Actor commands a full house at TED 2017 and redefines humanity

Shah Rukh Khan has done it again. Won over everybody with his self-deprecatory wit,  charm and humour at TED 2017 in Vancouver.  The articulate actor, who is about to launch his own series of life lessons on Star TV, said love is the simplest yet greatest emotion known to mankind.

Introducing himself as a man who offers dreams and sells love, the star, in his trademark style, talked like a self-fixated onscreen character without feeling remorseful about it. “I’ve been made to understand there are lots of you here who have never seen my work, and I feel really sad for you. That doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m completely self-obsessed, as a movie star should be.”

 likewise, the performer contrasted mankind with himself — “Humanity is a lot like me, it’s an ageing movie star, grappling with all the newness around it, wondering whether it got it right in the first place and still trying to find a way to keep on shining regardless.”

Alluding to the night when he lost his dad as a 14-year-old, Khan said, “From that night onwards, much akin to humanity in its adolescence, I learnt the crude tools of survival.” He  additionally reviewed how life was more straightforward in prior circumstances, not at all like the present which is confused. “The framework of life was simple then. You ate what you could find and you did what you were told to do. You married the first girl you dated and you were a techie if you could fix the carburettor in your car. You went wherever life took you for work and people were mostly welcoming of you… Most important, you were who you were, and you said what you thought.”

As the audience was charmed by his life lessons discourse, he attempted to spread energy with his biography. He recalled how he moved to Mumbai to become a professional actor and met many individuals who changed his observations and his thoughts. He additionally related how his innovativeness helped him chart the course of fame. “By the time I was 40, I was really flying. I had done 50 films by then and I’d been knighted by the Malaysians and given the highest civil honor by the French government. Humanity waas soaring with me, we were both flying off the handle, actually” said Khan, who has gotten the privileged doctorate at the University of Edinburgh.

 Reflecting upon his tryst with social media, he said, “Everything I said took a new meaning; everything I did — good, bad, ugly — was there for the world to comment upon and judge. Everything I didn’t say or do was also met with the same fate.”

 Appearing not exceptionally content with this innovation-ridden world, where “Apple” is no longer an organic product but an organisation, he said, “I started to feel that I couldn’t be who I wanted to be or say what I actually thought. And humanity at this time completely identified with me. Both of us were going through our mid-life crisis. Humanity, like me, was becoming an over-exposed prima donna. The whole world and all of the humanity seemed as lost as I was.”

 Finding the gathering of people totally identifying with each word he uttered, the 51-year-old attempted his best to inspire them. “The present you is brave. The present you is hopeful. The present you is innovative and resourceful. And, of course, the present you is annoyingly indefinable.”

 “I’ve learnt that whatever moves you, whatever urges you to create, build, whatever keeps you from failing, whatever helps you survive, is perhaps the oldest and the simplest emotion known to mankind, and that is love. You may use your power to build walls and keep people outside or you may use it to break barriers and welcome them in. You may use your faith to make people afraid and terrify them into submission. Or you can use it to give courage to people, so they rise to the greatest heights of enlightenment,” Khan continued. Closing his monologue, he said, “The future you has to be like an ageing movie star, who has been made to believe that there is a possibility of a world which is completely, wholly, self-obsessively in love with itself.” Rounding off his presentation, he did lungi dance with some of the attendees.