BIC TALKS

Courage is not the beginning of self-knowledge. It is the constant condition of it.

Courage to Be You follows two people asking that question from very different lives. Amit and Najib are a gay couple navigating not only their relationship but the religious and social distance between them. Rajeshwari, Amit's childhood friend, is quietly working to reclaim an identity fractured by early trauma. Their stories run parallel, but their questions are the same: what does it take to choose yourself, and what do you risk when you do?

Rashna Imhasly-Gandhy draws on Jungian psychology and chakra healing, offering the reader a framework for the same inner work her characters undertake. Their guide, in both cases, is a therapist. Their destination is their own.

Yasmeen Premji will introduce the session. Rashna's presentation will be followed by a conversation between her and Malini White.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Rashna Imhasly-Gandhy will be in conversation with Malini White. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Mar 2026.

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Two questions plagued her for five years, living between Delhi, Venice, and Istanbul: how do we lose what we lose, and why do we love whom we love?

Drawing on her collection of essays Place: Intimate Encounters with Cities (2026), written across 25 years and 13 cities, Ananya Vajpeyi will explore what cities hold for us. The memory and meaning held in street corners and corridors of light; the way personal loss and political trouble have of finding each other in the very same spaces.

Architect Prem Chandavarkar brings his own lifelong reckoning with cities to the table. Between them, the conversation promises to move across continents, disciplines, and the question of what it means to love a place.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Ananya Vajpeyi will be in conversation with Prem Chandavarkar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Mar 2026.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

You've received the call. The scam artist trying to get your information. Perhaps you fell for it, perhaps you knew better. In either case, it becomes a story to tell over coffee.

But who are the people on the other end of line?

In her new book, Scamlands, journalist Snidha Poonam explores the vast fraud economies stretching from small-town India to global scam hubs. Nuanced, detailed and above all, personal, Poonam reports on the many lives that run parallel to our own. Tracing the supply chains of fraud, she reveals an economy that's both ruthlessly efficient and heartbreakingly human.

In this talk, she is joined by columnist Aakar Patel to explore the themes of the book. They will examine how scam economies thrive in the gaps of inequality, why trust is collapsing faster than we can rebuild it, and what it means when fraud becomes a viable career path for an entire generation. The session ends with an audience Q&A.

There are no easy answers, but you'll know more when that unknown number calls again.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Snigdha Poonam will be in conversation with Aakar Patel. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 2025.

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What did the architects of the Republic want our symbols to represent?

Acclaimed musician and public intellectual T M Krishna launches We, the People of India: Decoding a Nation's Symbols, a rigorous exploration of the tricolour, the Preamble, the national anthem, and the symbols that define Indian democracy.

In conversation with urban researcher Gautam Bhan and journalist Dhanya Rajendran, Krishna traces the historical and philosophical origins of these symbols. Together they will unpack how these symbols were born, what they were meant to represent, and how their meanings have shifted in contemporary India.

A thoughtful inquiry into the past, present, and enduring significance of India's defining symbols.

Presented by:

Contxt

In this episode of BIC Talks, TM Krishna and Dhanya Rajendran will be in conversation with Gautam Bhan. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 2025.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

A single family. A small village. An entire nation's story hiding inside.

Tell Me A Story About Our World brings together academic and translator Vanamala Viswanatha and novelist Kavery Nambisan for a conversation about the art of fiction and storytelling, based on Nambisan's latest novel, Rising Sons. Set in a village in Karnataka, following one family from pre-independent India through to the 1970s, threading through the complexities of caste and colonialism while painting vivid landscapes of rural and urban life in a bygone era.

What makes Rising Sons sing is how Nambisan inhabits her world. Kannada coexists comfortably within the English, not as a novelty but as a force of realism, enabling the reader's sensibility to percolate through society at every level. Then there is the narrator: never formally introduced, yet unmistakably present, speaking of "our village" and "our daily lives" with a voice that is not quite impartial. The resulting text reads as both narration and remembrance, an immersion into a carefully crafted world.

The stories we tell are as much about the Word as they are about the World. Expect an interesting and illuminating conversation, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Kavery Nambisan will be in conversation with Vanamala Viswanatha. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 2025.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

A new dawn was breaking. And its light would reach far beyond its time.

Rebellion in Verse unfolds a journey that goes back to the sixth century CE; a time when many yearned for a reprieve from the constraints of Vedic orthodoxy and caste hierarchies. The Tamil Bhakti movement emerged as their clarion call, a grassroots surge of devotion that redefined spirituality and the social fabric itself. The saints of this movement were poets of the people, composing their hymns in Tamil and their verses, brimming with simplicity and profundity, wrestled divine wisdom from the elite grip of Sanskrit and handed it to the masses.

This conversation around Raghavan Srinivasan's book Rebellion in Verse, explores how poetry has long served as a space of defiance: challenging hierarchy, authority, and inherited social orders. Drawing from Bhakti and other traditions, the discussion reflects on how verse carried ideas of equality, desire, and resistance, and why these voices continue to matter today. A Q&A with the audience will follow.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Raghavan Srinivasan and Sharada Srinivasan will be in conversation with Karthik Venkatesh. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 2025.

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In SheThePeople's signature style, this is a session of wit and grace.

Bangalore Raani is a vibrant celebration placing female voices precisely where they've always belonged: centerstage. Unapologetic and electric, this dialogue brings together women whose presence, choices, and courage bring Bengaluru to life. In this edition, Shaili Chopra is joined by mother and daughter, Yasmin and Kubbra Sait.

Through candid storytelling that moves from ambition to reinvention, relationships to those small everyday rebellions that shift culture, the conversation flows freely: sometimes hilarious, always real. Relatable yet aspirational, intimate yet energizing, this is the rare space where women's stories don't just resonate, but reverberate through lingering conversations, lasting inspiration and undeniable connection as a result of being deeply, and truly, seen.

In collaboration with:

Shethepeople

In this episode of BIC Talks, Kubbra Sait and Yasmin Sait will be in conversation with Shaili Chopra. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Feb 2026.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Once known as a garden city and a pensioner's paradise, Bengaluru has undergone extraordinary economic and demographic change over the past three decades. While growth has brought opportunity, it has also reshaped everyday life in ways that go far beyond traffic and waste. This second edition of The Bengaluru Debates turns a critical lens on our city to ask whether it still supports healthy lives for its citizens.

Public health research increasingly shows that the roots of urban ill-health lie not only in hospitals or clinics, but in planning, infrastructure, and governance. Air quality, water and sanitation, food systems, mobility, housing design, open spaces, and access to light and ventilation all shape how healthy a city allows its people to be. Yet these questions rarely enter public debate in Bengaluru.

Opening with a short context setting, the session will move into a panel discussion between Dinesh Gundu Rao, Hon'ble Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Karnataka; Dr. C N Ashwath Narayan, Former Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka and Member of the Legislative Assembly for Malleshwaram; Dr. Shreelata Rao Seshadri, Professor and Director, Ramalingaswami Centre for Equity and Social Determinants of Health, Public Health Foundation of India(PHFI). Moderated by Srikanth Viswanathan, CEO, Janaagraha, the panel will reflect on the relationship between the health of a city and the that of its citizens: what Bengaluru must rethink to secure a healthier future. The session will also include a talk by Nachiket Mor, Economist & Health Systems Researcher.

The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.

The Bengaluru Debates: A BIC–Janaagraha Dialogue Series on Urban Governance in Bengaluru and Beyond aims to expand civic space in the city by fostering conversations through a civic lens. The series is designed to be informative, constructive, and entertaining, while also serving as a trigger for local community action. Its objective is to bridge the gap between policy, practice, and public discourse on urban governance challenges, and to catalyse citizen and policymaker engagement towards systemic solutions.

In collaboration with:

Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, founded in 2001 in Bengaluru, is dedicated to transforming the quality of life in India's cities and towns. Their mission is to strengthen the systems of urban governance so that cities can deliver clean, green, safe, and liveable environments for all citizens. For them, "quality of life" is not only about infrastructure and services, but equally about responsive institutions, citizen engagement, and transparent, data-driven governance.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Dinesh Gundu Rao, C N Ashwath Narayan, Shreelata Rao Seshadri and Nachiket Mor will be in conversation with Srikanth Viswanathan. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Jan 2026.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Dharma is difficult to translate, and even harder to understand.

In this talk, scholar Frederick Smith draws on nearly five decades of study to illuminate how the concept of dharma moves, shifts, and comes alive across the subcontinent. By tracing regional retellings of the Mahabharata, he reveals how different communities have interpreted its moral tensions. Turning to modern literature such as U.R. Ananthamurthy's Samskara, he connects these ancient debates to contemporary questions of responsibility, community, and moral action. With clarity and depth, Smith examines how ideas of dharma and adharma operate in the Sanskrit Mahabharata and how these ideas ripple outward into contemporary India.

A Q&A with the audience will follow, offering space for reflection and dialogue.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Fredrick Smith delivers a talk. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Dec 2025.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.

Overwhelmed? Disoriented? Exhausted?

In this reflective session, Dr. Shyam Bhat draws on his expertise in psychiatry and integrative medicine to unpack the rising sense of disorientation shaped by hyperconnection, constant noise, and emotional overload. He explores how these forces fracture our inner clarity, and offers practical ways to rebuild a steadier sense of purpose. Drawing from both clinical experience and contemplative traditions, Dr. Bhat charts a path toward reconnecting with our values and rediscovering direction in an increasingly fast-paced world.

A gentle invitation to pause, understand what's unfolding within, and realign with what truly matters.

The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A.

Presented by:

Nirvikalpa Integrated Therapy Foundation Founded by Dr. Shyam Bhat, the Nirvikalpa Integrated Therapy Foundation blends India's philosophical and psychological wisdom with modern Western science to create a rigorous, evidence-based therapeutic model grounded in non-duality and transcendence. The foundation conducts scientific research, develops therapist-training programs, and shares integrative mental-health insights with the public. Its work aims to build a culturally rooted, systematic approach to therapy that strengthens resilience, deepens connection, and supports collective well-being.

NIRVIKALPA

In this episode of BIC Talks, Shyam Bhat delivers a talk. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Dec 2025.

Subscribe to the BIC Talks Podcast on your favourite podcast app! BIC Talks is available everywhere, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Overcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.