Parul Wadhwa comes from humble beginnings in India and found herself on the West Coast in California due to her curiosity of technology. With just a few hundred dollars in her pocket, she had to reinvent herself. Today, she’s a creator of incredible VR stories.
TAMAR: Hi everybody. I am starting to count the episode numbers because we are in the 20 something. We are Episode 26 today. I have and I’m just making sure. Yep, we have Episode 26. Yay. Today I have Parul Wadhwa, she is going to share her story and I am completely coming from this blind slate as usual. So, thank you so much for joining and tell me a little bit about yourself where you are right now.
00:46
PARUL WADHWA: Hi, Tamar. I am in the San Francisco Bay area right now. And thank you for inviting me to your podcast.
00:55
TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. I guess it’s a little early for you. This dynamic makes it like nine o’clock podcast. I wouldn’t be in trouble, but kids have class tickets. Oh, school? Yeah, yeah. So, tell me what do you do? What’s your life like, these days?
01:17
PARUL WADHWA: It’s pretty interesting. Actually, I thought everything is going to be upside down, which is in many ways because of COVID. And the protests going around. And interestingly, my life has kind of pivoted in one area because of this whole crisis, because I am an immersive storyteller who works with virtual reality. And everything is gone virtual suddenly for the last couple of months or weeks, if I may say. And so, I’m at a very interesting point in my life right now.
01:53
TAMAR: Oh, yeah, in Korea, it’s crazy is an understatement, I guess. It’s funny because my particular story, I had an early quarantine early March. March 3, for me. The rest of the country shut down about two weeks, three weeks later. And I’m trying to normalize these podcasts because I think we are slightly reopening. I have had people in the San Francisco, San Jose area who have spoken to and they’re like, I’m going to be careful. But business is kind of going on as usual. The dynamic, I think becomes ultimately what people internalize is their experience in the heart with respect to the virus. And I feel that it’s very different for everybody. So, it’s funny. So, yeah, tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are? And how’s your trajectory. I know you had a little bit of an interesting trajectory, you’re about to tell me before we started the podcast, but I told you, I want to hear it here. So, tell me a little bit about that?
02:58
PARUL WADHWA: Well, yeah, it’s been very interesting. As I say, life is a journey and take one step at a time. And I tend to be a person who looks at the whole mountain. So, it was definitely daunting, interesting and challenging. I currently work in the technology sector in Silicon Valley, but had no plan to be here. And to be honest, when I look back, I have no idea how I got here, too. I actually grew up in India. And I had no plans whatsoever to emigrate to United States. And one thing just led to the other, and majority got me here. And then I started working in the tech industry. So just to give you a little bit of background, I come from a very humble family in India, and I was very happy go lucky and going about my life. And I actually wanted to nothing to do with what I’m doing currently, which is that very passionate about making films and being part of the whole media scape. And when I was in India, in my teens, wanted to just take that path forward and bright, one of my first few things that I did. After I graduated from college, I started working for Bollywood just to realize what my dreams were like. And I suddenly felt that yes, of course, I have this passion for film and media, but that’s not really running around trees and making stories and seeing all those things is not my cup of tea. And one thing led to the other. I was so attracted to technology. I was always very curious how things worked. So more than actually choreographing a song or just trying to figure out how that whole process worked. I was more interested in figuring out what’s happening with this film reel when it gets processed? Or, how, where does it go in the camera or all the technical aspects of it, and that got me intrigued, and I won a scholarship from the Korean film Council. And they actually got me into the technical department and I flew from India for the very first time. And I moved to Asia, where I lived for a couple of years. And I learned a lot about the technique behind film and storytelling and things like that. I’m sure in the podcast as well, we were getting into this right before. There’s so much that goes into it in terms of creative stuff. But also, it’s more about modern technology, everything that you see today is more about media and technology. And technology is not just one thing. Because while you have to master the form that you’re using, but at the same time, the technique and how that came about is also part of the whole process. And that’s when I started learning about all this stuff. I had a great time there.
06:21
PARUL WADHWA: And again, had no idea that I would completely move into technology. And slowly and gradually, that started happening to me, and even at that point, I had no idea that my path is going to take me to the United States at some point. And I was working on calibrating a bunch of things, which just to explain to our audience, what it is, is when you see a film on your screens, the way it’s shot is very different from the way it looks on the screen. So, the feel of the firm is decided by the director and the tactical team. And they work many hours and days and months on the look of the film. And so that is called calibrating where you could have shot it in very dim circumstances or with very poor lighting, but you can fix that or change the complete look of the film. So, for example, if I shot it in, let’s say, yellow tones, I can completely change the whole film to red tones, because that’s my intent, or that’s the emotion I want to convey . So, I started learning all those things that I got, an opportunity to work with a London- based studio, who wanted to hire me, in doing the same stuff, and I reached London and I think at that point of time, I started thinking going back to who I used to be, of always wanting to make films, but at the same time I’m learning all these techniques and the technical side of things. There has to be some connection between who I am or what I intend to be. Because, by that time, I traveled a lot in Asia and Europe, and I was based in London, and I started thinking who I was, and then, an artist’s residency came about, and I applied for it. And that was actually New York City. And that’s how I was, by the first time that I landed in United States about eight years ago maybe, and with very little money in my pocket, probably I barely had, $1,000 at that point of time. So, just with this whole thing that I wanted to discover who I was, as an artist, I’d never done anything before that, which was making anything of my own or calling myself an artist. And I just had these bunch of skills which were very tech based. And I just came with them to New York City. From there, things just picked up. And it was complete unraveling of my own identity of who I was, as an artist, what I wanted to see as an artist, why an artist. Of course, I today work with art and technology in the technology sector in Silicon Valley. But I make very immersive experiences, which are so based around stories of home longing, belonging, and that is such a huge part of who I am. Because of my journey, I think.
09:33
TAMAR: Awesome. Well, it sounds like you’re very well-traveled now. So that’s a good thing. That’s amazing. Yeah, I want to kind of see the stuff that you do because it’s hard to envision all this art and stuff that you’re creating, but I’m sure it’s absolutely beautiful. I’m going to request some links for the listeners to see or I don’t know what they are, I don’t really know. But I would love to experience the art that you’ve brought to the world and the storytelling that you’ve been able to bring. So, hopefully that is a valid question. And then yeah, in terms of your appending, your identity, it must be difficult. It’s hard especially because you didn’t have the expectation that you would ever be on the other side of the world. And you probably still have a lot of family there. So how often are you traveling? What does that look like? And I mean, Now, given our circumstances, has that affected your life in any way in the sense that you haven’t been able to see family and you had plans or nothing really? Or what’s that dynamic? Like with? Your fear?
10:38
PARUL WADHWA: Yes, the world. Honestly, just a few weeks ago, I went to judge a competition here in Silicon Valley with a lot of students and one of the students volunteered, having got to know about my story. They introduced me as a true globalist, and I was really taken aback because I personally had never used that word for myself. And I also feel like the word globalist has this feeling of conquering everything. And I never used that for myself, and I felt it was a sense of achievement, but it was also very uncomfortable. And coming back to your question, I always feel that I don’t belong to one place because I’ve been to so many places at the same time in my life and it has been a complete adventure. So, the two things that happened out of that is that I don’t really feel at home anywhere. At the same time, I feel I am always hankering to sort of settle down in that one place which my life never allows me. So, it’s interesting because that kind of stuff is very visible in my work as an artist if I may call myself because for the last couple of years, I’ve been practicing my art and immersive storytelling, and that’s intriguing. And going back to the whole question of how COVID has completely ripped apart my life because I have a lot of family back in India at the same time I have adopted a lot of family or mean, friends and family who become more important to me than the family I have left behind many years ago. And they’re all over the world. Sometimes when I have to introduce my closest friends, they’re like in another part of the world or definitely in another city. And that’s interesting because I’ve spent so much of my time and closest emotions with them, but yet at the same time, they’re not in the same space. And COVID kind of questions those things for me very closely. Of course, physically, it’s put barriers for me to travel and for other people to travel to me. So, that definitely happened. And I haven’t been able to travel at all, and I’m even scared what does my life look like in the next year when I won’t be able to travel often, and it’s making me very uncomfortable. But yet at the same time, the very fact that I’ve always been a person who has had family and friends all over the world, in that sense, everything is just a mostly bit virtual for me, including the technologies I use to do immersive storytelling, which is mostly virtual and augmented reality. And suddenly the world is a sci-fi world. So, I don’t very much at last explain what I do or who I am because everyone’s sort of grappling with that identity which I sort of have been living for some time now.
13:55
TAMAR: Well, it’s funny that you say that as somebody who’s like you use the phrase globalist and you’re traveling a lot and you can’t really find your place at home. I don’t travel very often at all. I think the last time I went on a plane was September. I did go September 2019. I went to my parents’ house, that house I grew up in. Previous to that it was like 2018. I travel once a year now and I used to travel maybe twice or three times or four times a year, which isn’t that much either. But when I had started having kids, they’re all over the age of two. So, I don’t have any with babies, that would be six different flight plane tickets and not really financially conducive right now. But it’s funny that you say that as somebody who’s traveling you don’t find a place at home. The moment that this pandemic started, I started to struggle a little bit myself in terms of how I felt as a resident of my community. The backstory for me for your purposes, hopefully other people have heard this before, but I live in the first city suburb that had community spread. We had an actually documented case of community spread, which meant that we had a patient zero and I was connected to patient zero in my community. And that basically was the domino effect that shut down the entire country. I think people didn’t realize that it was a lot worse than it was, but they shut us down first, and then everybody shut down, as I mentioned, two to three weeks later. And I struggled socially in my community, it was very difficult for me to kind of relate to people in my community. But then, when this happened, I worked from home, I thrived working remotely, and because of that, I was able to pick it up very easily. And I became I would say you would call vigilante, or Good Samaritan. I don’t know what it is but I’ve put like 500 hours of work into feeding my community and doing things for my community, writing stories about it to make people feel better, coordinating charity initiatives and the like. And it’s so weird for me, and I think part of the reason why I do that is because I don’t necessarily feel like I live here yet. And I have to do this to cement my reasons for being there. It’s sort of like, a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome, but they talk about imposter syndrome in this context of I don’t feel like I’m able to perform at work. But what if you have this imposter syndrome that I don’t feel like I belong in this community. Then all of a sudden, that becomes so much more depending of your identity in a place or this is sort of why I’m distracting myself by saying, oh, yeah, I’m here and I kind of belong here. It’s very weird, but it hit me like, in the last couple days, I was like, why am I doing this? I mean, yeah, I want to do it to be a good person. And I thrive on doing it, I actually love it. I’m dealing with every single day, there’s like two to three hours of customer service complaints. Just this morning, I did a food pellet delivery. We partnered up with farms that had excess surplus of food, and giving it to members of community. And this morning, I had 16 pallets of produce that went to multiple homes. Oh, my buddy, yeah, it’s great. But everybody’s telling me oh, I have that on hand. So, I have my cucumbers, oh, I have fed this and peaches and melons. And, and I’m seeing pictures of these melons that are like rotten, and I have like someone just sent me one literally four minutes ago. And I’m like, ooh, I don’t want to see this. But this is my new life, apparently. And I think the reason why I’m doing this is because I want to feel like, hey, I live here. And it ties back down to that identity. So, you see it in a different way. But I see it as I actually been living this house for almost eight years now. And I don’t necessarily feel like I’m part of the community, like this is how I make myself making it work. But it’s still I feel like I’m this. I’m this outlier among the cusp of on the side, what’s the sidelines and not really part of it. I think I’ve changed that dynamic for how other people look at me, but I don’t always feel that way. So, just a perspective that I I’ve been entertaining internally.
18:26
PARUL WADHWA: Wow, that’s interesting. That’s very interesting. Most of the time, it’s the opposite for people. And when you back trace your steps, it actually leads to who you are. It’s pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing, and I love the work that you’re doing for the community as well. It’s so much needed for the hour.
18:48
TAMAR: Yeah, it was just something that’s kind of weird. I don’t feel that’s something that would normally be my thing. But it came very naturally to me. Like I knew a guy who knew a guy and I started reaching out to restaurants because I wanted to try food. That was another thing I wanted. To try all these meals because I don’t like going out, I don’t like leaving my kids. I don’t like date night. So, if you can’t go to the restaurants bring the restaurants to you. So, I do that as well. Last night we did okay, but then some guy shows up after everybody leaves and he’s like, I’m looking for my food. I’m like your food is not here. The guy expected the food guy, the delivery guy was expected at 5pm. He didn’t come until 7:15. So, I have to deal with like this caravan of cars in my driveway which I had to get clearance from the local cops in order to get access to social, ultimately have this perception of social gathering. So, there’s no shortage of drama in this. I’m sufficiently being distracted with that and then launching a brand because there’s so much fear involved in launching a business like this. This keeps me distracted from that fear, although it doesn’t lead, it doesn’t have me less focused, it just takes me away from the fear. So, I always say, if anybody’s afraid to do something, get distracted, just keep focused, keep yourself focused on your goal, but get sufficiently distracted, and your fear won’t overcome you as much. You won’t be able to spend time to dwell on it. So, moving on, let’s talk about you for a little bit. I know your story, I assume it has a little bit to do with moving, picking up and coming to the other side of the world. Maybe that is, but what would you consider to be your rising above the ashes story, you’re overcoming your adversity? Was there? Is there a different story to that? What does that look like for you?
20:46
PARUL WADHWA: I would say that it was really hard for me because if you think about it, and you might have come across this in India, because of the kind of place that I came from, usually you won’t see women going very far with their goals or ambitions, or they are nurtured to think in a way that they could have goals or ambitions or a career, so to speak. And I pretty much grew up that as well, and I just never thought that that was assigned to me existed, or there was something that was part of my identity, or I needed to find myself mostly I was growing up. And everything around me was so patriarchal and women have to perform in a certain way, according to the standards of society. The ultimate goal for an Indian woman is just to get married and raise children. And that is true for most of India even today, and we have a huge amount of problems with domestic violence, gender violence, as well. And there is a huge rape crisis that exists that the government is constantly fighting. And so, within those parameters, I never thought that it would be a very natural progression for me because I wasn’t even studying the things that could take me to economic progress in that sense, or to help me find who, what my identity was what I wanted to do. So, it was a very confusing path for me. And for the most part, it wasn’t very linear. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do or who I was. And like I said, it was very gradual. And when I put all these dots together, I realized that I always had this penchant to tell stories, but at the same time, all the things that I cared about, for example, I’m very empathetic being and the very fact that I chose a technology, which is so far and so futuristic, like VR, has nothing to do with how I grew up and where I grew up, which was very simple. And you can’t talk about a futuristic technology even today. It’s just a 180 turn for me to even think that sort of thing exists when I don’t have family, they’re in India, and I explained to them what I do, it’s hard for them to visualize it, because 23:49 Silicon Valley’s completely a different world altogether, where everything futuristic is happening. They have not seen it, they haven’t had any grip or any encounter, or any chance to have an experience of something like that where life is all centered around very small, little things. And going back to my past, I would say, I really appreciate that. I am so much of an aspiring entrepreneur as well. And I often think how can I use this technology for working with other people or creating something which is more useful than just what I create for myself or for a family, say for very selfish reasons that it is purely for entertainment or for reflection. It’s not really something which is creating a change or ripple effect in the world. And I would love to see that happen at some point of time. So, I engage in very entrepreneurial things and I think I am so much of that in spirit, given the kind of decisions I’ve made in my life. Coming from where I am, to where I am now, it’s like here I have to take responsibility. And there’s this very strong sense of a feminist identity in a way. Or if I may say, for lack of a better word, because I don’t know what that meant, when I was back in India, because there was no opportunity to even express yourself as a woman. I forget about finding ourselves or what our identity was, and that was interesting, a journey to just find that person within you who is more than a woman or daughter, or what society expects her to be. And then just emerge from there to say, I am more than all of these things, and I’m this person who believes in all these things, and this is what my longing in life for is, or this is what I live for, or this is what I’m striving for, or looking for in that sense. So, there was no opportunity to do that. And oftentimes one of the things that I’ve always wanted to do and I do at various different levels is that I mentor a lot of young women. Let’s say with the Cherie Blair foundation in London, Geneva, worked with for some time when I was in London, and I continue working with them because their goals are very similar to mine. They reach out to women entrepreneurs or anyone who’s aspiring to create something in the developing world and reach out to especially women, and encourage them to achieve their goals in very small steps. And I mentor with them. And that is something very exciting for me. In the same way, I work with this company called Technovation, which is all about technical innovations. And they focus on reaching out to girls from high schools all over the world and not just in the United States. So, it’s interesting that I get to mentor high school girls from Cupertino, which is in Silicon Valley. At the same time, I get to see this brilliant app that a group of girls in Afghanistan have made, and it just brightens my soul because I know what that journey means. I know what it means to sit in that room in the developing world where you have access to nothing, and you just dreaming up something with this very strong desire to create change or to build something and at the same time, it is also finding your own identity and what that could lead to. So, I often say don’t stop dreaming because you never know where it’s going to lead to. One opportunity might come after the other. And those girls might not be in Afghanistan, the act of the building might be somewhere else. And it would actually create a lot of significant change. And, especially in the tech world, that I am always in, we see this huge movement of Black Lives Matter right now as well, which is so poignant and important. Yet at the same time, there are fights around, you’ve got to stand up for gender as well. When you walk in with technology, I’m sure you’ve worked with technology, like you said, and you’ve experienced that it’s just saturated with men. And technology which is made for men, there’s very little space for any other kind of stuff. So how do you break those stereotypes and how do you emerge from there? And how do you make sure that you have a unique voice which is contributing something to the world? I think that is the driving force behind me. And I think that would be my ashes to a phoenix story in a way that it wasn’t just a linear progression for me.
29:09
TAMAR: So yeah, I think it’s amazing that you’re able to take that and take your learnings, and you’re able to apply that in mentoring women who were, I would say in their own struggle. But is it really a struggle? I would say it’s more of a rebirth, it’s growth, all of our struggles ultimately become learning experiences for us to become better versions of ourselves. There will be times where we will like I guess, revert and come to a point where we don’t want to regress a little bit. But I think for most of us, all these little things always go back to the word struggles, ultimately becomes an opportunity for us to take that step and to grow in a better way. And it’s amazing that you’re able to take your experiences, which your identity was completely changed. You said you left your family behind, you have a new family, I mean, that’s a mindset that you have to adopt in order to make your current reality, your current location, your current situation, something that is identifiable for you. It’s something that you can do, you can tolerate, you can stand the words, kind of a loss of words here. But I think what you’re able to do here is amazing, and I mean, kudos to you. Right now, I want to find mentors for anything even though my story has nothing to do with yours. I like that you’re going out and you’re taking the ability to teach what you’ve gone through, and to help them. It’s completely foreign territory. It’s both from a cultural perspective and from a geographic perspective. So, women have the ability to do so much more.
PARUL WADHWA: Yeah, thank you.
TAMAR: And thank you. So, on behalf of all the people that I don’t know you’re teaching, thank you. Yeah.
31:13
PARUL WADHWA: Thank you, Tamar. I think it’s more to do with the fact that it takes you a while to understand what are you condensing from your journey? And then, once you know, the process can be traumatic as well. I wouldn’t call my process or my journey to be dramatic. But in the sense, it was very uncomfortable for sure. And many times, it’s a very standard thing for life is never linear for anything. It’s not just for me, maybe for most people who aren’t hankering for anything, but I was. And so, it wasn’t not just linear, but at the same time, it was definitely uncomfortable at times. And when you deal with that uncertainty and that uncomfort, but at the same time, you go through a process where you’ve healed and you’ve dealt with it, and you’ve realized what it means that whole process. And of course, that takes years, another couple of years or maybe sometimes a lifetime. And I think we’re always deciphering, if you were, we wouldn’t have this podcast and this conversation, another 10 years into my life, I’d probably have another story. Because that would have been my interpretation of how I see and look at those things. And it always keeps changing. And it’s good, definitely because you grow like you said, and your perspective changes. And so would you choose to give back is also different.
32:47
TAMAR: Yeah, and I mean, you’re giving back in such a great way. So, it’s amazing. Awesome. There’s a lot of directions I could take here. But in the interest of time, I guess we’ll probably go into the self-care regimen. What do you do in order to basically give yourself a breather, take care of yourself? Whether it’s journaling, gym fitness, what is your self-care look like? It’s changed the dynamic exchange. Also, since the pandemic, feel free to talk about what the usual looks like, and how it has potentially changed. Go for it.
33:27
PARUL WADHWA: Yeah. Mindfulness is such a buzzword in Silicon Valley. And I used to often think why, and I do things in my life to keep myself grounded. First is, I actually follow, very passionately I meditate. And the reason I say passionately, is because I think it’s just like disconnecting ourselves from your reality and which is interesting because most of the time I spend in a virtual world in VR, and when I actually meditate, it takes me into a very different world, which is not VR, but it’s also not my world. So, it’s questioning that whole artifice of the VR world and the virtuality and offer real world as well. The temporary nature of where we are and what we are, I’ve obviously experienced that because I don’t take anything too seriously. I am passionate about things I build and projects I make and stuff I put out into the world. I put all my heart and soul into it, but at the same time, something that keeps me grounded is the fact that I’m not too serious about it. If it fails, it fails and I did my best and probably will have a few grudges or a sense of failure for a couple of days. And I kind of have those moments of going down and being depressed for a long time. But I emerge from it and I think a lot stronger with the feeling that it was just so temporal. And it doesn’t mean anything in the larger scheme of things of who I am. And it’s not just about one thing, it’s not just about a professional failure, but also personal failures. I look at them exactly the same way. Which is why I think that my strength is a lot into using techniques like meditation, yoga, and mindfulness, where I have learned to feel that everything around me is way bigger and bigger set of circumstances that lead to something and I am just one of those circumstances. I am part of that whole mechanism of things that will make something happen. So, if I did not do my part, then it’s okay because there were 99 other things that were doing their part which went wrong. So that means that you have to make peace with it, and you’re the ultimate person to say things. And I think the very fact that I come from such a spiritual land of yoga and meditation and all these techniques, when I reflect back, it’s interesting, because I think about perspective. In Silicon Valley, everyone’s trying to control things, or we need to know what’s the next thing or everything has to be very planned, which is all great. It works great to have a very concrete product. But at the end of the day, if you apply those same principles in your life, it doesn’t really work out that well because there’s a lot more. You have to be fluid as an identity and you’re more than just your body. And I think the conflict happens when people try to control things, or they think that I exactly know that in five years I will own a house and I will earn this much money, or I will be doing this. If you ask me, I always say that I don’t know what I’ll be doing. Of course, I have a plan for myself. And I work on those plans. I wouldn’t say most of the time, sometimes those plans work according to the wave that I’m working on them. But I always leave that scope to fail. And that’s very important to me. to keep myself grounded, to have that perspective. And that insight that whatever I’m doing, there’s more than forces that are sort of taking care of that stuff. So even if I try to control it to the Z, it’s not just me, there are things that I can’t see that are happening. So that’s one thing that I do to keep myself grounded. And physically, of course, I like to get exercise, but I’m not really a person who enjoys jamming. You can find me and every time running on a treadmill reminds me of the meme that people share all the time that Nazis used to make run people on the treadmill to punish them. And something that sort of sticks to me, which is why I really enjoy my yoga sessions and my meditation and physical exercise, I run and I swim, I am such a huge water body. I love being in nature, hiking. I just love hearing the birds and so anything doing outdoors in nature is my go to, for reviving my soul. And thankfully, I’m just here in California, between the ocean and the redwood forests and beautiful trees. And it gives me many opportunities to step out except that everything is just changed in everyone’s reality, including mine because of the pandemic. And it’s funny that I used to never meditate in VR and I do so much now because I miss that reality of mine of being outdoors and being in shelter. We just had limited opportunities to step out, get exercise and obviously, I haven’t had any opportunity to swim which I’m missing that time which is so healing for my soul and for my body. I think when I’m under the water, it’s just a very different being and it connects me again to this larger thoughts that I just spoke about during my connection with mindfulness. And I just absolutely love swimming. And so those are some of the things that I practice mostly: mindfulness, yoga, swimming, running, and being outdoors mostly.
40:13
TAMAR: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I love it. I think that sometimes not everybody’s a gym. Right? And that’s fine right now. I can identify with that. There’s no gym. Right? But I understand and being outdoors is something that I think a lot of people preaches, it’s so important to be one with nature and to appreciate what you have going on. I think for me, personally, I love doing that, like at 10 o’clock at night, 11 o’clock at night. People are at home.
PARUL WADHWA: Which is as well.
TAMAR: Yeah. Well, I don’t know about that. Not for me. So, I’m going to do one quick wrap up question. If you can give your earlier self some advice, what would you tell her. Give me about 30-second answer.
40:54
PARUL WADHWA: I think my 30-second answer would be listen to others before you. So, I think the biggest mistake I ever made, I was brave, which is good. If I was turned back, I say I wouldn’t be this brave. This is daunting for me. So, if I look back, I don’t usually this kind of person. Or my younger self didn’t really look up to people or listen to advice or look for mentors. And that was something I would really advise myself to. Also, step into other people’s shoes. It really helps or instead of just following, creating a new path, follow somebody’s path. It definitely somebody who’s been there, has done that before, so heed some advice.
41:43
TAMAR: Awesome. I love it. Okay. Yeah. So, thank you so much. I appreciate you spending your time, sharing your journey with me. And I look forward to learning and seeing a little bit about the creations that you’ve made. I wonder if there’s a way I can experience this VR. I hope I can get into this, understand a little bit more about your reality from my perspective, from my chair, and hopefully other people will be able to benefit from the beauty you’ve created in the world as well.
42:20
PARUL WADHWA: Absolutely. I would love to share that one with you, which you can share with the audience as well. And thank you, Tamar for this podcast and for this lovely chat. I really enjoyed talking to you. So, thank you so much.
42:34
TAMAR: Yeah. All right.
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