TEDxFCRIT

TEDxFCRIT brings the spirit of TED’s mission of ideas worth spreading to local communities around the globe. TEDxFCRIT events are organized by curious individuals who seek to discover ideas and spark conversations in their own community. TEDxFCRIT events include live speakers and recorded TED Talks, and are organized independently under a free license granted by TED. On 2nd March, when every thing will be setup, the stage, the mic and the audience, all we dare you to do is to talk about these elephants. Lets talk about problems which are very much prevalent and ideas to solve them. There’s an elephant in the room. It is large and squatting, so it is hard to get around it. Yet we squeeze by with, “How are you?” and, “I’m fine,” and a thousand other forms of trivial chatter. We talk about the weather; we talk about work; we talk about everything else— except the elephant in the room. An excerpt from The Elephant in the Room By Terry Kettering How is it that, as humans, we live in silence and denial each day of our lives? It is as if an heirloom has been handed down from generation to generation; the heirloom of ‘silence in chaos’, living with our eyes, ears and mouth shut. We have mastered the art of being oblivious to the evil and pain that thrives and throbs right next to our ears, sometimes close to our beating hearts. Many a time, our hearts beat in tandem with the pulsating wrong that is growing in size day after day, night after night. The stigma of mental health, suicide among the youth and the underprivileged, blatant breaking of laws by the lawmakers and people who blindly follow suit, the bottomless ravine between the rich and the malnourished, crime against humankind and mute animals, unhappy marriages, desolate children, the list unfortunately is endless. But do we dare ruin our day by expressing our thoughts on these? Isn’t it just Karma? “Oh their fate is sealed”, we say. “Discussion is pointless and a waste of time, nothing comes out of it’, we say. But dare we just try and look at the elephant in the room. It is growing larger in size with every passing day. The statistics are feeding it, increasing its girth. We can now no longer manouvre around it. The elephant will, soon, not only suffocate us but will also crush our souls. It’s time to look the elephant in the eye. Let’s talk. AUDREY CORREA (Assistant Professor, FCRIT, Vashi)