When a City Gives
Calcutta, when generous
When Meghdut Roy Chowdhury - the maverick and irrepressible entrepreneur, who is also a podcaster, musician, philanthropist - reached out to do an episode on Make Calcutta Relevant Again on the work I do in the social sector, through SVP, I, of course, agreed.
I thought it would be a nice turn to be on the other side of an interview!
So, one early morning, a couple of months back, I trooped into the studio in the Techno India University campus, and was unfussily got readied, sans (thank god) lipstick or face powder. Meghdut came in, and I was surprised to see no paper with questions charted out. And, as I subsequently learnt, he never does prepare formally.
Meghdutt gets to know the person and then carries the interview as a chat. And that is what it turned out to be. Fun, easygoing but incisive - beautifully held together with the charm and elan which Meghdutt brought to the talk.
The podcast was released a few days back. And I must confess, I did not expect the kind of unprecedented response that it did get!!
Make Calcutta Relevant Again is, as I discovered, an immensely popular video podcast with lacs of followers. And the traction the interview got, hyped through the rigorously edited reels created from excerpts of the interview, gobsmacked me. I was in a bit of a daze, unused as I am to all this.
But what really pleased me was that an interview on the social sector got so much attention. The non-profits I work with got mentioned and their work spoken of.
This was both gratifying - and so much fun.
Psst - and I got to recite a poem on Calcutta in the end!!
Here’s the interview. Maybe, spend some time on it?
And - if you want to FIRST hear the poem on Calcutta, then here goes -
If your interest is piqued, about SVP and the social sector, do read these -
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