Darkness at Noon

He couldn’t have been more different from the speaker who was to follow later the same evening, but if there’s one thing Pratap Bhanu Mehta shares with Naseeruddin Shah, it’s the courage to live out loud, to live out clear, and to live with rare honesty.

Pratap is one of India’s most valuable and engaged public intellectuals. And in a riveting keynote, he analysed why across the world societies are convulsed with anxiety and are embracing the “rule of men” rather than the “rule of law”. He separated fact from sentiment and explained why data is not always the most reliable way to read the future, whereas reading human sentiment correctly is like reading early signals of things to come.

It was a shape-shifting lecture, one that triggered as many questions as it answered – a powerful affirmation of the very idea of Algebra as a space to trigger new ideas, new conversations. And if you, like us, have been grappling to understand the new world order emerging around us, this session is essential viewing.

Watch the full session above.