Apna Time Aayega
good afternoon uh
girls and boys ladies and gentlemen one
thing i was sure about when i accepted
this request to
speak at this edition of tedx was that
it will be punctual after all
the theme itself is integrating time
but then my talk was scheduled just
before lunch i was the last speaker
before lunch time and i thought to
myself and you would agree it was
a legitimate apprehension whether there
would any be any people actually here be
here
to listen to me or would everyone rush
off to the lunch counter
so in order to send the organizers a
subtle message
i titled my talk as apna tai mayaka
but i’m glad to see so many of you here
also maintaining social distancing which
is very important
i call it integrating time by
maintaining dog
and that’s what even prime minister
narendra modi says and it sounds a bit
like the kingfisher tagline
doesn’t it divided by times united by
kingfisher
in today’s context it would be divided
by kovid united by
masks and i see quite a few colorful
masks
out here i was telling a friend of
mine that tedx is organizing this
particular event where the theme is of
integrating time
and he told me haven’t we actually
wilded away a whole lot of time
during most part of 2020 as part of the
lockdown why does tedx have to spend an
entire day then
talking about time i thought really dude
because as far as i was concerned
between
mopping the floor washing the dishes
folding the clothes
disposing of the garbage buying
provisions and working from home
i thought these were very testing times
in fact i had to work overtime
in order to catch up with content on
netflix amazon and hotstar
so i thought if there was one commodity
one element
which was in short supply in most of
2020
it was time because
if you see the 366 days of the calendar
of 2020 remember we are in a leap year
it’s almost like
by a year 2020 get an extra bad day free
this these have been testing times and
it has been a trial by fire for
so many of us in fact i know of people
who are
praying and hoping that come january 1
2021 will probably be a better behaved
calendar
than 2020. it’s almost like buying a
product online
right you buy an expensive order for an
expensive iphone and i know
i think iphone unveiled some three four
versions earlier this week
so you order for an expensive iphone and
instead of that you get a cheap
chinese mall let me tell you when i say
mal
i do not mean to say so let’s that be
clarified
lest it find its way into some 9 pm
bulletin on some channel
now kobet 19 has been
in many senses a very difficult year has
made it a very difficult year for most
people
it’s made 2020 a year to forget
can you go fast so
if you look at the way it has panned out
we hear of so many tragic stories
from so many families friends relatives
acquaintances
and it almost seems like the only way to
beat the your time is up
a very traumatic and tragic warning the
whisper of death
as i call it which is ending so many
dreams and aspirations
like this is to buy is to remain
faithful to the mosque that’s the only
way to beat this kovid 19 nightmare
that the entire world is going through
it’s almost as if we are
seeing a science fiction horror film
produced from across the great wall
and dubbed into several indian languages
that’s how
scary the situation is and the kind of
stories that we hear from so many people
that’s making it so much difficult in
fact
it has kind of cut across all kinds of
barriers rich poor
hindu muslim christian parsi jew sick
educated uneducated even god has not
been spared
temples churches gurudwaras mosques have
all been shut down
for most part of 2020 your influence
does not work
either out here so what do you do really
because at this point in time kovat 19
has made it
is really the big equalizer as it were
suddenly as i said the only way to beat
it is by social distancing
wearing a mask and ensuring that use a
sanitizer
all the time that’s the only way to do
that
and you need to stay true to the such
bharat abhiyan the hand
in fact may not be the hottest political
currency at the evm at least not in the
last
six years but definitely the hand
is your passport to remaining safe and
remaining healthy
no one is safe anymore and these are the
times we live in
and no one is safe anymore not even the
king of good times
including the person living in london
right now
so what exactly is time is it an
abstract concept or is it a very
tangible concept how does one really
define time
is my bad time the same as your bad time
or does my having a bad time mean my
boss is having a good time how does one
define time
is time about being about 12 55 pm
right now i guess it would depend on who
you are asking right
if you ask me as a journalist i will say
time is deadline
that you need to deliver the story in
the next 20 minutes so that it can be
part
of the 9 pm bulletin and i mean those
channels
who actually deliver news not a raving
and ranting session not an abusing and
screaming session
if you ask me as an educator i would say
it’s all about the time that you spend
with your books
preparing notes absorbing like a sponge
up from life in general and of course
the time management during the
examination
if you ask me as a father i would say
just another eight odd months
before uma and my only daughter
completes class 12 and leaves home
in pursuit of higher education if you
ask me as a husband i would say 25
wonderful years
and many more to come if you ask virat
kohli
he will tell you time is all about
timing the ball right so that you hit
that delicious covered drive
right and he will also tell you that
it’s high time
the rcb won the ipl
and talking about the ipl ms dhoni will
wonder what happened to csk’s good times
at the ipl
if you ask a doctor he will say time is
the golden
r if you ask a stock broker he will tell
you it’s all about timing the market
to ensure that you make good money if
you ask an astrologer he will tell you
your bad time will continue till
december 2021 because till then rahu and
ketu are not on talking terms
so we are all talking about time all the
time
but our interpretation and understanding
of time
is all very difficult different
most people when they want to avoid you
would straight away bring in mr time
into the picture and say i do not have
time
i personally think i do not have time
quote unquote is the biggest lie
ever spoken almost every other minute by
someone or the other
to someone else because the sentence is
actually incomplete it should actually
be
i do not have time for you but i may
have time for someone else
put bluntly it means you are not
priority which is why when we speak of
integrating time the theme of this
edition of tedx it’s
actually about integrating relationships
because we are all in a relationship
with time all the time
and the best of relationships need time
to ensure
that they remain the best when you deny
time to
someone who seeks it from you you’re
actually putting a value
a crude price tag to that person’s worth
in your life
and you tell yourself listening to this
person
spending time with this person speaking
to this person does not
add to my life in any way so let me
blame it on time to me
integrating time is just another way of
speaking about
respecting relationships respecting
every single entity
who came into your life doing good bad
or ugly things
made you feel good made you feel
miserable went out of his hand
way to lend a helping hand or actually
created problems in your life
it could be the bad eggs who taught you
a very bitter lesson
it could be a chemistry teacher who
taught you the formulae
it could be your english literature
teacher who taught you to appreciate
william shakespeare enjoy the process of
learning
it could be your grandfather who taught
you how to hold a racket in order to
play
good badminton it could be your
grandmother who taught you how to read
the time
on the wall clock right that reminds me
in fact
my daughter went to a montessori school
till class four
i fondly recall that on the day of the
farewell of my daughter’s batch
the principal of course had invited the
parents but she had also invited the
grandparents
and on that last day the principal of
the school did something very thoughtful
she handed over to
every grandparent a laminated copy of an
essay their grandchild had written on
the grandparent when they were in class
two or three
to me that is integrating time deepening
a very special bond a moment where you
tell the grandparent that you’re
more valuable and precious than what you
think you may be 60 and your grandchild
10 years old
but this is a time that you need to
cherish
the love that you have for your
grandchild and your grandchild has for
you
is like a moment frozen in time it is
not an us versus them it can be
and it should be us and them
we speak of generation gap i mean that’s
a phrase we use quite often i think once
we try to integrate relationships
none of this so called generation gap
would really exist
but the question that arises is are we
integrating time and relationships well
in the most positive and harmonious
manner
let me talk about journalism the career
with which i have been associated with
for
close to 30 30 years it has changed a
lot from the time when i used to
actually type my articles on a remington
typewriter as a freelancer in the late
80s
to go to every newspaper office to hand
over my piece
to the editors when we entered
television in the mid-90s we used to
operate with
big high band tapes beta tapes the size
of the tapes kept shrinking
and now you have either the small tips
and of course your cell phone
now is really the game changer in the
early 90s actually as newcomers in the
media space we would wonder whether we
could actually go
live from a location a flooded area a
cyclone hit area
an area where an axle attack has taken
place an area where a major train
accident has taken place
just to be able to communicate to the
viewer
and show to the viewer what exactly is
happening today it is possible
all you need is a smartphone with a good
4g connectivity
and a selfie stick and a mic and you are
good to go
which is why apna time ayga for the
common man
and the journalist has become a case of
time again technology has truly
revolutionized the media just like many
other sectors
in india and around the world each and
every person is now a journalist
you only need a social media handle to
get your voice heard and amplified
in fact you no longer need big bugs to
have your own channel so many people are
running successful channels on youtube
doing stuff that they are good at
specialist at
and becoming digital media entrepreneurs
so while all this has happened and it’s
all very fine
has a large section of the mainstream
media
forgotten its basic dharma of
integrating relationships
or has it become a divisive force now
when we
entered the field of journalism 30 years
ago at least speaking about myself
you were told that you need to ensure
that you earned the
trust of the viewer over a period of
time and that was for us
the five letter word which we needed to
remember all the time
in fact the tagline of ndtv where i
worked for over 16 years
is trust the question is whether
over a period of time in our bid to show
that we are now better thanks to
technology we have lost out on that
basic five letter word called trust
so the question is whether high
technology use in media
has necessarily led to a more
responsible more empathic media space
or is hate now gift trapped in a
high-tech rapper
because i feel it is a poisoning of
india taking place
one day at a time one bulletin at a time
so to return to the theme of this
edition of tedx
if the media generation of today is
happy with this change with time and if
society at large is
okay with hate and slander served by
both sides the right wing as well as the
so-called liberals i think we are
heading for very dangerous times
a large part of the media if you note is
no longer showing you the truth
it is the channel’s truth the website’s
true the newspapers truth it’s like a
multiple choice questions
mcqs presented to you and me choose
whatever suits
your truth now you may wonder whether i
am painting a very pessimistic picture
yes and no no because i mentioned
youtube a while earlier
and i will now take you to the other
career i am associated with right now
and that is education now for the past
one year plus i have been teaching
students absolutely free of cost
the most important resource being my
time
and this is over youtube and as the lady
said in the introduction
my students range from shillong to
ludhyana to
madurai to vadodara to small towns like
dhule
lots of towns in odisha west bengal in
fact the other day i
kind of found one student called jyotika
who hails from
my mother’s village in trishul district
of kerala and i was delighted
and so many of my students actually
scored marks in the high 90s in their
2020 final board examinations
so technology has evolved and with time
what has taken place is the integration
of content with technology
today fiki counts edtech as one of the
industries that will
really grow and flourish in the next
decade
i remember a conversation with an up top
i.t honcho
uh a chairman of a prominent i.t company
in november last year and he was telling
me sudhir in a decade from now
students will go to school only for
social interaction developing leadership
skills
the academic learning will all happen
online
well i think he kind of spoke of a
decade as a very long time because
that kobet 19 fast forwarded the 10
years that he spoke of
to just about 10 weeks yes there are
issues with online learning as all of us
know
there is problem of not everyone having
access to technology there is screen
fatigue there is boredom
uh but what it does is that if aided by
good technology
it can reach out to the most remote
corner of the country and that’s a huge
plus
the marriage of technology and education
has shrunk
the time factor and that’s the time the
integration of time that we are talking
about
so you have two career paths that i have
been part of one not
entirely covering itself with glory
despite the influx of high technology
the other using the same technology as a
way forward to have
tremendous opportunities lastly
while we talk of you know journalism and
education all that is fine
but integrating time is also not about
doing it with others
it’s also about yourself the question
that each one of us need to ask is
are we giving ourselves a decent amount
of quality time are we happy with the
company we keep on social media
are we feeding ourselves with toxicity
every minute
no wonder if you notice and that’s what
a friend of mine was also talking about
we hear about so much of depression
issues these days
despite having so much of company on
social media we are still
feeling very very lonely so integrate
your time
your idea of time not necessarily with
the world that matters
but with yourself also look inward so
that you can
find peace and that’s how you can lead a
more
harmonious life have a more harmonious
existence thank you very much for your
time