Lalita du Perron talks to Stanford Life Design Fellow Deepak Ramola in this 2-part episode, about what it means to be a wisdom historian, an artist, and a writer, while we try to figure out why grandmothers are always so wise!

Over the last 15 years, Deepak has worked at the intersection of wisdom and lifelong learning through his organization Project FUEL, collecting life lessons from 195 countries.

187

Lalita du Perron: All right. So the question I posed, and which I'm sure you get a lot and will never stop being annoying.

188

Lalita du Perron: Tell us your three, if not favorite. Whatever. We don't know what's your favorite. We can't look inside your heart, but give us some of the wisdoms that you hold dear.

189

Deepak Ramola: The first one comes from a man I met and interviewed in Varanasi, India.

190

Lalita du Perron: My favorite place.

191

Deepak Ramola: It's gorgeous. Yes, it's so amazing. So in the Hindu mythology, it's believed that if you pass on in Kashi,

192

Deepak Ramola: you attain Moksha or salvation. And so with that belief system, hundreds and thousands of people over hundreds of years, have flocked to the city of Varanasi and taken their last breath. Next to Ganga,

193

Deepak Ramola: and in that pursuit, salvation homes were built as hospices for these people to stay put in their last days. Out of the many that existed, only three are left behind, and out of the three only two are functional. And out of the two,

194

Deepak Ramola: the one that I want to talk about is called Mukti Bhavan. It really just translates to salvation home. I went there to interview people because the fascinating thing about mukti Bhavan is it only gives people two weeks to stay. So if you don't die within two weeks, you have to check out.

195

Deepak Ramola: And I think that's the greatest cosmic humor, right? Like, check out in one way or the other.

196

Deepak Ramola: And what does it mean for people to know what their lessons are in the very final moments of their life with having accepted

197

Deepak Ramola: what that is.

198

Deepak Ramola: As it arrives. So I went there, and the people were fascinating. A lot of them were really unwell. So you know. That was that consideration. But the most fascinating human being Lalita I met was the manager of Mukti Bhavan is a guy named Bharav Nath Shukla.

199

Deepak Ramola: Mr. Shukla. He passed away in 2021, but when I had interviewed him in 2,016 February.

200

Deepak Ramola: he said to me one morning I was asking him, How long have you been a manager of this place? And he said, 44 years.

201

Deepak Ramola: and I knew that by then anybody who passed away had to pass away in his presence. So I said, how many people have passed away since since you? You took on this role? And he said, 12,136.

202

Deepak Ramola: Now, as a researcher, I know that is solid data, you know. That's 12,000 participants. So I asked him. Mr.

203

Deepak Ramola: I said, Shuklaji, what would you say is the biggest lesson you have learned from people, he said. I like you, so I will give you one for every 1,000, and he gave this 12 lessons from the 12,000 deaths he had witnessed.

204

Deepak Ramola: one of those which I love is resolve all conflicts before you go

205

Lalita du Perron: And Miss

206

Deepak Ramola: Shukla said that everybody had someone to say sorry to or someone to accept. Sorry from in their very final moments.

207

Deepak Ramola: Life is that act of finding courage to not make the final moment. The only time when you can summon that courage. So that says, as an anecdote, you know

208

Lalita du Perron: I really appreciate that and I always think when people pass suddenly, it's probably better for them. But it's so hard for the people left behind, and if you get a little bit of a heads up.

209

Lalita du Perron: it's very hard for the people that are moving towards death, knowing that's what they're doing. But I think there's that space, then, for other people to say, sorry for whatever it is, and I've certainly been in that situation myself. A powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Give me another one. That's perhaps not South Asia somewhere else, although I absolutely love my listeners, know how much I love Benares

210

Lalita du Perron: so. I love that you went there, and Deepak did not know that about me. So this was just by chance

211

Deepak Ramola: Yes. Oh, wow! I'm choosing between my grandmother and kids in Tanzania. Okay, let me do, Tanzania. There's a community called the Iraqu Tribe in Tanzania and the Iraqus trace their origin to Iraq, and that's where the name comes from. And I was working with the children of the Iraqi community, and they have a beautiful ritual where, when a child is born, a newborn.

212

Deepak Ramola: they invite all neighborhood children and throw them a party. All these little kids, you know, drinking soda and having fun dishes. At the end of the party the kids from the neighborhood name the child

213

Lalita du Perron: Oh!

214

Deepak Ramola: And so the responsibility is bestowed upon these young children to be able to give an identity and a name to the child, because the Iraqi belief that the child will grow up in the presence of these children in the playground at school. They're going to be calling each other. So, whatever the vibe of the child

215

Deepak Ramola: and the fun at the party the children gather, they use that sense to cultivate that naming ceremony for the child. What I like most about it is that it puts agency in the hands of children, and it honors the wisdom of children

216

Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

217

Deepak Ramola: Almost a rare thing in the world we think age is a factor of.

218

Deepak Ramola: I mean, wisdom is a factor of age which isn't true wisdom is a factor of experience, and with more age. It isn't guaranteed that you will be more wise. Science has proven that. And so I love that anecdote, because the wisdom of children needs a whole fan. Base

219

Lalita du Perron: Yes.

220

Lalita du Perron: That's a great story. Okay, we're going to

221

Lalita du Perron: Come back to your grandmother. She's in my notes.

222

Lalita du Perron: Tell us about. Let's talk about poetry. So you are a poet. Many, many people are poets. You are published poets. That's a much smaller group, and you write in Hindi. You are

223

Lalita du Perron: bilingual, trilingual. How do you identify in terms of language

224

Deepak Ramola: Oh, I mean, I think I would say trilingual, because I speak English, Hindi and Gurdwali, which is the language of Uttarakhand and the mountains where I come from. You know there are a bunch of other dialects, but

225

Deepak Ramola: Gurvali is the language. I grew up speaking so, and then I mean because I write poetry. So you know you borrow from different languages Bojpuri and Methali, and Punjabi, and all of those but those 3 are my primary language, of thinking and writing.

226

Lalita du Perron: And I haven't read your Hindi poetry yet. I'm excited to read it, and you say that you bring in different dialects, but it's primarily. I mean, it's Hindi with additions from other places.

227

Lalita du Perron: Why not English or Gardwali? Then I'm sorry. These are very kind of essentializing questions, but I am obsessed with language. And I'm kind of obsessed with these kind of decisions, although I understand that I'm putting a logic onto decisions that may have come much more from the heart

228

Deepak Ramola: I I was going to say that. So thank you for for prefacing, prefacing my answer with your with your perspective, because that is what it is. I don't see it in binary

229

Lalita du Perron: Yeah, yeah.

230

Deepak Ramola: I see a thought arrive.

231

Deepak Ramola: and I say, what's the best tool I have to chisel this thought, and most of the time when it comes to writing poetry, I think, in Hindi I can credit

232

Deepak Ramola: the beautiful poets I read in school. I credit my school Hindi teacher, Mrs. Shrandha Bakshi, for instilling that love in me. I credit, you know, every every person who came home for dinner, and spoke Hindi in North India. All of those factors I think

233

Deepak Ramola: there is.

234

Deepak Ramola: Language is a bouquet.

235

Deepak Ramola: and we often use it as barbed wires right in literary circles, in cultural seminars. I see this fetish of making languages almost static and stubborn.

236

Deepak Ramola: Where it is not. It's a bouquet, and sometimes, you know, in my Hindi poetry I would use an English word, because that's the word I want to use, and I use it, and sometimes I borrow from Godvali. I recently just wrote a song in Godvali. But when I think about poetry.

237

Deepak Ramola: Hindi has music.

238

Deepak Ramola: you know just this. The words themselves have a sound which is like music, which is music, not even like music, and I like that, so that when I go out to perform I'm singing, as I'm saying, my pieces.

239

Deepak Ramola: and there's something about that which makes me truly truly gratified

240

Lalita du Perron: When you say perform, you mean, recite your poetry.

241

Deepak Ramola: Yes, yes.

242

Lalita du Perron: Do you write? Do you write it like? Do you sing it while you write it? Is it written in such a way that it is to be performed? Or does it work on the page

243

Deepak Ramola: So it works mostly on the page when it gets written. But I do a lot of spoken word performances and open mics just to cultivate the love for Hindi in Young People. A lot of my friends. When my books come out they're like, is there a translation available? I'm like that is the whole point. You read it in Hindi, you know. So yeah, losing a lot of friends by writing a lot of Hindi books. How about that?

244

Lalita du Perron: Has been on this incredible journey. And and that's a whole. Maybe we'll have a separate podcast talking about that. But I feel that's very specialized.

245

Lalita du Perron: yeah, I mean God, where to start? I mean, recently, I feel that it's

246

Lalita du Perron: in its Sanskrit in its Sanskritized form. It's a political tool. And so I for me.

247

Lalita du Perron: The language itself hasn't lost its beauty, but it's for me. It might have been slightly tainted by association. Do you feel that you. Do you get asked? You know why, Hindi, are you aligning yourself with something by doing that

248

Deepak Ramola: That question, and the naivety of that question by people who ask that, I think, is.

249

Deepak Ramola: is very colored by the circumstances they find themselves in. And so I respect that I don't find myself in that circumstance sadly. It's it's

250

Deepak Ramola: yeah for me, it is. It's it's not the

251

Deepak Ramola: political, you know character of it. It is the human element of it. It's like, is it saying what it needs to say? Do I have the vocabulary and the intention for what it is to say. I can add all these complex layers of, you know. Should the Hindi, this Puritan form of doing it, or like this, you know, bastardized version, as they say in literary circles.

252

Deepak Ramola: but one has to ask oneself when a thought arrives like a guest, cup is coming home.

253

Deepak Ramola: What do you say? Do you say? Let me cook what the last guest liked? Or do you say, what does this guest like? Do they have any allergies? Can I make something? And it is that a thought is a guest, and then use the language, not with the rationalization of

254

Deepak Ramola: oh, you know like should I please that that leader who only ate in silverware, and never really in these, you know, plastic plates, or whatever ceramic bowls you do justice to it with what it needs. And I think when I'm sitting down to write.

255

Deepak Ramola: I take off the cloaks.

256

Deepak Ramola: political, social pressures of me, so that I am as naked with the idea and the thought. I want to say as it is.

257

Deepak Ramola: and and there is a whole

258

Deepak Ramola: wing and beautiful history of people who write political poetry right?

259

Deepak Ramola: I think they probably start from a very different place, but maybe not because they're also trying to be as naked and as honest about the thought they're presenting. So

260

Lalita du Perron: I'm already. I'm already. I haven't read your poetry, but I'm already writing an article in my head comparing you to Kabir, so we'll see where that goes.

261

Deepak Ramola: You know Kabir said something so magnificent. Kabir said, sabvanto tulsibhay sub parvat shali gram

262

Deepak Ramola: Sabnadian, Gangabhai Jabjana Atamram

263

Deepak Ramola: And I think that is, that is the essence of true poetry. When you are trying to understand yourself.

264

Deepak Ramola: you try to go to that place of inner quiet that we discussed in the part one of this podcast and you're trying to really understand yourself. And I think in understanding yourself, you have to go to a place where you're not suiting whoever won the polls this season

265

Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

266

Deepak Ramola: Going further back. You're going to that human fabric

267

Lalita du Perron: Which is what the poem says, right for those of in the audience who don't speak Hindi or necessarily understand Kabir is Hindi, like everything is a spiritual place, if you're at one with your soul. Would that be a good way of describing it?

268

Deepak Ramola: Like all forests in the world, have become Tulsi. All rivers become the holy river Ganges, all mountains become Shali Gram, for those who try to understand themselves who understand the RAM, the god of the spiritual element within themselves. Yeah.

269

Lalita du Perron: Beautiful. In addition to writing poetry, you write Hindi film songs, I mean, that's when you told me that I'm like, Okay, I did not have that on my debug Bingo card. Like, I feel that we're in the space of spirituality, wisdom. People that love Hindi film songs are now yelling like, okay, why? Why is this? There's a linearity here that I perhaps did not see. So yeah, where does do film songs? You see that as just more of

270

Lalita du Perron: the same? Or is that a completely different part of you

271

Deepak Ramola: It's a different tool in the toolkit, but it's trying to say the same thing

272

Lalita du Perron: Awesome.

273

Deepak Ramola: When people see my work and my resume, I almost either come across as a very talented person or somebody who's having a career crisis and is

274

Lalita du Perron: Yeah, let's talk about the jack of all trades, because the crisis fits into that. I mean, you are somebody who's good at lots of different things, and that is often considered not a good thing like it's people don't trust it like exactly that. Oh, it must be having a career crisis

275

Deepak Ramola: A schoolteacher of mine in school said to me, because I was in the debating society. I was, you know, good at academics. I was in the Poetry Club and the Dance Club and the Singing Club, and he came to me

276

Deepak Ramola: one time as I was leaving for a painting competition, he said. You're going to end up being a horoscope reader under a clock tower in a small city. That's your future.

277

Deepak Ramola: And I remember, you know, feeling this, this jolt of judgment.

278

Deepak Ramola: From him, and I thought to myself, But why is that bad

279

Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

280

Deepak Ramola: To be a Jack of all trades, and I, you know, almost without saying it verbally I said it in my head. You know what I want to be, Jack. So so what?

281

Deepak Ramola: And many years later, Lolita, I discovered that the full saying, You know we are taught Jack of all trades, master of none. Do you know it's the incomplete truth. The full proverb was originally Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than being a master of just one.

282

Lalita du Perron: Oh, that's oh, wow!

283

Deepak Ramola: It was meant to be a compliment

284

Lalita du Perron: The whole thing

285

Deepak Ramola: And so when I discovered that I thought, That is it. I really want people to feel this is one life you have to commit to everything you want to learn. I've acted in television. I've acted in films. I've acted in theater, I write songs, I write books

286

Deepak Ramola: many times. I don't do them all at the same time. You know, I may choose to do 2 films a year if I'm working on a book, or if I'm teaching classes and coursework and grading. I might take 3 years to write the book, but I will give myself the buffer to do that. The reason, I said in the beginning, it's toolkit is because

287

Deepak Ramola: when you have an experience and a story like a craft man, you go to your toolbox and you say, does this need the you know the the small hammer? Or does this need the big hammer.

288

Deepak Ramola: and the wider and abundant your toolbox? The more justice you can do when I listen to someone's story, say Lalita's story. Sitting in the mountains of India

289

Deepak Ramola: or here at Stanford, I may ask myself if I'm an educator. The only way I can teach that is in a school curriculum. How do I teach it in a school curriculum? But if you are a poet, a lyrics writer, an educator, a wisdom historian. The room opens up, and you say, I just heard Lalita's story. Should I make a film on this? Should I capture it in a poem. Is this a great song? Is it something that I can teach as part of my curriculum next quarter?

290

Deepak Ramola: It's really just the toolbox. But what you're really trying to serve is the essence of what you experienced. And so to me, it's the same story. Yeah, different different brushes

291

Lalita du Perron: So it's actually one big trade, after all. Yes, rather than being a variety of trades. At Stanford. You are a life design fellow! Did I say that correctly.

292

Deepak Ramola: That's correct.

293

Lalita du Perron: What school is that in? And what does it mean?

294

Deepak Ramola: It's part of the mechanical engineering department

295

Lalita du Perron: Oh, I see I did not see that coming. I you know, design d school, you know, slightly more oozy, woozy part of campus. You are actually at the heart of what Stanford does. You're in

296

Deepak Ramola: Okay.

297

Deepak Ramola: engineering department has a design group. And this is part of life design. So I'm part of the life design lab, which is an amazing, amazing space within Stanford. It asks the question, how do we use design thinking to solve the wicked problems of life and create hopeful and tangible futures for people, which is in simple words to say, how do we help people design their lives?

298

Deepak Ramola: Not just their careers, not just their resumes, not just their competitive power play in the world and and positionality. But how do we help people design their lives? And I'm so fortunate that I get to do this work, because.

299

Deepak Ramola: you know, there aren't many jobs for a wisdom historian other than their own space. So to find other cheerleaders and colleagues who believe in the same thing. We have a bunch of courses on campus. We have designing your life for undergrads. We have designing the professional life. This coming April quarter of 2025. We're going to be

300

Deepak Ramola: creating a course called designing your spiritual life. So there's a buffet of beautiful experiences that people can leverage. Yeah.

301

Lalita du Perron: So.

302

Lalita du Perron: Okay.

303

Lalita du Perron: I come from from. You know I grew up in, as everybody knows. I grew up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in, you know, kind of a very white middle class environment. Science was the essence of everything. You can't see it. It doesn't exist, etc, etc, that never sat well with me. I end up in India. I you know I do all the stuff that white women do in India, and but I also end up with a Phd. In South Asian studies

304

Lalita du Perron: very different ways of looking at life, and one could say that designing one's life centers oneself as an individual that works very well in certain cultures, but not so well in others. So what what are your views around that, I mean, how do you take the kind of ethnocentric out of this idea that you should design your own life rather than hand it over to your elders.

305

Deepak Ramola: Yeah, that's a that's a brilliant question.

306

Deepak Ramola: Even when you don't consciously design your life, you are designing your life.

307

Deepak Ramola: then you just submit to it right when you this. The idea is when you don't take a decision, you are taking a decision.

308

Deepak Ramola: Yeah. So when you don't make a choice. You are making a choice, and it is that duality that is so interlinked into that designing your life.

309

Deepak Ramola: Which ties in to the idea of?

310

Deepak Ramola: Are you creating space

311

Deepak Ramola: for what you want? The idea we sort of touched on. And yeah, one conversation designing your life does not mean, what can I take. It also means, what can I give

312

Lalita du Perron: And create

313

Deepak Ramola: A balance for that, because when you are operating from a condition, from a limited, narrow, focused approach, you often forget that you're part of a collective, and life is ever evolving. So the design that your parents may be handed out to you

314

Deepak Ramola: is not going to to suffice. Now

315

Deepak Ramola: you will have to evolve it to meet the needs of your circumstance.

316

Deepak Ramola: I am so far away, you know, when I'm teaching at Stanford, or I'm teaching at Mit, or I come to do a grad school at Harvard. I'm so far away from what my parents could possibly forget. Parents, what my entire community could possibly conceive the morning I got into Harvard Lolita. This is a funny story.

317

Deepak Ramola: I woke up with the email because of the time zone difference. I woke up with the email of getting through. Howard and my sister, who was visiting, saw it, and she had an emotional reaction. She was crying. My mother ran inside and asked my sister, why are you crying? And my sister said, Deepa got Harvard, and my mother said, Is it curable.

318

Deepak Ramola: you know, and it's it's so legit because a woman who never studied beyond 5th grade does not understand the you know the importance of the whatever the the spotlight of these institutions, even Stanford, my mother has such a tough time saying the word, Stanford, because just it's

319

Deepak Ramola: it's in many languages. There's actually a beautiful t-shirt that goes around in which it's spelled out. It's created by Latin American studies. It's spelled out the way that it would be said by maybe a Latina grammar Istan, for

320

Deepak Ramola: exactly exactly so. My mother has a whole different diction for for how to pronounce this.

321

Deepak Ramola: but but the idea of designing your life

322

Deepak Ramola: is very much about accounting for a future that you want to create and contribute to

323

Deepak Ramola: and anywhere in the world we are. We are wanting that whether you are a young bride just married at 22, in a small village.

324

Deepak Ramola: wanting to build that life with your husband and your in-laws. Whether you are a scientist in a lab at Mit, whether you are a child in Bulgaria or a refugee in Syria or Bangladesh. What you're really doing through that cultivation and the employment of hope

325

Deepak Ramola: and resources and skill building is designing the life. What we do ask at the Stanford life design lab. Is this designer approach? It's like, can you prototype, you know a lot of times you say I want that life. I want to be an Airbnb founder. Everybody I meet almost everybody

326

Deepak Ramola: everybody I meet wants to have a cafe. Let me say my generation is like fascinated with with romanticization of I want to have a cafe. Most people

327

Lalita du Perron: Also want to have a cafe. Does that mean I'm young or no.

328

Lalita du Perron: we're the same. We're the same emotional, clearly, clearly

329

Deepak Ramola: We're doing fine. And then at the lab, we encourage people to prototype it. It's like, what would it look like to actually do this a lot of times. Students go out

330

Deepak Ramola: either volunteer, intern or speak to a cafe owner and realize

331

Deepak Ramola: I hate lifting dirty dishes. I don't like math. I don't like space management and come back after 2 weeks and say, that's a career I thought I wanted. Now I don't want it, so I'm going to go be whatever right my climate scientist self.

332

Deepak Ramola: it is that idea of prototyping, of deploying

333

Deepak Ramola: your means and your mechanisms to to get data on what you want. It's not. It's not a philosophical, ideological, you know. Sit back and think. It is a very action oriented stuff to prototyping what you want in life. It's using the designer's mindset and the scientist's inquiry to create the life you want, which I think is universal. The lab has

334

Deepak Ramola: a collaborated and contributed 577 other schools and universities across the world. So

335

Deepak Ramola: that says something about cultural customization to your ethnocentric. You know, duality question

336

Lalita du Perron: Thank you so much. I mean, this is this is the start of our conversation, but it's been so rich that we had to put it in 2 episodes, right? The end of episode 2. But I think it behooves us to end where we started, and that is with your grandmother. So please tell me and my listening community

337

Lalita du Perron: your favorite, or maybe the one that you carry with you most right now, because I'm sure it moves as you move as some words of your grandmother's wisdom

338

Deepak Ramola: I am so grateful. You asked to wrap it up with my grandmother's wisdom. That's where everything starts. There's a proverb, there's a Godwali proverb that I learned from her which is so relevant to the times we find ourselves in in the whole conflict of every kind.

339

Deepak Ramola: The proverb in Gadwali is

340

Deepak Ramola: Japani, Kadhara Aglagdi to Bujoni Kina, which translates to when water catches fire, what will you douse it down with

341

Deepak Ramola: And I want to leave everybody listening with that question is, when the solution becomes the problem, then how do you solve for it? And I think the times we are in.

342

Deepak Ramola: we see that, and whatever you understand of that times in your own lived reality.

343

Deepak Ramola: I hope I hope we can pause to consider. When did the solution become the problem? And now, how do we solve it?

344

Lalita du Perron: Wow! That is so powerful. You've also ruined my day because I'm gonna spend the rest of the day thinking about that

345

Deepak Ramola: Well, that's that's what wisdom historians do unruffle, you know, unruffle the ruffled

346

Lalita du Perron: Yes, yes, and and help us unlearn

347

Lalita du Perron: Audience. We're going to link to many of the websites that Deepak mentioned in the show notes. But you can also just go to deepakramola.com, or put in a Google project fuel. And you'll find out everything. It was such a pleasure to talk to you, and I look forward to reading some of your books, and to maybe continuing this conversation at a later stage

348

Deepak Ramola: I'm very grateful, Lalita. Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for creating a space where we can share these stories. So thank you.

350

Lalita du Perron: As always many thanks to Nilofar Saraj for post-production and editing the podcast and the music for the Intro and the Outro of this episode was by Rishabrikiram Sharma Sitar for Mental health, and the piece is called Roslyn.