— Inner Mastery, Outer Impact —
Master Your Inner Core with our 9-day Reflection Journey
An award-winning educator, acclaimed author, sought-after speaker and renowned faith leader, Simran Jeet Singh is a professor of history at the historic Union Theological Seminary, Executive Director of the Inclusive America Project at the Aspen Institute, Senior Fellow for the Sikh Coalition and host of the Wisdom & Practice podcast. Simran’s thought leadership on bias, empathy, and justice extends across corporate, university, and government settings, and has been invited to speak at prestigious institutions including Stanford University, Fortune 500 companies, The White House and Pentagon. Simran writes regularly for The Washington Post, CNN, TIME Magazine, Harvard Business Review, and Religion News Service, and is the author of the national bestseller, The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life and the award-winning children’s book, Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run a Marathon.
Why have we become so good at identifying what’s wrong in society, but struggle to imagine a solution for them? How do visionary leaders, reformers and saints think, view and act in the world? What place can we take refuge in when we want clarity to our most burning questions? And what is the true meaning of service, and how can we make our spirituality more practical?
Find out from Simran Jeet Singh—and from the great saints of Sikhism—exclusively in conversation with Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa on Intersections Podcast.
This episode offers key insights on:
Greetings everyone, and a warm welcome to Intersections. Our aspiration here is to expand our horizons by dissolving boundaries, by opening ourselves up to what perhaps could be limitless possibilities if we don't get ourselves to be confined to certain frames.
It is a joy today to have with us someone who is actually doing much of that dissolution of boundaries, boundaries between ancient and modern, boundaries between the spiritual life and the materially-engaged life, boundaries across faiths.
This is Simran Jeet Singh. He is an award-winning educator, an acclaimed author, a sought-after speaker and a renowned faith leader. As a professor of history at the very historic Union Theological Seminary we have as almost a sister institution to Columbia University here in New York. He is the executive director of the Inclusive America Project at the storied Aspen Institute. He is a senior fellow for the Sikh Coalition and the host of the Wisdom and Practice Podcast. Simran’s thought leadership on bias, empathy and justice extends across the corporate world, across universities and government settings, and he’s been invited to speak at many major institutions, including Stanford University, many Fortune 500 companies, the White House and the Pentagon. He is the author of the national bestseller, “The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life”, and the award winning children’s book, “Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of The Oldest Person To Ever Run a Marathon.”
Simran, great joy and privilege to have you with us today. Much looking forward to our conversation. Welcome.
Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here and be in conversation with you. So thank you.
My joy. We haven't met over the course of our life, and yet I feel there are some very common connections and bonds we share. Certainly, the association with Columbia being one, where you did your PhD. We should come back and talk a little bit about your time here at Columbia. You're at, as I call it, a sister institution in Union Theological Seminary, much appreciated and respected in the Columbia circles. And then you come from a faith that while it may not necessarily be my official incoming faith from the vantage point of the faith I was born in Sanatan Dharma or Hinduism, was always surrounding me in this warm embrace, Sikhism.
I grew up in Chandigarh, in the north of India, perhaps even more intimate than just that, where itself, a large percentage of the population, some 30, 40, 50% of the people around you in any given day could be Sikhs from the state of Punjab, that is the center of Sikh life. But besides that, my father grew up in what is now Pakistan, in a village, and what I am told is that the custom in his village was that the oldest son in a Hindu family would be converted to Sikhism. That was to me, fascinating to see the fluidity of the back and forth between these faiths. My father himself was born on Guru Nanak’s birthday. That is how they remembered his birthday at that time, because they didn't have the Gregorian calendar there to go with in those ancient times. But they do remember, it was that beautiful day where everybody was out worshiping in the Gurdwara, and then suddenly this excited person comes in to say that this baby has been born at that moment.
I've grown up with Gurbani all around me. This beautiful Sikh devotional music. On my father's passing, my mother had both honored Gurbani singers in Chandigarh, a Sikh priest as well as a Hindu priest doing their individual chanting from the Hindu and Sikh traditions. It was beautiful. So I have much interplay with Sikhism in my life. And, I therefore feel an extra special thing today to bring the magic and mystery of this beautiful faith into active expression for our audience. Because this is not a conversation we've had the opportunity to have until now. And yet to do it from a lens that can be very contemporary, very relevant for the kinds of complicated and modern lives that we live today.
So thank you for joining that path and for being open to this conversation. If you're open to it, I'd love to have us start from the very inception of this faith. We’ll have much to unpack about your life. But when you talk about the founding father of this faith, the great prophet Guru Nanak, could you tell us a little bit about his life and what he was trying to make happen, which ultimately led to Sikhism?
Yeah, sure. Well, thank you for that opening reflection which I really resonate with. Even the way you've framed up the nature of what this tradition is about it, it feels very resonant for me. Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, lived about 500 years ago. That world, that society wasn't that different from where we are now. He lived in this place in Punjab that was sort of the gateway to South Asia between Central Asia and the Middle East. There was a great deal of cultural mixing there. You had religious diversity. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and more. You had linguistic diversity. You had cultural diversity. And in that context, people were really trying to figure out how to live together. Guru Nanak was born into this society in Punjab where he looked around and, part of what you hear him describe as an enchantment with the world around him. He saw beauty and divinity in everyone that he met. Everywhere he looked in the world. But he also saw people suffering. He saw deep inequalities. He saw a lot of pain. He saw a lot of dissatisfaction. And I would say, the big idea that he brought forward as a solution was what he described as, “Ik Onkar,” the foundational teaching in the Sikh tradition that essentially says that everything is interconnected. The world is one, God is one. We are all one. And it's to me, even now, as I'm trying to live in our modern world, such a profound idea that despite all the differences we have with one another and the strong feelings we have of distinction from one another, ultimately we are interconnected. If we can remember that, it can change how we experience our lives. That's the gift I think that Guru Nanak gave to the world and the gift that I feel like I've received as someone who's trying to follow his teachings.
Beautiful. You've taken me back to a story I remember reading in one of the, at that time, favored comic series that was used to teach kids in India about culture and arts. They were called Amar Chitra Katha. In these Amar Chitra Kathas, there were these images of Guru Nanak. I remember reading the story about how he was lying down at one point and his feet were directed towards some holy site. And so these people came rushing to him, “It's disrespectful for your feet to be directed in that direction because it's where that shrine is or that site is.” He said, “Well, then, if that's where God is, where would you turn my feet to?” And they said, “Well, turn it that way.” Then he talked about how God is there too. And he turned the other way. Well, God is there too. But this, Ik Onkar, as you're saying, this notion that God is everywhere, God is everything. Where would you want me to put my feet?
I remember that story from the time I was probably 7 or 8 years old, and it really struck a chord with me.
Yeah I mean, it's an interesting way of thinking about teaching and living in this world. I love that story. I heard it as a kid, too, and I used to read the same comics growing up here in the States. So it's really interesting to hear you say that. But one of the lessons that I take away from that account is, to Guru Nanak, it was important for him to help awaken people, to help them be more conscious about the biases that they held, but it wasn't as important for him to convert everyone. The end of that story does not conclude with this person telling Guru Nanak that I will now become your follower. And it doesn't end with Guru Nanak saying you should become my follower. It ends with him saying, if you want to be a more conscious and aware Muslim, here's something you can think about. That's the end. I really love that part of the philosophy which does not insist on convincing people to live as exactly as we do, but to help them see maybe some of the things that they're not living into in the way that they're wanting to.
Well, it's interesting. I almost heard you say that in that story that he was tuning into that individual's lived experience, journey, environment, everything. And again, I'm testing this thought with you as a way to understand that philosophy that he was practicing there. But looking into that individual, he was able to help direct them towards the place where they would get closest to source. The source might be ultimately the same, whatever that creative force might be in the universe. For someone it might be to connect them back to the core precepts of Islam, because that is the part when they're really in a position to get deeply devoted to. For somebody else, it might be another direction. It reminds me of a story of, in a sense, one of our own. Thomas Merton, there’s this great Christian mystic who used to be at Columbia, and he was a college student, and he was a seeker at that time, trying to cut adrift and think and figure out his path in life. Then he comes across this Indian teacher who came from India to be at the Parliament of World Religion in Chicago and then came up to New York, hung out with him for a bit, and then discovered his spiritual hunger, which he wasn't fully expressing yet, but he was there. And then what Thomas Merton recalls in his autobiography is that he didn't sort of end up converting, he just said, “Come, let me teach you about mysticism and all of that. But you go to your source, you go to the confessions by Saint Augustine. You go to the imitation of Christ, these great profound mystical texts in Christianity.” And he did. Ultimately that became his path to the pursuit of self-realization. Again, just a beautiful example. The same sort of idea of what you just said Guru Nanak was doing. How beautiful!
There's something else that you observed about Guru Nanak, that I would love for you to unpack a little bit for us. You said he would call out stuff that he thought was wrong. He wouldn't mince words about it, but he also would always propose a solution. Then you also say that he would add some form of institutionalization. Could you speak a little bit to that?
Yeah. I think what I was trying to appreciate was that we live in a culture where it's become very easy to point our fingers at the problems. It's not even just pointing our fingers. There's also cancel culture, there's ideas of abolition. We very much support the idea and we have become very good at identifying what's wrong with things and why they should be taken apart. And in some cases, I agree that they should be. And I think that's a very important skill to cultivate. But what I don't see so often in our culture, but I see in Guru Nanak, is the ability to then say, “Okay, that's not working, but what might work instead.” One of the things I see in Guru Nanak and in a lot of the best leaders, I was going to say religious leaders, but it's even if you think about the best leaders, there's a sense of imagination, of creativity, a desire to innovate and develop something fresh. And sometimes, at least for me, it becomes really difficult to try and imagine something different from what already exists, because you grew up in a culture, in a society or a country where, your whole life it's been done one way. And so, how could you possibly think of something different? But I think some of our greatest visionaries, our greatest luminaries, have developed a knack for actually being able to look beyond the world as we know it and to say, “This is what the world could be.” And so I see that with Guru Nanak, and I see that with some of our best leaders. You can think about someone like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You could think about someone like Mother Teresa. They're very different kinds of figures, but these are the kinds of people that I think have some sort of orientation towards insight and vision that I very much appreciate about Guru Nanak as well.
I wonder if I can ask you the question, as you're much more of an expert on leadership than I am. Does that seem accurate to you in terms of leadership? Does creativity, innovation, a desire to build something new, do those feel like important elements for strong leadership?
I know it's a beautiful observation to make. I'm increasingly thinking about how to envision and reframe leadership in today's time with the sharing-based things that are just structurally shifting and changing around us. And I almost think that there are two kinds of leaders out there that flourish in different times. There are those that are preservers, they operate within a certain stable environment, and they learn, in a sense, the rules of the game, and they become very good at protecting a system and or kind of tweaking and optimizing a system. And, and if that's what you need, then those leaders can do really well. And in some ways, that's how the world has worked in the last 30, 40, 50, 80 years post the two world wars and all of that. And then, you have a situation where in some ways, one order is getting dismantled and a new order needs to get built. A place where humanity is being invited to push itself to some kind of next level of civilization or whatever it is that they are meant to be. That's happened over the course of history in certain punctuated moments. And in those cases, you need change makers, you need people who rise above and beyond the current practices. When I hear you cite the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and or Mother Teresa and Guru Nanak, I see them as examples of those kinds of transformational change makers that are actually, in a sense, the bridge between the caterpillar and the butterfly, rather than making just a stronger, better caterpillar or a stronger, better butterfly. They are that bridge that creates almost like a metamorphosis in the world, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes total sense. And I think metamorphosis is a very nice visual to try and think about what this looks like, because, I think about it for myself sometimes, if I believe that I have the same potential inside of me, then how could I actually come to realize it? Especially when it feels like I'm so far away from being that type of leader, the ones that we put on pedestals and say that they figured something out. But I think that sort of metamorphosis, that self-growth and evolution is a really nice way to think about how these people get from A to B and also that form of leadership is within reach for all of us.
And then when you think about it that way, then absolutely, what you're talking about creativity, imagination, a sense of possibility of what could be, what may not be in broad evidence today, but what could be, that kind of model, if you want to call it imagination becomes so central because you never want to lose faith in people. There is a sense at times today with some of us around losing a sense of hope about the possibilities. I think with these figures, they were, as you were saying, both very grounded in the pain and despair of what they were not seeing happen in the right way around them, but also never lost hope. That notion of Martin Luther King talking about finite disappointment is okay, but we need to always have infinite hope behind it. I love that.
Guru Nanak ended up being a pioneer in many ways, not just as a thinker and a preacher, but as a builder of community, practices and just things that gave people a very grounded, embodied way of putting these kinds of integrative values into practice. Could you talk about some of the things that are very emblematic to the Sikh community and faith which go all the way back to him?
Yeah. It's a great question. I have been thinking about this recently because I was in conversation with a friend who was asking us a similar kind of question. Coming from a Christian perspective, they were saying, “Well, what is something you do in a situation where you don't really know what the right answer is and you feel hopeless?” Kind of tying into your last comment. What stood out to me was as I was sort of reflecting honestly about what I've learned from Sikh teachings, that sometimes the practice is actually the guide to finding the solution. There's a bias that we have in the West that says, you need to know the answer. And then there's intellectual grappling. And once you have the answer, then you can put it into practice.
But what I've learned through philosophy is actually the other way around, that sometimes you act and it's through the action, right? Particularly in Sikh philosophy, the selfless service is called “Seva.” It's through this action that you actually have an experience and access wisdom that you learn what it is that you are supposed to do, and you learn how it is that you can find joy in the face of difficulty. You learn how to be in relationship with other people. Your question is such an interesting one for me because I've been thinking about it a lot recently, but also because you're familiar with the tradition. I can see that you're sort of coming from a similar kind of position where in our cultural upbringing, practice is actually more important than the idea itself.
Powerful point. I'm also getting sparked about something more recently I've studied and put into practice in my classroom from cognitive behavior therapy. It's a modern day, very recognized, successful, respected path towards mental health. Dr. David Burns, one of the preeminent exponents of that who I've been blessed to learn a lot from, he talks about this relationship between behaviors and emotions and thoughts and how we sometimes think something is triggered in us, maybe anxiety or anger or whatever because of some event and that emotion then leads to a certain behavior from us. But actually, the opposite can also be true. You can engage in a certain behavior in order to either dial down or dial up a certain emotion in yourself. So if you're not feeling good and you want to dial that down, then there are certain behaviors you can use. That's why it’s cognitive behavior therapy. In some ways, these pioneers of human transformation from centuries past, someone like Guru Nanak, probably, had deep psychotherapeutic insight about human nature.
Another version of that that I've been thinking of as a trained historian, so often we think, especially when we talk about people who are religious, we will describe their actions as causality based on their religious beliefs. We'll say they believed this. So they did that. The reality is nobody actually lives that way. Very few people do exactly what their religion says, right? Including those of us who identify as religious. Then how do you explain the behaviors that people take on? It's just a really nice reminder to me, as you're describing it, that actually we are all human beings. We all are historical. We are all manifestations in this world operating within a specific political context. All of that is to say, of course, the behaviors drive our experiences in the world. What do we do when I'm upset and I'm walking down the street and I see a homeless person and hand them a few bucks like that helps them, but it also lifts up my spirit because I've I'm doing something to help someone. That action then changes my experience. So yeah, I agree with you fully that there is some tapping into an insight around human behavior that feels prescient, incredible foresight from the Sikh gurus.
What are one or two examples of behaviors that are very core to the Sikh way of life that you found could be instructive or perhaps pertinent to any or all of us? They don't have to be necessarily only behaviors that are practiced by people of a certain faith. What would be a couple of examples of that we could take as a gift from you to our listeners today?
The first thing that comes to mind, I think just because we were already chatting about it, is the notion of Seva. As someone who has grown up in the Sikh tradition and also grown up in the West, I would say Western ideas on service and activism feel a little bit impoverished. I think they could benefit from a more capacious idea of generosity, which also includes this notion that serving others is not just for their benefit and not just our responsibility or our obligation. It's also something that serves us. The way that it works in Sikh philosophy is the more you serve others, the more you diminish your own ego, your selfishness. And then you find more joy in life. I think that simple formula is completely life changing. If we can understand that our connection with others grows, our obsession with ourselves diminishes, it's erased, and suddenly, we have so much more perspective about the things that matter. It's easy for us, you know, for me in this country to get caught up in why my life is so hard and all the things that make me upset. But sometimes connecting with other people's experiences helps me feel appreciation for what I do have, rather than anger for what I don't. This notion of seva, I think, is a life changing one.
Yeah, it's a beautiful one. For any or all of us who have been to a Sikh Gurdwara, a place of worship, which is also a place of service and experience, a very touching and moving and beautifully attentive form of service of the langar. The food that is served there and how it is served there with so much love, it reminds me of Mother Teresa saying, “It doesn't matter what you do, but the love you put into doing.” That is truly, true Seva done in the right spirit. It's such a beautiful thing in evidence and in those environments.
We had a community of students over the summer that we launched a leadership program with, for college students, to help plug a gap that I see in college curriculum that is so invested in intellectual life, but a little bit less so in character, citizenship and spiritual development. We said, “Let's run an experiment and see if we can create a scholarship around helping children and youth on that front.” Anyway, we did that in Nashville, Tennessee. For two weeks, we had the youth from different universities come and be in that immersive inner mastery-outer impact journey of leadership. And we said, we want to give them one kind of experience of some kind. And we actually found a Gurdwara there, and we were able to take them to actually be serving the langar there at the Gurdwara. And it was one of the highlights of that trip really to be there and be of service.
Yeah. I love that story. It makes me think about the way that I grew up going to Gurdwara. One of the teachings that ties in with Seva is, “Vand Ke Chakna,” which is one of the core principles that you learn as a Sikh. What it means is you distribute first and then you take. It's such a simple idea in the langar context. What it meant to me and my family was when you arrive at Gurdwara, first, you serve people food before you partake in food. You do Seva for 10-15 minutes and then you sit down and enjoy your meal and it's not a big deal. But then you translate that into the context of life, even when you're thinking about income or you're thinking about economics, this can translate out to scale. And you say, “Okay, what would it look like for us to put other people first before we put ourselves?” And it's not to say that we cheat ourselves or put ourselves in a difficult position, but it's just the inverse of how we tend to operate in the modern West. The capitalistic model tells us you put yourself first, take what you need, and then whatever's left over, maybe you give to charity. So I love this idea of Vand Ke Chakna, you take second only after giving first.
Amazing. I see so many practical applications of that. In fact, I'm tempted to see if we can create an exercise like that for my executive MBA students next time I teach in February in my class and my personal leadership and success course, because I think it's a beautiful experiment to invite people to take on.
Simran, in your journey, here you are in New York, living in many ways, the modern life, can be at times a fast paced and somewhat at times, a transactional culture. Some might say, when you are so infused with the Seva feeling, the desire to start things from the other in mind before your own needs, in practical ways, how have you found it to be applicable and are there moments in your everyday life where you're actually seeking to bring some of that? Could you give us an example or two and it could be just in happenstance, common, everyday moments? But I'd just be curious.
I think there are big versions of the answer to that question. Meaning like, moments that have really stood out to me and have been really powerful. I'd also say more recently, I've found so much power in the small moments. Especially, again, going back to what you were saying earlier, in a world where so much feels hopeless and it can feel easy to give up and say, what's the point of trying to change anything? I'm not going to fix income inequality or mass incarceration or there's so many problems that are systemic and big and it's so easy to give up and say, whatever I do doesn't make a difference. But I think if you approach it from a mindset of Seva and recognize that transformation is possible, even if it doesn't fix everything, but transformation is possible for the person you're serving. You can reduce suffering, and also transformation is possible for yourself. You can diminish your ego and diminish the suffering that you have individually. That can change the approach entirely.
In the last couple of years, I’ve actually found my own hopelessness has felt like it's been increasing, the small everyday practices of Seva have been transformative for me and given me a sense of agency in a world where it feels like I have none. It gives me a chance to feel like I have some control. Even if I can't control what happens in this world and what happens to everyone else, I can at least control my own experience of it in my small micro relationships. And that, to me, has felt really empowering.
I'm actually now writing down an assignment from my executive MBA students to just open them up to these small little micro transformations that you and I or all of us can engage in. And I want to give them three examples of how Simran actually puts this practice of Seva into action in common everyday moments. These could be at home, these could be with strangers, these could be with your colleagues at the Union Theological Seminary, with your classroom, or all of those environments. I think it'll be fun to hear a couple of examples from you.
Yeah, that's a nice way of asking the question. I'll think about the last few days and see how I tried to apply it. One that comes to mind immediately, today I was focused on writing in a coffee shop. All day I was there. Anyone who writes knows that it’s very painful to spend a whole day writing. What I was trying to do is, anytime somebody left their dishware on the table, I would just pick it up and take it over to the bar and save the barista the trouble. It's a small shop and getting around the bar is tough. So it was just a small thing, but what it did for me throughout the day was, it gave me a chance to get up from my desk. I was appreciative of that. But it also helped me stay conscious of the people around me that I was aware of. I might be immersed in my own world and on my computer, but I wasn't disconnected from the people around me. So that was a nice one.
A second example is, I had a few high school students reach out who are looking at developing a project. Most people who are professors at universities get a cold email from high school students. You're taught that the best answer is no answer, right? You don't respond. But to me, it feels important to make time for these kinds of things. I had a nice half hour call with these really lovely high school students who are excited about a project. In some ways, one might say that this is a very amateur project because where can it possibly go if these kids are in high school? The other side of that is, I might be able to give them some guidance that puts them on a path towards some sort of future that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. I might be able to give them a spark of motivation, an idea or a connection that they wouldn't have access to otherwise. That to me, feels very much like the kind of thing that many people did for me when I was younger. I really feel committed to paying it forward. That's a second version of Seva.
The third one and this is, going back to the example we were talking about earlier, at Gurdwara on Sunday. The way it works for us is, the kids are in Punjabi school for the first few hours. We have some social time with our friends. We sit and listen to Kirtan. It's really lovely and relaxing. Then when my kids sit down to eat and my wife sits down to eat, I usually have some free time. On this Sunday, yesterday, I just decided to go and serve some more food. I can't tell you how good it made me feel. It's not about some kind of self-aggrandizing, there's no one else who could do it better than me or me being there, changing someone's life or saving them. It wasn't like that. It was more like the humility of saying, I have 30 minutes and I'm going to use those 30 minutes to do something for someone else instead of for myself. There's something that's so countercultural about that, counter-ego about that. I really love that experience for myself and what it did for me internally.
Yeah beautiful. Thank you. Those are excellent examples. I'll build on your first one, where you talked about returning other people's used dishes at the cafe. I was taking a walk in this beautiful, scenic park. I was traveling for business and it was like a resort-like thing. Suddenly, this ball shows up. Obviously, some people are playing and somebody hit the ball. And so my natural instinct was to be of service, to be helpful. I'll interrupt my walk for a minute and pick up the ball and kind of start walking over and throwing it to where it is so that they don't have to take the trouble of coming all the way. Then I see those people at a distance who were obviously the ones involved with the ball and they're looking at me and waving and I'm like, oh, this is so sweet. They're actually being so thankful and happy that I was so kind and thoughtful and broke my walk for them. Then I see them getting even more desperate with the waving as I'm coming closer to them. And I'm like, something is not right energetically. Then I realized, “Oh my God, Hitendra, that was a golf ball. You're not supposed to touch it.” Then I was like, “Okay, no worries.” And I just went back sheepishly to my walk.
That’s hilarious. That is very funny. Beautiful intention. Really nice intention.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. But it taught me a lesson about mindfulness. We'd be fully involved with whatever activity you're engaged in, understand the context and whatever. Just a good intention and patting yourself on the back for being a good boy is not by itself is not going to get you to heaven.
Anyway, I also thought of that story because it'll connect the dots to the next thing I want to invite you to talk about because this thing happened in San Antonio. I've been spending some really quality time there. Why I have been, I'll keep it a little bit of a mystery because we'll come back to that. But for now, I just want to tell everyone that it's like a home base for you. That's where you grew up, isn't it?
Yeah. That's the motherland. Born and raised.
So, when you go back to your childhood and for a moment just kind of soak in a little bit of memories of what it was like growing up. One thing that I want to observe, Simran, which is very special about you is that, any or all of us are born into a certain culture, environment and certain values. Perhaps a certain faith, and, you certainly are an example of that. Many people just automatically either just assimilate them and then keep living their life or they reject them because somehow they don't really connect with those as much as whatever it is that they're getting pulled into society towards. In your case, you've engaged with them, but you've also reflected on them. You’ve also grown into them. You've asked yourself how they apply. In your life, you've dug deeper into the essential truths in those ideas. You’ve also been very thoughtful in offering them up to others through your book, your talks and other forms of outreach. Not, as you said, just like in the Guru Nanak way, not as a way to kind of convert people, but just as a way to celebrate something really that has been beautiful to you in the community and open people up perhaps to a level of appreciation and understanding. Anyway, I'm just kind of recognizing that while you had, I imagine in some ways, “normal upbringing,” there was something that was being seeded, something that was being formed, that has led to a relatively unique path that is so enriched and informed and guided by these choices around faith, beliefs, values, spirit engagement with life and all of that. So I want to ask you to take that lens and then look through your attic of childhood memories and share with us what some of those formative things were that in your community, in your family, perhaps choices your parents made about how to expose you to something or talk to you, or what have you, experiences that you had in that moment at some point in your single digit years or in your teens that really formed you to who you are today.
Thank you. I mean, there were a lot of moments that I can remember from childhood, especially with my parents giving me guidance on how to live. It wasn't always preaching or even teaching. Sometimes it was just modeling. What do you do in an ugly situation? I remember being at restaurants and people coming up to us and saying nasty things, my parents would really show us how to handle those situations. It was some combination of making sure that there was safety, that we weren't under threat. Engaging that to some degree, not responding with anger was something that I really learned from my parents. I think some of that is strategic and tactical. It only escalates situations if you yell back at people. But I think a lot of it was actually ethical for them that we're not going to let what other people bring to us, like the energy that they bring, the anger they bring, the violence they bring, we're not going to let that change who we are and how we want to be. I think all of that, if I put it together, speaks to a sense of quiet confidence. Not like a pride-fulness, but also not like a sense of cowardice or quietness that lends itself to being treated like a doormat. It was very much we know who we are. We know what dignity and respect looks like. And when we don't get it, we won't allow it. But we also don't need to be disrespectful to other people in return. I think that quiet confidence is something that I've really tried to uphold in my life. I find it very difficult in certain situations. Even though I've been facing discrimination my whole life, I don't always know what the right answer is or what it looks like to strike that balance in these situations but it really was, for my parents, this commitment to living by their values, regardless of the conditions and regardless of how people treated them, that that to me has really stuck with me.
Oh! That's very moving to hear. Kudos to your parents for having made that choice and having the self-regulation capacity to live away from what I'm sensing were at times very disappointing behaviors from people.
Yeah. It could be tough in these situations. My parents weren't always around. I didn't always have them to handle situations for me. I didn't always respond in the ways that they would have wanted me to, but even then, being able to go back to them and say, “Okay, here's what happened, here's how I responded.” I remember fighting back with my neighbors a couple of times, fist fights that we would get into. Even now as a parent, I could look at those as huge ruptures and major problems. Or you could look at these as small opportunities to practice. That's sort of how my parents would handle it. What did you do? Why did it happen? What could you have done differently? How do you want to do it next time? It was sort of the arc of the conversation and that has really stuck with me. So now even when my responses feel dissatisfying, I can still go back to, “Okay, next time this happens or some version of this happens, how will I respond differently?” And maybe that'll help me get me to a place where I feel happier about my handling.
It is so powerful to me that you see that, and that this is not something that you've just learned retrospectively by looking back in life and saying that, “Hey, the fact that it happened to me so many times, and then I was continuing to be intentional about how I should show up the next time.” It has just led to this growth or whatever but to actually say that that is how your parents talked to you. It's what in business we would call an after action review, like doing an after action after notable events or situations in life. It's a model that I've sought to explore, to invite leaders to work on their own growth while recognizing that life moments are leadership moments. It's not that part of you is just living your life, and then there's a part of you who shows up as a leader and then needs to have this critical conversation with this employee who's threatening to leave, or that team that is not inspired. But if you take every moment in life as a crucible in which to learn how to bring out the best in yourself and others and build trust and resolve conflict and all of that, then when those moments come, then you're more ready for them in the official arena of the stage of leadership at work and all of that. You're just demonstrating that that is kind of how your parents were raising you to take those everyday struggles, disappointments or moments as crucibles in which to really hone the practice of character.
It's funny to hear you say this because as I'm reflecting on it, my father was an entrepreneur, and he was in his own leadership training. Then he was doing leadership coaching, and I didn't quite realize it at the time, but I think he was using his tricks on us in parenting. I remember, we would do these family meetings once every quarter. Even just the cadence of that is very business, right? Who does that with their own families? But we would do quarterly family meetings at his office, in the conference room. And sometimes he would bring in his leadership coaches.
One of the stories that I share in the book is when we developed a family mission statement and vision statement and values that I actually still keep and I have hanging on my wall in my home. So it very much was, this experience of, here's a person who has learned some things within the leadership space that he sees very applicable to not just his workplace, but also for his home environment and for his kids. And we really benefited from that.
Incredible. There is a story you share, which I'm wondering if you're open to sharing here for our audience around a grocery store and a Snickers bar, something that catalyzed there that led to a major learning for you. Are you open to sharing that with our friends?
It's funny you ask because that is a story that I never shared until I wrote the book. I mean, that was the first time I ever shared it publicly. And of course, when you write a book, you tell the whole world. The reason I never told it is because I felt shame around it. I still feel a little bit embarrassed by it, but it's not like it was a big deal. It's just something that I knew I did wrong.
The story is essentially as I go to a grocery store with my mom, which is a very common occurrence growing up. I used to love going to the grocery store with her. At the end of the shopping trip, we ended up at the checkout line. When she's not looking and when the cashier is not looking, I stick a candy bar in my pocket. I was old enough to know it was wrong. I was old enough to know that I didn't want anyone to see, but then my mom turned and looked at me as I was putting it in my pocket, and so I was busted. I was embarrassed and scared of what she might say. Eventually, we go home and I go and apologize to her. We have this conversation where she says, “You may as well not wear your turban anymore.” And I was shocked by that. Because she was the person who had been telling me my whole life that I should wear my turban and that I shouldn't worry about what people say. And now she was telling me otherwise. Basically, as our conversation went on, I understood that her point was if my turban is about trying to live by my values as a Sikh, but if I was cheating on those values, then the turban meant nothing, and so I may as well take it off. It had a really big impact on me. Since that time, any time that I'm in public, I'm always thinking about how am I living as Sikh and am I living by the values that I tell people I want to? Am I being honest or am I trying to serve other people before I serve myself? Or am I thinking about justice and what that looks like? These are some of the core values as a Sikh, and so that incident really imprinted the importance of that in my mind.
Well, thank you for being so humble and open to sharing that story both in your book and now here. It's very endearing to me because it shows we're all human and that we live and learn over the journey of life. To have your mom respond in that way, not to just scold you, not to just ignore what just happened, but to actually make it a very teachable moment. And that also in such a profound and rich way, not just in a simple way, that thou shalt this and thou shalt not that, it's good and it's bad, but something much deeper is so beautiful and instructive for all of us how to be good parents and shepherds in the community.
This may provide small consolation, but, as I'm sure you know, just as much as I, one of the most formative character building moments for Gandhi in his life was when he stole some money.
That's right. I even thought about that connection, it's a good point.
Exactly, so you're in good company. I was telling you, I'm going to hold back a little bit and tell you more later about my connection with San Antonio. So the grocery chain that you had entered in the grocery store that day H-E-B, of course, a storied name in Texas and San Antonio and has been very close to our collective hearts at my institute at Mentora. We have been privileged to serve them actively over the last 8 odd years. Their president, Craig Boyan, is a dear friend and their new president, Roxanne, as well across the leadership team and beyond. As I'm sure you know, just as much as I am in, the kind of inspiration and the kind of learning that we get from, not just serving them but from learning about their culture and their history, started by a woman 120 years ago, this incredibly successful chain with so much heart and care for their partners, employees, but also their community and even the founding family has done with most of their profits has just plowed it back into the Texan community in public education and beyond, it’s just a perfect story of what big business can be and what big business can do. It's a $50 billion company today, 160,000 employees. Anyway, to see the name H-E-B show up in such a pivotal way in your life at that moment, just warms my heart.
Oh that's great. It's one of the things I miss. People laugh when I tell them, but one of the things I miss most about not living in Texas anymore is the big ceilings of H-E-B. That was a great place. But also, I know people joke that in Texas, H-E-B runs better and does more for the communities than the government does. So it really has found a way to make a deep impact in the communities that it serves.
So let's just put one intention out there in the ethos and that one of these days, you and I will find ourselves together somewhere in Texas, maybe, hopefully in San Antonio and walk into an H-E-B together.
That sounds great. I would love that.
Well, we've paid homage in some measure to the founder of the faith of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, but this is a faith that was enriched by ten such lives of the great masters, the great teachers, builders and expositor of that faith of Sikhism. The 10 gurus, as they're called. Can you share a little bit about what inspiration you've learned that you find very relevant to your life that comes from one or more of these other great Sikh gurus?
The one who comes to mind immediately, we just celebrated his 350th anniversary, was the ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur, who was a warrior and a poet. His poetry, his Bani is incredible. One of the things that happens in his life, and ultimately leads to his death is a group of Hindus come to him and say, “We're being persecuted because of who we are and what we believe. And we hear that you're someone who will stand up for us. Can you please help?” Part of the reason the story stands out to me is because we also live in a world where people are persecuted for who they are and what they believe. Things haven't really changed that much. And Guru Tegh Bahadur is a beautiful example of somebody who says, “I'm not being persecuted. My community is fine, but I'm also not okay with you being targeted for your religious beliefs.” And so he says to these Hindus, “Yes, I will, I will stand up for you.” He protests, and because of his protest, he was arrested, detained and then tortured and killed for the right of people to practice their own beliefs and their own faith. It's such an important example to me, as we're living in this world now that none of us should really be here just for ourselves and for the betterment of our own families and our own communities. If we really believe in these beautiful ideals and aspirations like the freedom of belief, freedom of the press, freedom to gather, these democratic ideals, then are we willing to actually stand up for them? And it may not necessarily mean that we need to put our lives on the line like Guru Tegh Bahadur did, but, we should be willing, and I feel like I should be willing to stand up for them to some degree and sometimes pay a price for them. Because, as they say, freedom isn't free. It's the story of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth guru who really inspired me.
Thank you for sharing that. It means a lot. Both the story and the lesson behind it. To me it's an invitation for us to ask what is our definition of a good life? It reminds me of, sometimes I challenge my students to the idea that, you can get up in the morning and you can dress for success, go out and dazzle the world with your genius, come back home, watch some Netflix, eat some good food, go to sleep, get up the next morning, dress for success, go out and do great things. Come back home, spend some time with loved ones. Go to sleep. Get up the next morning. Repeat that. In one day you get gray hair, and then one day you grow old and one day you die. That's a smooth life. A spiritual teacher that I gained so much from is Yogananda and he said, “A smooth life is not a victorious life.” So I share that with them. It's a smooth life, but is it a victorious life? A life like that which had no challenges, no struggles, no higher aspirations or hunger, no uncertainty and all of that. Pretty much everybody recognizes that actually, a victorious life does involve some amount of those kinds of hurdles and struggles and all of that. I think what you just mentioned is Guru Tegh Bahadur’s joyful pursuit of a victorious life over a smooth life is such a beautiful lesson that any or all of us can draw from that in all ways.
I hadn't heard that from Yogananda, but I do like the insight that a smooth life is not a victorious life. That feels true. I think the happiest people I know are the ones who have gone through immense adversity. More adversity than I've ever faced in my life. And so there is something interesting about difficulty and hardship and how it relates to joy.
If you don't mind, keep going on that. Can give us another glimpse of the great history of Sikhism and one other pivotal moment that is very close to the heart of the community, which offers an instructive lesson to any or all of us?
Yeah. So here's what I've been thinking about recently, especially given our political landscape, and it comes from the guru who was the youngest guru. He was a child when he was appointed guru, and he was also the shortest tenured. He was only a guru for 3 years. While he was guru, he was summoned to Delhi, to the Mughal court by Aurangzeb. At the time there was a smallpox outbreak in Delhi. The guru, Guru Har Krishan says, “I hear your request. Your summon. But there's something more important that I need to do right now. And it's to take care of people who are sick and dying.” It's just been such a profound reminder to me of remembering to do what's important. Power is all around us, and they're all kinds of not just demands on our time, but also invitations, opportunities, things that feel like, if I got a call from the Prime minister of England or Canada or if I got a call from the president, depending on who's in leadership, but there would always be a small part of me that said, “This is a chance to have access to the halls of power.” And so there's a temptation to keep your eyes on the prize and ensure you know what your priorities are. It's such a beautiful lesson. And to see it in the form of somebody who's much younger and has the wisdom to say the temptations are not going to sway me. They're not going to distract me. I'm going to focus on the thing that feels most important. To me, that is a really important reminder.
I love the way you take these moments in history and translate them into a form that is very practical and translatable for us for our lives as well. That's beautiful as a student of history for you to be doing that.
Let's turn to this last chapter of our time together, to your own path and your own life. You've given us a couple of glimpses of that. Just what it was like growing up as you and the kind of instruction and inspiration you found modeled in your parents. That defining little sweet moment at H-E-B, but going beyond that into your adult life and where you are today, what practice have you found most helpful to you to stay in touch with your core? To not drift from kind of ideals and aspirations given the allure and the pull and the distraction of the kind of world we live in? Is there some regular return that you take to the very core of your being and what is that practice that has been most helpful to you?
Well, you'll know this, in the Sikh tradition, the way of worship is music. All of the scriptures of Gurbani are written to music. And so, I learned the instruments and the singing growing up as a kid, and now I'm teaching my own kids. I hadn't thought about it this way until recently. Actually, as I was in a church and observing how other people pray and realizing how much more of an embodied experience singing can be, and how at least when I'm singing, there is no place where my mind is wandering. I'm focused on the words. I'm focused on the notes. My ears are attuned to the sounds. So singing has actually been something I've returned to from childhood. It's been some years, but it's something that really grounds me. This is interesting too, the words themselves aren't always the things that I'm focused on. It can be a sort of meditative experience where I am singing, but I'm thinking about other things in my life or things that I want to improve. The way that I would describe it is it's almost like the music is doing work on you in the way that a massage might do work on your body. There's something internal happening with the music and the words that operate on you. That has really been a practice that I've returned to in the last several years.
That's beautiful. I’ve got to at some point find my way into your home when you're doing some of the devotional singing with your kids.
Yeah, you should. When you're back in New York, we'd be happy to have you over.
You reminded me of a time when I was growing up as a kid we used to have records. They're not even like CDs or tapes, but they were records. These extended play records in the EPs and long play and all of that. We have this record of this Gurbani which is beautiful. Even the words and what they connote about our relationship with the divine, it was so beautiful. You mentioned how the mind gets completely focused on the words and the notes, but I'm sensing from everything I understand about chanting, both in the Hindu tradition and in the Sikh traditions that there's a lot of heart there. The heart opens up. There's a deep flow of love or feeling or something that gets engendered.
I think that's right. There is something. I find it striking sometimes because I'm a scholar of religion and so often I'm reading or thinking or teaching about these different religions and their ideas. But then the second you go in and put them into practice, you apply them in some way, your heart opens up in a way that you wouldn't experience when your brain is just doing the work. So there is something special about that.
Taking everything that you've done, if you had to counsel a university today, and I'm just putting this out as a thought experiment. So let's just experiment with this idea. We've seen so much struggle and strife at times on college campuses in recent times. Therefore, if we had to bring the lens of integrative ideals, we're all interconnected, we're all one, etc., what might folks like you and I do if we had the freedom to design somewhat the campus environment without being handcuffed by the current expectations of how freshmen are oriented or how courses are taught or how campus life operates? If there were 1 or 2 interventions we could do or things we might want to design into a future vision of the university life, any ideas that you want to offer as to what might actually create some more connective tissue in what is right now this emotionally charged, reactive, somewhat cancel culture, etc.. We talked about some of these. Hope being really compromised today and all of that. What could we do to envision things in the university that might take humanity and youth to another level?
It's a great question. It's a $100 million question these days. So this is a real struggle of our times. This isn't the end all by any means, but I think one answer is, infusing humility into our education. One way of saying that is we reward people for being right and for proving other people wrong. And so there's an incentive structure to this. We also teach people through standardized tests that there's a single right answer to everything. Is there room for gray? Is there room for subjective experience? Your life might be different from mine, and so our sense of reality might be different. We might be socially conditioned differently. I think these kinds of things ultimately require a willingness to accept that your way isn't the only way, that there is a possibility of multiple truths. There's a possibility that I might be wrong and that's okay. And that I won't be punished for making a mistake. All of these things, I think, are really baked into our educational structure in this country. And so I think, humility would go a really long way in resolving some of those challenges that we face today.
It's beautiful you say that. One of the things not surprisingly, many of us have got intrigued and invested in is, what can AI do to help in a more positive way advance humanity rather than worry about all the risks and perils with it? Given the kinds of interests we have, one of the things I looked at was create a mental gym where you can throw yourself into a little bit of role plays, and it's actually just putting you in scenarios and inviting you to share how you would respond to that person or that disappointing issue or this or that, and then opening you up to larger truths that you may not have known about what's happening.
I'll give you an example of that. In one of the role players it conjured up for me once it knew my profile, that I'm a father of a young child. I didn't know the age of my child at that time. She'd already graduated from college. But it said like, you're this father, you have this daughter, she has just entered college. You are moving her into a freshman dorm. You spend the whole day helping her travel and unpack and all that and now at the end of the day, you're both tired. You go out to get some food and you bring some Thai food back. And she rolls her eyes and says, “Dad, you know I don't like Thai food. I like Chinese food.” Now, how do you respond? I was like, I'd be somewhat disappointed. He said, “Why?” Because she could be more grateful. This is the AI platform talking to me, and it's saying, “What do you think is making her react this way?” And I'm like, “Maybe she's just tired, or maybe she's just not as conscious about her behavior right now.” And it said, “Okay, that could be. What if she is also feeling very pained about the fact that she's leaving home. She's leaving her mother, she's leaving you. Maybe she's just grappling with all those feelings right now.” That was the AI platform opening me up to another person's lived experience hypothetically.
That's so interesting. I mean, that is invaluable. Wow!
Yeah. I'm really intrigued. To build on what you're saying about humility, what if we can create tools like this and take people to these humility gyms or mental gyms and if you practice enough of these, is it possible that your heart and brain get a little bit rewired so you're more watchful in real situations?
Right. This is the challenge, right? It still requires the receptivity of the individual. How do you soften someone's heart enough that they're open to it? But I think part of what you're proposing, can we create tools that do that? On the other hand, don't we already have the opportunity to do that with the people around us? But I guess the point would be, we don't necessarily have an intention around developing that kind of connection so that we are then receptive. It's an interesting thought. It hadn't occurred to me before.
I think it's not a fully solved problem at all. This is just a little bit of an idea as a play on what you think. But you're absolutely hitting on a key point, which is that unless the person is willing, these tools can't really help with anything. How do you open them up to that first little bit of humility just be open. And I respect that very much.
In the path that you're on today, you have been integrating so many different modalities from writing a book to being in storied institutions like at The White House, like in academia, and in businesses talking to people about this discrimination, bias, equality, and the good life about opening up to the richness of the faith of Sikhism and beyond. With where you are today, what do you see as your big quest for the next decade of your life? You're raising a beautiful family. Is it right that you have two children?
Two children. Yeah. Thanks for asking. I guess the most exciting thing I'm working on right now is a television show. It sort of ties into the mission that is at the core of everything I do, which is how can we disrupt people's biases and how do we help create connections for people? The show is looking at different minority religious communities in the US, their history and their experience, but it's really trying to make this connection for people in a way that I've experienced as I've been traveling around the country and meeting different communities, it's essentially saying, you look at us and you think you have nothing in common with us, but actually we're sharing similar struggles, the kinds of things that these people want for their families and their lives are not different from what you want in your life. That has been such a powerful experience for me. It's a project that I'm really excited to bring into the world, because I think it can help answer at least some of the challenges that we're facing societally.
Fantastic. So this would be like a TV series?
Exactly. Yeah, it'll be a TV series hopefully coming out this summer 2026. It's on the way.
What are the different communities or faiths that you're profiling if you're open to sharing?
Of course. In the first season, we work with the Muslim American experience, Jewish, Latter-day Saints, The Black Church and then the Sikh community. Those are the first five episodes we do. That’s season one. Then, of course, as you can imagine, I have a whole vision for the next season where we'll get to meet people from other communities that we don't get to meet in the first season.
Beautiful. We're in the final stage of our conversation, and this has been so beautiful and enriching. So rich with beautiful instruction and inspiration about the Sikh faith and it's very real history, but also how it integrates and interviews with your own life journey and what you're manifesting in the world.
I want to come back with where we started from when I observed what I find really special about you, which is, this kind of comfort that you have. This might have happened even in the brief conversation we had prior to the podcast, but this great comfort you have in occupying that space at the intersection of the spiritual and the material that we've got to be actively engaged in the theater of life in being in some ways warriors and whatever it is that we are taking on as our chosen battles, but at the same time, we can do that from a place of divine grace at the very core of our being.
So in these closing moments, can you talk a little bit about what that ethos means to you? What is it that you invite your students to take on in your teachings? How it guides your life in the family as well. Just something to help us all get lit up. It doesn't have to be either or. It doesn't have to be that you just live your life materially, once in a while you go on some retreat somewhere because you really want to do a reboot on your soul, but it's got to be a moment by moment kind of invitation to see every everything in life as being as Guru Nanak would have told us interconnected.
I love the way you said it. I don't even want to add anything myself. It's so well put. I think one way to think about it is, in our life, in our culture, we make a separation between what we think is spiritual and what we think is political. In many ideologies and traditions around the world, that's not how they see the world. I think just to understand that it doesn't have to be that way, and we can live in a way where the spiritual is political, where our love for life and our appreciation for its preciousness can translate into compassion for other people and wanting to help them and to reduce their suffering. I think for so many of us, and this is true in Sikh philosophy as well, the spiritual is political. It has to be political. And if it's not political, then what's the point? If you're not showing up, if it's not inspiring you to show up for other people when they're really hurting, when they're really hungry, when they're really in need, that doesn't really feel like the kind of religion that I want to be a part of. The spiritual is absolutely political.
Yeah. This is beautiful. I'm just reminded of a story that I was very moved to read earlier today. There's been this painfully terrible thing that happened in Bondi Beach in Australia. At the same time, one incredibly positive story in that whole painful episode was about this man who proactively jumped out to actually disarm this gunman and put his own life at risk just to stop some more of that mayhem that was going to happen. His name is Ahmed. Ahmed's father was being interviewed as to how did your son do that? In the middle of all that killing and shooting, how did he have the gall to rise up, run towards that man and hold him by the neck and pull it from him and all that? And his father said, here's what was happening. He saw the bloodshed and what was going on, and his soul just pulled him into doing it. That was it.
Yeah. And some people will hear that and say that's nonsense. Some people will hear that and say, I know exactly what that means, because that's what it means to be spiritual, right? So it's such an interesting division in terms of how people understand this, but I think it's right on. I love that story. I hadn't heard of it. Thank you for sharing it with me.
What a great testament to the invisible power of the soul. To be a force for good. That's great.
As we then get to close this out, I just want to invite you to share a last lesson or thought that you found to be of tremendous importance to the climate of the times we live in to bring out that innate goodness, that somebody like a Guru Nanak would see in any or all of us never to allow us to give up on that. Anything that you found very resonant with your students that you draw from a book or from your life experience and leave as a parting gift for our audience.
Good question. I'm not saying anything surprising by saying, we live in incredibly divided times and it feels like no one likes one another, and there's always someone and something to be upset at. I think in some ways, the idea of Ik Onkar that we talked about earlier, the interconnection of the world, it feels simplistic. It feels like it's too easy. One of the reasons that it feels easy is because we consider it to be superficial, that interconnection means sameness and it doesn't account for difference. I just want to challenge that for a second and say it doesn't have to mean sameness. It can account for all the richness and nuance and complexity of our world. Also, it can be true in representing what it is that binds us together. To me, again, this is a spiritual commitment and a way of looking at the world that can transform how we experience. But it's also a political commitment to recognize that there is a possibility of bringing people together, of finding social cohesion and integration, and even when people don't see that possibility for themselves and don't want to hear it from you, that they're still interconnected with us and there's some work to be done there. I’m just sort of challenging the assumption that that interconnection is too simple for us to benefit from. I think there's a lot we can gain.
Beautiful. And the simple act of Seva in our everyday lives and that idea of first being in a position to give before you seek to receive, could be an everyday practice that could allow a step by step to perhaps grow into a greater awareness of that sacred interconnection that we have from the conversation.
Those are nice touches. Thanks for bringing those back in.
Yeah. So much to learn. This has been a beautiful conversation, Simran. We are all cheering you on in that wonderful project you're working on. I certainly look forward to that TV series when it comes out. Any indication we can give our audience as to the timing of that or where they might look out for it?
Oh. Thank you. We're in final conversations with distributors. So we'll have a home soon. We're expecting it to land this summer. So not far around the corner.
Fantastic. Well, we'll all be keeping the lookout for sure. Thank you so much for joining us today and bringing the sweet spirit of Sikhism to us and also your beautiful life as well.
My pleasure. Great to be with you. Thank you.
.svg)
