Well, I got lucky this time. I won a free pass to attend TEDx Chennai (an independently organized event bringing people together from primarily the walks of Technology, Entertainment & Design), and it turned out to be quite an eventful Sunday. Joseph (an organizer of the event) called me on Saturday evening to inform me that I had won a ticket to attend TEDx at the IIT Madras auditorium. Nothing like an otherwise ‘plan-less’ Sunday! I got up very early, which hasn’t happened for the past year or so, all ready to drive down and expect a totally inspiring set of talks.

Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan performed what I can call one of the best fusion pieces I’ve ever heard till date. Earlier this year, Anil performed at ‘Across the Universe’, a concert in Madras alongside Unnikrishnan and B S Purushotham, which was another fantastic performance – one which truly teleported (yes, music might be the only answer to my teleportation fetish at least in my life time!) people across dimensions. This was by far the best start I can think of for a TED event!

Romulus “the snake man” Whitaker, the founder of the Madras Snake Park, kick started the set of talks with his witty, funny and surprisingly-snake-loving instances of his life. Now I guess I’m not as scared of snakes as I was before – nothing like empathy toward anything and everything… probably something that can save the world!
Sharadha’s talk on Indian culture through films was inspiring, and made me question myself on whether it was worth watching my next Bollywood movie. As ‘politically incorrect’ as it was and as she had put it, we do need a set of fired up vigilantes to change things around here. The closest to Batman I could say!
Madhavan showed us what it took to stand out from the status quo; not by doing something entirely different, but doing something amazing with what he had already learnt. The impact of Agriculture in our nation was put through to people, some of whom didn’t know much about. A swarm of people surrounded him during the coffee break, and continued to rush out to catch him even as he was leaving after the event!
Vittal’s talk was hilarious and yet powerful. He showed us what corruption had grown into, inflicting politics, businesses and people. I felt his approach to tackle corruption by addressing the ‘money-problem’ or the flow of money in politics, a probable solution worth pondering and trying out even. Apparently ‘corruption’ is a hot topic today, especially in interviews. Getting a grassroot fix for this would be marvelous.
Krupa’s presentation on helping the underprivileged was touching, and Kavita’s life experiences and music evoked emotion.
It was at this point when I realized the TED India series of talks were slightly different from the rest. Most Indian entrepreneurs had a story to tell, which had the ability to evoke human emotion in a peculiar way. Something which captures the heart with not just awe of science or awe of technology, but with the awe of life. For me, the awe of life was very well articulated as the awe of Design! It did make a whole lot of sense. (Yet, we still have a long way to go to match TED standards – a lot more to learn.)
Reddy and Santhosh had good initiatives running on serving/helping people to build a better future. I could correlate a lot of it to creating sustainable lifestyles after understanding Sustainability at the WUD2009 event in Bangalore earlier this month. Jeeva and Bawa engaged the audience with their post lunch activity-packed talks – made me feel more human than anything else
The last talk was a bouncer. Something unexpected, yet fantastic. To be frank, it wasn’t a talk at all! It was the life of Satyabrata Dam, an ex-Indian Navy submariner with multiple roles and whacky ambitions. His perception of life is something breathtaking, and I could say I got most of today’s inspiration just by watching his slideshow: a series of jaw-dropping photos of mountains, caves, skies and beauty of mother nature. As he put it, “Mountains have all the answers, no matter what your question is”. The Himalayas has just taken the highest priority in my to-do list, after Amsterdam and places where celestial marvels happen by the minute.
Kiruba and his team put up a good show, and not to mention good food and good people. More at http://tedxchennai.com and #TEDxChennai (on Twitter).
Yet another productive TED India experience! (The earlier one was a few gigabytes of streaming video over the Indiatimes Live telecast of TED at Mysore). Looking forward to 10.10.10 – the next TEDx Chennai event.