The Talk

So we were having this event in college for the 2nd year running called TEDxNSIT. For people unfamiliar with the TEDx concept...TED is basically an annual conference where people from different realms come and give awesome talks. These fields can vary from Technology to Bacteria to Underwater Exploration. A TEDx conference is an independently organized event on similar lines...but say by an organization/institute which has got the requisite license to hold such an event with the "TED" name.

All the technicalities apart we were having one college and somehow I was asked by my friend Roshan (who was heading the Organizing) to come and be one of the Speakers and speak about one of my research projects. Now a lot of other people had done so much better work than me in college that it felt pretty weird to come and talk about my work. Nevertheless, it had been a long time since I faced an audience (I don't walk on the ramp nor do I play the guitar...why else would people see you on a stage in college ????) so I decided to give it a go. It was going to be a change anyway from the staticness (or gloominess ??) of life in recent days.

Anyway, so I prepared my presentation not in your usual Powerpoint but a cool software called Prezi (thanks to my friend Gaangil for the tip). I guess initially I was a little nonchalant about it...but about a week left for the talk I started preparing in my hostel room...looking at the window and trying to speak. Somehow I always used to stammer..I speak too fast sometimes , I think there are too many thoughts in my head somehow. One day before I knew what I had to speak, I didn't write anything down it was in my head and either it would work out well or I would have to completely revamp my strategy at giving these talks.

D-DAY

On the day, I woke up at about noon...the event had already started at 10 am. I somehow manged to get ready by 2 and reached backstage. I was nervous you know...I felt like a kid amongst all the speakers. This awesome lady from NID was going over her slides and I was like WOW !! she will definitely give a good talk (She did infact give a great talk ) . Puneet Sahani a hitchiker by profession came in front of me and wrote 4 complete pages for his talk in about 20 minutes. Its like he had so much to say. I on the other hand was hanging out with Ankit Agarwal who was discussing (of all things) girls with me, in hindsight it did calm me down a little, although I had very little to contribute to the conversation.

This was also the day I was suddenly drinking Red Bull which I find absolutely vile and worse than cough syrup. But I had so much nervous energy that I needed something to drink. One of my friends Pragya was also backstage and there I was holding a Red Bull can and chatting with her. Talking did help reduce nervousness...Pragya if you're reading this..Thanks :-)


By the time my turn came, there were a couple of awesome talks that had already taken place. I was nervous going on stage and when I got up the light was directly on my face (that hurt !!). But I adjusted and as soon as I faced the audience there were no more inhibitions. I started off with the talk and I knew when to pause and try to crack a joke (No One Laughed...which left some awkward seconds for me to fill).
The crux of my talk was an DEMO that would require someone to call my mobile phone and press buttons on his keypad, this would then turn on a light bulb kept on my table. Somehow with the help of my friend Udit Aggarwal (whose wry wit on stage won one and all ), I managed to pull this off and I would like to think it looked mildly cool on stage. There was some applause in the middle...a lot of my friends had turned up but I do hope they were sincere :-). I was pretty relieved when I was on the last slide. I took out my mic and just took a deep breath getting off the stage. I then went back to my hostel room and did what I do best...open the door and fall on the bed with my shoes on.

AFTERMATH

I came next evening to see a huge poster with all the Speakers' photo on it. My photo was there too on the bottom right corner...it felt nice in a way...it also felt a little weird.

Standing there staring at myself I realized two things -
1. I need a better photo
2. I need to do something worthwhile with my life. You know "I want to change lives"
is a cliched line but somewhere I definitely want to figure out how I can improve
lives in the lower strata. (Maybe a trip back to my village awaits)

Lets see what the future holds !!

P.S. - I didn't want to bore you with the project details. A video of the talk will be out soon , you can see the talk and the project (MELOS it is called ) in the video itself.

Hope you guys are good. More ramblings next time !!