and I think it's a really good place and back in the day when I was in the UK for studying I was non-vegetarian so I was eating everything and so therefore there was I was spoiled for choice with pizzas with you know burgers with whatever the typical food that you get but I think yeah my memories of food that was special were probably you know distinct things like Chinatown or these cute little restaurants that I figured out myself and also of course you know we are Indian we miss our Indian food so there's a whole amount of Indian food there a lot of it is really bad when you chanced upon something that was good that became sort of like my local haunt so I even till today when I was in the UK right now about two three months ago there's a particular roll place like a kathi roll place in off of Oxford street which is called actually the kathi roll company and 14 years ago when I was there that was like my haunt I would Go there, you know, once in a month or once in two months for sure. Because they had really good rolls there. And you know what? It's still really good. It hasn't gone down. When I was there just two months ago, we went again and it really brought back so many memories. So food wise, yeah, it's definitely a very multicultural place in terms of cuisine. That Brexit doesn't really define the cosmopolitan-ness of it because I see more and more non than ever before. I mean, it's the same really, I would say, that there's a lot of migration from everywhere. There's a lot of Desis there. There are a lot of Chinese people, Asian people. There's a whole sort of Greek corner. There's, you know, Europeans there. So I don't know if Brexit has affected vain or the grain of, you know, the multiculturality of the city. Yeah, I feel like politically, you know, the entire world is moving to a place where people are becoming less and less. So I think that is there in the air, you know, which I think back when I was there wasn't. Yeah, so I don't know about the bagel place in Brick Lane particularly, but there's a bunch of bagel shops. I have discovered my own favorite bagel place, the Bagel Company, I think in near St. John's Wood, which is in the northwestern part of London. And it's a lovely, cute little store and it's got the cream cheese. I mean, it's it's honestly yum. And their bagels are also they really like sort of specialize in that for desserts. Also, I'm not I don't have very much of a sweet tooth and I try to avoid sugar. But of course, when you're in London, there's a lot of ice cream stores. There's your waffle like waffle meisters and stuff in Piccadilly Circus where you get those yummy fresh off the oven waffles with icing sugar and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were this like different, different kinds of cakes we tried over there. And yeah, I just I don't remember the names exactly from the menu. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of really good cafeterias and breakfast places. Yeah. dessert places in the UK. I will say to answer your previous question, that what has changed post COVID and post Brexit, I definitely think the expensiveness of the city or the priciness because the place has become crazy expensive. I mean, what used to be like a McDonald's happy meal when I was there 10 years ago was probably like at four to five pounds where you got like small fries, you got a burger and you got Coke for four or five pounds. And that same meal has now become about 10 or 12 pounds. So the inflation has been absolutely crazy. And McDonald's has become so bad that I don't recommend anybody eating it. It's the most synthetic food ever. But generally, just to give you an idea of the prices, it's not a city to live in, if you are not earning well. And I think my brother can attest to that being a student where he's always counting pennies and he wants to live a good life and he wants to indulge in everything. But it's very expensive. Yeah, we've I mean, I've gone to I've been blessed to travel there quite a lot. And every time we travel there, like with my family and stuff, we usually step out of the city and, you know, explore the surrounding areas. So out of those areas, we've gone to the Lake District, which is really beautiful. This time, we actually went to a very tiny town. Did a road trip. And we went to this town in East Sussex, which even people in the UK didn't know about. It's called Rye. And honestly, it's a town for like 70 year olds. But my brother and I had a great time there. And it's really, really picturesque and beautiful. And it has a it has a rich musical history, weirdly, because in this town, Pet Shop Boys and also two members from The Beatles, I think Paul McCartney lives there. And it's one of the most beautiful places in the city. And it's one of those towns where a lot of these old fogey musicians have retired. And, you know, we were with my parents. So we stayed in this like old English manor that was run by actually a gay couple of men. And they were very old. They were about 60 years of age, but full of beans and really fun. And they run this, you know, house or whatever this manor. And we stayed in their house, actually. And they were telling us about this rich history of cabaret and all these musicians. And it's really, really beautiful. And it's really, really beautiful. And it's really, really beautiful. And it's really, really beautiful. And it's really, really beautiful. And it's extremely quaint, the town. It felt like a little, you know, sort of hill station sort of town that we have in India. Like, you know, if you were going to like a Darjeeling or a little bit outside of Simla in Himachal Pradesh, you would find that quaintness. So it was similar to that. And it had a lot of antique shops and sweet, sweet little restaurants and a cute little high street, which was very expensive, but very sweet and cute. We had a great time there. And it was really, really beautiful. great time exploring that town. We also took a steam train, which is again, one of the USPs of that town. Of course, we are well versed with the steam train since they brought them to India as well. And you know, they exist and a lot of people from the UK who are obsessed with trains, one of them being my dad is not from the UK, he's Indian, but he's obsessed with trains. And he loves all the steam trains and the old school British trains that still exist in India and the hill stations and stuff like that. So of course, he was a little kid in a candy shop going on this steam train. And my mother was really bored, because it was like a one hour journey. And she was like, okay, I'm done. But yeah, it was a very sweet town. But the Lake District is lovely. I've also had the privilege of going to Scotland, which is amazing. I actually visited Scotland while I lived in London for study because my really good friend, one of my closest friends was studying in the University of Edinburgh. So we took a train and then my other friend was studying at the University of Durham. So the three of us are really good friends. And we we all studied psychology and LSR together. And then we all ended up in the UK at the same time. And I guess we kind of planned it. That's what made my year in the UK even more special because I had my Desi friends with me also there in the year that I was there. So we went to Edinburgh and we explored Scotland, we did a few hikes, I would recommend taking a lot of inners because it's really windy. I actually didn't end up attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival or any of the theatre and music festivals there. But I did visit Scotland again with my family. And we did. We went to Glasgow and we also went to Edinburgh again. And Edinburgh is magical, I would say because you know, they have these firstly, the Irish are just very welcoming, and they're very sweet people in general. And they're much more welcoming to non Irish people than the people in the UK are. And they also have this pub culture, this pub culture where, you know, these old school musicians, like people on the banjo and people on the harp and singers and everyone, they all just show up and congregate at their local community pub. And they just sing, they just jam out every evening. And we got to, you know, just enter these different different pubs in the city. And we got to see these amazing folk musical performances by these Scottish musicians, which was really, really awesome. to experience. So that was amazing. But no, I didn't didn't attend the festival. So I won't lie, I've been I mean, I have ambivalent feelings towards AI in music, and especially in singing Nishit, because of course, it's a new and uncharted territory for all of us. And, you know, it's it's a bit scary considering that I'm the human talent. And if AI is replacing me, then what where does that leave me? But at the same time, you know, if you can't beat it, join it is I believe, and it is the future. And I do understand that, you know, I think for I'll separate the two for voice, I definitely think that personally, for me, I can speak about myself only, that because I haven't lived in Bombay, I actually haven't gotten a lot of voiceover work, which I tried really hard to get and sitting in Delhi, I've voice work that I've done to people in Bombay. But we all know that Bombay people want to work with Bombay people. And they kind of don't they don't know you and they don't know your voice, which is fair, they don't really want to send you remote work sort of a thing. So for me, particularly, I am here sort of lending my voice to this AI domain, because maybe it's going to open up new doors for myself. Now, it's going to make my voice accessible, and cheaper, and more resourceful to not just people in Bombay, but India, or other South Asian cities like Pakistan and stuff, which we were discussing yesterday. So for me, like, I'm, I'm optimistic, I'm hoping that voice wise.