TEDxManipal

TEDx Manipal, an independently organized TED event, was hosted by MIT on the 21st of September, 2010. Though it's been more than 2 months since, I'll try to brush up, whatever I remember from the event.

This year's inagural TEDx event featured eminent personalities such as Rashmi Bansal (founder of youth magazine JAM and author of Stay Hungry Stay Foolish), Rajiv Misra (chief security office at the Indian Railways) and Nakul Shenoy (a 'mentalist') among others.

The TEDxManipal was inspired by TED videos across the globe, and its licence was acquired by Rajeev Agarwal, Anshul Agarwal and Gaurav Dhir, current final year students at MIT, Manipal, thus the conference based on the theme inspired by the very own motto of Manipal University, 'Inspired by Life'.

I got a pass to attend Session III of TEDxManipal, and after hearing from others who attended the morning and afternoon session, it was sure to be a very eventful and productive evening in store. Nevertheless, the four speakers for this session were, Sundar Sarukkai, Somen Dawn, Prakash Shesh and Nakul Shenoy.

The event kicked off with the most viewed TED Video across the globe, as it had for other sessions. Then we were introduced to our first speaker, Mr. Sundar Sarukkai, who spoke on how Science and Religion is interconnected in this world. His belief was that the best way to understand science was to implement the basic nature of philosophy. Though his speech drew attention and provided to be beneficial, it did turn off the crowd momentarily, who then shouted and cheered (even whistled) at the next speaker, who hailed to be from MIT once upon a time, Somen Dawn.

After a brightful start to his speech, Dawn explained to us the motto behind the $35 Sakshat tablet, which is a project under Kapil Sibal, Union Minister HRD. He explains how this had been inspired by OLPC in the USA. After his innovative speech came the, perhaps, most humorous speeches of the day, by Mr. Prakash Shesh, who talked about how supersitions affect us in the real life, how the silliest of ideas are pre-inserted into our minds, thinking to believe if anything goes out of track is a symbol of bad luck. His powerful, yet humorous speech left us bewildered. He rhetorically put forward the notion that why we go clockwise round the temple, why never anticlockwise, why as college students, we hang on to that one 'lucky' pen, why we eat something sweet before going for an exam and many such examples. To be frank it was one of the best TED speeches I have heard till date!


After his amazing speech which lasted 18 minutes, not more or less, otherwise would have superstitously gone bad, came the 'mentalist' Mr. Nakul Shenoy. The magician performed a couple of tricks, one on-TEDx, one off-TEDx to demonstrate the power of magic. He called upon a couple of students from the crowd, and asked one of them to put a Rs 500 note in one of the three envelopes labelled 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Then he asked his friend to speak out a number and burnt the other two envelopes revealing the Rs 500 note within the last one. The crowd was almost at its feet, attentively noting each and every move of the magician. It was mind boggling.

The off-TEDx magic was when one the magician wrote down a place and a nickname, a couple of friends were thinking just by calling them to the stage and noting their facial reaction. It was awesome ! Post event, we had the informal interactive session, where I got a chance to meet, Rahul Roushan, editor of Faking News. I heard his speech was also amazing, and I just hope the videos of TEDxManipal are out soon and TEDxManipal 2.0 is not far away!

Inspiration is all around us, we just need to have the grasping abilities. An opportunity lost is never an opportunity wasted. It comes back always in some other form. We just need to open the right door at the right time. It is only then, when we are 'Inspired by Life' !