‘Our future is safe in your hands,’ says Shah Rukh Khan to Gitanjali Rao; also impressed with Kshitij Marwah’s invention on ‘TED Talks India Nayi Baat’

By Ms Moon

on November 03, 2019

After an inspiring season 1, the makers are all set to stir some interesting conversations with the upcoming season of StarPlus’ show – TED Talks India Nayi Baat. Superstar Shah Rukh Khan is returning to the small screen as the host of the show which is slated to go on-air from November 2, 2019. Shah Rukh Khan has time and again mentioned that he has a very curious mind and loves to try new things. This time, he was completely impressed by a 13-year-old inventor, Gitanjali Rao, who believes you are never too young to create technology to help people and save lives.

Gitanjali has invented a portable device - named ‘Tethys’ - a quick, low-cost test to detect lead contamination in water. Named after the Greek goddess for fresh water, it allows a sensor linked to a mobile app to give an accurate, almost immediate analysis. She even got a chance to show her experiment on the TED platform in front of Shah Rukh Khan. She has also invented ‘Epione’ – a device to diagnose opioid addiction at early/onset stages. Impressed by the young girls’ inventions, Shah Rukh said, “It is an amazing invention for a 13-year-old when I was at that age, my parents used to tell me to latch the door for safety. With such great minds like Gitanjali, our future is very safe in your hands.” Gitanjali is the winner of America’s Top Young Scientist Award as well as named in Forbes 2019 30 under 30 list.

On the other hand, the show will also showcase the speaker Kshitij Marwah, who has invented a device called – Tesseract, which not only blew the minds of the audience but also of SRK. After seeing Kshitij’s invention, he expressed his wish to use the device when he makes the next part of his movie ‘Don’. After listening to Kshitij’s speech, Shah Rukh Khan willingly tried on the Mixed Reality device which transported him to a completely new world. He virtually travelled to Rome, Wild-Life in Africa and even, witnessed the magic of this device underwater. He said, “I really liked the idea, I hope I can use this for the next installment of Don (laughs). I loved the device, but I am also curious if people who are sitting in the audience can watch it without wearing the device and if there is any solution by adding lasers in the studio.”

To this, Kshitij responded, “Yes, this is possible, but this is more of a physics challenge which we are trying to work out. Though the device is connected through an app on our smart phones and it ranges from 5000-10,000 in India.”

Another inspiring story was of Vibha Krishnamurthy who is the founder of Umeed Child Development Centre, works towards the betterment of children with disabilities and is one such story! Shah Rukh, who himself has three children of different age groups, knows the best how to deal with them on a daily basis. It is Vibha’s vision and dream that these children with disabilities be treated just like everyone. She feels, it is important to teach kids this from their formative and early childhood days. To which Shah Rukh expressed, “Let kids be, let them mingle with each other and figure it out on their own. I have 3 children and I have learned this with time. I personally feel, kids with disabilities will end up teaching them something new and it will be magical.”

Vibha expressed her concern by saying, “People do try to treat all these kids equally while playing, conducting activities in school, but there are also times during birthday parties that these kids with disabilities are not invited. And, I want to change that.”
Father of 3 children, Shah Rukh Khan resonated with Vibha’s work and goals. He even praised her for her bold move and making the attempt to take care of these children.