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Ask Me Anything (AMA from as little as $5)Namaskar. It's me, and as I mentioned before, I’m a 51-year-old movie star, a bit of a legend back home in India, and I'm proud to say, I haven’t resorted to Botox yet – (I chuckle). I know, I know, I may act like a 21-year-old on screen, selling dreams and peddling love to my fans who believe I’m the world's greatest lover - *winks*, but let's keep that our little secret, alright? (I give a knowing smile, playing into the image).
I’ll confess, I’m incredibly self-obsessed, just like any proper movie star should be. You know, it's part of the gig. I was invited here by my friends Chris and Juliet to talk about the future "you". However, naturally, I’m going to talk about the *present* me. In a way, I think, that makes sense. I truly believe that humanity, in a lot of ways, is a lot like me (I pause for the laughter). Yes, it’s like a slightly aging movie star, trying to make sense of all the newness around it, always wondering if we got it right the first time, but still, always trying to keep our shine.
My story, like that of many, started in humble beginnings. I was born in a refugee colony in New Delhi, the capital of India. My father was a freedom fighter, my mother was a fighter in her own right, and we fought for survival like the original homo sapiens. When I was in my early 20s, both of them passed away. I still feel it was a little careless of me, in hindsight. I remember the night my father died. I was 14 years old and the neighbor’s driver refused to take us to the hospital in his car, as he thought “dead people don’t tip so well”. So, I, put my father's body in the back seat, my mother beside me, and started driving us back. And amidst her tears, my mother looked at me and asked, "Son, when did you learn to drive?" I just replied, "Just now, Mom." It was an incredible moment of resilience, born out of necessity.
From that night onwards, I quickly had to grasp the crude tools of survival, just like humanity in its adolescence. Life back then was pretty straightforward, eat what you can get and do what you’re told. I thought celiac was a vegetable and vegan, well, Mr. Spock's lost comrade. We married the first girl we dated, and you were a techie if you could fix your car. I even thought gay was just a fancy word for happy, and Lesbian? Oh, that was the capital of Portugal. We relied on the systems built by past generations for protection and even believed governments were there to help us. Science was logical. Apple was just fruit, and “Eureka!” was something you yelled when you wanted to run down the streets naked (I chuckle). Life was simple and migration was for Siberian cranes, not for people. We were who we were and said what we thought.
Then things started to change when I moved to the metropolis of Mumbai in my late 20s. Like a newly industrialized humanity, I started to change. I saw so many people from all over the world – faces, races, genders, money lenders – you name it. The definitions became a lot more fluid and work became more important to define you. The old systems started to feel too rigid for all the diversity. However, ideas started to flow with more freedom and speed. I experienced the miracle of collective endeavor and human creativity. It propelled me into superstardom. By the time I was 40, I was flying high. 50 movies, 200 songs, knighted by Malaysia and given some honor in France that I can’t pronounce, though I am ever grateful (I smile and nod). I even met Angelina Jolie for a brief two-and-a-half seconds (I laugh). I also sat next to Hannah Montana, who mostly had her back to me (I shrug). It really felt like I, and humanity, was soaring.
And then the internet happened (I pause). In my late 40s I began tweeting like a canary, thinking that everyone would admire my world. But what awaited humanity and I was completely different than what I expected. We expected free-flowing ideas and dreams, but what we got was a village-like enclosure of thought, judgement and definition. Everything I said, did, good, bad, ugly was up for scrutiny. Even the things I didn't say or do. A few years ago, when my wife and I decided to have a third child, the internet claimed it was the love child of my 15 year old son. There were even fake videos. It was disturbing, to say the least. It felt like reality was becoming virtual and virtual, real. I felt like I couldn’t be who I wanted to be or say what I thought. It seemed, humanity felt the same. We were going through a mid-life crisis and becoming over-exposed prima donnas.
I sold everything from hair oil to diesel generators and humanity was buying everything too. I even tried to wear a skin-tight superhero suit to re-invent myself, but it was a disaster. Those superhero suits are *not* comfortable! (I make a face). On the upside, I accidentally invented a dance form – the Lungi Dance. It was a rage. It was a confusing, but people liked it (I laugh and demonstrate). I felt like the whole world was as confused and lost as I was.
I didn’t give up, though. I even tried to reconstruct my identity on social media. I thought if I posted philosophical tweets, people would be impressed. But I got back confusing acronyms like ROFL and LOL. Somebody replied with “Adidas” to one of my thought-provoking tweets and I was like, why are they talking about sneakers? Then my daughter told me that Adidas now means "All day I dream about sex" (I laugh). So, I replied WTF, glad some acronyms haven’t changed.
Here I am, 51, and amidst all the acronyms, I think now is a momentous time for humanity. We are brave, hopeful, innovative, resourceful and annoyingly indefinable. I was brave before coming here, and I decided to take a look at myself. I realized I was starting to look like my wax statue at Madame Tussaud’s (I chuckle). And so, I asked myself, and humanity: Do I need to fix my face? I'm an actor, a modern expression of creativity. The land I come from, India, is a place of spirituality. They made me, a Muslim son of a broke freedom fighter, the “Badshah of Bollywood”, the king of romance, with this face – * I gesture to myself* – that has been called ugly, unconventional and not chocolatey enough (I pause for the laughter).
My country has taught me that power or poverty cannot make your life more magical or less torturous. The dignity of a life resides in its capacity for grace and compassion. What moves you, what urges you to create, what keeps you from failing, what helps you survive – that’s love. It’s the simplest emotion known to man. As one of my country's poets said, “*Recites poem in Hindi*”, it is that, all our knowledge, technology and creativity will mean nothing unless we have love and compassion for each other.
The word for love in my language, *Prem*, just two and a half alphabets, if you can grasp that, you can enlighten mankind. So the future "you" must be a you that loves. Otherwise, it will not flourish, but perish. You can use your power to build walls or break barriers, you can use your faith to terrify or give courage, you can use your energy to destroy or to illuminate. You can destroy the ecology or regenerate it. We can use our resources to make war or to provide for the hungry.
The capacity for love, my country taught me, is akin to godliness. It’s the one thing that civilization has not tampered with. We are here, having these TED talks, sharing our innovations, knowledge and talent and we have the reasons to celebrate the future "us". However, amongst the celebration, we need to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion. The future "you" has to be an infinite “you,” a “chakra,” it starts and ends at the same place. It's a you that understands its importance and its complete unimportance in the larger context of the universe. A “you” that returns to the innocence of humanity, that loves with purity of the heart, that sees with truth and dreams with a clear mind.
The future “you” needs to be like an aging movie star who has been made to believe that a world that is self-obsessively in love with itself is possible. That future is created when we become our own best lovers. That's what I believe should be the future “you”. Thank you very much. Shukriya.