Thinkfest.

(13 Nov ’11)

            I read about the controversy around Thinkfest after the event was over. I’m glad I attended it. I don’t know how my not attending would have helped ‘protest’ against an ‘illegally’ built hotel (the illegality is of/in the money put into it plus the permissions given). It would have denied me access to hearing first hand inventors (Karl Dietrich – he’s made a car-aeroplane), politicians (Shukria Barakzai from Afghanistan), terrorists-turned-crusaders, very brave young persons who don’t fear death to take on the Taliban (Sherbano Taseer)… or the Indian government forces (Dayamani Barla, Kopa Kunjam), researchers (Esther Duflo), architect Frank Gehry, those related to films (Aamir Khan, Prasoon Joshi,  writers (Shashi Tharoor, VS Naipaul, Siddharth Mukherjee), politicians (Nitin Gadkari), anti-politicians (Khejriwal and Himanshu Kumar) and more (Justin-Hall Tipping). It’s a long and impressive list, comprising the best brains in the world today, and in India.  Pavan Sukhdev, Prakash Jha, Pavan Verma, Abhijit Bannerji and Esther Duflo (of The Poor Economist), Aruna Roy and so many more. On time, all three days… well, maybe only a couple of minutes stretched, and without wasting a minute, it was well organized for a first time large scale function here. Next time maybe they’ll organize the reception counter better: Many had registered my name months ago, yet had to stand in a long queue with non-registered persons, but that, too, was sorted out rather fast and without much ado.

I thought Sam Pitroda would bore me to death. His was a monologue. After listening to him, I wished he’d been given more time. As one of the very, very few people who believe that the government is actually doing a good job as compared to the private sector, I was pleased that he gave us news no channel would. Maybe DD does, who watches it. Maajid Nawaaz told us how he became an extremist, how by the age of 24 he had set up terrorist outfits in six countries, how and why he got out of terrorism and is promoting peace today. Mike Brown told us how he ‘discovered’ that Pluto wasn’t a planet after all. Naresh Trehan’s session was about genetics, how the manipulation of the genes in petridishes already has and will further change our lives. He countered many of the arguments, saying we can’t afford to play God. Fact is, genetic engineering and stem cell treatments are already here and come to stay, we can’t turn the clock back, the negatives notwithstanding.

The music sessions, I thought, were the loo-breaks. They were superb sessions on the explanation of music; I made sure I sat through them all, L-3-L-4 herniated disc pain notwithstanding. I had one life to live, I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity to learn, hear, absorb… when I had pain-killers on my side.  Anil Srinivasan and his colleague Sadhana Rao didn’t just expose us to tunes on the (very well played) piano, they helped us explore just what music does to our lives. In fifteen minutes every session. Brilliant. A music-lover like me hadn’t come across such an appreciation course ever.

Where did Tehelka get all these names from? How did they choose the topics? It must have taken a great deal of effort to contact the people, considering that they did it all in just a few months.

Amongst my acquaintances, some cribbed that though the Goa Government had given money for the event, no Goan was included. My take: I can hear Goans on local platforms, I’d never be able to hear (or in the case of this fest, meet in the corridor), people from all over the globe). Plenty of aam Goans made use of this free opportunity (there were those who paid for it, too), specially students and young professionals. Why not KA for the venue, someone asked. I’d wondered the same, initially, because reaching the hotel wasn’t easy. But, KA doesn’t have a hall so big, and when one is dealing with speakers from the world over, the logistics of lodging and boarding is better handled ‘on-site’. Having attended many events in KA, I must also add, the sound and lighting, the smoothness of functioning here was better. It makes a lot of difference.

What remains with me after a week is the diversity of topics. I’m still googling to get more details about the points I had been furiously noting down.

My generation was brought up to believe ‘money is bad’. Many of us look down on industrialists and traders as somehow morally inferior to us. It was interesting that the Thinkfest included Mittal, Ruia and KD Singh representing that class, giving us their points of view. Businesses change the world, but, as Tarun said: “It’s ideas that make a country/civilization great.” This celebration of ideas, it was announced, is going to be an annual feature in Goa. Good news, that.

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