Living by instinct recipe for a healthy happy life
[Music]
what i am today
is because i believed in my instinct
i followed my heart i did not follow
the template society had to offer i
embraced
the animal inside me i fell in love with
that animal
and that’s how my journey began i
remember
being abused by my father at a very
young age
he almost burnt the whole family alive
my mother was a school teacher she had
very limited means
and which means she knew how to give us
very basic stuff
and i was hungry for more i did not get
the love of a father
so that made me go and hunt
for for something that i was missing
nutrition nourishment
i started to read books on uh on food
by the time i was a i gained enough
knowledge
but the knowledge was not enough it was
not satisfying
something was still wrong i eventually
joined the gym
i started to build my confidence my body
and very soon i was representing san
diego’s college as the college captain
and heading heading the team
uh in weightlifting bodybuilding and
powerlifting i won all the titles
and it made me famous it made me happy
uh i was learning
more and more every day
post that wendell rodriguez was doing an
audition
and i was i was not aware of it a friend
said let’s go for the audition
i did not know much about modeling and i
went for this audition and i got picked
up
the next day there was a mention in the
newspaper that iggy is going to do
wendell roddick’s show and again there
was a boost
in confidence and and popularity
but i was also a dj at that time my
music
was not appreciated i was playing
different music something that is not
playing on mtv and channel v
i wanted to expose that to people and
people were not ready for it i mean not
everybody was ready for it
and there was a disheartening that that
kind of killed my confidence
there was not many modeling shows
happening in goa
and then one day
a photographer from bombay named colston
julian
uh said iggy why don’t you try something
in bombay
so with with a heavy heart and with a
lot of
uh i mean from going from a village to a
big city
was complicated not enough money but
because colson said i can shoot you the
pictures
and and gave me a platform there i
decided to go
i went to bombay but then it was not
working out bombay was
bollywood based and i was not cut out
for that i didn’t want to do movies
so i did a few shows but not much i
focused back on my music
my music took me to many many bars and
clubs in across bombay and i got
recognized as a very
good dj and i started to make some money
and then i was picked up by a agency
called
elite models and i was signed up and
they said ikey why don’t you come to
delhi
and and try and audition for the lakme
fashion week
which i did i was not too sure because
again moving from another
big city to delhi was again complicated
not much money so friend bought me a
ticket and he came along with me and we
went by train
and at the audition i was there with the
rest of the boys
and the next day again there was a
mention in the paper that iggy is
selected for fashion week i was super
excited
i just moved everything from bombay came
back to bombay and moved everything back
to delhi
to delhi and then life changed
i was doing all the shows across delhi
for all the famous designers
in in a week’s time i was popular i was
playing at the after parties
life changed and i was neglecting my
body
i noticed that in this fame and then
this popularity i was
eating pizzas i was eating burgers and
and not
really being conscious about myself
and i over the span of five years my
body started to tell me that
something is wrong there was some level
of
unhappiness my body started to tell me
after showing
every year i would come to goa
which i really didn’t want to i would do
it because of my friends because they
wanted to have a holiday and go and they
wanted someone to guide them
so i would bring my my all my my my
my model friends with me to go up they
will stay in my house we would have a
good time and go back
i would make them have a good time there
was this one year in 2009
then i got invited to play at a bar in
goa
and when i played i found there was a
change there was a change there was some
kind of acceptance
to the music i played and these these
were tourists
with a very few local population and
i got so much satisfaction from playing
there that i said i don’t want to go
back to delhi
um i told my friends you go back let me
stay here
and i started playing at this bar and
then idea came to my head that
i should start my own place and
i was seeing all this development around
bridges
construction big festivals
the carnival with all this plastic waste
created and i was like i don’t want to
do the same thing i want to make
something very sustainable very simple
and and still have fun and how to do
that
so i created cirrus i started collecting
waste from
from from the highways people
from different bars plastic bottles or
whatever anyways even even
broken use nails from wood we would
extract them and reuse them
for metal to everything anything that’s
on the street we would pick it up in my
jeep and bring it to service and start
building from that there is a
possibility to do this
and that was the point i wanted to make
whether it lasts for three years or five
years
is not important but it’s possible and i
started creating that
many people started joining me the
tourists started joining me we created
we created a skate park we built it with
our own hands
we built three houses and eventually
many many many creative people started
joining and
i had time and space in goa to rethink
about my food
because i had slowed down my life we
were going fast
i was a part of the rat race so after i
slowed down my life i was
okay now i need to go back to my diet i
need to fix my body
i was working so hard for one hour two
hours in the gym and there was no
satisfaction my body was bloating up
i had a layer of fat over me i had
muscles but there was a layer i could
feel that within me no one else could
could see it because i feel it people
cannot feel people can see only a
superficial layer
they see photographs but what i feel
from inside i know
and that was troubling me and i don’t
want to cheat people and i don’t want to
cheat myself
so what i did is i started going back to
basic science what we learned
in our school what i was doing
earlier was like what everybody what all
of us do we have heavy breakfast
right and then we block we block that
highway of us
we we put that heavy food
and then and then we take then we put
other foods inside
so what i started to do is start slow
think what is the easiest food to break
down its water
first then comes fruit
then comes the carbohydrates and then
comes the protein
so you let the ferrari go it’s fast
moving baker
let it go then you put the second
fastest vehicle
and then you put the slowest vehicle
that’s how i treated my food and that’s
how i teach kids
i make it very simple what’s the fastest
food and they know
it’s it’s fruit it’s easy to bait and it
gives you instant energy that’s how you
wake up
then you put in the carbohydrates for
lunch
which is slow release of energy
and then comes the protein at night
which helps you build your muscle
and i stopped going to the gym after
that since 2007 i haven’t touched the
gym i don’t have
any regular routine in workout or
workout happens on the field
digging hammering nails pushing the
vehicles fixing vehicles this is our job
and that’s how we maintain our body
there’s nothing unnatural we didn’t do
anything unnatural like lifting weights
and you can see you can see that at 41
today
i still i still look good my body is
in in good shape
and i started being militant on the
people working with me
i’m quite a dictator at my place i even
i’m i do the same with my mom because i
want my mom to live long
she’s 71 today and she’s also following
the diet she cheats a bit
but i’m watching like a hawk i’m
watching her because
i wanted to be healthy
so i offered this this way of method of
eating to to people i’m working with and
they saw results in two weeks
everybody started saying yes our
digestive system is now clean i don’t
i don’t burp anymore i don’t i don’t
have i don’t smell bad anymore
there is no gas anymore and then i said
okay now let’s start fasting once a week
we need to do a 24 hour fast
i observed that and we saw results in
two weeks
even the kids my own kids actually we
all started
following this and everyone said yes it
works it works
and then we move on you know i moved on
in my
in my in my project cirrus and
eventually
i felt the need that okay we are
it’s a very small space we need to even
we need to we need to go out we need to
reach out to more people
there was a broken jeep there was a
broken bus we converted that
into what i call the vinyl ambulance
because i’m a dj and i have love for
vinyl
uh i still play vinyl i have fairly a
very big collection of vinyl and i
wanted a
platform that i can move around so we
converted this jeep
and we made it from from plastic from
plastic waste
and wood and so that we can take our art
and our and our vision across india and
the world
because this is what we do and keep it
simple
my my my my policy is
sustainable sustainability minimalism
think slowly just don’t hurry into
things
keep it simple and move on so
the vinyl ambulance helps me to to
travel to different cities and tap more
people
and that’s all i have to say i hope
and that’s all i have to say thank you
[Music]
you