Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

How bawadinesh.com handles your information: what we collect, why, and the choices you have. Operated by Khurshed Batliwala and Dinesh Ghodke.

Payments made on this website are received by V19 Productions, our company. We respect your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, and the rights you have over it, wherever in the world you are.

What we collect and why

Newsletter. If you subscribe to our newsletter, Sounds Interesting, we collect your email address. We use it only to send you the newsletter and occasional news about our courses, books and other work. Legal basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing.

Course notifications. If you ask to be told when a course's dates are announced, we collect your name, email address and phone number. You will get an email when dates go up, at most five times for any one course. Your phone number may be passed to a small group of trusted Art of Living volunteers, who may call you about the next course. Every email has a link to stop the notifications and another to take your phone number off the list. Or just write to us and we will do it.

Tips and digital purchases. If you leave us a tip or buy a digital product, our payment processor collects the details needed to process the payment, and we receive your name, contact details (email and/or phone) and the payment confirmation. We use these to deliver what you paid for (where applicable), keep required financial records, and help you if something goes wrong. Legal basis: performance of a contract with you, and our legal obligations (tax and accounting records).

Payments. Payments are processed by Razorpay, our payment gateway, and received by V19 Productions. Your card, UPI or banking details are entered directly into Razorpay's secure systems and are never seen or stored by us. Razorpay processes your payment data under its own privacy policy.

Contacting us. If you write to us, we keep your message and contact details for as long as needed to help you.

Technical data. Our hosting provider (Vercel) automatically processes basic technical information when you visit: IP address, browser and device type, pages visited, time of visit. We use this in aggregate to understand how the site is used and to keep it secure and working. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a functioning, secure website.

Affiliate links. Some links on this site lead to Amazon. If you follow one and make a purchase, Amazon attributes it to us and pays us a small commission, at no extra cost to you. We do not receive your name, contact details or payment information through this. Amazon provides us only with aggregate reports of purchases and earnings, and processes any data collected on its own site under its own privacy notice. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in funding the site through affiliate commissions.

Embedded content. Some pages embed third-party content, such as YouTube videos. Interacting with embeds may allow the third party to collect data about you under their own privacy policy.

Comments

If you leave a comment, we store the name you give, your email address, what you wrote, and the IP address the comment came from. Your name and comment appear on the site. Your email address and IP address never do. We use the email address to reach you about your comment, and to tell you when somebody replies if you have asked us to.

Comments from people who have not commented before are read before they appear. We may decline to publish anything abusive, spam, or off topic, and we may remove a comment later for the same reasons.

To keep spam out, we send the comment, your name, your email address and your IP address to CleanTalk, a spam filtering service. They tell us whether it looks like spam. They do not use it for anything else.

Comments stay up as long as the post does. Write to namaste@bawadinesh.com and we will delete yours.

What we do not do

We do not sell or rent your personal information. We do not run third-party advertising. We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling.

Sharing

We share personal data only with the service providers who make this website work: MailPoet (newsletter delivery), Razorpay (payment processing), Vercel (hosting), and professional advisers where legally required. Each processes data only for the purpose we engaged them for. Some providers may process data outside your country; where they do, transfers are protected by appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

Retention

Newsletter emails: for as long as you stay subscribed. Payment and order records: as long as required by Indian tax and accounting law. Correspondence: as long as needed to resolve your query. Technical logs: per our hosting provider's standard retention.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (including under the GDPR in the UK/EU and the DPDP Act in India), you have rights to: access the personal data we hold about you; correct it; delete it; receive a copy in a portable format; object to or restrict certain processing; and withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent. To exercise any of these, write to info@bawadinesh.com. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

If you are a California resident, you have equivalent rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know, delete, and correct. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in the CCPA.

Children

This website is intended for a general audience and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

We use reputable providers, encrypted connections (HTTPS) and access controls to protect your data. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we take the protection of your information seriously.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update this page and the date at the top. Significant changes will be mentioned in the newsletter.

Contact

For anything related to your personal data: info@bawadinesh.com, or the details on our Contact page.