Where Dreams Come From

Michael Smolens has been a serial entrepreneur all his life. He says he went with his gut at every stage. The motivation was never money, it was to do things that were never done before. Even when he fell down, he just continued. Now, approaching the fourth quarter of life, he has labeled himself Collector of Puzzle Pieces. Give it a listen.

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Ruth Jeannoel’s mother fled the oppressive Duvalier regime in Haiti and settled in Boston, Massachusetts where Ruth was born. From all accounts, it was hard to be a single mother, without knowing any English and never having had faced the brutal New England winters. Ruth, who learnt Haitian Creole at home and English at School became her mother’s interpreter, as she tried to make her way in the United States. In the absence of money – the church was their sole source of solace and inspiration. In this conversation, Ruth explains her early influences, the discovery of words for the inequalities that surrounded her and, ultimately, as a woman of African ancestry – the deep desire to help others like her.

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Bijayini Satpathy, came of age as a classical Odissi dancer at Nrityagram – a dance village in South India, founded in 1990 by the socialite and danseuse Protima Gauri Bedi.

When Bijayini decided to leave Nrityagram and strike out on her own in 2018, she told Marina Harss of the New York Times that she had a (I quote) “strong urge to push into an untouched and unexplored dimension, before it was too late.” And, even though she felt a “shocking sense of loss” of her hold on dance at the self-imposed severance, she has rebuilt herself. It has been as if she was compelled to undertake a painful path to fully realize her dream. Bijayini Satpathy spoke to me from her home, outside Bangalore and not very far from the Nrityagram campus.

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Imagine you are walking along a road in rural Central India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A place where infrastructure is sparse and people continue to live in poverty, many excluded by circumstance to fully participate in India’s heady economic development. It’s quiet, and then you hear the unmistakable low rumble of a Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike’s 4-stroke engine. Then you see it. It’s blue in color and astride it is a venerable European woman.

My guest, Ulrike Reinhard, grew up in Germany and discovered her gift as a basketball player early. Although her middle-class parents were not really happy about whom she chose to date, they did give her the freedom with sports and education. It seems that this freedom allowed her to live life on her own terms. In 2013, while on a trip to India, Ulrike was inspired to build a skatepark for children in a village in Central India. The thought was, that a skatepark could be instrumental in breaking down barriers of caste, class and gender. Be a positive disruptor in an otherwise stagnant setting. Seven years on, it seems the experiment is thriving to the benefit of the children of Janwaar, Madhya Pradesh and their families. Ulrike Reinhard spoke to me recently from Portugal.

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Almost four decades ago, while still in college in India, I played bass in a rock band. My guest today, Rahul Ram, was the bassist in a rival band. Then we lost touch, until one day, in the early 2000s, the song Bandé by the band Indian Ocean for the Bollywood film Black Friday came bursting into the scene. Rahul Ram was ostensibly the band’s front man. In our conversation, he outlines his various interests and how they got channeled, and defined his music and life. Rahul spoke to me from his home near Naggar, Himachal Pradesh.

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