THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
If the India Today Mind Rocks 2017 summit were to be described in a single word, it would probably be one of these: raucous, engaged, self-aware
The 2017 Mind Rocks Summit had it all—politics, cricket, business and a dash of humour
OUTSIDE SIRI FORT AUDITORIUM, the crowd of students was thick enough to require elbowing through. Inside, despite it being just past 10 am, a concert was noisily being cheered on by several hundred of ‘the youth’. The cover band, Rangreza, was a good sample of the audience itself: competent, confident and entirely committed to having a good time.
First on stage was Union minister Smriti Irani. Dressed in blue and exuding a maternal vibe, the minister’s bromides on ‘new India’ were calculated crowd pleasers. “The students themselves should be asked what kind of future they imagine for themselves,” she said, to sustained cheering. “That vision is the future of the country. Young India will define new India,” she continued. “It will be a place where the powerful empower the marginalised.” When it was time for questions, however, a young woman named Ananya floored the minister with this: “We see a lot of politicians on TV. We see them screaming at each other. In school, when students engage in debates, they consist of actual arguments…” Though the minister swiftly passed the buck by suggesting that politicians’ lack of basic courtesy was the fault of the anchors who moderate the debates, the question was an apparently necessary reminder that ‘young’ and ‘gullible’ are not synonyms.
That spirit of raucous, self-aware engagement persisted through the day. At a later session, even legendary actor Sanjay Dutt got a dose of it. However, he was far more candid, taking full responsibility for his own actions. “I got into drugs in college,” he admitted. “I got hooked on to it. It took me about 10 years to get out of it and I’m lucky that I had the means to do that. Drugs are an easy escape, related to being ‘really cool’. Then you get addicted to it... [it becomes so bad that] if a donkey dies, you drink; if a dog dies, you drink.” Even rising superstar Varun Dhawan faced the pointed end of a generation seeking change: soon after he came on the stage, he was asked in no uncertain terms about his six-pack physique and whether he’d be willing to take off his shirt to offer the crowd a look at it. It was a heartening reversal of roles, since
objectification is a trial usually reserved for women. Hopefully that raised a silent question or three, but in either case, gave the crowd an (entirely superfluous) opportunity to lose its collective mind. And lose its mind it did, with hordes of young women periodically rushing to the stage in attempts to get closer to the object of their desire. Underlining the almost virulent adoration on display were the scores of handmade signs being waved at the man, all bearing variations on the theme of ‘I love Varun Dhawan’, not to mention the football scrum that developed around the roses that Dhawan tossed to the audience before departing.
There were any number of similarly charged moments. Comedian Kunal Kamra, for instance, addressed the animal-like lust that has brought low so many of the ‘godmen’ that walk our lands. (“Download Tinder,” was his succinct advice.) He also had an interesting take on why comedians face such vicious anger. “The problem with stand-up comedy,” he said, “is when you speak into a mic, the people watching feel it is a direct conversation, that
they are the target of the joke—and then they abuse me.” At a later session, Vivek Oberoi brought up another aspect of controversial conversations: censorship. Talking about his decision to act in a web series, he said: “The most satisfying thing about it is that you don’t have to deal with [a] Pahlaj Nihalani.”
One theme that repeatedly cropped up during the day was that of nepotism. As a social problem that afflicts almost every sphere— from Bollywood to Parliament and beyond— this issue raised its head in almost every single session. Minister Irani addressed it (“People from working families have this problem: someone might come and say, ‘Don’t you know who my father is?’”), as did Manoj Tiwari and Kalikesh Singh Deo, but the clearest answers came from Varun Dhawan and Gaurav Gogoi. “It is definitely true that your entry into the business is easier,” Dhawan admitted. “But you still have to get the box office returns. No one has money to burn.” Gogoi went a step further: “A Lok Sabha constituency,” he said, “usually has a population of 12-15 lakh. It is
Vivek Oberoi shook a leg with Nidhi Singh and Tanuj Virwani to Veda Krishnamurthy, Smriti Mandhna and Jhulan Goswami not possible for a person to know all of them and it is also not possible for them to know a new person entering politics. A new leader needs an [existing] identity.”
And there was more. So much more, in fact, that one is forced to dust off an old cliché: you really had to be there. Actors Kriti Sanon and Ayushmann Khurrana were, as were three sports stars—Veda Krishnamurthy, Smriti Mandhana and Jhulan Goswami of the Indian cricket team. Talking about making it in Bollywood as an outsider, Khurrana said, “I’m blessed to be an outsider. When I was a child, I used to stand in queues and buy movie tickets in black. That is something only an outsider can experience. Nepotism exists everywhere. Eventually, only talent survives.” And responding to a question about institutional backing, Goswami said that BCCI Ayushmann Khurrana
support has been growing, and that “if you look at women’s cricket over the last few years, it’s moving in the right direction. There is more infrastructure and there are more facilities available now.”
There were also conversations with business leaders and entrepreneurs, dancers, youth leaders and the heads of modern-day matchmakers. All the sessions had one thing in common—a clear-eyed understanding that, clichés aside, the youth really is the hope of the nation (not to mention the nation’s business houses). All offered advice, with one particularly relevant perspective coming from Shashank Tripathi, chairman of Jagriti Yatra. “If you want to do something for the country,” he said, “create an enterprise to solve the problems of Tier-II and Tier-III districts. We at Jagriti will help you. The prime minister is also very keen to help.”