Late Nights With YouTube

I have been talking to Apoorva Tripathi, 26, my roommate at a start-up gurukul amidst 1,800 acres of forest in Ropar, a small town on the way to Manali from Chandigarh. It is February and bitterly cold in the slopes of the Shivaliks. There has been late snow in Kashmir, and we are feeling it here tonight in Ropar.

Most of us are in thick jackets. Apoorva is making do with a light sweater and a shot of whisky.

“Back in Delhi, all through the day I am screaming at my suppliers and delivery boys,” says Apoorva. “When I get back home, I need a hot shower and some whisky to calm down.” Apoorva is an entrepreneur. He started a business called My Fruit Chaat from his savings. He does fruit chaat, at the moment four different kinds, packs them and sells them.

My Fruit Chaat recently got seed funding from The Morpheus, a start-up accelerator that has organized the gurukul. At the gurukul with Apoorva are others who have start-ups that do sophisticated work using surface computing and data visualization. Tripathi is breaking the mould of geek entrepreneurs who find funding.

From middle class Lucknow, Apoorva worked at Café Coffee Day to make money, earned an MBA, and then trained as a Six Sigma Black Belt at 24. In case you didn’t know, the Six Sigma sorts take home six digit salaries. “I was earning more than my ability to spend, so I bought a ticket to Bangkok and partied. I did ditto in Macau and other parts of the world. I earned, travelled and wasted myself in the party hot spots of the world”.

Then he turned all that into a ball and chucked it into a bin. Today, Apoorva says he thinks twice before buying a movie ticket. “I want My Fruit Chaat to become a success,” he says.

I turn up the volume on Jai Uttal. Apoorva needs the will of God behind him: “Dance Shiva, dance/ make everything brand new/ give us another chance.” Pennance. Prarthana. Bhakti. Satsang. Let’s invoke it all for this 26-year-old.

I first heard Jai Uttal, a Grammy nominee, in the mid-90s on a visit to singer Hariharan’s home in Mumbai’s Sion area. It was his mother who was playing Jai Uttal’s Monkey on a cassette player (everyone under 20, Google “cassette player”). I can’t remember the exact song, but over the years Down on My Knees became a favourite.

It was as if I had stood in the after burn of a jet engine. I was blown, a Fused Helpless Dot Of Consciousness. But it set the stage for what Hariharan was going to make me listen to next: the first mix of 15th Century Vedic scholar Vyasaraya Tirtha’s Kannada classic Krishna Ni Begane Baaro, by his new band with Leslie Lewis, Colonial Cousins. In subtle ways, that song changed the Indian music landscape.

By now the whisky is taming the cold. I am wondering about Apoorva; about My Fruit Chaat; about start-up accelerators like The Morpheus and the down-to-earth husband-wife team of Sameer and Nandini Guglani behind it; about the Indian-ness of it all. A toast to the new India these guys are conjuring. Let’s invoke the Gods: the Hanuman Chalisa, by the irrepressible hippie-from-the-future Brenda McMorrow. Hey, Apoorva, never partied with her to bring meaning into your daily life? Try it (rap version right here). I think you will like it.