Here’s the full transcript of mental health speaker Raj Adgopul’s chat with Jane Farnham of Great British Speakers

00:00:08:02 – 00:00:19:08

Jane Farnham

Hi, I’m Jane Farnham from Great British Speakers, and I’m here today chatting to Mumbai’s Bill Bryson. The inspirational mental health speaker Raj Adgopul. So good morning Raj. Thanks for joining us today.

00:00:19:24 – 00:00:21:15

Raj Adgopul

Good morning, Jane. Thank you for your time.

00:00:22:04 – 00:00:32:17

Jane Farnham

Lovely to see you. So you I hear have had an extremely challenging early life, as some may say, rather shocking, in fact. So tell me a bit about your story.

00:00:33:24 – 00:00:53:12

Raj Adgopul

Well, I would say I was a gamble which paid off because I’ve got two brothers. Well, I mean, me and my brother, and my mum said, you know, I think, look, I’m not sure about you. I don’t know how well you want to do in life. I want to look after the, I want to keep one, you know, who is definitely going to do well in life and I want you to go away.

00:00:53:12 – 00:01:10:23

Raj Adgopul

And she said to me, she says, If you’re successful, come back. And if you’re not, then don’t come back because I don’t want another mouth to feed. So that was, that was a parting message to me. She said, look, you know, don’t smoke, don’t drink. I’m not saying it’s bad for you. You will just die and don’t die on me.

00:01:10:23 – 00:01:26:13

Raj Adgopul

And that’s how she asked me to leave home. So I left home. I did my nursing training in India. Then I came to Mumbai. I lived in Mumbai for four years. Well, that was what set me up for life, actually. And if you can survive in Mumbai, you can survive anywhere.

00:01:27:00 – 00:01:32:07

Jane Farnham

Tell me a bit about living in Mumbai. I’m interested to learn more about Mumbai.

00:01:32:07 – 00:01:53:04

Raj Adgopul

Well, in Mumbai, you have to sort of adopt a different kind of mindset in order to survive. Because Mumbai is not like a city. It’s like a university. So if you can graduate from that university in Mumbai, you can go anywhere in the world and you’ll get a job and you will thrive and survive because it will push every limit that it has.

00:01:53:08 – 00:02:12:00

Raj Adgopul

And you almost like become like a cat you know talking about cats that no matter which way life throws you, you’ll always land on your feet. So Mumbai is that place where you cannot be vulnerable. And if you’re vulnerable, you just die, as simple as that. And so living in Mumbai was what set me up for the world.

00:02:12:00 – 00:02:32:13

Raj Adgopul

And almost like, you know, it gave me like I didn’t realize then that it gives you like a bulletproof kind of mind mindset that nothing knocks you. I mean, in England, in the West, emotional challenges are high, whereas in India it’s more physical challenge. But what it does is, it does sort of Mumbai. Living in Mumbai is very tough.

00:02:32:13 – 00:02:54:21

Raj Adgopul

Like that’s why you see one of the talks I give is like the impossible every day. And I remember like when I lived in Mumbai, when I used to leave my home in the morning, my objective was to come back alive. That was the objective for the day. And that’s what you operate on. And I never thought, you know, I’ll live past 35 years of age because after 35, like, your body becomes too heavy for your arms.

00:02:55:08 – 00:03:17:07

Raj Adgopul

So I lost like seven of my friends who fell off the trains and died. Local trains because four and a half thousand people die every year falling off local trains. So I’m in my bonus years actually. Mumbai really, you know, like give me the sort of well, I think it’s a mindset of gratitude and also, you know, the resilience to survive anything and anywhere in the world.

00:03:18:03 – 00:03:31:14

Jane Farnham

So tough love in your early years set your path to studying in Mumbai. So tell me about your travel then to England and what did you really know about England before you departed?

00:03:32:11 – 00:03:43:02

Raj Adgopul

Oh, I didn’t know anything about England. All I was told in Mumbai was look, if you go to this country’s the fastest shot to a good life. And secondly, you won’t die.

00:03:43:14 – 00:03:47:13

Jane Farnham

I love the simplicity of it!

00:03:47:13 – 00:04:05:14

Raj Adgopul

They did not tell us that you were like, how much bills cost, how much what taxes you pay? None of that. I remember. You know, like when I went to the interview, I knew that it was for England. And, you know, when they sold it to us that, you know, look, England is a country. You don’t die. And if you want to die, there is this organization called the NHS that won’t let you die.

00:04:05:17 – 00:04:25:08

Raj Adgopul

So I thought great, you know, And I remember when I went when I passed my interview and the English Manchester Royal Infirmary managers who were in India, they said, Would you like to read the terms and conditions of employment? I said, Look, here’s my passport. Take me. That’s it. Because I want to live. And I didn’t know anything about England.

00:04:25:08 – 00:04:43:15

Raj Adgopul

All I knew was like I said, you know those two things. But also, you know, on a, on a purely sort of informational level, we were told that, you know, England has got the best human rights records in the whole world. So in the country of hierarchy, what I knew was England sits right at the top even now for the whole world.

00:04:43:24 – 00:04:59:13

Raj Adgopul

So if you, if you look at the hierarchy of countries, so England sits right at the top, then America, then Canada, then Germany, France, then if you’re really scraping the barrel, then you’re in Dubai, Doha, Qatar. And if you’re unfortunate, you’re stuck in India.

00:04:59:23 – 00:05:06:10

Jane Farnham

So what age did you arrive and having arrived, how did you develop your life here, having known nothing about it?

00:05:07:03 – 00:05:35:01

Raj Adgopul

Oh, I arrived when I was 26 years of age and I didn’t know anyone. But what I knew was that this is an amazing country, like it was a miracle. Like, from my interview to coming here was about three months when I passed my interview and I got there and I remember that when I opened my first bank account and I put my card into the HSBC ATM machine and there was £1,000 overdraft.

00:05:35:01 – 00:05:52:22

Raj Adgopul

I had never seen that much money in one place until I was 26. My hands were shaking like this, that I had access to that amount of money. And I knew that, you know, England is walk in the park it’s the easiest country to be in. So how did my life develop? I arrived here and I work like most Indians do.

00:05:53:04 – 00:06:02:14

Raj Adgopul

So I just walked all the time. But it was really good because I was treated well. You know, I felt like I existed. My life meant something.

00:06:02:14 – 00:06:03:21

Jane Farnham

You worked as a nurse?

00:06:04:05 – 00:06:16:01

Raj Adgopul

I worked as a nurse. I worked as a nurse. I lived in Manchester. And then I met a lovely English lady and got married, moved to Cornwall. That was a bit of a shock.

00:06:18:08 – 00:06:21:08

Jane Farnham

Difference of experience to Mumbai, isn’t it?

00:06:21:22 – 00:06:35:17

Raj Adgopul

Tell me about it. And then when we had two children, just going for the walks in the wood was not cutting the mustard enough. So we moved towards civilization. So we moved to Dorset and which is where I’ve been living for the last six years.

00:06:36:10 – 00:06:40:00

Jane Farnham

So then how did the speaking start? Is that relatively recent for you?

00:06:40:21 – 00:07:03:21

Raj Adgopul

No, it’s been like, you know, last sort of five, six years I’ve been doing it because initially, you know, I started sharing my stories because what I found was, you know, in England, English people complain a lot about silly things. And there is so much to be gratitude about this amazing country we live in. And I suggested I said, look, I spoke to my colleagues

00:07:03:21 – 00:07:23:06

Raj Adgopul

to tell my little anecdotes, my mind, just stories of appreciation. And it put me in a good mood as well because it was like a daily reinforcement of like, you know, just saying all the amazing things about this country because, you know, when you’re alive is so wonderful. So that’s where it started. And then my colleague said, I think this is really good.

00:07:23:06 – 00:07:41:10

Raj Adgopul

You know, I think you should take it somewhere. So I gave an audition and then that led to a TED Talk. And after that, I’ve been giving talks to the Women’s Institute, universities, colleges. There are lots of little organizations and villages close to my house because my children were young, so I couldn’t travel far. So that’s how, you know, my career developed.

00:07:41:10 – 00:07:49:08

Raj Adgopul

And I’ve been doing sort of local areas, which is, which is very fortunate that, you know, people give the gift of that attention like yourself as well.

00:07:50:01 – 00:08:10:03

Jane Farnham

So it seems like, you know, your early years gave you this innate gratitude. And when you come to the UK and able to forge a career and build a new life, that doesn’t go away. You don’t take that for granted, which, you know, a lot of people do assume a certain level of life as a given. And it’s not always.

00:08:10:03 – 00:08:29:18

Jane Farnham

But one of the reasons that we liken you to obviously the American Anglophile, Bill Bryson, is that you’ve got obviously, as you’ve been talking about, a very unique take on your country, on this adopted country of yours. But what’s your favorite? You were talking about your anecdotes. What’s your favorite on Mumbai versus Dorset? Share that with me.

00:08:31:02 – 00:08:51:15

Raj Adgopul

It has to be the newspaper headlines. It’s amazing. You see, when I was working in the data team, but that’s when it that’s when it occurred to me that I was walking down and I saw this newspaper headline, and I thought surely not. This is wow. I mean, I had read this newspaper headlines. This is where I want to be.

00:08:51:15 – 00:09:12:09

Raj Adgopul

You know, this is where all the action happens. This was in Axminster, by the way, which is in Devon. It’s a small rural town. And if you see the newspaper headline in Mumbai, like the newspaper which I mention in my blog, is eight people die every day falling off local trains. And that’s the good news. That’s the newspaper headlines and here the newspaper headline was A Swan Spotted in the Garden.

00:09:13:08 – 00:09:30:09

Raj Adgopul

And wow, I mean, like, how amazing is that? That this is where I want to be? And then I thought I got to see the next day and I went and looked at the newspaper headline, and the other one was man nearly hit by bus. I thought, you’re just making this up like, you’re just scraping the barrel.

00:09:30:09 – 00:09:55:15

Raj Adgopul

I could say I fell off a cliff. I nearly fell off a cliff, because I walked 20 steps this way. Or I could say I nearly achieved enlightenment if I sat for another 5 minutes, you know, so that it’s been it’s been wonderful. So that’s the favorite anecdote is those newspaper headlines. And if you see anybody in England, you realize how much like, of course, you know, there is a lot of media, there’s doom and gloom.

00:09:55:15 – 00:10:13:22

Raj Adgopul

But in reality, if you go to the rural villages, you should look at the crime section of Axminster. It says wheely bin nicked. That’s the top crime section. I mean, wow. Firewood nicked, I mean, that’s how dramatic as it gets. So I think that was my favorite anecdote, actually, is the newspaper headlines.

00:10:14:10 – 00:10:40:14

Jane Farnham

Yeah. And you know what? It’s really lovely to chat to you and hear such warmth and humanity because of course, obviously, I think the news do tend to sort of have this fear mongering negativity and it’s all bad news and we need to be scared. And so it’s really refreshing talking to you. Tell me a little bit about your professional background, because obviously you’ve worked in the NHS, so you’ve obviously got very soft spot for it.

00:10:41:03 – 00:10:42:15

Jane Farnham

Why is it so special to you?

00:10:43:20 – 00:11:08:10

Raj Adgopul

Oh, it’s all come down to looking out for me because, you know, growing up in India and Mumbai, you know, I live with the concept of mortality. So again, you know, going back to what I said at the start is in Mumbai, you know, every day you say gratitude that I’m so lucky I’m alive and here you take life for granted.

00:11:08:10 – 00:11:25:10

Raj Adgopul

And also almost like, you know, you think, wow, I mean, like, you know, I’m going to live forever. And that’s why I have the soft spot for the NHS. I remember when I told my mum, you know, like I said, look, if I work for this organization called NHS and it’s free, free at the point of care, of course, you know, we pay taxes.

00:11:25:10 – 00:11:40:16

Raj Adgopul

But I said it’s free at the point of care. My mum, even though I lived in England for 20 years, she could not believe that I work for a service. I drove to patient’s houses, gave them care and I didn’t charge them. She said just charge under the table. I said, No, mum, you don’t do this in England.

00:11:41:04 – 00:12:05:01

Raj Adgopul

I said, We have a very robust tax system and I have a soft spot because in this country you can be vulnerable, and that’s because of the NHS. And it’s an amazing organization, amazing institution, and it keeps people safe and most people at least you know where I come from, where nothing is for free, you realize what an amazing system we have got. That you can be vulnerable.

00:12:05:01 – 00:12:30:15

Raj Adgopul

You can be hit by a bus. You know that you know you’re not just going to lie there dead. Somebody will come pick you up. I can tell you this anecdote. In Mumbai, when we were working in a hospital and this lady was hit by a reversing truck and they bought her in a stretcher, I was in the hospital in the casualty department in Mumbai, and she was outside on the stretcher.

00:12:30:15 – 00:12:51:17

Raj Adgopul

And we were not able to give her care because they said, no, we can’t give her care because look at the sari she’s wearing. She wouldn’t be able to afford the money to go in and pay the bills and we couldn’t save her. And whereas NHS, it’s incredible. Like I said, you know, if when even if we want to die, we say, no, no, no, you can’t die.

00:12:51:18 – 00:12:53:12

Raj Adgopul

We keep you alive. It’s amazing.

00:12:53:19 – 00:12:55:24

Jane Farnham

So do you still work for the NHS Raj?

00:12:55:24 – 00:13:01:05

Raj Adgopul

I work part time for the NHS, so part time, you know, I find that I share my message of gratitude.

00:13:01:24 – 00:13:12:15

Jane Farnham

Brilliant. So here’s an interesting question to finish on then: if you were to write a letter to your younger self as you arrived in England, what would it say?

00:13:12:15 – 00:13:37:08

Raj Adgopul

I would say, learn as much about the subtleties and nuances of the English culture. Although England is the easiest country to integrate in, English people are the hardest to understand. It’s like, yeah, it’s like an enigma to someone. I mean, in rich countries, do people do this when they say it’s my fault? That means it’s your fault.

00:13:39:00 – 00:14:04:01

Raj Adgopul

The English, the way they speak and the way that what they say is always implied. So what I would write to myself is look, learn everything there is to about the subtleties and nuances of English culture. You have to see the matrix in order to integrate. It takes years to integrate in English culture because it’s all about the tone, the subtlety, the nuances, implications, all that.

00:14:04:09 – 00:14:25:03

Raj Adgopul

And I think, you know, one of the, one of the best things we were told in Mumbai and if I was to write that again, the things you know, which I missed a lot, that we were told that, you know, the English people are white. And the strongest emotion for English people is embarrassment. So if you say something, you cocked up, you say something wrong, they go red.

00:14:26:00 – 00:14:45:08

Raj Adgopul

So just keep a close eye on the colour of the face. So if they go red, track back what you said, and try and get it right. And I missed a lot of those when I first arrived. And that’s what I would tell myself, that, you know, keep a close eye on the color of these people if they go red, try and learn as much as you can

00:14:45:08 – 00:14:47:01

Raj Adgopul

and you will learn really, really fast.

00:14:47:22 – 00:15:04:11

Jane Farnham

Well, I’m Welsh, so I don’t know if I’m allowed to take any of this on board because we’re perfect, us Welsh. But anyway, on a final note then, Raj, what gives you the biggest buzz about speaking?

00:15:04:11 – 00:15:41:00

Raj Adgopul

As I was saying earlier, I think English people complain a lot about little things and there is so much to be grateful for living in this country, breathing this air and enjoying this environment. What gives me the buzz is, firstly, and it’s like a daily reinforcement for me that I live with the sense of gratitude. And also when people come to my talk and when they leave, they go home feeling firstly great about themselves, great about the country they live in, and also total gratitude.

00:15:41:08 – 00:16:16:01

Raj Adgopul

And that’s what gives me the buzz is like I can spread that joy. And the other thing which is most important, I feel phenomenally in life, phenomenally in many areas, and I want to share my learning. I want to help other people not make the same mistakes as I made. And that’s what gives me the buzz is to share my learnings, share my mistakes, and let’s not repeat my mistakes and have a better life because it’s such a wonderful thing you know

00:16:16:01 – 00:16:23:02

Raj Adgopul

to be alive. And when you are alive, you know, there are so many possibilities. It’s such a joy and that’s the message I want to share.

00:16:24:02 – 00:16:46:17
Jane Farnham
Well, the positivity is jumping out of the screen from you. Thank you so much for sharing that. It’s been lovely chatting to you and if you would like to book mental health speaker Raj, then simply contact myself or Steve at Great British Speakers on 01753439289 or you can email bookings@greatbritishtalent.com. Raj, thank you so much. Once again, it’s been a delight.

00:16:47:07 – 00:16:48:21

Raj Adgopul

Thank you so much. Thank you for your time.

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