33. The Long Way Home | Music, Memory & the Moments That Find Us

In this special episode of Mohivate, Dr Mohi Sarawgee brings together music, memory, and meaning in the podcast’s first original musical collaboration.
At the heart of this episode is a beautiful piece of music titled The Long Way Home, created by Johan Sebastian Ledesma, who composes under the name Bragei. 

What begins as a chance conversation on an ordinary street becomes something far more unexpected. A story of timing, recognition, and the kind of moments that seem to arrive without being planned, yet feel deeply aligned when they do.

The episode moves through personal memory, from childhood road trips filled with music, to the people who shaped a lifelong relationship with sound, rhythm, and presence. It reflects on how music is not simply something we listen to, but something that holds memory, carries emotion, and connects us across time.

Alongside this, Dr Mohi briefly explores what science understands about music and the brain. From its effects on stress, mood, and the nervous system, to the way it engages multiple regions of the brain at once, music is both deeply felt and biologically significant.

At its heart, this episode is about the moments we do not plan. The ones that arrive through chance encounters, shared interests, and quiet attention. What some might call synchronicity, or serendipity. Moments that shape direction without announcement.
The original piece The Long Way Home plays at the end of this episode, and will be available separately on YouTube for listeners who wish to return to it.
With reflection, story, and collaboration, this episode offers something slightly different. A pause. A memory. And a reminder of the ways we find our way back, often without realising we were looking.

References:

1. Music and the brain — stress, dopamine, and emotional response:
Salimpoor, V.N. et al. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2726

2. Music, stress hormones, and the nervous system:
Thoma, M.V. et al. (2013). The effect of music on the human stress response. PLOS ONE.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0070156

3. 3. Singing and wellbeing:
Grape, C. et al. (2003). Does singing promote well-being? Integrative Physiological & Behavioral Science.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02734261

Just a gentle reminder: this episode is for information, education, and inspiration only. It’s not a substitute for your doctor’s advice. For any personal health concerns, always seek guidance from your doctor.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi everyone, welcome back to Mohivate. I'm Dr. Mohi Saraugi, a GP by profession, but here I'm swapping prescriptions for perspective. Today is a very special episode and a slightly different one, and I say that with full awareness that I've probably said that before, but this one genuinely is. You know, there are some things in life you don't go looking for: a feeling, a moment, a memory, a conversation on an ordinary street that turns into something you couldn't have scripted if you tried. Today's episode is full of exactly those moments: a kaleidoscope of memory, music, and the kind of magic that only arrives when you stop rushing and start paying attention. And today also marks something I've been holding close for weeks, like a gift I've been waiting to share. Mohivate has its very first collaboration, and I cannot wait any longer. So today let's just begin. Now, if you've been listening to Mohivade, you'll know that we love to go back in time. So let me take you somewhere. I grew up for a deeply formative part of my life in Calcutta or Kolkata, as it is now known in India. A city that is warm, loud, chaotic, and steeped with music and literature in a way that gets under your skin and stays there, and one that almost everyone who has lived there will tell you they have a love-hate relationship with, except that the love always wins. Some of my most indelible memories, the ones that come to me, not when I try to recall them, but when I'm least expecting it, were made there. Now, central to today's episode are two men, my dad, who is now in spirit, 16 years on, and still the person I talk to most in my head, and his closest friend, who I call my uncle. These two men shared what I can only describe as a very specific and quite magnificent set of obsessions. Chocolates, cars, driving, road trips, and music with a stereo system in the car that I want to be clear was considered significantly more important than any of the people travelling in it. For them, it wasn't music as something that played while life happened. It was music as the thing life happened around, the main event, and everyone and everything else, including the people, was supporting cast. Now my dad's first car was a blue fiat, and in what I can only describe as a rather spectacular entrance into his life, it was stolen within hours of him purchasing it, only to be found the next day in the exact same spot by a group of young boys who had come across a brand new car with a full tank of petrol and decided to take it for a joyride through the night. The car was returned, the petrol considerably less so. In Calcutta at that time, car stereos being taken from parked cars was a particular hazard, and for a man who loved his music the way my dad did, his car stereo was taken not once but three times. One of those incidents I witnessed with my own eyes in the middle of the night, but that is a story for another time. My uncle, in the same year, 1984, a few months later, bought his own car. Also a Fiat, a green one. And here is the difference. That green Fiat still exists today, 42 years old. It has its own garage. A garage my uncle specially rents for a car that is completely non-functional. Every six months or so, approximately 10 people push it out. It travels perhaps 200 meters, and then those same 10 people push it back in. My uncle has made it very clear. This was his first car and it is not going anywhere. It is kept with the kind of love that most people reserve for living things. These two men, my dad and my uncle, were both devoted to cars, to driving, to music, and to the kind of long, unplanned road trips when nobody checked the time and nobody particularly minded. My dad was the kind of man who would give you an hour's notice. Ready, we are going. No GPS, this was the 80s and 90s, and a destination was sometimes more of a suggestion than a plan. There were never any hotels booked. I sometimes think hotels were never really the point. The real thrill was on the road. All they needed was a full tank of fuel, good food, the right cassettes, and everyone, without exception, sang every single person in that car for the entire journey. That is one of the fondest memories I carry. And somewhere along the way, I seem to have inherited that same love for the car, the road, the drive, and the music that makes it all worthwhile. If anyone visits me, I have to take them on one road trip, whether they want to go or not. I tell them it's about sharing the experience. Sometimes I think it's also about showing off the driving. Either way, the music is always on, and I still hope everyone joins in eventually. Now let's talk about cassettes. For anyone listening who was born after, let's say 1995, please pause this, Google audio cassette, look at the picture, and come back so that you understand what you're dealing with. In the era of cassettes, music was something you tended to. You searched for it in shops, you handled it carefully. And for those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, the cassette was an object of devotion. In our family, that devotion reached what I can only describe with great affection as clinical levels. My uncle and my elder sister shared a particular obsession with cassettes, not just listening to music, recording it, preserving it, duplicating it. But before any of that came rules. Cassettes came in a plastic box with a paper insert wrapped in a thin, perfect layer of plastic, and there was apparently, according to my uncle, a correct way to remove that wrapping. It had to come off from the side, precisely without tearing, without haste, no nail, no sharp object, and certainly not by anyone who hadn't been properly initiated into the process. If a new cassette arrived and someone opened it incorrectly, my uncle would simply sit in silence. Swollen face, complete non-communication. All of this for a thin layer of plastic that was going straight into the bin. And talking to him in that state was far more anxiety-producing for the other person than for him. So as you can imagine, this was not a process open to the general public. My uncle trained exactly one other person to do it properly, my sister. And then came the recording. My sister kept one, my uncle kept one, and the original was handled separately with the gravity of archival material. To make all of this possible, my uncle became, I believe, the first person in our entire neighborhood to acquire a Sony dual cassette deck with two tape players side by side. A beautiful, deeply serious machine purchased specifically, and I want you to appreciate this for the purpose of recording. Its operation was restricted to two people only, him and my sister, who was a teenager at the time, and treated this responsibility with exactly the seriousness it deserved. Every weekend they recorded. My sister would write out the song lists in her neatest handwriting on the little paper inserts, artist, title, everything in order. The originals were kept separate. The recordings were for listening. The whole system was in its own way a kind of perfection. And then there is this particular Sunday that I will never forget. My uncle's family had come over, as they often did, because Sunday lunches at our home was something of an institution. And my sister and my uncle were naturally recording cassettes. My mother had been watching this cassette operation take over yet another weekend. And on this particular Sunday, she reached her limit. In the most theatrical way possible, she turned to my sister and announced that she was going to take every single cassette, put them in a large wok, and burn them in the kitchen. Now I was approximately seven years old, and at seven, I took this information at face value and processed it with complete seriousness. I stood there and imagined my sister carrying armfuls of cassettes to the kitchen where my mother would place them in a large wok and stir-fry them over high heat until they were gone. I imagined the ribbons, the fire. I was devastated. So I went to my sister and in my most urgent, most sincere voice, said, Do you want me to hide some of these cassettes under the bed? My sister looked at me and said, Just calm down. Do you really think she's going to burn them in the kitchen? Let's do our homework. And I said, You don't know, she might just do it. Of course, my mother did not burn the cassettes. But that image, my mother, the walk, the cassettes, have never fully left me. I bring it up to this day. She claims she does not remember it. Some things live only in the memory of the child who witnessed them. Post script to this story when my sister turned 16, my mother suggested she get her own cassette recorder. And I, as younger sisters throughout history have done and will continue to do, immediately pointed out that if she was getting one, I needed a Walkman. Please Google if you don't know what a Walkman was. My parents flatly said I would have to save for it myself. So I did for years. A Walkman in the late 90s cost 900, about 15 pounds. And just when I finally had 900, of course, a newer, better model came out for 1200, about 20 pounds. My sister and I went to the shop together, and I stood there so close, so far, doing the maths, and the maths was not in my favour. I was ready to settle for the older one. But my sister, lover of music, of tapes, and the most generous person I know, quietly took out her share and said, We'll get the best one. And then on the way home, she looked at me and said, Nobody needs to know, we didn't get it for 900. Those are the memories that music is made of. And I should tell you, my uncle's dual cassette deck still works. To this day, he listens to it every morning and every night before sleep. I genuinely believe Sony Japan owes him some kind of recognition. A certificate, a trophy, a respectful bow in his direction. And while there are many stories, these are the ones that state, that's where music lives for me. The singing in the car on roads we hadn't planned to take. The careful handwriting on a paper insert. My sister's hand reaching into her pocket without being asked. All of us in different ways holding on to pieces of a life that moved in different directions. Music in our family was never just something you listened to. It was something you protected, something you sang on a road, going nowhere in particular, with the people you loved most without knowing for a second that you were making a memory. And to this day, that hasn't changed. I still send music to people in joy, in difficulty, in new beginnings, and in moments that don't quite have a name but need something to hold them. Because sometimes a song says it better than your words ever could. We still talk about those road trips, about those singing sessions. Music has held us together across countries, across years. It has formed friendships, deepened bonds, and carried something I've always held close to my heart. Now, this is a science podcast and I do keep my promises, even the brief ones. But do we really need to be told what music does to us? I'd argue we already know. We feel it. So since this is Mohiveate, just a few lines. Music lowers cortisol, the stress hormone, it raises dopamine, the neurochemical of reward. It can slow the heart rate, ease anxiety, and gently shift the nervous system from fight or flight into something closer to rest. Researchers who study the brain have often used musicians, particularly pianists, as subjects because what happens in the brain when they play is extraordinary. Memory, emotion, motor control, and language all active at the same time. Music engages multiple systems in the brain at once. Which is why when a song gets it right, you feel it everywhere, in your chest, behind your eyes, in something that isn't quite a feeling, but isn't quite a thought either. And interestingly, singing takes this even further. Because now you're not just listening, you're breathing with the music, shaping it, becoming part of it. We have always known this long before the science gave it names. And perhaps listening to this today, you'll begin to understand why this episode matters to me the way it does. Because what you're about to hear is Mohivade's very first musical collaboration. And the story of how it arrived is, I promise, the last one and worth every minute. A few years ago, I noticed a car parked near my home, a 1998 Jaguar, the kind of car you slow down to look at when you walk past it. One day the owner was standing beside it and I did what felt completely natural. I complimented his car. And also, because I felt he should know, mentioned that Jaguar is now an Indian company. After that, whenever we bumped into each other, we compared notes on cars the way people who love cars do. I always noticed a guitar in his car, but I never asked about it. And then one day at a time when I was simply looking for a keyboard just to play, to enjoy, I happened to run into him again. I mentioned it casually and asked if he knew any shops nearby where I could rent one. And he said he had a keyboard and that I could borrow it, which he did. And for almost four weeks I kept it initially for the pure joy of playing and singing, and then somewhere in the middle of those four weeks, I had what I can only describe as a gloriously optimistic plan to compose my own intro and outro music for Mohivade. I say this with full honesty and no small amount of laughter at myself. I produced nothing that could reasonably be called music. Whatever I had imagined about my hands and those keys was not quite matching the reality of what they were actually doing. The playing and the singing, however, I thoroughly enjoyed. When I returned the keyboard, I mentioned all of this to him. And very quietly, almost casually, he said, If you want music, I could make it for you. I was quite surprised and I asked him, Are you sure, do you make music like compose? Because that was my honest reaction, and I think it would be anyone's. He said yes, and then he told me a little bit about himself. The man behind Mohive's first ever musical collaboration is called Johann Sebastian Ledesma. His name comes from Johann Sebastian Bach, the great German composer and musician. A detail that feels less like coincidence and more like quiet direction. Johann was born in Colombia in a place called Cali, the city of Salsa, where music lives in the walls. He taught himself guitar and piano as a child and also plays drums, bongo, and Cuban thimbales. Over time, he worked in music production, did some DJ work, spent time in theatre, but through all of it, music was always his passion and always the thread. In recent months, he had begun creating something different: music with a certain stillness to it, music that gives you space. Johan composes under the artist's name Braggie, drawn from Norse mythology. Braggie is the god of music and poetry, the keeper of stories, the one who gives words their music and music its words. And what I find interesting is that just a few months before any of this, a friend had been telling me about Norse mythology, and I had been reading about it since. And then disappeared. Johan asked me what I was looking for, and I gave him a list. I told him the music needed to feel like nostalgia, comfort, happiness, familiarity. It needed to carry the feel-good factor. It needed to feel purple and green as feelings, not colours. I realize how that sounds. I stand by it. It needed love in it. And in whatever mood you were in, difficult, tired, joyful, lost, somewhere in between, it needed to make you smile. It needed to give you that one moment where your heart just says, How good is this? And in any circumstance, it needed to shift something, lift something. You know, I have this habit. When I have something in mind, I write them down as a list. So I sent it to him as a message, and when I read it back, I thought this man might think I need a prescription. That was a very large demand to place on one piece of music. Music I didn't even know yet if I would accept. Johan very kindly said he would get back to me. About two weeks later, he sent me two pieces. I was walking when I pressed play on the first one. It was genuinely good. And then the second one began. And I don't know how to explain what happened in that moment except to say, I just knew the way you know certain things without being able to justify them. Something in me settled the feeling of an exhale you didn't know you were holding. Let me tell you what it sounds like because it deserves to be described. It moves at 78 beats per minute, unhurried, intentional, like a walk you're not trying to finish. A deep kick, a warm snare, a resonant bass line that you feel as much as you hear. The lead is a shakuhachi flute, long, breathy, emotional, sitting over a cotodrone, and warm rose chords that simply hold the space, and weaving quietly through it all, a delicate chip tuned melody that adds texture without ever taking over. Smooth, warm, intentional. And then I looked at the name of this particular piece. Johan had called it the long way home. What we always come back to, coming home to yourself. And here was a piece of music made by a man I met because I admired his car, who had never heard that phrase from me, who had never listened to a single episode, who simply named it what it felt like. I've been listening to it every morning, every night, at different times of the day, in different moods for five weeks now, and it has served the exact purpose in which It was meant for every single time. Every single thing I asked for, somehow it found its way in. So I finally asked him if I could make this music Mohivate's own. I had always wanted Mohivate to have its own music. Something made for it. Something made for you. I just didn't know it would arrive the way it did. Through a car, I stopped to admire a conversation that began with nothing in particular. And a man I had known for years, but was only just discovering the side of him. These were things I did not plan. But there's something about that, isn't there? The way life arranges itself almost unnoticed until suddenly it makes sense. A memory from one part of your life, a moment in another, and somehow, without you trying, they meet. And somewhere along the way, music finds you. I don't know if it's synchronicity or serendipity, but it has always been my favorite kind of moment. The kind I live for, the kind I've learned to pay attention to. Because the most meaningful things in life rarely arrive when you go looking for them. They arrive when you're ready to recognize them. And something in you simply knows. This collaboration is dedicated to the men in my life. My dad, who taught me that music is never the background. He still lives on. In the music he loved, in the songs that come back to me at the right time, almost like reminders of what he would have said. And my uncle, whose 70th birthday it is today, the 7th of May, who has loved music longer and more faithfully than anyone I know. For all the men who shade me in ways both deliberate and completely unspoken to the ones still here and to the ones now in spirit, and to Johan, who creates as Braggie. Thank you for hearing something I could barely describe and for creating something so beautiful. It will always stay with me. The music you're about to hear, this collaboration between Mohivet and Braggie, The Long Way Home, will play now. It is also available on YouTube as a standalone piece whenever you need it. This music is for you. For the mornings that need something before they can begin. For the moments that don't quite have a name, but need something to hold them. And for the days that feel heavy when all you need is three minutes to remind yourself that you're still here, still moving, still finding your way. I hope you love it as much as I do. If this episode stayed with you, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you for listening. I'm Dr. Mohi. Until next time, remember this. The long way home is the journey that brings you back to coming home to yourself.