Identity Library

00:15
Veronika Becher
Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Identity Library. My name is Veronika Becher, and today I'm joined by Praneeth, who is one of my MBA student co workers.

00:25
Praneeth
I don't know how you would oh God and not students. He's not my student.

00:31
Veronika Becher
But, you know, we're just studying together in the same program. And maybe before we start, I should, like, tell you guys that I haven't been recording in a while and. Whoa. Praneeth can definitely tell you why, because.

00:46
Praneeth
We both were suffering through it for.

00:48
Veronika Becher
Probably a whole semester. Grad school is surprisingly much more difficult than you might think, especially when you're doing an MBA at NC State.

00:56
Praneeth
It's.

00:56
Veronika Becher
And there's just no free time. Beautiful, right? So, Praneeth, would you like to introduce yourself? Maybe, like, give us a little background where you're from, maybe. Fun fact. Anything would be sufficient.

01:10
Praneeth
Okay. I'm Praneeth, and I'm Veronika's MBA coworker, as she said. As she put it.

01:18
Praneeth
Coworker.

01:18
Praneeth
Coworker. But no, my background, I'm from. I'm from. I grew up india, primarily in a boarding school, and came to the US in 2019, and I went to Arizona for long years in Arizona, and then I came to North Carolina in 2023, and I've been here since. And I love it here.

01:43
Veronika Becher
You love it?

01:43
Praneeth
I love it.

01:44
Veronika Becher
Well, I left Arizona when I visited. I traveled through Arizona seven years ago, and I was like, the landscape is so beautiful, but I was like, I will never live here.

01:56
Praneeth
That's exactly my feeling. It's so beautiful. Like, the sunsets are to die for, and obviously Grand Canyon and the mountains. So beautiful. But living there. No, no.

02:07
Veronika Becher
Fun fact. I was traveling through Arizona, and I was a foreign exchange student back then, still in South Dakota, and were a couple of students. And it was super funny because were, like, in the middle of the desert. Like, literally desert. There was just one little store in the middle where we decided to stop with our bus to just get some food and just, you know, get some water, take a break for, like 30 minutes.

02:33
Praneeth
And one of the supervisors is like.

02:35
Veronika Becher
Do you see this house down there around, you know, in the middle of the desert? And they're like two houses, and there's nothing else around it. Probably like 30 miles or more. And we're like, yeah. They were accepting an exchange student last.

02:47
Praneeth
Year, and that was the moment when I was like, oh, South Dakota sounds really nice. Even though everyone was making fun of me for ending up in South Dakota after Seeing this little house and thinking.

03:02
Veronika Becher
About that could be me. I was like, whoa, at least I.

03:06
Praneeth
Didn'T fry in the desert. I just froze in the cold. Minus 40.

03:11
Praneeth
Yeah. And I will say, at least in the cold, you can. You can save yourself. You can cover yourself in the desert, in the sun. Oh, my gosh. Just.

03:19
Praneeth
You just cover your. You just cover yourself with sand.

03:22
Praneeth
Literally.

03:24
Veronika Becher
Don't become a plant.

03:26
Praneeth
No. No trace to. No. No trees to give you shade as well.

03:29
Veronika Becher
No.

03:29
Praneeth
This is so bad. Will you start planting them?

03:33
Praneeth
I'll try, but yeah.

03:35
Praneeth
I'm actually going back to the topic with this random side quest about Arizona that I never mentioned on this podcast before, but were both sitting in.

03:43
Veronika Becher
The lounge, and I think this is still funny to me how you just randomly dropped. Oh, yeah, I went to boarding school and it was in the middle of.

03:51
Praneeth
Nowhere, and I was like, wait a minute, I need to interview you for that. That's like, that's crazy. I've never heard anything about that.

03:58
Veronika Becher
So maybe, like, you're the first guest, too, that I'm interviewing from India. So let's start off that too. Where from India are you from? Before people attack you have five seconds to think about your answer.

04:12
Praneeth
Okay. Just to position myself. Well, I am from South India, and it's a very underappreciated part of India. I think most people, when they think of India, they think of North India, and it's valid why they think about it. Most people outside of India are exposed to Bollywood and the influences of Bollywood, which is primarily North Indian culture. And South Indian culture is very much. No one knows about it, really. Like, there's a lot of us around here. There's so many of us South Indians around here. But most of the restaurants I've noticed in other parts of the US Are mostly North Indian cuisine. It's really in North Carolina that I've seen South Indian cuisine restaurants, and there's a lot more South Indian culture stuff that goes around in North Carolina. So which is why. Which is really why I've.

05:07
Praneeth
I've enjoyed North Carolina a lot. But yes, I'm from South India. Andhra Pradesh is where my family's from. We speak Telugu and I grew up in Bangalore, which is in different state. But it's also. It's very multicultural. We have a lot of people from all over South India and as well as North India, it's the. It's the Silicon Valley of India.

05:38
Praneeth
Nice example. Yeah, I love it.

05:41
Veronika Becher
I feel like as a person that knows minimum amount of about India, it's fascinating how many languages you have in your culture too and how diverse it is. And I, I told you about that, how it took indian drama, like Introduction to Indian Drama course here it stayed. And it was fantastic. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken. But I was funny because I was sitting next to my African American friend with the two only.

06:12
Praneeth
Crazy non Indian people that decided to take that class instead of Shakespeare. And I apologize to Shakespeare, but Indian dramas were much more fun to read.

06:23
Praneeth
Oh, so much more fun. Shakespeare was such a pain.

06:27
Praneeth
Such a pain.

06:27
Praneeth
Such a pain.

06:29
Praneeth
And honestly, I even ended up playing.

06:31
Veronika Becher
In a theater performance. What it was really funny playing out Shakuntala. And we also had another one was. I'm thinking, I think we read Horse Face. Like, I think that's the English name of it. And a couple of other ones. Like, this is interesting. It was really. Yeah, it was just interesting.

06:55
Praneeth
Yeah. There's a famous playwright india called Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore. He's also. He's like from the Bengal region. So we did a lot of his stuff growing up as well. Yeah. Very proud of our people.

07:11
Veronika Becher
I, I think that's fantastic. Like, especially how much people try to preserve culture and how much they try to integrate it back. And people value it a lot like history and a family, I think. I don't know, that's just my perception that it's really family oriented.

07:32
Praneeth
I think you're spot on when you say that. Yeah. It's a very collectivist society. Everyone's looking out for each other. We have very strong family values. Sure. And our traditions are rich and we kind of have a cycle where we keep it going. It's taught to us every generation start our history. Obviously we had the British ruling over us. So we're taught about that. We're taught about, you know, the Indus civilization all the way from back then. So it's. Yeah, it's really nice.

08:10
Veronika Becher
I feel like we've read a lot about Queen Jhansi or like Jhansi. And that was really interesting just knowing how she's despised in so many different ways as a woman. Being a warrior, but not warrior. And for people that don't know, it's. Maybe you're the better person to explain it.

08:34
Praneeth
You're like, no, we're not doing history lessons. It's.

08:37
Veronika Becher
When the British came in, she was the one who actually led. Let's called India United against the British. So she was the queen, but at the same time she had to obey the British at the same time. And it was kind of like a conflict. So at some point she decided that we're going to be free from the British and she decided to fight back. So it's one of like the most significant women figures in history, but also indian history. Maybe that wasn't like the correct way of perfectly explaining it, but it was close enough.

09:12
Praneeth
No, it is close enough. And it's funny because that in our history classes and so on, the story of Jhansi is really not told to us.

09:22
Veronika Becher
Oh, why?

09:24
Praneeth
I don't know why? That's a really good question. Why? And you could probably leave this out, I don't know. But it's so strange. I think in a lot of ways India, as much as we keep our traditions alive and so on, a lot of the traditions are very patriarchal. So there's a lot of, like, I guess there's a lot of misogynistic views about how women are viewed. And that's an issue that still persists india today. And like, this is just a side note, but recently we had the cricket World cup, women's cricket World cup india. And one of my friends, he went to a game, it was New Zealand versus England.

10:14
Praneeth
And after the game was over, some of the New Zealand players decided to go out in the street, just, they want to just walk around the hotel, walk around the city a little bit. And there are a couple of guys, kind of creeps really, who are going on a two wheeler and just like harassing them. And when they filed a complaint, it went, it reached, it made big news, obviously, because, you know, they're international players. And it made the news. And the Indo, the Minister of the city came out and said that these women should know better than to be walking outside at night in this city.

10:54
Praneeth
Instead of blaming the men and instead of really looking at the issue, the systemic issue that there is, which is, you know, men and how they don't, how they treat women, he decided to blame the women, which is like, no, better they should know better than to go, than to be roaming outside at night.

11:15
Veronika Becher
Yeah, I think that's a really difficult question. And I think a lot of other cultures, unfortunately, are in the same pot. If you can say that with people blaming more, why did you do that? It literally reminds me, this is so.

11:31
Praneeth
Funny of our accounting professor right now.

11:34
Veronika Becher
Who would, every single time we have a class would say, well, that's how.

11:38
Praneeth
We always did it.

11:39
Veronika Becher
Right? That's why no one changes the rules.

11:41
Praneeth
And that's literally something that stuck with me today, because that's exactly the oldest.

11:47
Veronika Becher
Like, oh, yeah, it's always been like that. You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. You know, obey the rules and then everything's going to be fine.

11:57
Praneeth
Yeah. And it's just, it's. It's tragic if you ask me, because in this day and age, you know, a lot of people are being educated a lot more. They have. They have access to information like never before and access to, like, content as well. And it doesn't seem like the right kind of education is being given or the right kind of upbringing. Upbringing is being given. I think in a lot of Indian families as well, men are kind of given a pass. They don't have to do a lot of household chores and so on. They're kind of looked at as the head of the family. And so even growing up, like, women are kind of. This is probably not the case in a lot of now more progressive Indian families, which you do see a lot more of nowadays.

12:46
Praneeth
But even in my family, there are some. In my close family, there's. There are like some nuclear families like this where the girls are kind of brought up to just be the women of the house, do chores, do cooking, that kind of stuff. And then they're married off. My cousins got married recently. I really hope this doesn't make it out, but my cousins got married recently and they are the same age as me. They're like 20. They got married at the age of 22, 23, which may not seem very old, but considering where they were in their lives at the, at the moment, it just didn't make sense to me.

13:25
Veronika Becher
What do you mean with where they were in.

13:27
Praneeth
They were still. They were still going. They were still finishing up their education. They were still in college. They were in the middle of their degrees. And one of them, she was. She had her final exams coming up in two months in. I think it was in March or April, and she had a wedding in February. And then she decided to just do the final exams and then just laid back. She didn't want to do anything after that.

13:55
Veronika Becher
I think it's just sometimes it's interesting because I never experienced that in my culture. Being from Germany, we just. It almost feels like it's the opposite right now. There's a trend of being the independent woman of the 21st century. So you, like, you can do everything yourself. And there's just. There's this thing where a lot of guys are like, oh, we don't need to open your, like, the door. We don't need to help you with something that is heavy because it's almost the extreme side of you can do it yourself. And I'm like, well, maybe I do need help.

14:27
Praneeth
Because if you would be a guy, maybe you need help too. That's like. And I would open the door for you.

14:33
Veronika Becher
But it's just, it's an interesting experience seeing, like, so many different sides of cultures, how people treat different genders, and how it's then being given to the children and to the next generations too. I always like to say, if you have a male role, like a role model, and depending how this person treated their mom or their, like, significant other, it shows a lot how you are as a person too. Because I don't think every guy is like, oh, I don't like the way my dad treated my mom, so then I will not treat her like that. I think it is kind of a, like, really important fact as well as for me, my mom being my role model in a way, or like my grandma.

15:21
Veronika Becher
It's the same for a guy being like, oh, if I have a father figure that does a specific way to my mom, this is how I should treat her and should treat my wife too.

15:31
Praneeth
Yeah.

15:31
Veronika Becher
And it just goes on and on from generation to generation.

15:35
Praneeth
Yeah, absolutely. I, obviously, I can't speak for everyone in a country of 1.5 billion people, but I do know that in. In India, role models, usually they. They look at prominent actors or prominent sports, like cricketers, and they put them on the pedestal. They put them as role models. So there's a huge fanfare. Whenever there's, like, their favorite actor puts out a movie, there's a big fanfare. And the movies. I feel like I'm just bashing Indian culture at this point.

16:15
Veronika Becher
No, I don't think that is the case.

16:16
Praneeth
The movies, I think back in the 1990s, the 90s, and the 2000s and so on, I think the issue can kind of. You can see where it stemmed from, because in a lot of those movies, when they would portray kind of romantic relationships between a man and a woman, it was very much the case where the hero of the movie was always trying to pursue the heroine and the way he would pursue her was in very, like, creepy circumstances. And it was so strange. If. If only I could, like, show you a clip later that. That kind of sums up what this is like. And, and Fast forward to 2025. The same. The, the men who pursued those, those cricketers From New Zealand. My guess is they did it in the same exact way as. As it was portrayed in the movie. And that's.

17:15
Praneeth
It's just creepy.

17:17
Veronika Becher
I was like thinking even Shakuntala as its own. If you ever seen like the actual play online anywhere, like, or like in real life. It's also creepy. Like there are a lot of things where like they fall in love. If whoever wants to read it up.

17:33
Praneeth
You should read it up so you.

17:34
Veronika Becher
Know what the context is. But when he's like falling in love with her, he's like admiring her. And it's like they literally like just hiding behind like a tree and observing.

17:45
Praneeth
The women while they, technically speaking, are half naked, in my opinion.

17:49
Veronika Becher
So that's like a really interesting, like.

17:51
Praneeth
Hot take about culture.

17:53
Veronika Becher
But also if you want to feel a little bit better. I feel like the world sees Germany too through lens of movies a lot of times. And I think the way people think our language is shaped being really harsh.

18:08
Praneeth
Yes.

18:09
Veronika Becher
Comes from military movies that are World War II. And then everyone gets really confused whenever they hear me speak German. They're like, oh, German, isn't that harsh?

18:18
Praneeth
Absolutely.

18:19
Veronika Becher
And you've learned German too.

18:21
Praneeth
I've learned German. So whenever I see those videos online of people just talking about how German is such a harsh and hard language, I'm like, this is not. You guys are making way more than actually is. It's not this harsh. Everyone thinks everyone in Germany sounds like Hitler. That's not true.

18:40
Veronika Becher
That's not true at all. And sometimes I feel like he did.

18:43
Praneeth
It on purpose maybe.

18:46
Praneeth
Honestly, that sometimes comes to my mind.

18:48
Veronika Becher
I'm like, if you think about it, I think, you know, it is a military culture too. Right. The way you speak, the way you address people. And if that's your, you know, image of how language is shaped and how it sounds like.

19:03
Praneeth
I don't think that's the case for every culture and for Germany in general.

19:07
Veronika Becher
And also I think it really depends where you live too. And I think it's similar. And with India, like India is different in every, like different region.

19:15
Praneeth
Yes.

19:15
Veronika Becher
And you told me that in the south it's different. What is something that you feel like is really typical for like your region india?

19:25
Praneeth
For my region india, I think, I mean, language is obviously a very distinguishing, big distinguishing factor. Each. Each state in the south, we have four states in the south. Each state has its own different language. And we are very proud of our culture. Our food is. Our food is also slightly different. We have more lentil based and Also very spicy food, like very spicy food. That's one thing my region is actually pretty well known for. And other than that, there are differences in general between the south and the North. We're also from just a physiological standpoint, we're more dark skinned. We have I guess a little bit more of like a Christian influence as well because the Christians came in through the south, the Portuguese as well.

20:28
Veronika Becher
And I was just curious, like, out of like cultural perspective, what is like a difference between these two, like regions? And I think that shows already that there are like so many like different factors. But also, I think, I don't know, you said religion too and isn't like every region has also partially different beliefs.

20:53
Praneeth
In the south, kind of. So Hinduism is the predominant religion in all over India. We have a few Islamic regions as well, closer to the Pakistan region and also in some areas in the north and in the south we have one state which is predominantly Christian. Not my state though, it's Kerala. Love them. They're the most, they're the most educated state in the country, most literate state. And it's that state if anyone visits India, I would suggest Kerala. It is such a beautiful state. And so in terms of religion, we're all pretty much the same. But I think the way we look at Hinduism, like in the south, we also worship different gods than they do in the North.

21:46
Praneeth
Like a lot of people when they come to North Carolina and they, when they tell me about, oh, have you been to this big temple in Cary, this big white temple? I have, I have been there.

21:58
Praneeth
And that is not my religion. Don't they.

22:03
Praneeth
I have been there and that. So that is an example of a South Indian temple. That is a South Indian temple. Yes. And there's another, there's a few other temples around Morrisville where I live, little India. And that is. Those are, I think I haven't been to those, but I think those are not Indian temples. But yes, we worship different gods as well to some extent. There's many gods in Hinduism.

22:34
Veronika Becher
So many interesting. I feel like sometimes I don't know if anyone will cancel me for this comment. But you know, in Japan they have Buddhism, but they also have Shintoism and Shintoism also, like they have also several gods, but it's a little bit a different concept. So I don't think you can't really compare them. But I think I always, I don't know why if you mention like several gods. No, no Celtic culture comes into mind.

23:03
Praneeth
As far as Shinto isn't turned.

23:05
Veronika Becher
But I lived in a region where we had a lot of Japanese people. So I think we also had temples. And there would be always, oh, yeah, there's a temple. I'm like, no, that's not the Shinto stick like temple. It's a Buddhistic temple.

23:17
Praneeth
Wrong, you know, wrong culture. No, I'm joking.

23:20
Veronika Becher
Wrong religion. But what I'm actually trying to, like, record the episode about, and I think we drifted a little bit into India, but I think it's interesting too, to see how diverse your culture is your boarding school.

23:34
Praneeth
And to this point, I think it stuck with me.

23:37
Veronika Becher
And I'm like, if I don't record an episode about that, I don't know.

23:40
Praneeth
This is just crazy. And when Praneeth dropped this randomly, why I was trying to solve my accounting homework, I was like, what did you just say?

23:54
Veronika Becher
And he just pulled up a whole.

23:55
Praneeth
Map showing me like, the full, like, the school, the photos, everything.

24:00
Veronika Becher
And I was like, this is fascinating. I really want to know more about that. So maybe you should. I don't know. Wherever you want to start, go ahead.

24:07
Praneeth
It's. It's your floor.

24:09
Praneeth
Okay. So the boarding school is your floor. Okay. So the boarding school is called Rishi Valley School. I grew up over there. Spent nine years. From the age of nine till 18, I was in. I was at that school. It has made me the person that I am today. I can say that with full confidence. It has really influenced the way I've grown up. And yeah, it's a boarding school. It's a private school. We have very few people. There's maybe 360 students totally in the school.

24:43
Veronika Becher
You, like, know everyone at this point?

24:45
Praneeth
It's so small. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Everyone knows everyone. And it's. It was just so wonderful. We were in, like, a very rural part in South India, and the closest, I guess, village to us was maybe 17km away. Don't ask me how much that is in miles. 10 miles. 10 miles.

25:09
Praneeth
I think at least once. It's the opposite way around.

25:17
Praneeth
So, yeah, it's like 17 kilometers away. That's the closest village to us. I guess it's a town. It's grown now and were kind of in the middle of a forest. The school was. Was started in 1930, and it was built around this. This giant banyan tree. If you don't know what a banyan tree, I would look it up. It's huge. And this banyan tree, unfortunately, has died now. Like it was towards the latter stages of its Life when we, When I got to the school. We're trying to preserve it somehow, but the core route is dying. I digress. But it was built around this banyan tree and the school has since expanded. It's a. It's got a large area, but the school is concentrated somewhere in the middle. We.

26:14
Praneeth
We have hostels, which, if you look at it's not very advanced standard of living, I would say. We have like metal carts, mattresses, pillows. Everything is made in the school. And it's a pure vegetarian school. But the biggest thing that shocks most people is that we had zero access to technology from the outside. So essentially in this school, were living in our little bubble for eight months of the year. Four months break. Four months. So eight months of the year were living in a little bubble where it was just us. The only access we had to the outside world was physical newspapers, as crazy as that sounds. And parents would drop us off at the start of the semester and they could visit us once a semester. And we could call them maybe twice a semester.

27:18
Praneeth
And the only other way to communicate with them. From the age from. From like 4th grade till 8th grade, you only write letters to your parents, physical letters to your parents. And from ninth grade onwards, you can email them once a week. Yeah, so that was. That's the school in a nutshell. But what was so special about the school is just how we're always with each other. It was such a small group of people, so we all know each other. We build some amazing relationships over there. The teaching styles are also very different to the rest of India. I think the rest of India teachers can be strict. They're very strict. They're always focused. They've always very focused on grades. Indian education is built that way.

28:07
Praneeth
You're very focused on getting good marks, getting good grades, getting into the top engineering school in the country and then making it from there. This school was very different from that. You were kind of encouraged to find your own path, really. A lot of inner reflection, a lot of finding your passion and working on that. And it was very unique and something that you don't find a lot india. So it was something I'm very grateful for. My parents gave me the opportunity to do that. And so even now when I meet some Indian people and they ask me what I do and I told them, oh, I used to work in sports. And they're like, oh, that's interesting. We never knew you guys could work in sports. So it's. Yeah, it's nice.

29:00
Veronika Becher
I think It's. It creates almost a platform where people can pursue what they actually are interested in rather than being confined to cultural norms. And I think that's a really wonderful idea because I had a really interesting also experience similar where, you know, how Asian cultures in general have an issue with, you need to be this, you need to be that, you need to be a doctor. And I met a guy from China here at State who's pursuing English literature. I was like, this is crazy. And your parents are fine with that? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, this is just not something I, you know, imagine people would do.

29:42
Veronika Becher
But I think it's wonderful and it's nice too, because there are a lot of opportunities also in other fields and especially, I mean, I don't know how it is india if you would pursue sport management there, but I think for sure in other countries, if you are living outside of India right now too.

30:00
Praneeth
Yeah, it's. It's still, I think, growing. The families are getting more progressive now. They're letting their kids do. Let them do what they want. I think it's also coming from an area of, you know, wealth that a lot of these people are able to do what they want to do. I was lucky in that sense as well. I grew up. I grew up with a lot of privilege, so I was able to kind of pursue what I wanted to pursue. But I also see the. The perspective of the traditional culture, where they want to. Where they want their kids to do engineering or doctors. And that's because growing up, a lot of these families, they come from very rural backgrounds, they're from poor backgrounds. And so they.

30:54
Praneeth
They see the only way out from here is to become an engineer or doctor, because that's what brings wealth to the family, wealth and respect to the family. And so this is a route that they feel is the most viable route. It is a lot of hard work, and it is at the end, when you get there, they think you'll be well rewarded. So a lot of families end up doing that, end up pushing their kids into that direction. My dad was one of them as well. He was pushed into. Well, not. I think he. He liked it as well, but he was one of those kids who also went into engineering and. And he's grown up and now he's giving me a good life. So I will. I won't fault the system for that.

31:38
Praneeth
I think the vast income inequality has created that system. And I wish more families and, you know, from like, more rural families could kind of see that there are many other viable options for your. For their kids to, you know, pursue and, like, earn. Earn wealth and respect in many other fields other than just engineering and medicine.

32:07
Veronika Becher
I feel like I have a completely different question that just came up because you were mentioning how you were living in the dorms or the hostels, and you said you built everything. Like, everything was produced in the village. Let's call it like this in the boarding school. So who was producing all these things?

32:28
Praneeth
The school employs so many different people. So we had this. We had this department called. It was literally called the building department.

32:37
Praneeth
Really creative.

32:38
Praneeth
Yes, very creative, but they were called the building department. They would build everything from tables to chairs to metal carts. Mattresses as well. Mattresses were very basic. Please don't get. Don't get it twisted. It's no IKEA mattress, which is like so thick. Thick with super thickness and stuff. It was very thin mattresses. But, you know, we made it work. We didn't complain a lot.

33:06
Praneeth
Did you have an option?

33:07
Praneeth
We did have an option to complain anyways.

33:10
Praneeth
Put some leaves on top.

33:15
Praneeth
But yeah, it was so literally called the vanity apartment. And they would. They were also, like. They would. I don't know now when I think about it, I don't know how they did what they did because they were also. Pretty much, they were also like the maintenance crew for, like we have in our apartments. Anything goes wrong and you need it fixed. You would call them the building crew, the building department. They would do everything in the school. So now when I think about it, actually, it's only just occurred to me because I think of maintenance crews in the US and living in an apartment, and when we always complain about maintenance and how it's so bad, these maintenance crews barely show up. Like, no disrespect to them, but, you know, there's a lot of problems in the apartment, of course. And they.

34:05
Praneeth
There's always, like, a long schedule. There's a long wait list that you would get on for them to come and fix your thing. And now when I think about building department, you would give the complaint and they would, by the end of the day, redone. And I'm just like, wow, this is. I have newfound respect for them, that's for sure.

34:23
Praneeth
I want to actually, you know, disagree indirectly. My building has two guys that fix everything. So when my, like, under my sink, my drawer fell apart and broke while it was gone. Imagine you come back and it just broke, and you're like, what is happening? I was away for a week in Germany, and that's what happened. And I had a whole hole in the back of my drawer and I don't know what happened. I really don't know. I'm not questioning it. And I was like, can you fix it? So they were like fixing it and gluing it together and like, and to, you know, I told the MBA class that we have had a leak, like a really bad leak in our apartment where everything was just full of water. And it was so funny because they're fixing that too.

35:17
Praneeth
It's the same two guys that are fixing now our leak that are also painting the walls, that are also electricians. I'm like, okay, they're basically doing everything. Maybe they were, you know, studying with the building department.

35:34
Praneeth
Maybe. Maybe they came from the same family.

35:37
Praneeth
No, the only issue is that one is Mexican and the other guy is American. So I don't know. I don't know how they end up there. But no judgment, you know, maybe the.

35:47
Praneeth
Building department has a course online that we just don't know about. Maybe.

35:51
Praneeth
Certificate. Let's get a Certificate. The building department certificate for LinkedIn.

35:57
Veronika Becher
But you also said there's no technology. And I think it's fascinating. It makes sense if it was built in the 30s, right? 40s, 1930, I think you mentioned. And it makes sense just giving the time frame when it was established. But now that the world is shifting and changing, do you think kids in your program would need still assistance and exposure more to technology because it's just more relevant for your life nowadays?

36:29
Praneeth
Absolutely. And I think that's one thing. Now granted, I don't know how much the school has evolved since I left, which was six years ago. So in the last five years we've seen how the world in general has moved and like really adopted technology, I think over Covid times. So I'm curious to know if that's something that has really taken over the school as well. When I did visit in February, it didn't seem like it. I will say it did not seem like it. But I do know that the student body in general, they seem more well informed, they seem more open and progressive and I guess liberal minded to some extent more so than me, than my class and the classes before me. And I'm not sure what to put that down to really because their exposure to technology hasn't gone up.

37:30
Praneeth
Doesn't seem like it. But it is something that I think when I was in the school I would always think, okay, if one day I have kids, it would be nice to send them here. But now when I think about it and when other parents ask me as well what my opinion is and whether they should send that school, can send their kids to the school, I'm slightly opposed to it because of the lack of technology and the lack of opportunity. I guess because as much as we are allowed to pursue our passions in this school, there's no real outlet for it. So for someone who wants to, who's very passionate about say, astronomy, we can learn about it as much as we want at the school.

38:23
Praneeth
But to actually apply and try and get yourself in front of people who know more about astronomy and who have more exposure to the field, it's very difficult because we don't have that outside access to resources like other big schools do in cities. And that's one thing I think that is holding the school back a little bit. Just that they remain closed off in a world now that is like if you're closed off in like in today's world, I think you tend to fall back faster than you do maybe 30 or 40 years ago. That's my opinion on this.

39:11
Veronika Becher
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. But then you also said you had a really great experience at the same time. Right. What made you decide to go to a school like that to begin with?

39:23
Praneeth
So my cousin went there first. She's about eight years older than me. And then my sister followed her in 2009 and the following year in 2010, my brother and I were given the option. Our parents asked us. We used to visit my sister. We used to love just visiting the school. And then my parents asked us the previous year, we wanted to join and I said yes. Now this, when I said yes, at the time, it was purely out of spite for some reason, because at the time you've probably heard about just Indian parenting culture and how we're kind of like parents used to scold us a lot. We used to get in trouble a lot. So I did out of spite because I just wanted to be away from my parents.

40:18
Praneeth
And the first year and two, I did not enjoy it as much. I was very homesick as you know, any nine year old away from their parents, I guess, incredibly homesick. And I always wanted to come home. But then after a while when I made more, I made friends and you know, just enjoying the freedom of the school. Playing games whenever you wanted, I really enjoyed that. So I think from a nine year old perspective, it was just the reason I joined the school was just purely out of wanting more freedom that was my thing, my thought process. At the time, there was nothing about, oh, I want to join the school because I can pursue my passions. No idea what I was passionate about at the time.

41:12
Praneeth
Do you know now what you're passionate about?

41:14
Praneeth
Do I know now? Absolutely not. At the time, I wanted to be a cricketer when I was nine years old. Old. And there was no way that Rishi Valley School was going to help me become a cricketer.

41:27
Veronika Becher
Such a shame. Would you say, like, what is something that you've learned through being there?

41:35
Praneeth
Independent life skills, for sure. I think I've learned to live on my own. That's definitely helped me a lot. And building relationships is something that I've learned a lot from the school as well. And it's in. It's so important. I'm learning so much in this MBA about how important it is to build relationships and to that, like, I'm very grateful to my school because they've kind of. They haven't directly taught me, but it's just being with, you know, people all the time, with a very close group, with a very small group of people for a long time, it kind of teaches you how to assess relationships and build new ones and just. Yeah, that's one thing I really.

42:22
Veronika Becher
Yeah, I think it makes you independent, but also it teaches you how to get around conflicts or how to deal with people you don't get along with because you have to, because you are kind of stuck together. And it. It's almost like a. On a bigger scale, a project, like.

42:42
Praneeth
A group project, you know, that you need to handle.

42:46
Veronika Becher
You're like.

42:47
Praneeth
You hate and love yourself, each other, in a nutshell.

42:50
Praneeth
And that was the case in my class as well. We had. I had a lot of people I did not get along with, but, you know, we had to make it work. We lived in the same hostel, so we had to make it work. And. Yeah, that's. Yeah, when you mentioned it, I. It's. It's so. It's so important in, like, workplaces and just in life in general, dealing with conflicts. It's so important. And I think the school has geared me for that very well.

43:21
Veronika Becher
What would you do if you get sick in, like a board of school?

43:25
Praneeth
We had a doctor on site. We had a hospital. Now, this doctor, though, not the greatest. Not the greatest. She was not qualified. She was a. I think she was a gynecologist. That's crazy, right? She was a gynecologist who came and she was living on. So the doctor's living on campus. We have a We used to have a hospital. Not, it was not. It was maybe the size of a clinic, I would say. And everyone would go there in the morning before breakfast, after breakfast they would check in with a doctor. Doctor would give them some medicines and then send them on their way. And if they were extremely sick, we had like a ward where you would basically be, you'd sleep there overnight and it was all like on campus. So you know, friends would visit you would have.

44:21
Praneeth
We used to call them house parents. They're like the, I guess the Ras in some sense. But these house parents are basically your parents over here. They would look after you. They would make sure you're doing the right stuff. And you'd also have a house matron who would do like give you food or like get you milk and help you with other just trivial tasks and so on. So it was the team effort from both the house parent and the matron. And honestly they were amazing. In every hostel has like a different house parent as well. So they would take care of you if you're, when you're very young and you're extremely sick, they would take you to the hospital and they would come and check in on you when you were sick. So it was, it's very nice.

45:18
Praneeth
The hospital maybe not so much. No one liked the hospital. I don't think anyone likes the hospital.

45:26
Praneeth
Otherwise no one will leave the hospital.

45:29
Praneeth
But in more serious cases, if so I actually, I broke my hand a couple of times over there. And our hospital is not equipped for things like that for anything major. So when anytime something major would happen, they would send you to this town to either they can. They have like more professional hospitals and the school had like a partnership with some hospitals and so they would send us out to the town. It's like maybe a 20 minute drive. And then they would patch you up and they'd send you back. But if it's any more serious that even the town cannot do it, they would send you to the next closest city, which was Bangalore, which is about three, two and a half to three hours away. So they would just plan that a whole day for you and you'd go.

46:19
Praneeth
So if students needed to go see a dentist, for example, we would be taken to Bangalore to see a dentist. Any other things like, you know, just a broken hand or broken bone, you would go to this town. Yeah.

46:38
Veronika Becher
And then you'd be fine. Is it a boarding school for girls and boys? So is it also like the Classrooms are mixed or is it separate?

46:48
Praneeth
The classrooms are mixed. The hostels are not mixed. However, when I was in fourth grade. So fourth grade boys are kept in girls hostels. It's structured weirdly. So you have three hostels dedicated to fourth grade boys, girls, fifth grade girls, sixth grade girls, and seventh grade girls. So these three age groups, or four age groups would live across these three hostels. And then you would have fifth grade and sixth grade boys. You had two boys hostels for them. And then every other boys hostel was always. You would have a mix of grades in them. So we always had. When I was in 12th grade, I had 11th graders with me. We were a mix of 6th, 11th grade boys and 6th, 12th grade boys. Yeah, but as you grow older, like, the hostels are separate.

47:47
Praneeth
The girls hostels are also in a specific area of the campus. And were in a different area of the campus. Not far from each other, but still just separate areas.

47:54
Veronika Becher
Yeah, that makes sense. Do you. Do you own laundry?

48:00
Praneeth
No, we. For personal stuff. Like personal, like undergarments and stuff, we would have to wash that ourselves. But any other kind of laundry, we would. We would. We would have a towel spread out. We would put our clothes in the middle, and we would, like, tie it up into, like, a bundle. And then we would have specific laundry days. It was Monday and Thursday laundry days. You would put this bundle somewhere accessible near the door of the hostel. And then we had like a. I guess you could call it a laundromat just to, you know, make it sound more American. But it's essentially like this giant industrial washer in one section of the campus. And there were. I think there was this family who used to work there.

48:54
Praneeth
They would drag a cart with them all the way to the hostel, load all the bundles onto the cart, and then take it back, wash it, Wash the clothes, iron it, fold it, put it back in a bundle like this, and then they would send it back to the hostel. It's crazy. It is.

49:13
Praneeth
That's like high tech.

49:15
Praneeth
It is. It is incredible. We had some complaints about it because I think they primarily use bleach. They use a lot of bleach. So colors. So clothes would often lose color or shrink when we send it to them. So it's just something you learn as you live more years on campus. But I mean, now when you think about it, like, so grateful for them. So grateful. Laundry is such a hassle.

49:44
Praneeth
It always reminds me of how in Germany we dried outside.

49:47
Praneeth
Yeah, they do that here as well. Yeah.

49:51
Praneeth
But then in the United States, you have a dryer.

49:53
Veronika Becher
And I'm like, whoa. But I actually sometimes don't like dryers. Being really honest with you, because certain clothes are not good. They just shouldn't be in the dryer. Like gym clothes.

50:05
Praneeth
And then my roommates are now all hanging up around the apartment. It's like how to live with four girls in one apartment. And they all, like, wear athleisure more than I did.

50:16
Praneeth
I don't know. Is that, Is that only a thing in the US though, where they have dryers? Because now when I think about it, most other countries, you dry it outside. No.

50:25
Veronika Becher
Yeah, I feel like, honestly, my. My guess, I don't know.

50:29
Praneeth
What if that's a theory.

50:30
Veronika Becher
I don't know if that's true, but I feel like the culture here is so driven by fast paced environments and like, you don't have that much time. You want to do everything fixed. You want to, you know, less chores. You know, there are even people that hire others to clean their apartments that.

50:46
Praneeth
I've never like seen in Germany as much happening. I mean, unless you may be really.

50:50
Veronika Becher
Rich family, I don't know. But I feel like maybe dryer is like there because of like the fast pace. Like on the go, you just throw it in and then it's done. And you don't need to worry about that anymore because hanging up close takes time.

51:04
Praneeth
It does take time.

51:05
Veronika Becher
And putting him down takes time.

51:06
Praneeth
Yeah, I used to do that back home india.

51:08
Veronika Becher
Yeah, me too. My mom won't be like, my mom.

51:10
Praneeth
Would make me do it.

51:11
Praneeth
Me too. She'll like, hang up. And I'll be like, I don't want to. Because the worst part is my dad has black socks and they all look the same. And then my mom would be like, fold up, please, these socks. And I'll be like, they all look the same. Like, how should I know?

51:24
Veronika Becher
And then my dad would be like, this sock is thinner than this sock. That means these two do not fit together. Why are they together?

51:31
Praneeth
And I'd be like, they look the same.

51:34
Praneeth
Yeah, it was also. Did you also have the stress of, like, whenever it would start raining, whenever it started raining, like, my brother and I, we would run outside and get all the clothes in before the rain touched it.

51:48
Praneeth
You will laugh.

51:49
Veronika Becher
That's something that my grandma used to have the issue because she would hang them up outside. We hang them up at this point on our balcony. What is crazy? Maybe, but the issue is that our clothes can dry up to four days sometimes because of the. It's not humid in my area. But it rains a lot and so it's kind of like just wet. It's just damp. So your clothes stay damp too.

52:13
Praneeth
Yeah.

52:14
Veronika Becher
And there's still like places designated so you can actually hang them up outside. But I don't think besides some grammys.

52:24
Praneeth
Decide to do that.

52:25
Veronika Becher
Like I don't think many people do that nowadays as much anymore. And most people dried inside their apartments. But yeah, no, I, I know. And my grandma would be like, she would even know when it starts raining soon because there's like a specific type of birds.

52:43
Praneeth
Birds, okay.

52:44
Veronika Becher
That will fly lower than they usually do because when, before it starts raining. I don't even know if I can even explain it fully. But basically all the little like, I don't know, insects.

52:58
Praneeth
I. I know what you're talking about.

52:59
Veronika Becher
Deeper.

53:00
Praneeth
Talking about dragonflies.

53:02
Veronika Becher
No, not dragonflies. But dragonflies would be also india.

53:06
Praneeth
It was dragonflies. Was our indicator. My grandmom would tell me like, if dragonflies are down here close by, it.

53:12
Veronika Becher
Will rain because it's because all the little like flies, they. Because of the pressure that has accumulated before rain, they start going lower rather than higher up. So a lot of birds end up flying lower too to collect them. Because they eat the little bugs, right?

53:30
Praneeth
Yeah.

53:31
Veronika Becher
So you can see if they really low to the ground, that means it's going to rain because that's the indicator. Super random.

53:37
Praneeth
But yeah, we had dragonflies. My grandmom would tell me if the dragonflies are close by. If they're down here, it means it's going to rain.

53:49
Veronika Becher
But it's similar. People in Russia would also. Dry fish.

53:54
Praneeth
Dry fish, okay.

53:57
Veronika Becher
There's a specific, like it's a salty fish that is like, I don't know the whole process, but you dry the fish at some point and you just.

54:05
Praneeth
Hang it up next to your clothes in a way.

54:08
Praneeth
Oh my God.

54:10
Praneeth
You like the same way you clothes, you just hang up the fish and it dries and you eat it like.

54:15
Veronika Becher
With beer or this really like dried salty fish and you like pick it apart and you eat it as like a, let's call it snack. I just seen a lot of people do it with alcohol, but you can also eat it in general and it's just like specific technique that people use.

54:31
Praneeth
That is, I think, funny that your clothes are hanging in the same way as the fish in the same spot. Speaking of vegetarian schools.

54:40
Veronika Becher
It's not, it's not. It doesn't smell at all. It's like think of. I don't Know it doesn't smell like at all. You would think that, but it's just, it's nothing that is like that smelling.

54:53
Praneeth
Okay.

54:53
Veronika Becher
Yes, exactly. Because the salting process ensures that doesn't happen. So yeah, it's like. And you remove certain parts of the fish too. It's not like you just hang them up.

55:06
Praneeth
That's not what you do. Just want to clarify, but no.

55:11
Veronika Becher
Is there like something like a last thing that you feel like you would love to mention about your school, your boarding school, something that stuck out to you over the years, or a funny story? I feel like, I don't know, I'm.

55:27
Praneeth
Just down for the ride.

55:30
Praneeth
So we're co ed school, right? But it's also interesting because even though we're co ed school, relationships between boys and girls, very discouraged, very much discouraged. Or like any kind of like, you know, romantic relationships, extremely discouraged. And the reason they would give is we are discouraging this because we can't monitor them, we can't monitor these relationships. We don't know what's going to happen, which is valid to some extent. But it's also, I think when you get to a certain age, you're like.

56:09
Praneeth
I want to date someone.

56:10
Praneeth
Yeah, it's bound to happen. It's natural, you know, and it's. I say this now because now it's very funny. Like I told you, like the. More like the generations after us, after I left the school, from what I've heard, they become more progressive. They're also more emotional, more in touch with their feelings as well. And you have a lot more bisexual people in my school now. And I've heard stories of, you know, lesbian couples. And in my head it's like, okay, how are you? How do you monitor this? When it was boy and girl, it was somewhat easier because we had our own hostel. They had their own hostel. We're not allowed to enter theirs, they're not allowed to enter ours. There's some monitoring to some extent, but in these kind of instances, I don't know, I just found it funny.

57:04
Praneeth
This is not, I, I don't even know why I mentioned this, but.

57:08
Veronika Becher
No, that's a valid point. I think a lot of the schools forget about that. But I'm happy that you at least didn't experience any, let's call it sexual abusement or things like that. Because I know there's something about certain schools not saying specifically to India, I'm saying in general when we have a segregation of like gender. But you don't have because you still go to school together that there's a lot of like, especially with kids that are a certain age, like 13, 14, 15, the. With sexual abusement that is an issue between guys and guys like in the same dorm. That is like sexual harassment, things like that. I don't know if you ever heard about that. But that's, that is the thing I've heard from people telling me these things and I'm like, this is crazy.

57:59
Veronika Becher
Just because you're like so bound to certain rules that you like, you don't know what to do with that and that's what happens.

58:06
Praneeth
Yeah, no, it's. It's definitely a case india. Does I. I don't know what more to say about it really. But yeah, it is definitely prevalent india. There are more schools which are co ed now. But I think indian traditions in general, just relationships, like boyfriend, girlfriend relationships are very much discouraged. They want your primary focus to just be on your education and not on girls or boys. And yeah, so I think the school was just a mirror of that. They were just trying to keep those traditions going and they use the excuse of monitoring as one thing. So yes, it was discouraged, but obviously these things still happened. I had a relationship in school and.

59:01
Praneeth
Teachers and just randomly dropping it. Yeah, I didn't have one.

59:08
Praneeth
But it's also so weird, right, because there's really not a lot you can do and everything when you do have relationship, it's kind of like a cat and mouse game. You're trying to maintain this relationship or like build this relationship. But at the same time you have to do it very discreetly, very quietly, kind of in the shadows because you don't want teachers to see you. Any teacher that sees you, they'll go report it to someone higher up. It'll go to your parents. Parents will come in, chew you out or something.

59:42
Praneeth
They would definitely chew you up.

59:43
Praneeth
Yeah, my parents are okay with it, but you know, most parents were not okay with it.

59:51
Praneeth
Was a nice way of putting it. That's a really accurate statement.

59:55
Praneeth
Yeah, so it was. Yeah, it's an experience having, trying to have a relationship in that school. I'm not saying don't try. You can't stop love.

01:00:10
Praneeth
We have a romantic city in the studio. We can't stop love. If I'm in love, even the MBA program won't stop me.

01:00:18
Praneeth
Exactly. But yeah, that was one thing. I think it stood out to me. But it's like the way the school would handle relationships and friendships and so on. Very strange. Very, very Strange. There's also. I don't know if it was the case in your high school, but as you grow older, you tend to stick with one group of. Like a group of people. And we had that in our school as well, in my classes specifically. And the teachers did not like that. But why are they, like. I don't know why they were trying to dictate who we could and should be friends with. We were comfortable with, you know, with each other. So were always with each other. We're friends with each other. And the school had took issue with that.

01:01:08
Praneeth
They would call us out constantly, and in the end, they would also, I guess they dictated, you know, how we would spend time with our friends as well. It was very strange. I think that's one thing that I did not like about the school, for sure.

01:01:27
Veronika Becher
I think they probably. That's a guess, right? They probably wanted to have you exposed to more people. And you know what happens sometimes with. When you build groups that you actually exclude people that want to be friends with you or could be friends with you, but because you're so comfortable in your group, so you don't do that anymore. So you almost are dependent on a certain age where you build the groups and you form them and then you stick with them. So it's so difficult to enter them if you're, like, new or if you're from, you know, you want to switch something up. So I think they probably wanted you to encourage to be like a community rather than different groups. Yes, but you want it to be different groups because that's how you find confinement in each other.

01:02:11
Praneeth
And I see that. And I. This is like. The school gave me the same reason as. Well, I get it. I completely get it. Because we're a small community as it is. We're a small community. So trying to. So excluding people in that small community is going to be very. It's very bad. But I feel like they could have handled it better instead of making us seem like bad people for just having a group of friends, just educate us on why it's. Why it's harmful, how it could impact other people. And I think that's perspective that I got later on when I. When I left the school when I was in Arizona, that's when I got. I got. I got. I got that kind of perspective. But in. When I was in the school, I was like, this is stupid. Why are they.

01:02:59
Praneeth
Why are they, like, prosecuting? Well, that's not the right word, but.

01:03:02
Praneeth
Why are they prosecuting?

01:03:04
Praneeth
Why they. Why are they, like, you know, coming after us or just being friends with people and what's. So there was a process in the school. Sorry, I'm just going constantly.

01:03:14
Veronika Becher
No, go ahead.

01:03:15
Praneeth
There's a process in the school. So when you get to 10th grade, you have a board exam, like the whole country board exam. And then after 10th grade, you have 11th and 12th, like, plus one, plus two. And for 11th and 12th grade, the school kind of has a pro. Like, they look at the class in 10th grade, and they're okay. From this group of. From this group of students over here, how many of them do we want to get back to the school? How many. How many do we want to call back to the school? And how many do we not want? And they ended up essentially doing like a class teacher, I guess, like the teacher in charge of us. He essentially, I think, acted mainly on just grudges, inferioritism, and. Yeah, but that's like, it's.

01:04:12
Praneeth
It's a very specific experience for me. It's not a school thing.

01:04:17
Veronika Becher
And a specific teacher, too, right?

01:04:19
Praneeth
Yes.

01:04:21
Veronika Becher
Maybe my last question that'll be interesting. How did you transition out of it being, like, so secluded, no technology, and then going to college at some point too. Right. In the United States, like, how do you do this transition?

01:04:34
Praneeth
It was not easy at all. I came to Arizona. I felt completely left out. I had no idea how to. How to deal with anything. I knew how to live on my own. I know how. I knew how to do basic stuff, but trying to find and build relationships in. In. In the US it's like, Arizona is such a big school, so it was very overwhelming to start with, and it took me a while to really get adjusted to, you know, just the way life is in the US And I think sports helped me out a lot in that aspect. I. I used to play soccer in that soccer. I still. I still try to play soccer. And I think just joining soccer teams helped me. Helped me out a lot in Arizona and getting. Getting by. But, yeah, it's not easy.

01:05:24
Praneeth
I don't know. I can't speak for the rest of my classmates, but I definitely found it very difficult getting out of school and adjusting to life outside of school.

01:05:38
Veronika Becher
Do you think the experience was still worth it, even though it was difficult to adjust to actual real life outside of it?

01:05:45
Praneeth
I think so. I think it's worth it. But I will say it's worth it. Until a certain age and a certain point, in my. In my opinion, if I had maybe stayed there until 9th or 10th grade and then gotten out into, you know, the rest of the big world. It would have been more beneficial for me. But yeah, that's my.

01:06:10
Veronika Becher
But that's how you end up doing it, right? Do you have, like, last advice you would like to leave with the listeners? In life? It could be anything. It could be related to what we just talked about, something that you've learned through being in the boarding school, transitioning into like normal life, anything.

01:06:30
Praneeth
I would say be open to experiences. That's my biggest thing. Just don't close yourself off from anything. Be open and just share love, you know, Share love.

01:06:44
Praneeth
I love about you. Thank you so much.

01:06:48
Veronika Becher
I really appreciate you being on the podcast. I enjoyed that you shared all these. I don't know, I think this is.

01:06:56
Praneeth
Still a crazy experience because I never.

01:06:58
Veronika Becher
Thought there's someone out there, Praneeth, in a jungle. I'm joking.

01:07:03
Praneeth
Literally in the jungle, living his life.

01:07:07
Praneeth
But thank you so much for being.

01:07:08
Veronika Becher
On podcast and dear listens, I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. There are more episodes coming out, hopefully. No, they will. And have a good day.

01:07:20
Praneeth
Bye.

01:07:21
Veronika Becher
Bye.

Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/