[Applause]
chaos theory is a delight
I take no claims of understanding it but
as a wildlife filmmaker it makes perfect
sense to me that if a butterfly flaps
its wings in Kolkata there’ll be a
cloudburst enroute keep the butterfly
effect and that’s why I’m here but let’s
go back just a little bit I grew up in a
perfectly logical universe my father was
a chartered accountant and the math was
really important to him so basically X
leads to Y and that’s how we get to Z
but I had a lurking suspicion that
perhaps there was another way of getting
to Z in fact to be honest I’m not even
sure if I really wanted to get to Z at
all I was never very good at math yeah
that was pretty much the extent of my
mathematical skills but dad always dad
always insisted as you know you have to
caution that Jackie subject which I
finally did in my board exams and that
was the last I ever saw of quadratic
equations and trigonometry and other
very odd sounding things and I mean pity
because now I realize I probably should
have made better acquaintance with it
but that’s the butterfly effect so after
the very feeble wrapping of my
mathematical skills I decided to run as
far as possible away from math and dived
headlong into the world of Arts and
since I did very very well in English I
decided I was going to do English
literature very good decision because
the study of English two teachers taught
me the very complex and wonderful art of
storytelling and if today I am a
filmmaker it is because I learnt the
craft of narrative first now in a
predictable universe the logical thing
for me to have done would have been to
go ahead into a post graduation in
literature and then adopt it and become
a professor but you see I was never a
very big fan of straight lines and
that’s what my life’s been about always
the butterfly effect it fast flopped it
wing its wings when I was about three
years old it was my birthday I believe I
was a very young I was believing it was
quite a cute little girl but instead of
asking for
cute little doll I asked for a big ugly
duck that’s right my first friend in
life for a patch or whatever was not was
not a doll it wasn’t even a dog it was a
duck so while all my friends used to
take their dogs for a walk on a leash I
used to take my dog for a walk on a
leash and that was the beginning of the
lunacy and over the next few years
very insidiously I pretty much turned my
parents 12th floor apartment into what
can only be described as a mini zoo
that’s oh that’s a pigeon that used to
greet me right after school and those
are the kind of creatures I had in my
flat at home I forgot to put on that
list a very very obnoxious rooster that
used to wake my whole building up at
4:00 a.m. I wasn’t a very popular child
with the adults and oh that’s a goat I
was trying to bring home from a holiday
and northing but that is when my mom
said not happening sure that’s pretty
much it so the butterfly flapped its
wings again when I was about six years
old another birthday and I said okay
this time I want to Snow White birthday
party pretty standard for a little girl
who’s six except the little girl also
wanted horses at her birthday party so I
wanted a horse ride fine that’s great
except my birthday is in the right in
the middle of mon-sol so while all my
friends are torn up in these beautiful
white dresses with white balls looking
like little princesses with like snow
white they had no clue that it was going
to take place in the middle of a very
muddy field so they all turned up
looking like this
and then there were horses and then they
went home looking a bit like that
I was something so outrageously
delightful about doing the unexpected
and pushing the lines and being a little
bit different and if you think about it
all our lives for that matter are a
continuous demonstration of the
butterfly effect now you could have been
a lawyer but your inner key you couldn’t
be a big corporate honcho but your
Chetan Bhagat
I would be a pianist but I’m a wildlife
with makeup and I suppose every time the
butterfly flapped its wings it set up
conditions in my childhood that would
later perhaps build become the space for
watch my decisions would be in my
adulthood so if there is a moral to be
perhaps a child or perhaps sort of if
there is a moral to this all then it
would be that if we accept that our
lives are inherently chaotic then we
might want to make decisions that are
not detrimental to a long-term happiness
that’s 100 gates of college closed
behind me and I looked at that unbending
road in front of me that road that I
knew exactly where it would be leading
that straight road ahead I flinched
because I knew exactly where could lead
that 9:00 to 6:00 that big job that big
fat wedding those holidays in Bali and
Bangkok and because that’s where
everybody goes and before you know it
you’ve landed yourself right has passed
you by you’ve landed yourself a heart
condition and high blood pressure and
and the whole Schmeer of like successful
living let me put it this way because it
was never a fan of straight lines last
night while most people were perhaps
watching Netflix or TV I was watching
the Harvest Moon rise in – National Park
a bit like that in a silver forest and
if I have seen thousands and thousands
of fireflies dance below the stars it is
because I chose not to study the
business of straight lines and that is
why right after college I decided that I
would go off to South Africa South
Africa is where it all started for me
that’s where I did my first sort of
wildlife filmmaking camp if you can call
it that a camera workshop of sorts right
in the middle of the wild now a lot of
people ask me what it’s like to be a
wildlife filmmaker and the answer is
see regular person it’s probably really
hard because you’ve got to wait hours
nothing happens in the world you just
sit and stare and cross for hours and
hours and hours and only then suddenly
some amazing things happen and despite
all the difficulties in Africa I was
among some of the most amazing creatures
in the world and somehow those
challenges of this career of actually
having to be out there in the wild and
face that kind of physical and mental
challenge and stress never felt
difficult at all because when it’s right
and when it clicks somehow those
challenges still not matter so Africa is
spent in the beautiful company of these
animals and things like that right after
that of course right after my little
after good adventure a lot of very
well-meaning adults thought it was
exactly that they thought okay great
she’s taken one of those you know
gappiya things that they do not ease
these kids and she’s gonna come back to
a normal life and get a real job and
she’s not gonna go do these things hello
mate I take it as a hobby kind of a
thing you know how it is standard advice
they had no idea that I plans of taking
this seriously but many a times they
said you know but you know you have to
consider it does that really look like
something that you want to do for the
rest of your life are these places that
you go to on your own even safe secure
what about job security what about what
what is the industry in India and
wildlife filmmaking it to be honest they
were perhaps right and for a young girl
as a wildlife filmmaker it’s that much
harder because you know people don’t act
so to associate a young girl with
wildlife filmmaking well they normally
associate is like 45 male big tall man
with a big hat so it was just not sort
of fitting in and there were moments
where I kind of felt like you know yeah
I am maybe am i doing the right thing
will I succeed
I mean what is it’s too hard what if I
really don’t get any chops or
assignments I mean I love it but how am
I going to go ahead that’s when the
butterfly flapped again you’ll be happy
to know I fell in love
meet massima she’s due year old cheetah
I met her in Nairobi in Africa little
outside of Nairobi in Africa in Kenya
and I spent two weeks with her had the
privilege of doing so and she would come
running from a distance every morning
when she would see me and I’m her friend
at her and she befriended me and it was
absolutely beautiful and then all that
wonderful logic that was hold in my
direction flew out the window once again
I said forget it no matter how hard this
is going to be I was going to go for
broke no problem I had momento I had no
strategy I still decided to go all I was
armed with was with my with my passion
perhaps my talent and a singular drive
to do this for a career and nothing else
and as a filmmaker my singular ambition
has always just be to be able to tell
the beautiful stories of nature that are
extraordinary unusual unexpected and
that’s why I went on to make food like
this one this is the little frog that
you get in Shillong it’s called the Xmas
frog and it’s a very rare species
because it exists only in shallow so the
film was called Thumbelina and now it
may seem like a very small thing to you
because it’s not a very pretty for quite
delicate but studies have shown that if
it disappears then its disappearance
affects the ecosystem that it belongs to
and that affects the neighboring
ecosystems so we’re back to that
butterfly innovation trail so I started
telling stories that were not just about
flagship species but things that were
small because even the small things
those small flaps of the butterfly have
a much larger significance back to my
career
they came a point when I had to sort of
decide that you know I was going to do
this as of a full-time job now and this
was going to be it
so I decided after that that I was going
to off so to formalize my commitment if
you can call it that and applied for a
course in science and Natural History
filmmaking in the University of Otago in
New Zealand that was a game changer that
was an absolute game changer for me the
energy process was really high first of
all it was like it was a very rigorous
apart apart from an applic
it was a very rigorous interview that I
had to go through I kind of felt like I
was applying to the nos ha ha
having been accepted I found myself at
the edge of the planet in the place
called Dunedin in New Zealand and that
course really opened my mind it taught
me
storytelling and camerawork and things
that on a completely different scale all
together and by the end of that course I
had to make myself a fool now that’s
when once again that butterfly flapped I
found a very unusual story and I
recognized it to be a very unusual story
I made a film called Sirocco Howard Tut
became a stud now there are only 125
kakapo parrots in the world today and
all 125 live on this one island called
the cops fish island that itself is an
amazing conservation story but what
makes it even more special is that one
among these 125 kakapo parrots
it’s convinced he’s a human being so he
doesn’t even think he’s a cop oh he
thinks he’s a person he only hangs out
to people and he’s so funny and he’s in
such a character that one thing sort of
led to another which is available in the
film and it became an absolute superstar
and sensational New Zealand so my my
film was a rags to riches story about
his life because Sirocco today is the
only bird in the world with a government
job and because it’s a rags to riches it
was called Howard art became a star I’ll
show you a little clip from it driven
it’s a 60 minute drive to his five-star
high-security accommodation where he can
finally drop his guard
[Music]
meet his Excellency not human but parrot
[Music]
Sirocco is a very rare bird a cockapoo
it’s a privilege to see him in broad
daylight because he’s a nocturnal that’s
whom made honor $800 budget went on to
win the green Oscar it went on to be
seen in 80 different countries and at
some point I had the privilege as well
at the wild stream food festival of
handing a personal copy Sir David
Attenborough himself never did I plan
that all these things will happen when I
made Sirocco I just made it with
whatever money I was given as a student
to make my graduation film but I did my
very best and when you do your very best
somehow the butterfly effect kicks in
now green Oscar was was one of the I
mean the Panda award as it’s called it’s
it was a singular honor to get that no
other woman from India had got it before
in the global category and it was the
absolute singular honor but having said
that Green Oscar or not it didn’t make
the wildlife filmmaking career any
easier there was still no industry in
India properly a proper formal industry
in viola filmmaking the jobs were still
hard it was still difficult to get
assignments in the right time the right
kind of assignments and I found myself
rock-bottom again it was a rollercoaster
constantly but when you take in a leap
of faith you’ve got to take a leap I
mean when you’ve taken the leap you’ve
got to take in when you leap into chaos
you’ve got to leap with faith is what I
mean and before I knew it I got another
assignment for two years with Animal
Planet which took me around India
and showed me how beautiful our own
country was I landed up in places that
look like this in Kashmir that too is
Kashmiri and like that that’s not Mars
that is the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat not
very far from here and I also ended up
in this beautiful little hamlet in the
Indo Burmese border where I made another
friend a given that decides to come down
from a tree sit on my camera and look
for it nits in my hair she’s like
something always I’d be English like
even and sweet
so we not leader so you see that’s the
beauty of the unpredictable the kind of
things that happen the surprises our
flights leave really so many times plans
haven’t worked out for me so many ideas
haven’t been realized so many stories I
haven’t found funding for so much so
much of the time that roller coaster
hasn’t been well has been at rock bottom
and but you know you’ve just got to
carry on with clenched teeth with Crete
and a little bit of panache and planning
and that’s how early this year I ended
up in the UK and she got the privilege
of working with some of the best in the
wildlife filmmaking industry the top
brains of the wildlife filmmaking
industry my time at the BBC was
unparalleled and in terms of the
experience I gathered and then again
having continued to stop stick with it
at some point a little bit more of magic
happened I got to actually work on
location with 30 with Attenborough
himself
[Applause]
and try the wall but to spend a lovely
weekend with mrs. Li Darren of gerrant
Aaron’s wife mrs. Li Darren and I’m sure
a lot of you have read of my family and
other animals and it was an absolute
amazing weekend and that’s where life is
sort of taken me now and you asked how
how does it come to me the answer is
quite simple
be faithful be brave be ready to face
life
good bad be ready to face the four chil
the fallow and accept it in all its
glory and somehow somewhere that
butterfly will flap its wings and
something will happen and then you can
say with some amount of confidence as I
can say with some amount of confidence
that life has not passed me by that
every moment has been lived and that’s
the beauty and the symphony of this
wonderful thing that you’ve got chaos
[Applause]
chaos theory is a delight
I take no claims of understanding it but
as a wildlife filmmaker it makes perfect
sense to me that if a butterfly flaps
its wings in Kolkata there’ll be a
cloudburst enroute keep the butterfly
effect and that’s why I’m here but let’s
go back just a little bit I grew up in a
perfectly logical universe my father was
a chartered accountant and the math was
really important to him so basically X
leads to Y and that’s how we get to Z
but I had a lurking suspicion that
perhaps there was another way of getting
to Z in fact to be honest I’m not even
sure if I really wanted to get to Z at
all I was never very good at math yeah
that was pretty much the extent of my
mathematical skills but dad always dad
always insisted as you know you have to
caution that Jackie subject which I
finally did in my board exams and that
was the last I ever saw of quadratic
equations and trigonometry and other
very odd sounding things and I mean pity
because now I realize I probably should
have made better acquaintance with it
but that’s the butterfly effect so after
the very feeble wrapping of my
mathematical skills I decided to run as
far as possible away from math and dived
headlong into the world of Arts and
since I did very very well in English I
decided I was going to do English
literature very good decision because
the study of English two teachers taught
me the very complex and wonderful art of
storytelling and if today I am a
filmmaker it is because I learnt the
craft of narrative first now in a
predictable universe the logical thing
for me to have done would have been to
go ahead into a post graduation in
literature and then adopt it and become
a professor but you see I was never a
very big fan of straight lines and
that’s what my life’s been about always
the butterfly effect it fast flopped it
wing its wings when I was about three
years old it was my birthday I believe I
was a very young I was believing it was
quite a cute little girl but instead of
asking for
cute little doll I asked for a big ugly
duck that’s right my first friend in
life for a patch or whatever was not was
not a doll it wasn’t even a dog it was a
duck so while all my friends used to
take their dogs for a walk on a leash I
used to take my dog for a walk on a
leash and that was the beginning of the
lunacy and over the next few years
very insidiously I pretty much turned my
parents 12th floor apartment into what
can only be described as a mini zoo
that’s oh that’s a pigeon that used to
greet me right after school and those
are the kind of creatures I had in my
flat at home I forgot to put on that
list a very very obnoxious rooster that
used to wake my whole building up at
4:00 a.m. I wasn’t a very popular child
with the adults and oh that’s a goat I
was trying to bring home from a holiday
and northing but that is when my mom
said not happening sure that’s pretty
much it so the butterfly flapped its
wings again when I was about six years
old another birthday and I said okay
this time I want to Snow White birthday
party pretty standard for a little girl
who’s six except the little girl also
wanted horses at her birthday party so I
wanted a horse ride fine that’s great
except my birthday is in the right in
the middle of mon-sol so while all my
friends are torn up in these beautiful
white dresses with white balls looking
like little princesses with like snow
white they had no clue that it was going
to take place in the middle of a very
muddy field so they all turned up
looking like this
and then there were horses and then they
went home looking a bit like that
I was something so outrageously
delightful about doing the unexpected
and pushing the lines and being a little
bit different and if you think about it
all our lives for that matter are a
continuous demonstration of the
butterfly effect now you could have been
a lawyer but your inner key you couldn’t
be a big corporate honcho but your
Chetan Bhagat
I would be a pianist but I’m a wildlife
with makeup and I suppose every time the
butterfly flapped its wings it set up
conditions in my childhood that would
later perhaps build become the space for
watch my decisions would be in my
adulthood so if there is a moral to be
perhaps a child or perhaps sort of if
there is a moral to this all then it
would be that if we accept that our
lives are inherently chaotic then we
might want to make decisions that are
not detrimental to a long-term happiness
that’s 100 gates of college closed
behind me and I looked at that unbending
road in front of me that road that I
knew exactly where it would be leading
that straight road ahead I flinched
because I knew exactly where could lead
that 9:00 to 6:00 that big job that big
fat wedding those holidays in Bali and
Bangkok and because that’s where
everybody goes and before you know it
you’ve landed yourself right has passed
you by you’ve landed yourself a heart
condition and high blood pressure and
and the whole Schmeer of like successful
living let me put it this way because it
was never a fan of straight lines last
night while most people were perhaps
watching Netflix or TV I was watching
the Harvest Moon rise in – National Park
a bit like that in a silver forest and
if I have seen thousands and thousands
of fireflies dance below the stars it is
because I chose not to study the
business of straight lines and that is
why right after college I decided that I
would go off to South Africa South
Africa is where it all started for me
that’s where I did my first sort of
wildlife filmmaking camp if you can call
it that a camera workshop of sorts right
in the middle of the wild now a lot of
people ask me what it’s like to be a
wildlife filmmaker and the answer is
see regular person it’s probably really
hard because you’ve got to wait hours
nothing happens in the world you just
sit and stare and cross for hours and
hours and hours and only then suddenly
some amazing things happen and despite
all the difficulties in Africa I was
among some of the most amazing creatures
in the world and somehow those
challenges of this career of actually
having to be out there in the wild and
face that kind of physical and mental
challenge and stress never felt
difficult at all because when it’s right
and when it clicks somehow those
challenges still not matter so Africa is
spent in the beautiful company of these
animals and things like that right after
that of course right after my little
after good adventure a lot of very
well-meaning adults thought it was
exactly that they thought okay great
she’s taken one of those you know
gappiya things that they do not ease
these kids and she’s gonna come back to
a normal life and get a real job and
she’s not gonna go do these things hello
mate I take it as a hobby kind of a
thing you know how it is standard advice
they had no idea that I plans of taking
this seriously but many a times they
said you know but you know you have to
consider it does that really look like
something that you want to do for the
rest of your life are these places that
you go to on your own even safe secure
what about job security what about what
what is the industry in India and
wildlife filmmaking it to be honest they
were perhaps right and for a young girl
as a wildlife filmmaker it’s that much
harder because you know people don’t act
so to associate a young girl with
wildlife filmmaking well they normally
associate is like 45 male big tall man
with a big hat so it was just not sort
of fitting in and there were moments
where I kind of felt like you know yeah
I am maybe am i doing the right thing
will I succeed
I mean what is it’s too hard what if I
really don’t get any chops or
assignments I mean I love it but how am
I going to go ahead that’s when the
butterfly flapped again you’ll be happy
to know I fell in love
meet massima she’s due year old cheetah
I met her in Nairobi in Africa little
outside of Nairobi in Africa in Kenya
and I spent two weeks with her had the
privilege of doing so and she would come
running from a distance every morning
when she would see me and I’m her friend
at her and she befriended me and it was
absolutely beautiful and then all that
wonderful logic that was hold in my
direction flew out the window once again
I said forget it no matter how hard this
is going to be I was going to go for
broke no problem I had momento I had no
strategy I still decided to go all I was
armed with was with my with my passion
perhaps my talent and a singular drive
to do this for a career and nothing else
and as a filmmaker my singular ambition
has always just be to be able to tell
the beautiful stories of nature that are
extraordinary unusual unexpected and
that’s why I went on to make food like
this one this is the little frog that
you get in Shillong it’s called the Xmas
frog and it’s a very rare species
because it exists only in shallow so the
film was called Thumbelina and now it
may seem like a very small thing to you
because it’s not a very pretty for quite
delicate but studies have shown that if
it disappears then its disappearance
affects the ecosystem that it belongs to
and that affects the neighboring
ecosystems so we’re back to that
butterfly innovation trail so I started
telling stories that were not just about
flagship species but things that were
small because even the small things
those small flaps of the butterfly have
a much larger significance back to my
career
they came a point when I had to sort of
decide that you know I was going to do
this as of a full-time job now and this
was going to be it
so I decided after that that I was going
to off so to formalize my commitment if
you can call it that and applied for a
course in science and Natural History
filmmaking in the University of Otago in
New Zealand that was a game changer that
was an absolute game changer for me the
energy process was really high first of
all it was like it was a very rigorous
apart apart from an applic
it was a very rigorous interview that I
had to go through I kind of felt like I
was applying to the nos ha ha
having been accepted I found myself at
the edge of the planet in the place
called Dunedin in New Zealand and that
course really opened my mind it taught
me
storytelling and camerawork and things
that on a completely different scale all
together and by the end of that course I
had to make myself a fool now that’s
when once again that butterfly flapped I
found a very unusual story and I
recognized it to be a very unusual story
I made a film called Sirocco Howard Tut
became a stud now there are only 125
kakapo parrots in the world today and
all 125 live on this one island called
the cops fish island that itself is an
amazing conservation story but what
makes it even more special is that one
among these 125 kakapo parrots
it’s convinced he’s a human being so he
doesn’t even think he’s a cop oh he
thinks he’s a person he only hangs out
to people and he’s so funny and he’s in
such a character that one thing sort of
led to another which is available in the
film and it became an absolute superstar
and sensational New Zealand so my my
film was a rags to riches story about
his life because Sirocco today is the
only bird in the world with a government
job and because it’s a rags to riches it
was called Howard art became a star I’ll
show you a little clip from it driven
it’s a 60 minute drive to his five-star
high-security accommodation where he can
finally drop his guard
[Music]
meet his Excellency not human but parrot
[Music]
Sirocco is a very rare bird a cockapoo
it’s a privilege to see him in broad
daylight because he’s a nocturnal that’s
whom made honor $800 budget went on to
win the green Oscar it went on to be
seen in 80 different countries and at
some point I had the privilege as well
at the wild stream food festival of
handing a personal copy Sir David
Attenborough himself never did I plan
that all these things will happen when I
made Sirocco I just made it with
whatever money I was given as a student
to make my graduation film but I did my
very best and when you do your very best
somehow the butterfly effect kicks in
now green Oscar was was one of the I
mean the Panda award as it’s called it’s
it was a singular honor to get that no
other woman from India had got it before
in the global category and it was the
absolute singular honor but having said
that Green Oscar or not it didn’t make
the wildlife filmmaking career any
easier there was still no industry in
India properly a proper formal industry
in viola filmmaking the jobs were still
hard it was still difficult to get
assignments in the right time the right
kind of assignments and I found myself
rock-bottom again it was a rollercoaster
constantly but when you take in a leap
of faith you’ve got to take a leap I
mean when you’ve taken the leap you’ve
got to take in when you leap into chaos
you’ve got to leap with faith is what I
mean and before I knew it I got another
assignment for two years with Animal
Planet which took me around India
and showed me how beautiful our own
country was I landed up in places that
look like this in Kashmir that too is
Kashmiri and like that that’s not Mars
that is the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat not
very far from here and I also ended up
in this beautiful little hamlet in the
Indo Burmese border where I made another
friend a given that decides to come down
from a tree sit on my camera and look
for it nits in my hair she’s like
something always I’d be English like
even and sweet
so we not leader so you see that’s the
beauty of the unpredictable the kind of
things that happen the surprises our
flights leave really so many times plans
haven’t worked out for me so many ideas
haven’t been realized so many stories I
haven’t found funding for so much so
much of the time that roller coaster
hasn’t been well has been at rock bottom
and but you know you’ve just got to
carry on with clenched teeth with Crete
and a little bit of panache and planning
and that’s how early this year I ended
up in the UK and she got the privilege
of working with some of the best in the
wildlife filmmaking industry the top
brains of the wildlife filmmaking
industry my time at the BBC was
unparalleled and in terms of the
experience I gathered and then again
having continued to stop stick with it
at some point a little bit more of magic
happened I got to actually work on
location with 30 with Attenborough
himself
[Applause]
and try the wall but to spend a lovely
weekend with mrs. Li Darren of gerrant
Aaron’s wife mrs. Li Darren and I’m sure
a lot of you have read of my family and
other animals and it was an absolute
amazing weekend and that’s where life is
sort of taken me now and you asked how
how does it come to me the answer is
quite simple
be faithful be brave be ready to face
life
good bad be ready to face the four chil
the fallow and accept it in all its
glory and somehow somewhere that
butterfly will flap its wings and
something will happen and then you can
say with some amount of confidence as I
can say with some amount of confidence
that life has not passed me by that
every moment has been lived and that’s
the beauty and the symphony of this
wonderful thing that you’ve got chaos
[Applause]
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