JUMP: Going Full-Time on The Emissary

It’s been a long time coming. When I finished university in 2014, I didn’t know what I really wanted to do. From the beginning, I never really enjoyed the usual office 9 to 5 life. Eventually, though, I became domesticated. It was a steadily growing income. It brought stability. Life was chill. But I always wanted more, especially in terms of mental stimulation and passion (I was essentially an Excel monkey for most of my career).

I always wanted to start my own company, but in what? The best paths emerge out of boredom and a scarcity of time. When I finished my work, I would delve into India. Indian politics, history, religion, economics, diaspora, etc… When I returned from the gym at night, I wouldn’t gravitate to Netflix or the much better-equipped HBO Max. Instead, I would be reading and arguing about India on Reddit.

The pull of India is old in my life. Being born in America has always made me different from other kids in school, as America was much less diverse when I was growing up in the ’90s and 2000s. My initial interest came when I was 5. My father would drop my mother off for her night shift working at a factory. We would then watch BR Chopra’s Mahabharat via a VHS. A fantastical world emerged from the television that captured my imagination.

As I grew older, I would be diagnosed with vitiligo. My grandmother had completely lost her pigmentation, appearing as a white woman in a sari. That fate loomed on me when I was around 9. It was terrifying. I would become even more obsessed with India due to the fear of the loss of my cardinal Indian feature – my skin color. To be Indian, I would have to demonstrate an understanding and practice of its culture much more than my fellow swarthy Indian Americans. Luckily, medicine and prayers have slowed and even reversed the silent spread of the disease, restricting it to the tips of my extremities for now…

The true push for starting The Emissary came much later.

As I’ve written about prior:

“Most of my fellow Indian-American diaspora are completely ignorant of India, even more so in the mid to later 2010s than now. Mainstream media, South Asian influencers, and Instagram gave WhatsApp uncles a run for their money, predicting a holocaust combined with an apocalypse in India driven by a Hindu Hitler. But I was reading different things. I read about infrastructure, welfare, entrepreneurship, digitization, and the heralding of indigenous culture. The differences would come to a head as I would act as the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae in group chats and hangouts with my Indian-American friends, defending the current dispensation of India. A few tongue-in-cheek kind words about Mr. Modi amongst stereotypical Manhattanites at a party in New York resulted in a screaming match that left a thought ringing in my head the next day during the ride back home – ‘How the fuck are my fellow Indian-Americans so dumb?’ During a raucous Euro trip earlier in the year, my close friends told me to start writing about my knowledge and interests related to India. My only prior writing experience was wasting hours arguing with people on Reddit. My only writing influences were Jay-Z, Nas, Lil Wayne, and numerous other rappers I listened to daily for over a decade. I took a shot at building a blog after the European tour but gave up quickly after getting little traction. Months would pass by. After the Battle of the Big Apple, I felt a fire in my belly, and it was not from the extra lines of red sauce from my Halal Guys falafel platter at 4 AM the night before. I was going to write.”

That was nearly five years ago. Inconsistent writing has now evolved into a battle rhythm cadence. I have been contacted, followed, and read by people who were my idols and role models in thinking, content, and policy. I have marathons to go, but I am happy with where I’ve gotten. So much so that the seed of confidence has grown a tree of advancement. I think I can do more.

Therefore, I handed in my resignation a few weeks ago, and my last day of work was a few days prior. I am going all in. It’s time to JUMP.

I will be going to India after a short sojourn in the Middle East to think in the desert and amidst great cities I’ve always wanted to see. Then, I will travel across India from January 13th, visiting pilgrimage sites, meeting locals from all strata of society, and trying to understand the ground reality of a land I’ve written so much about. I am not just answering an ancestral call. Rather I come to India as a pilgrim, a student, a shishya to humbly learn. I have no set plans save for returning back home in a few months. If you want to meet, just DM me on Twitter. I’ll let you know where I’ll be and when once I know.

The future is audiovisual. Writing is fun, but I now know that I have to expand into podcasts and videos. During my downtime abroad, I will be teaching myself as well as starting production of this type of content. I may hire some folks, so if you’re interested, contact me with a portfolio of your work in either or both domains. All my content will be free for at least the first year to maximize spread. Though you can show support right now by buying the Artham 2024 Planner, an awesome yearly planner integrating psychological research methods, Hindu themes, and goal-setting methods.

Legacy media is atrophying. Ibn Khaldun, a medieval Arab sociologist, notes how societies transition between moments of hadar and badwa, meaning settled and nomadic lifestyles. When the settled people became lethargic and decadent, they were soon swept away by a marauding band of mobile warriors who had innovation, robustness, or simply a hunger that the settled folk did not. I believe that is well underway in media today. 

I seek to be a barbarian at the gates. Before, I wanted a sprawling organization like Vox or Vice. An alternative mega-media brand. But now, I think the best approach is putting in the work solo and soon constructing a small team to really shake up the landscape, especially considering the blooming leverage of AI. This doesn’t mean a band of barbarians sacking existing media houses. I don’t view the media space as necessarily zero-sum. More Indians, and indeed all humans, are getting online than ever. A massive opportunity opens up as a New India emerges in the world. I want to tell and explore its stories. Indeed, unlike the Great Firewall of China, the Indian internet is relatively free and takes advantage of the tremendous cyber-sea of commerce and content.

But how am I different? What makes me so special?

1. Style & Substance: For whatever reason, I think I provide either unique takes on India/the diaspora or I say it in a dope way (the latter is primarily due to my consumption of Hip Hop and esoteric Indian scriptures).
2. A central problem amongst the Indian Right is anger. An unbridling roar of persecution and victimization. Hindutva is a bottom-up ideology, which means it contains all the roughness and rusticity of the Indian village. I learned during my time on the social audio app Clubhouse that whoever is most calm convinces. It is imperative not to lose one’s head like the 47 talking heads on Indian news debates and to be able to explain the other side’s point of view without resorting to name-calling and snide remarks.
3. Across the Atlantic, my fellow Indian Americans are just recovering from the ideological equivalent of gonorrhea – wokeness. Sorry, snide remarks are indeed hard to resist. To be more diplomatic, almost all major 2nd generation Indian American media sharply skews left. I see myself as reasonably centrist, if not leaning right nowadays (you’ve all seen the famous meme of the shifting Overton window). But I most certainly provide a significantly different perspective than other Indian American media outlets. I am not going to serve you The New York Times smeared with garam masala and “chai tea,” which very much is the majority of 2nd generation media.

All in all friends, I’m winging it. I’ll give myself a year and some change to see if I can make something. You can follow updates on Twitter, Instagram, and Substack. Wish me luck; I’m off to JUMP.

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Thank you to God, my Guru, my parents, and V for their blessings and constant support.

-Akshar