The results for the TEDxPilani Fellowship program are out and we’re delighted to present to you the awardees of this year’s fellowships. The fellows were selected through a competitive selection procedure and we hope you’ll enjoy their entries as much as we did.

Fellow: Arunav Kanoria

Arunav’s entry:

Fellow: Aditya Shanker Raghuwanshi

Aditya’s entry:

Fellow: Soumit Saha

Soumit’s entry:

Soumit's Entry: Bro+Sis

As I went through the details of sending in the application, I saw sending one photo was also an option so here’s my entry. It’s a story; a reflection of what I feel should be etched in the ideology, not wholly but certainly as a part, in most of our country folk. The photo I attach shows at first glance innocence and humility. And herein lays the very crack in the mystery, humility amongst us. Now if you are looking towards reading through some sort of social entrepreneurship strategy or financial plan to set up a socially benefitting cause, stop here and give your time to the next application. As a person who sees in people the core behind why they behave as they do only to gauge it’s all induced by a societal bounce of
need, like a protocol fashion of portraying oneself. One doesn’t need a psychology degree to assess a person.
Coming back a little about where I took this photo and why to this day I see in it a talisman guiding my actions. I had on self interest chosen Rural Photography as the subject of my team’s exhibition panel for photography club last semester and I went to a village nearby and there I saw the girl in my photo. The sheer sight of someone so complex, that would be me carrying a bulky camera , doing the rounds in her village eluded her beyond her imagination to get so overjoyed and wanting to get clicked. Seems like anyone would do that, but what everyone wouldn’t do is carry around your little brother as you run from end to end behind the photographer.What I’m trying to say is that metaphorically or rather symbolically her actions underlay how we do NOT act in our country. Each one of us is that girl and her brother is our country. Her brother encompasses all the happiness, all the plagues and all people with whom we form this nation. Some of you might feel, all this philosophical policing have already been there and failed then why should I be lent an ear. Well it is this very notion that deserves fast and strict change. More than half concentrate on what is being written and criticizing it, what you and they don’t do is STOP, think about what is being written.
I, myself am a very practical person and don’t believe in acting or being selfless beyond my means and limits but acts as small as lending holding the door to a shop for an old person doesn’t even strike to ninety of hundred of us. What bothers me is why this cold attitude is omnipresent. Have we started seeing so much gain in personal acts that such a help, which is free , doesn’t cost you a penny doesn’t strike you.Ok, if it’s not the money, is it the social embarrassment in doing something unorthodox that invites strict apprehension from your side. Steve Jobs explained this stigma so well. He said since we are eventually to die, we have already been stripped off, what could be worse and yet our shortsighted eyes view embarrassment as fatal.
Till now I have only complained over dilemmas our country folk, you, and me we all face. As a pause here, I want to reiterate if you feel that you disagree with me or are in denial to the accusation I make on you as being an Indian then move on to the next application, I’ll be happier. Being in denial defeats the entire purpose of what I want people to know and change.
Concluding finally , this photo and the girl might seem ordinary but it is what I wish to see in it is extraordinary and you must realize that what you fear or regard as important are too petty in the one life , in the one country that you owe to. Change your thinking that is ALL. Seriously its only your thinking that needs changing. Peace Out!

Fellow: Pranav Kolachana

Pranav’s entry: Pranav’s talk on Paleolithic Living (click here to download and play)