3 Minute Stories
Millions of children in India suffer from speech impairment, resulting from various conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy, down syndrome etc. But there are only a handful of speech therapists in India that can help these children (unlike say USA). A bunch of Indian geeks are finally using technology to address the problem and it’s beautiful to see the impact – how when you give the tools to communicate to these children, they can express a lot!
Last year I travelled to Bangalore to meet Mughilan and Mrinal, the co-founders of Skylark drone. This is their story – and how they are able to use drones to contribute to India’s growth. Pretty interesting!
This is a commissioned assignment (meaning I got paid to create this 3MS). Generally when startups approach me, they just care about a ‘video’ that can show others, what they ‘do‘. ‘We do this and we do that and we also do this and we also do that’ is what I ususally hear. Unfortunately, unless what someone does is mind-blowingly never seen before cool, the world doesn’t much care (at least not enough to watch a video). So how does one make the world care about what you do anyway? By telling a story. And that’s what I do. A story is always more about what one ‘wants‘ and why one wants whatever one wants. And only then does a story move to what one ‘does’ to get what (s)he wants.
Thankfully, I could spend few days in Bangalore with these guys (as I shot another story in the same premise where they were based at, at that point of time). And that helped me understand their journey and thus appreciate what they were truly doing. Hope you like it!
In three minutes, you will be fascinated with how one person who could have easily taken up a good job after graduating from IIT in 1975, decided to do something extremely innovating for the education of poor kids. For him, education is not about ‘covering’ syllabus but to ‘uncover’ the mysteries of this world. After watching this story, most of you would agree that his approach towards education doesn’t just apply to poor kids, but to almost every school child in this world, where education has essentially been reduced to the art of mugging and scoring in exams.
I met Arvind Gupta via Soumeet. Soumeet had launched the makersofthings campaign last year. He asked me if I wanted to make 3 minute documentaries on some of the real life story leads that he had received. His video on how India innovates had gone viral and he was flooded with stories of innovation.
For various reasons I could not get myself to collaborate with him on a full fledged scale, but I agreed to shoot one movie. I was in Uttarakhand, working on Mamta’s story when Soumeet and I spoke about a story around Arvind Gupta. Some time later, last year itself, I traveled to Pune and wrapped up the interview and shooting. But unfortunately, I was able to finish making the movie only after about eight months (i.e. now)! Hope you like it and hope you genuinely feel a story like this needs to be shared with every school, not only in India but across the world.
After seeing this 3MS (3 min story), some of you might want to check out Arvind Gupta’s website or his Youtube Channel or even his Ted talk (which became very popular and from which, I have used a small portion in my 3MS).
If you liked this story, you can view all my short-documentaries under the ‘Education’ theme.
Amrutash, my batch mate from IIT Madras, left his lucrative job to start a library business which failed to get the desired readership. Naresh, also my batch-mate (we shared the same hostel and wing even) joined theater after IIT, but realized he could not make enough money from that.
It is amazing to see how today, both Amrutash & Naresh have joined hands to create a successful business that is solving a problem almost every school faces.
This 3MS is their story and what they do and how schools are loving them.
When you start watching this short documentary, you might not notice much beyond a bunch of girls trying to make something in a hobby class. But the impact of what they are doing, on their lives, will bring a broad smile to your face.
When Malaika wrote to me about some of the interesting and inspiring things students like herself were doing at Mahindra United World College (MUWC) of India, I had imagined a bunch of college students trying to change the world they lived in. It was only when I finally visited the campus last month in Paud, Pune, that I realized that these students (though indeed trying the change the world and all of that) were actually school students! MUWC is an equivalent of XI-XII standard school and the most interesting aspect that I noticed about it was that it had students from all over the world! Wow – I would have died to study in a school like after my tenth! I didn’t even know not for profit schools like these existed, when I was in school! 🙁
Anyway, so let me not write here what this latest short documentary of mine is about. You should see it for yourself. And if you like what these school kids are doing for the rural women folk (living near their campus), do show support in whichever way you can! You can share this documentary online or just drop a mail to them (seemacircle@gmail.com) acknowledging the their honest effort!