What's your 200-year plan? | Raghava KK

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

About 75 years ago,

my grandfather, a young man,

walked into a tent

that was converted into a

movie theater like that,

and he fell hopelessly in love

with the woman he saw on the

silver screen: none other than Mae West,

the heartthrob of the '30s,

and he could never forget her.

In fact, when he had his daughter

many years later, he wanted to

name her after Mae West,

but can you imagine an Indian

child name Mae West?

The Indian family said, no way!

So when my twin brother Kaesava

was born, he decided to tinker

with the spelling of Keshava's name.

He said, if Mae West can be M-A-E,

why can't Keshava be K-A-E?

So he changed Kaesava's spelling.

Now Kaesava had a baby boy

called Rehan a couple of weeks ago.

He decided to spell, or, rather,

misspell Raehan with an A-E.

You know, my grandfather died

many years ago when I was

little, but his love for Mae

West lives on as a misspelling

in the DNA of his progeny.

That for me is successful legacy. (Laughs)

You know, as for me,

my wife and I have our own

crazy legacy project.

We actually sit every few years,

argue, disagree, fight,

and actually come up with our

very own 200-year plan.

Our friends think we're mad.

Our parents think we're cuckoo.

Because, you know, we both

come from families that really

look up to humility and wisdom,

but we both like to live

larger than life.

I believe in the concept of

a Raja Yogi: Be a dude before

you can become an ascetic.

This is me being a rock star,

even if it's in my own house.

You know?

So when Netra and I sat down

to make our first plan

10 years ago, we said

we want the focus of this plan

to go way beyond ourselves.

What do we mean by beyond ourselves?

Well 200 years, we calculated,

is at the end of our direct

contact with the world.

There's nobody I'll meet in

my life will ever live beyond

200 years, so we thought

that's a perfect place where

we should situate our plan and

let our imagination take flight.

You know, I never really

believed in legacy. What am I

going to leave behind? I'm an artist.

Until I made a cartoon about 9/11.

It caused so much trouble for me.

I was so upset.

You know, a cartoon that was

meant to be a cartoon of the week

ended up staying so much longer.

Now I'm in the business of

creating art that will

definitely even outlive me, and

I think about what I want to

leave behind through those paintings.

You know, the 9/11 cartoon

upset me so much that I decided

I'll never cartoon again.

I said, I'm never going to make any

honest public commentary again.

But of course I continued

creating artwork that was honest

and raw, because I forgot about

how people reacted to my work.

You know, sometimes forgetting

is so important to remain idealistic.

Perhaps loss of memory is so

crucial for our survival

as human beings.

One of the most important things

in my 200-year plan that Netra

and I write is what to forget

about ourselves.

You know, we carry so much

baggage, from our parents,

from our society, from so many

people -- fears, insecurities -- and

our 200-year plan really lists

all our childhood problems that we have to expire.

We actually put an expiry date

on all our childhood problems.

The latest date I put was,

I said, I am going to expire

my fear of my leftist, feminist

mother-in-law, and this

today is the date! (Laughs)

She's watching. (Laughter)

Anyway, you know, I really

make decisions all the time

about how I want to remember

myself, and that's the most important

kind of decisions I make.

And this directly translates

into my paintings.

But like my friends, I can do

that really well on Facebook,

Pinterest, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube.

Name it, I'm on it.

I've started outsourcing my

memory to the digital world,

you know? But that comes

with a problem.

It's so easy to think of

technology as a metaphor

for memory, but our brains

are not perfect storage devices

like technology.

We only remember what we

want to. At least I do.

And I rather think of our brains

as biased curators of our

memory, you know? And if

technology is not a metaphor for

memory, what is it?

Netra and I use our technology

as a tool in our 200-year plan

to really curate our digital legacy.

That is a picture of my mother,

and she recently got a Facebook account.

You know where this is going.

And I've been very supportive

until this picture shows up

on my Facebook page. (Laughter)

And I actually untagged myself

first, then I picked up the

phone. I said, "Mom, you will

never put a picture of me

in a bikini ever again."

And she said, "Why? You look

so cute, darling." I said,

"You just don't understand."

Maybe we are among the first

generation that really understands

this digital curating of ourselves.

Maybe we are the first to even

actively record our lives.

You know, whether you

agree with, you know, legacy

or not, we are actually leaving

behind digital traces all the time.

So Netra and I really wanted

to use our 200-year plan

to curate this digital legacy,

and not only digital legacy

but we believe in curating

the legacy of my past

and future.

How, you may ask?

Well, when I think of the future,

I never see myself moving forward

in time. I actually see time

moving backward towards me.

I can actually visualize

my future approaching.

I can dodge what I don't want

and pull in what I want.

It's like a video game obstacle

course. And I've gotten better and better

at doing this. Even when I make

a painting, I actually imagine

I'm behind the painting,

it already exists, and

someone's looking at it,

and I see whether they're

feeling it from their gut.

Are they feeling it from their

heart, or is it just a cerebral thing?

And it really informs my painting.

Even when I do an art show,

I really think about, what should

people walk away with?

I remember when I was 19,

I did, I wanted to do my first

art exhibition, and I wanted the

whole world to know about it.

I didn't know TED then,

but what I did was I closed

my eyes tight, and I started

dreaming. I could imagine people

coming in, dressed up, looking

beautiful, my paintings with all

the light, and in my visualization

I actually saw a very famous

actress launching my show,

giving credibility to me.

And I woke up from my

visualization and I said,

who was that? I couldn't tell

if it was Shabana Azmi or Rekha,

two very famous Indian actresses,

like the Meryl Streeps of India.

As it turned out, next morning

I wrote a letter to both of them,

and Shabana Azmi replied,

and came and launched

my very first show 12 years ago.

And what a bang it started

my career with! You know,

when we think of time in this

way, we can curate not only the

future but also the past.

This is a picture of my family,

and that is Netra, my wife.

She's the co-creator of my

200-year plan.

Netra's a high school history

teacher. I love Netra,

but I hate history.

I keep saying, "Nets, you live

in the past while I'll create

the future, and when I'm done,

you can study about it."

(Laughter)

She gave me an indulgent smile,

and as punishment, she said,

"Tomorrow I'm teaching a class

on Indian history, and you are

sitting in it, and I'm grading you."

I'm like, "Oh, God." I went.

I actually went and sat in

on her class. She started by

giving students primary source

documents from India, Pakistan,

from Britain, and I said,

"Wow." Then she asked them to

separate fact from bias.

I said, "Wow," again.

Then she said, "Choose your

facts and biases and create an

image of your own story

of dignity."

History as an imaging tool?

I was so inspired.

I went and created my own

version of Indian history.

I actually included stories from

my grandmother.

She used to work for the

telephone exchange, and she used

to actually overhear conversations

between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten.

And she used to hear all

kinds of things she shouldn't

have heard. But, you know,

I include things like that.

This is my version of Indian history.

You know, if this

is so, it occurred to me that

maybe, just maybe, the primary

objective of our brains

is to serve our dignity.

Go tell Facebook to

figure that out!

Netra and I don't write our

200-year plan for someone else

to come and execute it

in 150 years. Imagine receiving

a parcel saying, from the past,

okay now you're supposed to

spend the rest of your life

doing all of this. No.

We actually write it only

to set our attitudes right.

You know, I used to believe

that education is the most

important tool to leave

a meaningful legacy.

Education is great.

It really teaches us who

we are, and helps us

contextualize ourselves

in the world, but it's really

my creativity that's taught me

that I can be much more

than what my education told me I am.

I'd like to make

the argument that creativity is

the most important tool we have.

It lets us create who we are,

and curate what is to come.

I like to think -- Thank you.

I like to think of myself

as a storyteller, where my past

and my future are only stories,

my stories, waiting to be told

and retold. I hope all of you

one day get a chance to

share and write your own

200-year story.

Thank you so much.

Shukran! (Applause)