The Conclave Saga: Part I

Do you know that Kochi Biennale is going on and I didn’t attend it, but I am there for the Delhi Conclave? It is strange indeed, because it was so easy for me to go for that art exhibition which I admire and is close enough to my place. But life do provides one with enough twists, and I was there at Taj Palace Hotel at Delhi, and not at Cochin or its surroundings islands – not looking at art, but listening to some of the best of our nation. Thank you BlogAdda! – http://www.blogadda.com.

Lets get to the first day then. The highest point of day one was surely with the Master Blaster, and undoubtedly the biggest Hero of Our Times from our land, Sachin Tendulkar. There are only three cricketers whom I ever wanted to see, and with this programme, it is one down and two to go. You can make a guess who all the other two are, and with the first one, it is easy. He was indeed the reason why many people told me that they will shoot me if I don’t go to the Conclave.

When you see such clouds on the sky, good things can happen to you 😛

It was amazing to hear from the legend, as he continued to thrive in his humble nature throughout the talk, and there was that moment when he gave tribute to Roger Federer as his favourite player and someone who has no replacement – as God’s gift. It is always a special feeling to listen to one legend giving credits to another. We already know that they are good friends with each other with a photo that we usually see on Facebook, but this is even more special.

With his hopes to see a better world supported by the philanthropy, the first big talk of “The World Remade” had finished. It was followed two talks related more to Politics about which I shall not talk about without being better informed about it. My relation to National Politics has been like a void; the knowledge about Kerala Politics should be a little more though. I am surely working on it with my PSC studies, and may be I can discuss about this topic in a good way later.

And then there is the legend – notice the divine light that burns bright 😉

One interesting topic in between the two political talks was about being educated with a degree, but not having a job. There is a dialogue from a Malayalam movie, CID Moosa which I wish to share here – in the flick, a character keeps saying, “It is about me, about me and me only” (translated from Malayalam). Yes, it was the feeling that I first got while listening to that talk. Rajiv Pratap Rudy made some valid points there, and the rest including Chetan Bhagat provided the audience with something to think about.

The question was asked about the need for dignity of labour. Why is one job superior to other, is a question that becomes extremely relevant considering the current scenario. Well, how can we expect that to happen in a world when the parents want their children to be engineers or doctors? I have been listening to this for eternity. An engineer is an engineer and a doctor is a doctor. Then who am I? Did I drop out of the ninth circle of hell with my MA English according to the society? Do I need to add something before my name to improve my quality instead of being a good person?

It is good to have an identity – we don’t always get to have one.

I pondered about it for a lot of time over tea, and I had to have a lot of it because it was extremely cold inside the room, and I have already written about my reaction to cold. I was born in March, which is one of the hottest months of Kerala, and I am more inclined towards heat than cold. We grew up playing cricket and football at mid-noon and not bothering about any globe of fire over our heads. This is also one of my reasons to be addicted to tea rather than any of those colder drinks.

I remember seeing “chawal” somewhere on the list of food, and I only recalled my lack of Hindi vocabulary despite studying Hindi in school and scoring well in the subject. The word actually meant “death” in Malayalam, just like “chor” meant rice in Malayalam. I just looked at a few other names, which I won’t be sharing here, but what I surely want to share is something about Lisa Haydon.

One of those interesting things which I found about tea 😀

My admiration for this lady increased a lot after this talk. Yes, her name reminds me of my second favourite Australian cricketer of all time, but that is not the point here. She was there to share the idea that we are more than what wear, and a person is not his or her dress. Even as she might have surely meant it more about women, it is something that has a bigger scope – the judgment made based on one’s clothing is rather too much to handle.

The talk about the future followed, which included a few things about the future of science and technology, and the one about 3D printing was more interesting than the others. The temperature inside the hall was getting lower, and the well-known soul guru Deepak Chopra did come with some interesting points, but the talk was too long and not always there making the point, I would say. There were a few things taken from his talk for sure.

You can avoid and forget many things, but not the lovely tea!

Then came the afternoon session that we were waiting for, and it was “The Kat with Nine Lives” – Katrina Kaif. Yes, she is among my favourites of Bollywood. I was impressed by the way in which she answered almost every question, especially those related to her personal life. But what makes me wonder is why are people so interested in the personal lives of the celebrities, and what the relevance of these questions are, especially on a stage like this.

May be it was meant to add the comic relief, but we were never going through a tragedy like in the case of a Porter scene in Macbeth or like the situation which demanded something like a grave-digger scene in Hamlet. Well, my best guess is that a lot of fans who will watch this programme on the television or internet might want such questions. It was indeed funny and enjoyable, and I would like to applaud Katrina for the way in which she dealt with those questions.

The talk about the India-Pakistan friendship which followed had some good thoughts to take home too. The first thing that came to my mind when listening to the same was about the Malayalam movie, Picket 43 starring Prithviraj Sukumaran (My take on the movie: https://moviesofthesoul.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/picket-43). I recommend that movie too. Yes, we need our neighbours to be our friends, but we are still left with that question if it is possible.

The crossfire stuff related to elections which are won on the internet gave some interesting points too, even though I have been completely unaware of such things behind the that election about which I only read on the newspapers. The talk about Afghanistan was an interesting addition which ended the day’s programs with a hope for peace in the nation which has been suffering. #Conclave15

***And thanks to my blogger friends there: Shoma Abhyankar, Arvind Passey, Yogita Aggarwal and Shreya Das – yes, there is the Part 2 with the final day; this has gone too long already 🙂

TeNy