J Hind J.

These batch of talks are definitely like the most creative.

The human who has her own stories, her own loves, losses, victories, failures.

A mother once begged me to let her four-year-old daughter die.

The bar is so high. If you're anything less than perfect, it's going to be hard to be in the top. Two, three. Uhoh.

We're all separated. The winner is

My name is Reggie Watts and my life changed forever when I got the opportunity to speak at TED. Now TED is searching the globe for ideas that could change everything. Nine TED X events around the world. Giving a global voice to the unknown. six minutes that can inspire, motivate, and change their lives forever. But that's not all.

Coached by an expert panel, one lucky speaker will be surprised with the opportunity of a lifetime. It's just so exciting. Wow.

This is exactly the opportunity to reach out to millions of people.

It's the biggest stage in the world. It's bigger than any dream. There were a bunch of people that were reading their scripts.

Small batch lines.

Um, there's a lot of work to be done.

No, no content notes.

Can I start again?

This cannot go.

It blew me away.

Wow.

I'm really sorry. It's so big.

This is the TED idea search. The next stop on our whirlwind tour is Mumbai, home of India's financial sector, Bollywood and our next batch of hopeful speakers.

My teenage self would be really really excited because while I was growing up, I used to listen to a TED talk every day with lunch. My purpose in life is to make sure that people understand that there's an extraordinary in the ordinary as well. That's my goal.

After a rigorous selection process, the chosen few are ready to share their ideas with the TED team.

Hello speakers. Welcome, welcome, welcome. How are y'all feeling?

Amazing.

Good, good, good. Well, you should be feeling great because you guys have been chosen to take the stage here in Mumbai because we believe that each one of you has something truly special to share.

Honestly, when I got selected, I I couldn't believe it. I thought there was the there there's something wrong in the email. It's a real honor actually to be part of this forum. My name is Ashan Kosla. I'm a graphic designer and a type designer. The message of my talk is really to use design and technology to transform crafts that are vanishing into a new avatar like a type face or a font that you can use to celebrate that culture. This idea is really close to my heart and it's really important because India has a rich and vibrant culture but yet it's not really looked at by designers so seriously because it it's seen as traditional and handmade and design tends to be mechanized. We can bring some of that humanity and the handmade quality into the work that we do as designers.

As you know, you were chosen as part of a global idea search and tomorrow the stakes are pretty high. One of you will be chosen to take the stage at TED's main conference in Vancouver. Now, this is a place where talks are seen by millions, where movements are born, perspectives are shifted, lives are changed.

I was amazed and it was a surprise for me also that out of this 10 speakers one would uh go maybe it would be me. Fingers crossed. Uh I would be so excited to represent India. It'll be like following in the footsteps of my role models.

Hey, I'm Sukriti or you can call me Suki. The idea that I'm sharing tomorrow um the big idea is about India's fashion history and how we deserve to be seen as a fashion superpower. It came to me when I began shopping for my wedding clothes and fell into this Alice in Wonderland like rabbit hole of uh amazing fabrics and textiles and figuring out these old hidden bazaars of India. I get to represent the power of fashion uh which is so easily kind of dismissed as a girls thing, a ladies matter. But really fashion is the story of India. I feel like I'm just a mouthpiece or a vehicle for so many many weavers and embroiderers and amazing textile artists of India. I'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it.

As you give your talk, we the TED panel, myself, Kelly, and Yash Raj, we're going to be looking out for things like the strength of your idea, the power of your storytelling, your stage presence, and your delivery. You're going to have to give the talks of your lives, basically.

I'm Kelly Stzzel. I'm leading the TED panel. My role at TED for the past 20 years has been curation. So I've worked with thousands of speakers on the TED stage to select them, to help them develop their talks and get them ready to share them with the world. I'm so passionate about this initiative in particular because it brings up ideas that we could not have found any other way. Things that I look for are really the strength of the idea, but you then have to make it land. The delivery is how well they connect with the people in the room.

My name is Kelly Shu. I run Ted's YouTube channel. So, anything that gets distributed on Ted's YouTube goes through me first. I always believe that content is king. And so, if it's a great talk and it's great delivery, it will do well. But selfishly, I'm always looking for a really concise way to like present it to people. I plan to bring my knowledge of what I think our audience enjoys. You can honestly have an amazing talk in person, but sometimes on the screen, it's like not as intriguing as it was in real life. I'm a sucker for an inspiring TED talk that just makes me feel like there's hope again.

Joining them on the panel is TEDex organizer and Mumbai local Yash Akashi.

India is a country of 1.6 billion people. We built Terrace Gateway as the platform for new India and shared ideas from India to the world. For the winning talk today, I'm going to be looking for someone that represents India well. Someone that changes perspective of India and someone that shares a big idea for India. It's a new world and we bring in a new perspective from our part of the world. Just make India proud. That's it. Nine countries later, I want India to be the best. So give it your best, have fun and jind jind.

Stepping on to the TED Main stage really is the opportunity of a lifetime. It has hosted some of the world's most influential visionaries, leaders, and architects of the future.

We have a long way to go in front of us.

sharing their ideas to a room of thousands. Entrepreneurs, investors, and change makers, each waiting to be moved, provoked, and inspired.

This is a moment when we have to rise to this occasion.

But the power of TED doesn't end when the lights go down because the talk joins a global library of ideas watched by billions. Doors opened, media attention, book deals, and funding and support for their projects. Standing on the TED main stage is more than delivering a talk.

All I want to do is show joy and hope.

Your impact magnified far beyond the moment.

That's what life is about. About daring greatly about being in the arena.

It's a journey I've been on myself. So I know how hopeful the speakers will be for that opportunity. In preparation for tomorrow's main event, the panel spends time with the speakers as they rehearse their talks, giving them invaluable coaching on storytelling and delivery.

Let's welcome our next speaker is Sean. Hi

everyone. Today was quite scary. It was pretty intimidating and kind of took away the flow. So there was just a lot going on. Hundreds of craft traditions from tribal tattoos to embroideries are vanishing. When these art forms fade away, it's not just the designs that we lose. We lose the voices, the stories, and the memories that they hold.

We're really starting to notice that each city has a totally different feel on rehearsal day. And you also start to feel the culture come out in the talks that we're seeing.

These batch of talks are definitely like the most creative. I see typcraft as a bridge that connects people across the world to the beauty and vitality of South Asian crafts and tribal arts. For me, the most exciting part was just to see the different people and their ideas and talks.

Balancing is like meditation for restless mind. It pulls you away from the screen and puts you in that moment. My name is Goautam Vishnau and I do the art of rock balancing which feels that it's not possible and it's gravity defying thing. It will enhance your focus, patience, stillness. You will find or experience the flow state of mind and it is like you are touching a rock which is on this earth from billions of years. People used to call me mad but whenever I see a person doing it and I'm teaching him the emotions which are come out from that person is like mindboggling. All of a sudden one firefly came and sat on my index finger and it was like book book and in that light I was able to balance it.

It was so delightful. It it was so like fun like the whole time I'm smiling the whole time. As always, I'm going to be looking at which talks I think also have a life outside of the stage on YouTube. And I think this batch specifically is a really good one for that because they're all so visually appealing.

All right, everybody. Let's welcome our next speaker to the stage, SITI.

I have I have

You're welcome. Let's practice again. Snow walking and talking. This is for everyone.

The rehearsals have been good. Now you guys will catch me probably trip and fall on my face in the on the main event. But I'll I'll go out on a limb and say rehearsals have gone very well. I have only one goal today to convince one uncle that fashion not tech not engineering is India's superpower. It kind of felt like talking to family and friends and to get to show off all the beautiful fabrics. So it it was a bit of a meat cute moment. Till today excavation into ancient Egyptian tombs keeps throwing up scraps of Gujarati cloth. They were so prepared. You can see how much they have practiced. Every single person today this could have been their stage talk. We had two people who got up and tried different things with clothing. One of them was a really a poem and this like it actually it made me cry. I just really it was like the most moving thing. She said, "The world will gift you responsibilities. Don't shoulder that burden. Don't lose yourself or your dreams in the folds of the arms of others. Do not hold on to people, places, promises, things. Only depend on yourself. Do not be me." I came in with a lot of butterflies in my stomach. I don't know if they were nervous, they were excited, they were all over the place. But rehearsals have been fun. We've been getting to know each other better. And there's a lot of u buzz in the room at the moment.

People know me as Peavey because nobody can pronounce my name. Too many L's, too many A's. And I'm a spoken word poet. My talk is about going back to your roots. It comes from a very personal place. It's my journey. I resisted my family. I resisted my traditions from the very get-go. I believe that the traditions is what were holding me back. Traditions is what were holding women in my family back. And I realized that traditions are simply stories that are passed down. Once I accepted those traditions into myself, I became those traditions. I learned to embrace them. I became a better version of myself. People walked out my door and I followed them right out to pick up pieces of myself to put myself back together again like Humpty Dumpty. I came back to the start line.

I want to get a few more seconds to feel that. And the third time I'm with you and you run faster than me. And the fourth time I'm with you, you run faster again. So somewhere a breath or a pause just for me to feel

the feedback that I've gotten is go slow right now. As you can see I speak really fast like I'm about to catch a train. I'm standing in front of the mirror constantly practicing with the tech team.

This is a very impressive lineup of speakers if I do say so myself. There are some speakers where the work they do is so extraordinary.

A mother once begged me to let her fouryear-old daughter die.

Remy was a severely malnourished little girl. Terrified. She was completely blind. No mother should ever have to wish death upon their child. My name is Dr. Radhika Batra. I'm going to be speaking about how we cannot have healthy children unless we have healthy mothers. As a pediatrician, all around me, I see women being ignored, neglected, and just not being allowed to thrive. It's really important for me to deliver my best because I want the world to hear why it's important to protect our women. And then I saw Remy.

I'm sorry. This it's not changing. No, I was a little conscious because I couldn't figure out the slides. It's the first time I'm practicing with the slides. Practice like crazy with the slides because that is in your control today. You just do not want that to be the thing that throws you.

The feedback from the TEDex team is like next level. If you are stuck somewhere, they are just patient enough to listen about you and guide you.

And so the type face that we uh co-created with this community um becomes like a living archive of um tribal knowledge.

You really have to have that hope and excitement. If you don't, it just doesn't transfer.

Today is seems like a little nervous. He can dial it up a little bit. Dial up the delivery. Dial up the energy level. This is something just because I've I'm now working with 90 speakers that I've noticed a lot of is what if I told you. You might think about how you could reframe that leg by saying

you just said it.

Oh, I said it today.

You said what if I told you every time you type a letter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I thought we had talked about that, but I couldn't remember. I've told that to so many people.

All the talks were so good and the bar is so high that I think if you're anything less than perfect, it's going to be hard to be in the top. I'm already stressed for having to make this decision.

Across the city, the TEDex stage has been set, ready for our speakers to step onto the red dot for the very first time.

Stepping onto the red dot for the first time was iconic.

There are some, you know, moments that you see on screen your whole life, and stepping onto the red dot of Ted feels like your own little hero moment. was pretty intimidating. As a professor, we're not really used to inunciating and emoting. We talk pretty straightforwardly.

If you tend to deviate from a set script in mind, sometimes you just get thrown off. So, I don't want that to happen.

The first thing I noticed was the timer. My entire goal was just to not look at the timer and just focus on the talk. But then all I did was look at the timer. I just want to give it my best and I want to make the work that I do reach the dead stage.

If I can go as one person representing the story of this nation, it would mean a lot to me.

My chances to go to Vancor are 10 on 10th because I'm confident it will connect to everyone out there.

As rehearsal day comes to a close in Mumbai, a place on the TED main stage is anyone's for the taking. Only time will tell what tomorrow will bring.

We're going to do a huge yawn like you're in a cartoon. Stretch it out. Stretch it out. Ah, you got to use your whole face today.

I just feel like I want to deliver my best and I don't want to disappoint myself in delivering a subpar performance and the rest is all destiny.

How do I keep it spontaneous enough? How do I keep it exciting, interesting, engaging for the audience?

Let's remind our bodies that they are real and let's tap our legs. Let's wake everything up. Wake everything up. I mean my hope is that people walk away and take something from it. If even one person walks away and says, "Hey, I want to like collaborate or whatever," that would be amazing.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 right foot. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 foot.

Fears and anxieties that I'll forget something really, but um you know, none of you know what I'm going to say, so it's okay. I'll just wing it maybe. My talk is quite interactive, so I hope people respond and yell things back at me.

Hands in the middle, everyone. 1 2

Before the event begins, a ceremony takes place to honor the Hindi deity Ganesha, god of new beginnings, wisdom, and luck. The time has come. The audience is arriving at TEDex Gateway and our speakers have done all the preparation they can to be able to speak at that main stage and have that big of an audience. I I'm not even sure I can imagine what what the future after that would look like. If there's, you know, someone out there, a young uh Indian girl or boy or someone from another country who catches this story uh and follows my journey over the years, of course, that would be super special.

It will make me and my country proud that something which was not seen by a lot of people and it has been seen on the world stage. I'll be very happy but I know I'll go.

Please put your hands together for the DIY the cool Gotham Bash.

Hey.

Hey, Kelly.

Mumbai.

Oh my gosh. Really, really intimate room out there. Yeah.

Um, good vibes all around for sure.

First up, we have Gautum, our delightful rock balancer. When I first tried to balance a rock, I almost broke it and my patience also. I was going through frustration, anxiety, anger all at once.

I love this way that he starts. He's such a character. I feel like he's having so much fun up there.

And finally after 45 minutes, I was like, I balanced it and I literally felt like a butterfly. I was weightless. It was not the rock which got balanced, but it was me. So when you are doing rock balancing you will not think about anything. It shows you it will keep you in that complete focus and in it will force you to be in that exact moment.

I mean this is one that is honing in on something so specific and kind of niche rock balancing but at the core of it is a pretty broad message. And after all that you have to just the lesson that everything in your life is just temporary.

I got to admit it's a little painful to see that arch fall down.

Yeah.

Not only rock balancing but I have expanded the horizon from balancing a bike, balancing a spoon, balancing a chair, balancing liquid in a glass also. I have an homework for you guys. See, take a brick which has eight corners. Try to balance it on one corner. Don't leave it unless and until you balance it. And in that patience, you will find presence deeply. Listen to it and try to balance it. Thank you.

Yes, Gautam. You did it.

You did it.

Wow.

I am feeling amazing. It's like uh something has been uh loading there and it is like released now and I'm just in a amazing mood to have food now.

My chances to go to Vancouver is 100 on

I just I love that talk so much. I mean he's an amazing character. It's a fun talk. The thing is if you if you take that all away then it's really it's a talk about mindfulness which is important. Is it new?

So now we have Paulie spoken word artist. I I mean this really moved me yesterday. She told me before this talk as well that she's surprising her mom with this talk. Her mom is in the audience and didn't even know she was giving a TEDex talk. and she told her mom, "Show up at this address wearing orange."

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, "What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?" Here's what she said.

Great opening. Her talk definitely made me cry yesterday in rehearsal and I'm hoping the same reaction happens in the room tonight.

Palvi, whatever you be, don't be me. As my mother sat there on one of four chairs in the dining room table at our home, peeling an orange, I wondered if the tears in her eyes were shooting stars that she was wishing upon. And if so, what was she wishing for?

She's such a great storyteller. like she is just painting this entire thing so well. I feel like people can visualize it.

She said, "The world will gift you responsibilities, shower you with responsibilities. Don't shoulder that burden." She said, "Puff out your chest and stand your spine straight. Even when the world makes you feel small, you don't feel small." She said, "Don't let the world wrap you around its fingers. Don't lose yourself or your dreams in the folds of the arms of others. Don't measure your worth by what somebody else tells you. Don't hold on to people, places, promises, things. Only depend on yourself. Do not be me.

And this is not an easy thing to do what she's doing right now. Like this requires so much choreography and practice. And doing it while she still has so much power and emphasis in her speech. The woman who was the entire sun in my eyes suddenly turned cloudy. And I realized that as a woman, the world paints a picture of you. And you fight your whole life to remove yourself from that frame, to remove yourself from that lie.

And as with most of us, I finally realized my mother is human. Not the mother who knows where my smelly socks are. Not the mother who knows my school timetable by heart. Not the mother who knows me inside and out. But the woman, the human who has her own stories, her own loves, losses, victories, failures.

This cannot as the mother of a young adult this is like the most.

And that day the sari stopped becoming a symbol of a blanket soaked with tears of repression and sorrow and loss. That day the sari became strength a manuscript that each woman wears around her telling her story if the world dares to listen. Oh my god. I realized that the orange peels were not my mother looking for her misplaced hopes or dreams. My mother was removing the frame for me so that I could paint my own picture. And so that's exactly what I did. I painted my own picture. I reframed it around myself. And I understood that to be an individual, I didn't have to leave the hole behind to be a modern woman. And so I brought the traditional woman along with me. I held her hand and I let her fly with her dreams in the sky.

And by the way, she's teaching us how to put on a sari at the same time.

Come on.

So now, my dear friends, when a 15year-old girl wrapped up in her mother's old sari comes to me on the second chair of four at the dining room table in our home and asks me, "What will I be?" I'll tell her, "You, my darling, are your mother's daughter. And I am a brown girl in a sari." You've been a wonderful audience. Thank you.

And yes, Paula V. The audience is loving this one.

They love her.

This is a talk I want to send to every person I know.

You know, it's just so breathtaking

and I want to send it to both my daughter and my mother.

I think the talk was beautiful. I think I enjoyed the process more than anything. I believed in what I was saying. I was enjoying what I was saying and so for me it was the best thing like I'm still reeling from it. I don't know how to react to it.

Her talk is mesmerizing for me. I don't know if I'm walking away from this talk necessarily learning anything new

and I think that's kind of a big issue for me.

Next up we have is Sean. We had a few minor tweaks for him yesterday and in rehearsals. Let's see if he's taken our advice.

The way you write something can be as important as what it says. So, if I write I love you in these different ways, which one do you connect with and why? They all say the same thing, but they're saying it differently due to the design of the letters. Now, what if I tell you?

Oh, he said, "What if I tell you?" It's just It's fine. It's just one of those things so many people say, "What if I told you in their TED talks?" Well, just tell us.

Yeah, just tell us. Across India, hundreds of craft traditions from tattoos to embroideries are vanishing. And when these art forms disappear, it's not just the designs that we lose, but we actually lose the voices, the stories, and the memories that they hold.

He was a little nervous yesterday, but he is crushing it.

Mhm. Yeah. There's this confidence that's like exuding from him right now that I didn't see yesterday in rehearsal. So when I visited the beggar adiwasi community, I noticed that the women tattoo their forehead with something called the chula or the herth. It is a symbol of food on the table, but it's also a marker of tribal culture and identity. But sadly, these tattoos are no longer being practiced by the community.

And so the type face or the font that we co-created with the same community becomes a living archive of tribal knowledge and it also allows them to hold on to their culture.

I think this is really beautiful I guess because it's it's sort of a niche topic that may have sort of a niche audience who would love it. Does it create as much global impact as some of the other talks here? Let's see.

Yeah. Next up we have Dr. Ratica. Yesterday she was really thrown by the slides. I think it was tripping her up quite a bit. So, I'm really curious to see if, you know, she can get that down and really deliver the talk she wants to deliver.

A mother once begged me to let her 4-year-old daughter die. I was working as a pediatrician in a busy government hospital. Please, doctor, she said, give us some comfort, but let her die. I froze. How could any mother possibly say that? How could any mother lose hope so completely?

That's wow. That is the most devastating story too that she started with. I mean,

I think she has everybody with her.

But the solution doesn't lie in a billion dollar technology, nor does it lie in any new genetic therapy. It lies in just two tiny drops of vitamin A. Just two drops could save a child's sight and their future.

This feels like one of those talks that could be world changing if it was spread. But soon I realized it wasn't enough because this deficiency didn't just begin in childhood. It actually began much earlier in the body of a young malnourished girl. She grows up in a house where the boys eat first. She gets only the leftovers. When she attains puberty, she starts to lose blood. Month after month, she becomes anemic.

Soon she becomes a mother and gives birth to a baby already starved of nutrients. This baby, born low birth weight, is now three times more likely to go blind or die before its fifth birthday. And the mother continues to suffer.

She's doing really well today. She sure is. The blindness we must cure is not just in our children's eyes. It is in our collective vision of equality. If we want to end preventable blindness, we first need to end the blindness that keeps our women unseen and undernourished.

I love how she's getting a mid talk applause.

Yeah, this audience reaction, I think, is really fueling her, too. She's really relaxed into this talk. Mhm.

I don't think she's nervous now.

Let's make sure no mother ever has to beg for her child's death again. And no child ever lives or dies in the dark. Thank you.

High claps. Always a good sign. The audience loved her. This was a strong talk. It's a big idea. It feels more like a talk about her work or a pitch to a pharmaceutical company or a donor versus being about an idea. I was told that some people in the audience teared up and they started crying because it was a hard-hitting talk.

I'm feeling so good and so relieved that I gave a good performance and now it's over. I can breathe a little.

This whole program is so good. Like, how is this whole program so good? It's so said we were going to have the hardest time deciding who goes to Vancouver.

Now we have Suci.

She was nearly perfect in rehearsal yesterday and there's a lot of moving parts. So, I'm really really hoping that nothing goes wrong for her on stage because I don't know how that would throw her off.

Buckle up and come back in time with me to 3,500 BC ancient Egypt. We see an Egyptian pharaoh getting dressed, right? Kajal, gold crown. And then he reaches for his favorite fit from Gujarat. Colorful cloud soft cotton muslin malmal. Look at her confidence and her poise and her delivery and her energy. And here she goes with the props. So far so good.

Jetting ahead though to 33 AD Jerusalem. At Jesus's burial, his body is shrouded in a super fine cotton. It's known as the shroud of Turin, but the Greek call it synindon, meaning from Cind, Hind, Hindustan. Mhm. Exhibit Bola, baby. Do you know what would happen if one of us, Riffraff, turned up in 15th century Java wearing all of this? We'd be chased by royal guards and stripped. In Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, only royalty wears poll. I could honestly do a TED talk just about this, but the Javanese guards are still in pursuit. So, let us flee across oceans and time to the wild, wild west of America. Clipclop clipclop.

Well, I love the way she's making these transitions. That was so thoughtfully crafted.

Mhm.

Yep. The all- American cowboy bandanna was imported. Tie-dye. Gujarati kchiefs. But wait, wait, wait. What about the dangari? Where does it come from? Here in Maharashtra, the town of Dongari produces a rough and tough cotton weave. And the dangari becomes a staple in factories and military in the west. From 3,500 BC through the 1600s, Indian fabrics draped the globe.

I'm just so impressed that she is able to pick up all these items, put them down, wrap them around her. She makes it look so easy. And I know hours of rehearsal went into this.

Yes, she's doing all this without missing a single beat in her talk.

You'll know the first products of the British Industrial Revolution, not cars, not weapons. Spinning jenny, power loom, jakard loom. What took Indian hands 50,000 hours can be made by British machines in

For the next 250 years, the Indian textile industry was ripped to shreds until this dude led a revolution.

Gandhi was a legit fashionista. Y'all he championed khadi and entirely handmade fabric, spun cotton at rallies, and even put a spinning wheel at the very heart of the old Indian flag. This is like a performance, a history lesson told in like super modern language.

Recently, we've come to think of Indians only as brainy, but our oldest identity is on its way back as a superpower of style.

I think the audience loves

they the audience is going crazy. The audience like really love this.

Yeah. Feeling really good. That talk went well and the audience is super responsive. They applaud and everything. I love listening to people laugh at the right jokes. I feel like you know you know they're getting it.

Do we think this talk is global?

I think it's deeply global. To me it is about the way that ideas spread and and how they always have. So I think for me this talk is actually about its global nature.

I think I now rate my chances a bit lower because everyone did so well.

I think she is going to be right up there and we are going to have a tough decision to make.

No, I want to take them all to Vancouver. They all need to be heard and seen.

I predict a long discussion ahead.

Mhm.

With each of the talks complete, the event comes to a close, allowing the audience to reflect on the evening's ideas.

I loved it. It was my first uh TED X gateway event. To find Indians doing such amazing things and contributing in ways was very very heartening for me. The best moment that happened was that stone balancing before entering into the hall. We had a hands-on experience on you know how to balance it and then having him on the stage created a kind of an emotion and that is going to last forever and etched in my memory. There was this doctor's talk where they are treating blindness and they are doing a great job.

Bali was very interesting because she took the sari which is a very strong metaphor for intergenerational stereotypes of women. I loved that idea that she shared.

I would say Sukriti was my favorite speaker. I have a family business of textiles and I have never been so fascinated by clothes. the way she's trying to globalize the idea of the history of India and fashion together and that niche is coming out on a global stage and I would love to see her talk and interact more about the topic.

I think they showcase India in a light that normally moves away from the snakes and the charmers and you know the elephants that's such a stereotype. So let's look at India with a new set of eyes.

But the decision ultimately lies with the TED panel. Wow. What do we think?

Oh my gosh, everyone was so good. I think this is our hardest idea yet.

This is hard. They really kind of all blew me away.

Each one of them had such a unique story.

Yeah.

I don't think we've ever got so many unique ideas on stage ever.

Now, we're going to have to make a really a really hard decision, y'all.

Okay. Is Sean, I love his talk. I think it's so unique. It's so so unique.

I love a good font talk and I love how he brought in, you know, the community and tradition and the work that goes into making them. I thought it was beautiful talk.

I agree.

It's beautiful work.

Gamuch

I think he was just center point to everyone's energy, right? Just the way people are rooting for him. What a guy. What a guy.

It was wonderful and a lot of fun. Poly

tears. I went into the bathroom after her talk. Six women crying and wiping off their tears.

Paul's words were beautiful and I do think she tapped into a universal feeling for mothers and for daughters especially too was poetry.

It's such a centric talk to India but what you take away from it I think it touched everyone regardless of where you're from. And also we learned how to drapari

in the fastest time ever. Yeah.

Siti.

Oh, I mean, yeah. And

it wasn't even just a talk. It was a full performance.

It was a movement. Yes. Being in India, not knowing about the garments that shaped the world, I was taken back and I was like, "Wow, we don't learn this." So, I think there is history. There is relevance to youngsters and she did it so well.

She also really inspired us to think about India as the center of fashion. And this I love too because this is a total classic idea search talk. You could not have found her to give this talk through any sort of research or anything. This is an idea search talk and I absolutely it blew me away.

Radica amazing work that she does, right? I mean,

wow. I really love her talk because it's so tangible, you know? It's like something that's literally actionable and it can actually change the world, but it's like there's a solution rooted in it. And I think you don't get that very often.

I think we've narrowed it down to three. On the count of three, and we got to all do this at the same time. Point at your choice. Okay. Ready? You ready? One, two, three.

We're all separated.

I knew.

Wow. Okay. So, we've got a tough decision to make.

Impossible decision.

You can take all three of them.

Mumbai's top three speakers have been chosen, but there can only be one that will make it to the TED main stage.

Speakers, y'all are incredible. I mean, each one of you absolutely killed it today. Y'all should all feel just so so proud about the talks you just gave. Huge congratulations to y'all. Huge well done.

This is the hardest thing in the world because I want to bring every one of you everywhere I go and especially to Vancouver. But we had to choose a winner and we have the winner is

Greetings. I'm feeling grateful. I'm feeling proud. It feels like an outof- body experience. I almost felt like it was someone else's name who was being called up. But I am so excited to represent India. Um, in all the work that I do about India's forgotten histories, this is what I try to bring out.

Sukiti gave this talk that is like nothing we've ever seen. just feels really special and really unique. There's so much that could have gone wrong with her talk today from the choreography to her speaking, but she nailed every single moment of it and it showed because the crowd was obsessed with it.

I I feel like we're leaving this as a group of friends and I hope you will trust me uh to represent India uh at Vancouver. Um, and I I hope I'll be able to take this energy that we've shared together all the way across the oceans and do it justice.

Just seeing an Indian go on stage, Ted in Vancouver, I think it's a big thing for a billion people, it was a lot about someone that represents India, someone that represents a powerful idea and someone that changes perspective about India.

I got to scope out this international competition, don't I? I got to see what these other countries are doing and we got to represent India out there. So, practicing hard and then seeing what the others are doing.

With Secreti earning her place on the TED main stage, our time here in Mumbai comes to a close. But the TED idea search continues.

Next time we're in Athens, where ancient gods once ruled the skyline and ideas changed the world forever.

Are we ready?

Are we ready?

There were a bunch of people reading their scripts.

You're going to make me cry.

Can I start again?

Stuff like that can really lose an audience.

I had a couple of meltdowns. So much could happen in 24 hours, I guess.