TED India November 2009
Contradictions.
If innovation occurs about the boundaries between conflicting notions, and borders where seamlessness is impossible and a new solution is required, then India is ripe for powerful innovation. My journey to TED India demonstrated the stark contrasts that define India.
Our location was the first indication of the counterpoints to come. Out of the dusty ruckus of a road rutted by oxcarts, auto rickshaws, and herds of cattle, we pulled into what can best we described as Las Vegas meets Epcot Center on the Stanford campus — the Infosys campus outside of Mysore. One moment we were in the maelstrom of humanity, the next we were in a hedge-rowed, gated community of uniformity, dotted with an homage to the Parthenon, I. M. Pei’s Pyramid du Louvre, and the aforementioned Buckminster Fuller Epcot geodesic dome.
Once the program began, we careened from Usha Uthup’s Bollywood song to Sunitha Krishnan’s heart wrenching pleas on victimization of women; whipped around from A. Balasubramaniam’s modern art to Anupam Mishra’s dialog on instincts of ancient water gathering; bounced from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s humor of the guru to the Shashi Tharoor’s earnestness of politician. This whiplash inducing curation, commingled with jetlag and the scent of sandalwood, made for an even more dizzying array of intellectual insight than the classic TED roller coaster.
Devdutt Pattanaik endeavored to capture this dichotomy is in tale of two traditions — the hero and linear Alexander of the West that lives in a hurried, singular world consisting of only one take on life, versus the mythology of India that embodies a curvaceous, reincarnated, meandering flow of life.
My “ah ha” moment came with Shekhar Kapur: The director (Elizabeth, Bandit Queen) who creates new landscapes for human emotion and does what the best innovators do— looks at old stories with new lenses. He reminded us all of the panic of unknowing that is required before we leap into the abyss of creativity, and that contradiction is required in order to create inspired works that develop a wondrous tapestry for the human intellect and psyche to explore. This is true in all visionary endeavors, be them technology, science, art or politics.
I leave TED India believing that perhaps the new world of innovation requires dancing with the tiger: Bring a bit of the friction that creates heat and the liberation of all people from Alexander’s world of the West together, along with the beauty of harmonic contradictions and deep human insights for the next wave of inspiration and world transformation. Thanks to Laskmi and Chris for showing us the first steps of the dance.
