A Time Immemorial Text from India

[Music]

hi everyone

i’m a teacher i ask a lot of questions

the entire talk will be a

few questions few short stories and one

inference

my first question would be

how many times were you yelled at by

your teacher

asking you not to talk i mean may not be

you in the class

please stop talking you there black

shirt and red shirt

please stand up how many of you have

witnessed this in your classroom

almost all of you okay

what place are we in a theater

right a movie theater which has probably

had its share of uh a few dozens of

hours of

hundreds of hours of movie screening and

a few hundreds of thousands of people

coming here to watch the movie okay so

we probably should ask the proprietor of

this place

how many times has he come inside this

theater and said you people please stop

talking

concentrate on the movie this wonderful

storyline made for you people

why are you people talking and mind you

the classes used to be for 45 minutes

right the movies are for

two hours i thought bollywood i mean i’m

not talking about the three and a half

hour long

movies that we make in hollywood of

course yes so if it’s uh hollywood it’s

roughly two plus

hours left plus or minus few minutes if

it’s bollywood

you don’t know sometimes it will be a

couple of intervals too in between the

movie right

and when the teacher says hey you red

shirt black shirt walk out of the class

happily we’ll just run out of the class

right so but but if it’s a movie

if it’s an interval for five minutes we

are scared if we miss the first scene

we will quickly go you know grab our

popcorn and then come

even better you know i will say you know

drop it into my seat my seat number is

13b right let’s ask a question

why 45 minutes of torture in the

classroom

but three and of hours of gala movie

watching

right you won’t even blink your eyes let

alone the awning of the class

right what goes right here what goes

wrong there

question number one question number two

these are linked seemingly uh dissimilar

but quite linked

assume i gave you a million dollar right

now

okay you’ll be happy of course you’ll be

very very happy

right five crore rupees let’s say

roughly you’ll be extremely happy

how else can i make you happy uh maybe

give you some caffeine

or a good dose of dark chocolate

or some substance that will make you

happy give you the adrenaline rush

or endorphin rush and whatnot

but then look at this the first point

by giving you money without injecting

any substance into you

you become happy well let’s pause there

and think for a minute

it is possible for us to make you happy

sort of

wirelessly you know i mean i i don’t i

don’t i don’t um

it’s no contact therapy it is no drug

therapy

now let me just open up the skull of the

person who just got happy

and watch what made him happy and touch

that part of the brain which makes him

happy

by the way what is this to do with the

first question these two are very much

linked linked in the following sense

for this i’ll give you a quick anecdote

when i first met my

prospective girlfriend today my wife

it was the first date in a coffee shop

cafe coffee day

me the teacher in me said

i should go and articulate about me

and tell her convince her that i’m a

great person to be with

what do i do what is this

laptop powerpoint slides i thought as a

teacher i should make

10 bullet points why i am great 10

bullet points why we will do great

together

okay and i spoke to my dad my dad said

all right i’ve known you well i i’ve

made a t-shirt out of you but please for

heaven’s sake don’t be a teacher

for the for the next one two hours when

you are with this girl okay

try to be the bring the non-teacher in

you

well you try doing this walk out of your

class and then watch all the students go

by

how many of them have understood how

many of them have not understood

how many of them have misunderstood

right majority of them misunderstand

what we teach

right the question here

is yeah why did my dad ask me not to

take powerpoint slides

the the answer lied in

the very fact that we are humans

one thing that is common across this

question is we are humans

we have emotions and in classroom

this very thing is not observed

okay why isn’t house of fit will quickly

run through

if you if you sort of look at this

question of open up the skull and

touch that part that made this person

happy which sort of

fired his neurons and made him feel good

after i declared that he won a

million dollar lottery right is there

any way

we can get that done by talking by

singing

by giving an anecdote by telling you a

story

is that possible

of course yes and one culture has sort

of

tried demystifying this

if someone asks me to write a two-page

report first thing is i’ll take a break

i’ll i’ll read about

writer’s block and go on a vacation feel

stressed

moment my boss asks me to write

something i do this

all right and we as researchers as the

introduction reads we write research

papers

writing 10 pages that side this side you

know tires us

there is this work from uh date unknown

i suspect a few thousands of years ago

comprising of six thousand versus six

thousand verses in a poetic language

talking about how should a theater be

what is theater all about how do you get

the joy in the theater

what how do you create a formula for

theater

and one of the most important part of

this work called the natya shastra the

word

nathiya there is not necessarily

narthana not dance

not ya there means natana it is it’s

about acting

one of the most important part there is

called the rasa theory

i’m sure most of you would have heard of

navarasas right it says

if you want your audience to stay still

and enjoy your

delivery of talk or as a stage

dramatic or a piece of dance or singing

or whatever you call it

you must ensure that you must massage

his entire brain using this navarro

right it says it says

a horror movie you see it’s not always

about scary stuff coming for two full

hours

there will be some storyline of some

some spell of love

some some some scene of a disgust

some scene of bravo and so on and so

forth

right why do they include all these

things why do they kill the hero at the

end

i always wondered as a kid why do they

kill the hero at the end that’s because

they want to cover this navarasas you go

to a massage parlor

they want to you know sort of ignite all

your energy points

as the idiom goes don’t leave any stone

unturned don’t leave any of this part of

your brain

untouched when you are giving a stage uh

you know

presentation says ngati shastra it very

clearly says

you have this navarasas you must give a

rollercoaster ride of this navarasas

be it a stage performance or be it a

classroom

this is precisely missing in our class

what we do

is sun at this position of a teacher

okay a plus b the whole square is a

square plus b squared plus 2 a b

i’m great a plus b the whole cube is a q

plus b q plus

3 a b into a plus b i hope i’m right

there and then

a plus b whole to the power of some

summation i equals 0 to n um

n choose i into a to the i into b to the

n minus i

i am great if you want to reach my stage

you must work hard

i walk out and all my all my students

are like oh my god my teacher is great i

can never reach his height we are always

like this

right tell me something just just

recollect a good teacher in your life

a very good teacher outstanding teacher

i’m sure all of you have one right raise

your hand

all of you have a very good teacher in

your life

just think of his qualities number one

he was definitely humorous

perfect comic timing right he would

dance in the class

a good teacher a good presenter mute his

voice

let him just talk it will be very

pleasant to watch him talk

see a radio jockey right he did not move

his hands

his or her hands but they will be moving

their hands

listen to a good speaker without the

gestures they’re good at

voice modulation they’re good at you

know doing dramatics

they do a sort of narthana in the class

we need this nava rasa sadhana

by teachers it is high time that we

do it and if we don’t do it we’ll

continue to be the

the same old boring teacher of red shirt

black shirt please get out of the

classroom right you must work hard to do

well in your life

right in this connection we i as a

professor

at iit i always wondered uh my students

are all very smart

whatever i teach they will learn

is that true do you think we should

bring in emotions in the classroom

we tried this 30-hour lecture called the

joy of computing

when i believed as the very good saying

goes

microbiology is not about microscopes

astronomy is not about telescopes

computer science is not about

computers and we thought we should

probably go out and then teach computing

show them how computing is there in

nature and use some dramatics to make it

appear very interesting have all sort of

navarasas in our teaching

right let me try illustrating a couple

of those

teaching lessons by this i do not mean

include

all navarasas in your class it’s

probably not possible the point is

try to make it a little more interesting

than simply narrating the a plus b whole

to the power of n

formula so let me teach some two three

concepts in computer science to all of

you i’m sure all of you will get it

so i i need a volunteer my friend is

here you can come to the

stage so here is a question of what is

called complexity in computer science

computers are all powerful right i mean

you don’t have to worry about uh

power there because it’s all of us of

omnipotent so we have tanushri here i’ll

ask her

to take a a4 sized sheet and tear it by

half

okay now you have two sheets tear it

further

you have four sheets go on and then we

have

eight and then we have 16

then we have 32 she’s finding it hard

but

but just in case she did assuming that

we gave her a very big sheet

she tears it uh 40 times i’ll finish my

ted talk but

you have all your time so uh the moment

she

does it the 40th time thank you danish

so you saw her struggle right

that’s the idea there right so the

moment she does it the 40th time

and piles these papers up and somehow

try standing on top of it

the fact is she can touch the moon

all right the moment we tell this in the

classroom the students are wondering

is that true what has that to do with

computer science

let’s investigate and you get all the

underlying rush up of the students

and keep that as the yardstick to teach

the rest of the class

okay so you drop a nice glass jar from

the first floor it takes one second you

drop a glass jar from the second floor

it takes two seconds is what a typical

11 standard student says

right but then no that’s the beginning

of calculus because there’s a built-in

accelerator inside the jar right i mean

it increases its speed as it falls

let us compute it let us go to the first

floor throw may not be a jar let’s not

be violent let’s throw a ball

and then compute the time taken second

floor third floor fourth floor

ask the question and leave the student

he will be

in this ostrich rasa that he

he will start wondering what is the

answer he will have sleepless nights

i am reminded of this book resnick and

holiday where the first chapter starts

with a

person watching the time and seeing the

sunset

and the question is can you watch the

sunset and compute the radius

of earth right so

the point is so you you create that

question the add-on line russian leave

it to the student i mean he comes along

he finds it as good as a bollywood movie

he can sit for three and half long long

hours in the classroom you must create

you must massage all his navarasa

regions of his

brain is that possible definitely yes

we may have to choose when we are

choosing our teachers so with this i

conclude my talk

when we are choosing our teachers we got

to be doubly careful especially today

after

sort of post coverage we have realized

teaching can go online

nothing is i was very thrilled when

people said it’s going to happen in a

theater in a movie theater simply

because

as the story goes about 60 years ago

people who are projected here the

so-called bollywood stars

were drama artists and we all know

they used to struggle for a square meal

move around from city to city

you know where even torn clothes at

times all that some people got was

a food for the session as simple as that

and you know what happened

camera entered the drama hall they all

now live in bombay right they call

themselves bollywood stars

they are richest in the country now post

kobe we have realized that teaching can

go online

and camera has come into the classrooms

right is every possibility that teachers

will be

the future rock stars and they should be

one when you’re recruiting it matters to

get a

person with a you know shahrukh’s dimple

and

kamal hassan’s acting skills and

rajini’s style and

the acting skills of madurai dikshita

madhubala and

so on and so forth right it matters for

us to select a teacher

than a teacher who will stand in the

sanity’s position

and narrate a plus b whole to the power

of n formula and ask you to work hard

it should be a delightful journey i’m

sure we can make it

if we can curate our lessons accordingly

it’s a call to all the teachers to

please make your classes

filled with navarasas thank you all very

[Applause]

much

[Music]

you