From Tears to Dog Poop

You might remember either reading about or listening to quite a touching story of 'The Boy Who Cried' over here last week. And while I typed that post out, I had to give you guys a disclaimer and point out that Meenal and I were not stone-cold, heartless bitches for laughing at someone else's misfortune.

Now, when you listen to this episode, you might feel like we don't care about Nishant's tears or as if the story of his misery is borderline hilarious to us. But that is simply because Nishant is a close personal friend of ours and we know that all those tears led to a very happy ending.

Because without context, this particular interview would have been very confusing to you. On the one hand, you would have heard this well-spoken man narrate his story which spans decades, going into the nitty-gritty of the triumphs and failures in his journey, openly addressing especially these failures and how upsetting they were for him. And on the other hand, you would have heard me and my co-host asking him direct, pointed questions with the least effort to sugarcoat facts and later, taking the piss out of his misery.

But this week, as we go into the second part of his story - the more happy, successful part - I feel like I need to put out another disclaimer: It gets worse.

Not the tears or the misery in his narrative but the bit about us taking the piss out of everything he says. There are points in the conversation where Meenal and I just can't help ourselves so we interrupt him to talk to each other about how funny his situation is. I haven't bounced off ideas with Meenal so much in all these months of podcasting. I think we may have even found our true calling as a team.

But the good news is that this time, Nishant also gets on board with the piss-taking and tries to bully us a bit, albeit in a more sophisticated, polite, and British way. Like the occasional, "It's called the art of story-telling, Meenal!" when she jumped the gun as he was narrating an incident and "Try to keep up, Meenal!" when she repeated something he'd just said.

But compare that to Meenal saying, "Okay, clearly he wants to talk about that" followed by a sigh and an eye-roll when he alluded to a very particular incident in his career as a sports journalist.

It's only at the very end that he loosened up enough to say, "You're both Judge Judy(s) and the bloody Executioners too. JESUS! You're Judgy McJudgersons!"

But that's about the extent of what you get to hear. While editing this episode, Shane had to cut out many such instances mostly because he wanted to maintain the flow of the conversation but also because he felt like taking Nishant out to grab a beer.

And the dog poop? You'll have to listen till the end of this episode to find out what our 'boy who cried' had to do with it.

Once again, many thanks to Nishant for bringing both these beautiful episodes to the Desi Outsiders podcast. These have been two of our most popular episodes so far in just one week and we couldn't be more grateful to all of you who've tuned in to listen to Nishant's story.