BENGALURU: When Esha Karthiraj’s mom giggled looking at a computer screen, on August 31, Esha thought her mother must be laughing at some random online GIF, so she gave no heed and continued with her homework.
Her mother then showed her the mail forwarded by her after-school teacher that left her gut upturned. “I am still in disbelief,” she says, as she sits down for this interview.
This 13-year-old girl from Kalyan Nagar is among the 20 children selected from all over the world to present a talk at the TED-Ed to be held on November 3 at TED headquarters in New York City.
TED is a global conference, started in 1984, where an individual is given 18 minutes to present an idea engagingly. TED-Ed, an offshoot, is a platform for teachers and students. At the event, Esha will be speaking on the power of questions and how the understanding of a question is subjective.
Margaret Sullivan from TED group confirms that Esha is to speak at the next event on December 3. “She was invited after the TED-Ed Team saw the video of her TED-Ed Club talk,” says Sullivan.
“My mother had said, let’s keep this as a surprise till November and I had agreed... But the next day I started receiving calls from all my relatives. My mother had told everyone,” she says, rolling her eyes and trying not to laugh. Esha says she is thankful to everyone who supported her but gives a “little extra thank you” to Sreeja.
Sreeja Iyer, a graduate of Havard School of Education, is Esha’s after-school teacher.
Sreeja runs a pre-school and an after-school called Sparkling Mindz that follows a Reggio Emilia system of education. Reggio Emilia believes in a “hundred-language” approach that involves painting, sculpting, music, etc., for a child’s development. Esha goes to CMR school and is currently in class 8, and she has been attending Sreeja’s after-school for the past four years. The TED-Ed video, done two years ago and through which she was selected, was an assignment with Sparkling Mindz.
Her talk, How I Chased my Dream And Learned, is a mix of her plans of becoming a master chef and her philosophy of life. In it, she shares a memory of her first attempt at cooking, she made a dessert with cocoa powder, baking powder and sugar but she didn’t bake it. It didn’t taste right, she says, but her first attempt taught her many things, the primary being not to be a quitter.
Esha is still surprised that her video which she feels “could have been better” landed her on the international stage. “I don’t hate my talk but I cannot be in the same room if somebody is watching the video,” Esha says.
Her mother Rakhee Prabhudesai, while enrolling Esha at Sreeja’s institute four years ago, had said, “She is a very shy kid. Please do something.” Esha says, “I know I wouldn’t have been able to do anything had Sreeja not pushed me to do it. I, in fact, had no intention of being a part of TED-Ed club since I am very lazy and always think I am not good enough. Had Sreeja not persuaded me of putting on that little extra effort I would’ve still been holding a piece of paper that reads no-confidence.”
Aishwarya Chodankar from Mumbai who is in class 12 is another Indian selected among the 20 to talk at the TED-Ed weekend. Esha and Aishwarya are already in touch through e-mails.