Have all of you suffered from TEDx [unclear]
(Laughter)
One of the most ridiculous questions
that I get to hear from many people at different times
is "who is superior, a man or a woman?"
The idea of gender discrimination, it frustrates me.
It baffles me.
At times, it really makes me sad.
So, there is almost divine irony in the fact that
I was born in Rajasthan which is north west India.
It's a beautiful place
with rich culture, colors, and history,
but the sad thing is that a lot of people decided
to stick with a lot of damaging traditions.
One of the most damaging from them is the idea
that a woman has a very belittling place in society.
I go to villages, and one of the things I see there is
10, 12 year old girls who are playing outside their house.
Except a few months later when I go there, I don't see them.
So I asked somebody. I said, "What happened to them?"
They said, "They've attained puberty now,
so they are not going to be allowed to step out of their house."
I see eight year old girls getting married.
Marriage is not always the solution as well.
It's not always a guarantee that your life will now turn out to be ok.
So, this notion which is not just an Indian thing
I see it outside India as well.
That the dignity of a family or society
lies on the shoulders of women
while a man can get away with absolutely anything.
I find it very, very humiliating sometimes.
So, all these ideas put together,
sort of came together to me when I was growing up.
I grew up in Dubai, and I live in London now.
When I was growing up, I learned something.
I learned that we can have two realities, two different realities.
And, I learned that they can coexist.
Some people have more than two realities,
which is fine, I guess, if it works for them.
But, I realized that I was not okay
with these realities being completely separate.
I wanted to find a way to bridge them.
I wanted one to transcend to another.
So, my journey took me back to India
at the age of 26 3 years ago.
Did you notice how nicely I put my age in there making me look young?
So 3 years ago, I went back to India
and I wanted to answer this question
"What is the meaning to my life?"
I have the luxury to travel to education.
"What is the point of all of this?"
I started doing work in the field of education.
When I was doing that,
I thought what if we do a TEDx event in the village.
It will be really fascinating. I've been to TED events.
I love the whole atmosphere. It's fabulous.
I was thinking "Can this work in a village?"
"Can we get the same feeling that all of you are feeling here today?"
"Can I get the same thing in a rural context?"
So, I was in this idealistic trance,
and I thought you wanna do something good for people
they're gonna welcome you.
So in 2010, I decided I wanted to organize a TEDx event.
My TEDx event is called TEDxShekhavati.
I started running into problems.
Some of them, things that I got to hear, were
"Because you're a woman organizing this event
it's a bad thing. It's against our religion.
You are corrupting [the moral] fabric of our society."
And after all of that, after working on this for like a year,
7 days before the event, they finally say, "Okay, how do we stop her?".
They tell me, "if you wanna go on stage,
you have to wear niqab to cover your face."
I said, "No! Because I wear the burkha for myself.
I don't wear it for other people."
I don't like the idea of wearing a niqab on stage
and talking to the same people without it.
So, after I refuse this, they say,
"Well, we're taking away the venue.
We're not going to let you do the event on that venue."
So, I had 300 people, had speakers coming in,
and I didn't have a place for them.
In a couple of days, I managed to organize another ground.
By then, I was so demotivated that I thought,
"I'll have 20 people. It's okay. We will just have a nice time."
And, on the day of the event,
we had 1,200 people who came for this conference.
(Applause)
So, the next year 2011, I thought this time I'll pick a school.
I took a school which is a school for Harijans.
Harijians are the untouchable people in India.
They are not untouchable because they have got an illness or something,
but because they come from the lowest caste.
They are stuck in the cycle of poverty, can never get out of it.
They are denied education as well.
So, that school is almost a 100 years old.
It has slowly become a school where poor children go.
So, when I went to the school, this was one of the classrooms in the school.
What we did with that school,
-- I went to that school recently and couldn't recognize it's the same school--
We built toilets. So, finally there were toilets in the school after a 100 years.
We painted the school.
On the day of the event, I remember
we had 5,000 people who came for this TEDxShekhavati.
(Applause)
Some of the really good outcomes from [this].
The 1st one was youth leadership to groom youth leadership in villages.
So, what I did was I had an idea of the event,
what I wanted to be like.
I took a guy and girl who I've taught through my other education initiatives
I told them "This is the work that needs to be done. Now, you do it your way."
They went and made teams and sub teams.
Basically, what this event looks like was created by them.
So, the women went house to house telling people about the event
'cause we don't have social media.
People don't really, completely rely on newspapers.
So, the women went to the beauty parlor.
And, they spoke to the main lady there.
So, when she was threading eye brows, she was like,
"So have you heard of TEDxShekhavati."
That's how everybody got to hear about the event.
There was a woman who came to me after this conference.
She said, "I'm so impressed
that I have enrolled 5 of my daughters in the school."
One of my favorite moments actually is
that one of our speakers, she spoke about women's rights.
-- Sorry, that's the school
that's what it looked like from outside. --
So, one of the speakers,
she spoke about women's rights and place of a woman in society.
I didn't have any woman who came to me and said, "That's really good."
I had so many guys and men who came to me and said,
"I'm so glad. That had to be said."
So, when I looked at all of this,
I feel that TEDxShekhavati is just the beginning
to change a mind-set that is hundreds of years old.
It's very, very difficult, it's not easy.
And, it's not going to change in 2 years.
But, what TEDxShekhavati has done is that it is a window of change
to not only the incredible changes happening in India, but around the world.
I feel very stubborn in bringing this to my people [and] to my community.
A lot of people asked me "How did you do this?
How did you face all these problems?"
When I look back, I have just one and that's my true answer
and I tell them, "What you are seeing is the oppositions and problems.
But when I was there, I couldn't see them.
The only thing that I could see was a time when people were happy,
they were positive and they were open-minded.
I feel after everything eventually
this is what makes all the difference.
Thank you.
(Applause)