Some conquered their own demons; some helped in the battles of others. The maiden chapter of TEDx Thiruvanmiyur shined the spotlight on warriors of both kinds, with every story weaved around a common thread: ‘connect’.
It wasn’t Auto Annandurai’s first TEDx talk, but it was his first in English. The entrepreneur gave an engaging spiel about the various features of his service — from four separate WiFi connections to special discounts on “industrialists’ birthdays, Kalam sir’s birthday and my birthday”.
“If I were to go to a new place and suddenly hear a Tamil song, how good would I feel?” This angst isn’t just rhetorical: it is something Annadurai witnesses everyday, as an auto driver who plies mainly along OMR and caters largely to migrated IT professionals. So, he went ahead and learnt a few more languages. Standing under the glowing lights of Holiday Inn, he recited greetings in Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada and Telugu.
Sindhuja Parthasarathy began with a photograph of a 17-year-old. “When they threw acid on her, she bled for three days. Her face, neck, shoulders and breasts melted,” said the photojournalist, before going on to recount her subject’s incredible story of resilience. Sindhuja ended with a much happier photograph: one of the survivors smiling with her daughter on a beach. Her shocking beginning, though, was deliberate. She was sick and tired of the comfort zones, she said, of the online, armchair “slacktivism”. But she acknowledged that the latter is the first step towards awareness. “Some of my friends and acquaintances have called my work ‘dark’. They hoped I wouldn’t put these disturbing images in my presentation here. So I did.”
Sindhuja had three different stories to tell, including one of the Devadasi community, and another of a sombre, middle-class family man who also happens to moonlight as a cross dresser. She chose this combination for a reason: each marks a new step in her own journey, tracing her growth from an idle photographer to a photojournalist who triggers change and mobilises support.
Support was also the focal point of lung specialist Dr Roshan Santosham’s talk, just as it was for Gloria Benny, founder of two child support NGOs: Make A Difference and Guardians of Dreams. The former recounted his work providing medical help during the 2015 Chennai floods. The latter took the audience through the journey of her NGOs, from their establishment to their growth into flourishing communities of enterprising, service-minded youngsters.
Madhumitha Gomathinayagam spoke of her personal struggle. Hers was a sombre, no-frills monologue that hushed the entire gathering. The IT professional and transwoman described the feeling of ‘other’, and the all-pervasiveness of gender roles, that had plagued her right from kindergarten. “My teachers would say, ‘why are you acting so girlish?’,” she remembered, “I wanted to explain that I wasn’t acting. I just am.” She recounted the struggle she went through to gain parental acceptance; of the emotional support of two strangers from the transgender community, who brought her back from the brink of suicide; of her reconstructive surgery and her 16 post-graduate degrees — “If people don’t respect my gender, they will respect my education, my professionalism.” Softly, shyly, she spoke till the hall erupted in applause.
On self-identity
Filmmaker-thespian Malini Jeevarathnam was strong and proud. She declared: “I’m gay. Super gay,” before diving into childhood memories fraught with fights for acceptance, with family-mandated encounters with psychologists, with a journey towards a clear sense of self-identity. The afternoon was wound up by Mahesh Raghvan and Shravan Shridhar of Carnatic 2.0, who punctuated their tale of musical and technological innovation with performances.
