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