Shah Rukh Khan’s TED talk video is finally here. I am not a big SRK fan but lately, I saw a few of his interviews and I think he’s becoming more interesting as he is aging. I was waiting for TED to release this video and I spent a good 17 minutes listening to this man whom millions of people consider a major heartthrob. King Khan as he is called in India is someone who led a different period in Bollywood movies with his lovely charm.
So, Shah Rukh Khan’s TED talk is roughly a 17-minute monolog where he’s tried to insert elements of satire and comedy while talking about a rather broad and sensitive topic – humanity.
In the video shot in Vancouver, Shah Rukh talks about his teenage when he lost both his parents. And a particular conversation with his mother when he was 14 and driving to the hospital with his father’s dead body in the car and his mother suddenly realized as asked, “When did you learn to drive?” “Just now,” Shah Rukh replied. Situations bring the best out of people. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. And I have seen this with many other people, some of whom are my closest friends on how certain life changing events bring out their abilities to a greater extent.
As he continued to speak about his life, he kept drawing parallels between his own life and humanity. He speaks about how both went through a similar evolution. From a time when he learned to anchor his family at a young age to the perils of being on social media today. One particular mention was particularly disturbing but a sad truth in today’s world. He speaks about an incident when his youngest son Abram was born and social media highlighted it as his first son Aryan’s illegitimate child! Aryan at that point was 15 years old. Imagine how disturbing it might have been for a child that age for no fault of his.
My key takeaway from Shah Rukh Khan’s TED talk is that there is nothing else that this world needs right now apart from love and compassion. Humanity started with love and that is the only way it can survive and complete a full cycle. He mentions, and I agree, on how much progress we have made with technology and innovation but all of that is futile if there is no love and compassion. All the books and knowledge are worth nothing if we don’t have love and compassion for everyone.
He says in his last note, “I want humanity to be like an aging movie star – a self-obsessed lover. Completely in love with itself.”
Watch the full talk here: