A speechTalk by Subroto Bagchi

Speech is quite a hard term and something I don't want to use. When I hear the word speech it is something that strikes me as boring and uninteresting. I am not getting a better word for it, but it is something that lies in between speech and (info)session. Or to take the official word that was used for this event, it was called a 'Talk by Subroto Bagchi'. A speech is something like a one-way communication where a guy comes on stage and gives gyaan while most of the audience is sleeping. This session was not just a one-way communication. It was more interactive in a different sort of way. This was where Mr. Bagchi was speaking and we, the audience, were listening(not just hearing). More than that, this was a session where Mr. Bagchi ended his talk in a short time and encouraged the audience to ask questions and share their thoughts on the subjects that he spoke about. This was very nice and not something that I have come across often. Moreover, the talk itself was captivating and you could feel that Mr. Bagchi felt one with his subject.

Mr. Bagchi was obviously inspired by one Mr. Howard Gardner and his talk was based primarily on the works/research of Mr. Gardner. There are two books among those that Gardner has written which has inspired Subroto. One is a book on Multiple Intelligences. Gardner is one of the first guys who questioned the system of measuring IQ and using it as a scale to compare the intelligences of people. He says there are about 11+ different types of intelligences that a person can possess and the area that he/she is intelligent in determines their intelligence and aptitude and not necessary the math-logical intelligence that IQ tests.

Similarly there was another book which Gardner has written called 'Five mind for the future'. This is a book on what kind of mindsets companies will be looking for in the future in prospective candidates. There are five minds that one should have like mastery of a single discipline, awareness of surrounding disciplines, creativity, respect, ethics. Mastering these would let a person scale new heights of success. The talk was good and pretty inspiring. Also, I was quite interested in reading the two books that Subroto has authored.

When he was talking about the first two minds of discipline I was struck by a anology myself. What he says is that you have to be a master of a single discipline. You have to be thorough in that particular disciple and there will a demand for only such domain experts in the future. However, the second mind says that you should know not just one discipline, but various disciplines around the one in which you are the expert. This doesn't mean that you should be able to practise these other disciplines, but you have to be able to see from the perspective of other domains and have to understand the existence of these other disciplines. This is needed in order to grown in your own preferred discipline. Something on this area could be a skyscraper. A skyscraper is meant to scale new peaks and rise up as high as it can possibly get. But this cannot be done by just going up. You have to build your base and foundation. As you grow higher, you have to expand horizontally to support the height gains, lest you topple and fall flat or back to ground zero.

The only dampner after all that was when I got back home and looked up the prices of these books. Not something that I can afford to buy at this point. :)
But do look up Subroto's blogs and google up the articles that he has written. These are definitely worth a read.

Edit: I remembered some anecdotes from Subroto's speech. I will update this blog post as and when I remember excerpts from his talk.

1) A mind of Respect. Subroto mentioned about having respect for others. Others can be collaborators and opponents. A case in point was the ongoing conflict at Singur. As Subroto points out, all the confict and confusion there was the result of lack of respect between the heads of the political parties. Mamatha doesn't respect Bhuddadeb, and Bhuddadeb doesnt respect Mamatha. So they both started bickering and fighting over issues without putting the state at priority. The only priority was putting each other down and finally they never tried to resolve the conflict together. But both had respect for the governer of the state - Gopalkrishna. When the governer called them together to reach a common understanding, then only both sat together with the governer and tried to initiate a dialog. So one should have respect for their peers to move ahead in career and life.

2) A mind of Creativity. As Subroto said, India and Indians have totally lost that creative spirit in them. After the towering temple Gopurams, the wonderful architectural carvings in the temples, maybe even the mughal inspirations such as the Red/Agra forts, the Taj Mahal, the rajput creations in the Rajasthan forts, there has been nothing else creative enough that we Indians can be proud of. I remember a quote by an eminent person who said that Bangalore is not a Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is a place where innovations happen, new products and techonologies are born and ideas become reality. In Bangalore we just assist Silicon Valley to realise their ideas. What have we Indians done that has showed off our creative skills. Maybe the one thing that Subroto didn't mention was the recent spurt of creativity in us helped bring about the technological revolution and we brought the concept of outsourcing to the world(I dont know the history of outsourcing, but this is what I feel we did). Subroto says that when you travel to Europe, you see bridges large and small over rivers and water bodies. No two bridges are built the same. Bridges are the symbols of the creativity of a civilization. The architects get to show off the creative side of them when building the bridges. Whereas in India every single bridge is copied from an existing design, either in India or from abroad. Even the Bahai temple in Delhi which is considered an architectural fascination has its root in the Opera House in Sydney. We Indians leave our creative minds in the bed when we go to work each morning. We are afraid of putting forth ideas to our bosses and are content doing what we like and earn the money that our bosses pay us. This has to change and change for the better.

3) An interesting question that Subroto asked of the audience was 'Who all in the room has undergone a surgical, invasive, operative procedure in life?'. Of course this flurry of medical terms was added to the questions after some people began thinking about the symbolism of operations and raised their hands saying that they were 'operated' upon by their managers in work. :D Funny people. So then, I pose the same question to you. 'How many of you readers have ever undergone an operation/surgery in your lives?' Of course few in the audience did raise their hands. Now think about this question before you read further into the post.

As a matter of fact, it is true that every single one of you who are reading this post has indeed undergone a surgical procedure in life. And when is that? It was when you were born and your umbilical cord had to be surgically cut off and you were seperated from the womb of your mother. Why did Subroto bring up this topic? It was to bring forward the role of the midwife who helps pregnant mother deliver. The midwife does this without supervision and without anyones interference and questioning. I think this was to show the mind of ethics or something similar. Basically, one must be an expert in his/her job and take it upons oneself to resposibily execute his/her task in the best manner. Not to the best of ones efforts, but in the best way. Period.