How Pranav Mistry Changed My Life

Ridhima Singh
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

I’m willing to argue that for a lot of us, our journeys with TED and TEDx first began with the legendary Pranav Mistry Talk on Sixth Sense Technology. “Whoah, he took a picture with his fingers!”, “Did he type, on a table?!”, “THIS IS LIKE IRON MAN” were just a few of my reactions as a hyper-imaginative 12-year old. My eyes had just been opened up to a world of ideas and people whom I didn’t even know existed. I wanted more.

Like everyone else, my fascination with TED Talks stuck to my computer screen for a long time. I would watch in awe for 18-minutes, and then more, and more. Somewhere in between those videos and whatever was left of my life, I realized that I had to do more. I didn’t just want to be the girl having revelations, I wanted to be the girl creating them.

I come from a nuclear family based in India, but always on the move. As we lived in cities as diverse as Dubai and Lagos, I began looking at people from a perspective very different from just who they are as individuals. TED taught me that we aren’t our experiences, we are our ideas. We are what we believe in. I developed a (frankly ridiculous) habit of imagining a TED Talk by everyone I met. And boy, did some of them blow me away. It didn’t take long for me to go almost insane with the desire to make more people realize this.

When I was 16, I moved back to India to finish high school. My insanity had subsided to a dormant thud in the back of my head, resurfacing only once in a while when particularly inspired, and otherwise overshadowed by adolescent existential dread (trust me, it’s a thing) and the fear of the future. Admittedly selfishly, I didn’t care about creating revolutions anymore. I just wanted to get an A in my French quiz, and maybe catch 8 hours of sleep that night. At this point, TED creeped back into my life in the most unexpected way possible.

“Do none of you know how to talk!?”, my debate coach had yelled at us one day after a session of abysmal practice. I had dozed off in the front row next to my friend, and both of us were jolted awake by the harsh alarm. “What is he saying?”, both of us stared on in bewilderment as he walked over to his computer muttering angrily to himself, and turned on a TED Talk saying “Let me show you what public speaking is!” In a dimly lit room, looking at the familiar red sign, among wide-eyed people, a lot of whom were seeing it for the first time, the feeling flooded back. “We need this” was all I remember thinking to myself, and then to my friend. “Do you think we should organise a TEDx conference in school?” “Let’s do it,” was his response, “I don’t have much going on.”

The year after that was a blur. But oh, what a satisfying one. We went to the very teacher who yelled at us for not knowing how to talk and requested for him to be our mentor. Between countless meetings, late night Skype calls and “my speaker has a bad throat!” crises, we pulled through. A bunch of 16-year olds with no knowledge of anything and a teacher and a high school principal who could have definitely done without the added stress. August 20th, 2015. The date is unforgettable, and so is the moment of walking up onto stage to give a speech as the Licensee and Co-Organiser of TEDxPWS 2015. It felt good, like something, somewhere had fallen into place.

The next summer, I got an email from TED. TEDxPWS had been recognized as a successful conference in India, and I had been selected as the youngest TEDxChange Scholar. I was invited to attend TEDWomen 2016 in San Francisco, and represent my conference. As I impatiently waited for the days to come close, I’m sure the 12-year old in me must’ve passed out at least a hundred times. “Is this happening? Is this happening? Really!?” Suffice to say, I lose all proficiency in communication when I’m emotional.

San Francisco changed my life, in ways more than one. I made friends I’m never going to lose touch with, I realized the value of family and friends back home, and I was introduced to a world which was so different from what I am used to. In a world where every direction you turn poses a new problem, insecurity or threat — religious, social, political, economic or racial — walking into the world of TED is a world of hope. It’s a world of solutions, progress, growth. A world where you learn to take your problems, and instead of internalizing them, you play with them. You dissect them, think about them, discuss them, and by the end of it, figure out how to fix it in your own tiny way.

Today, as a second-year undergraduate student, I’m organizing my second TEDx conference at my college: TEDxAshokaUniversity. And as we go through the same process of our ups and downs, and the endless number of challenges that come with organizing anything, all it takes to get me back on track is the feeling I had that day when I stepped onto a TEDx stage for the first time. The first time I walked into a room full of Change Scholars. The moment my teacher turned on a TED Talk in that classroom. The moment I watched my first TED Talk, and felt like the world can change. And that I want to be a part of that.

As TEDx Organisers, I sometimes feel like that is our ultimate motive. We take this initiative because we want our community to see the world through the same lens we can: one of exploration, ideas, revolutions, craziness, beauty and the ever-needed: hope. Hope that one day, everyone can feel the same way we feel, when they see the world around them.

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