Transcript

The Power of an Idea | Cyrus Todiwala | TEDxBITSPilani

[Music] hello everybody so today we're here to discuss the word idea what is an idea so ideas evolve out of thoughts that then you put it into a process leads to creation of something whether it's an invention whether it's something else is all everything evolves around the word and idea we all have ideas sometimes they materialize sometimes they don't materialize sometimes they lead to something excellent sometimes they fail but it all starts with an idea so we all think all the time we conjure up different ideas sometimes we make them work many a times they don't work at all so i want to talk about one idea when ideas lead to different things here's an idea that may have evolved thousands of years ago that has led to not just inventions not just uh explorations not just massive movements of people but has led to a whole change and a whole shift in bringing civilizations together it has been an amalgamation of cultures it has been an amalgamation of different things perhaps not best always because it has also led to superpowers it has led to colonization it has led to misery it has led to a lot of suffering as well as a lot of success and a lot of massive wealth generation for a lot of people for example the dutch east india company would today have been worth about 660 billion pounds had it fully succeeded the british it is known have taken billions away from our great nation when they first managed to get into our country so the word today i talked to about is spice spices india is the treasure trove of spices or india was the treasure trove of spices always and every nation in the world wanted to capture that amenity to make use of for their cuisines for their food the egyptians for embalming their mummies etc etc overland routes to india were established thousands of years ago but the overland routes were always dangerous going back from india to the west were always fraught with danger with uh breaking of the caravans with damage with destruction and very little getting through which actually led to the rise in prices of inflation because of the danger the cost of taking a spice simple thing from our country from india across the himalayas through the passes into the west eastern europe areas it cost a lot of money because very few got through the silk route opened up again fraught with danger because the looters the plunderers the decoys or whoever they were called in those days were waiting for these rich caravans to come through so they could get their hands on them and then demand a very heavy price for them to release the goods to other people so the best thing was to find sea routes to india kerala being the queen of the spice trade routes were found eventually starting first from the african and continent starting with perhaps the egyptians the phoenicians and then the jewish arabs later on the muslim arabs and sorry the christian arabs and then the muslim arabs and all these people brought different cultures to our subcontinent they brought lots of cultures but with that the main thing was trade but that trade then moved from spices onto other things and became bigger and wider led to invasions it led to suppression it led to foreign powers coming in to suppress and to dominate and to make take advantage of what was there in this golden land however actually speaking the one thing that actually led to this massive globalization of globalization is a modern word perhaps but global globalization in my mind was also caused by spices and one forgets that it was actually does and did have a very significant impact on the way we eat our foods today the way we bring cultures from different parts of the world into our own culture and we create the cuisine that we create from amalgamation of different cultures now being the fact that europe was desperate for spices and the being the fact that one tiny little nation one tiny little not a nation but actually a principality was first given the taste of easier access to spies by the arabs through morocco into the tiny province of venice led to this massive idea that i want to now discover india how do i get my hands on this country and me bring the spices in to break the monopoly of a tiny little nation that is making so much money creating so much wealth simply because it is in the right place at the right time with the right access to the right people who bring the right product that they can sell at a very high price so with that the arabs also brought a one very precious commodity to the italians in venice and that was coffee today we hear the word arabica used for this particular bean of coffee but it was actually the arabs when they took the coffee bean to across the mediterranean sea to italy or the adriatic sea or the the italians called it arabica because it was a seed that the arabs brought eventually the word coffee was coined it is an english word it was coined and then the world started to use it in a completely common way and the bean became known as arabica okay so this coffee originally if you go to the middle east you do know that in the whole five-star hotels this gentleman walking around the lobby with a summer in his hand offering you tiny cups of very sweet very flavored coffee that's kawa that was traditionally the coffee brewed in kerala with cardamom later on saffron came into play when the kashmiri started to use it and that was taken by the arabs across so idea okay an idea emerged into italy now becoming the greatest nation that discovered the art of roasting coffee in many different forms we do know that the best roasted coffees come from italy though the coffee beans could come from as far away as brazil or come from far away as east as the southeast asia because eventually it was taken and grown in many different parts of the world but come back to spice so the italians the venetians take took a very heavy toll from the rest of europe when they sold them spices so much so that time times pepper was valued as much as gold and was sold in equal quantities to gold so if you weighed pepper and you put gold that was the negotiation factor gold was his pepper and so every european nation on the western coast wanted to find this golden land that they could eventually get their own spices and break this monopoly and sell their own spices make money make wealth etc etc etc so every western european nation tried very hard to find india very difficult difficult question ideas emerged muslim mariners were appointed they were sent out they couldn't go far ships were not designed to go far distances provisions would run out because there's no refrigeration in those days things would run out sailors would mutiny and ships would have to come back illness came in diseases were spread and voyages were abandoned one small nation one small tiny little nation actually could go out the longest now this little nation was named by the romans during their conquest into europe and they landed in this little part of the of europe from which they eventually did come to britain and they did establish their empire it was called portobanus okay little nation called puerto banos which eventually became portugal portugal and in portugal there were the raw vines brought by the romans which were not of very good quality the wines were okay they wouldn't last very long they hadn't yet discovered the art of maturation properly and their wine often turned into vinegar because of the fluctuation of climates temperatures whatever and what they did was they had to use that vinegar so the portuguese had become the masters of using vinegar for pickling for cooking for all their products so they preserved their meats in vinegar and that kept the meats from getting spoiled so barrels of spoiled wine were strained cleared when the vinegar was fully formed large chunks of pork were put into these barrels with a lot of garlic and they were sealed and when these were matured and their pickles were ready when the ships went out they loaded the barrels onto the ships so when the fresh provisions ran out the sailors go then open the barrels and take the meat out what they got from that meat and the vinegar was they got vitamin c from the vinegar they got protein from the pork they got fat from the pork and they got extra excuse me they got extra nourishment from the garlic the bread that they had brought would be dry so then they would soak that bread into the vinegar and eat it so they had a balanced diet of carbohydrates fats proteins and extra nourishment from the garlic and this way their ships could stay out much longer the problem was that their vessels were not designed to take heavy seas so two master mariners i will talk about and then talk about the third who is in my mind the king of them all the first one to go out under the orders of the king of portugal was bartholomew diaz or diaz so bartholomew dies set out sail unfortunately he headed further in a different direction instead of going east even for the west and even south and he discovered south america saw dark skinned people saw different things around call them indians he was very comfortable he thought he had discovered india came back to portugal not having found india because there was no comparison to the spices that were being sold and traded but there were no spices there but he did find chiles anyway not having found india being disappointed the king sent another master marine route called cabral cabral actually now knew he had to go the other way so he went the other way eventually discovering [Music] the cape of south africa on christmas day calling it natal and that was when the portuguese first landed up further west onto the coast of bottom of africa but again khabarov had problems he had lost vessels he was his ships were damaged they could not sail any further and he limped back into portugal then the king decided one last chance the one he trusted most was a short gentleman four foot nine inches a little bit more tall as history goes his name was vashko the gamma vascular gamma was appointed to lead the next voyages vasco da gama of course had the route now to go to africa so he discovered came back came from africa came back and said our ships will cannot travel far because of the way our ships are built this gave him an idea the word idea now that changed the course of history his idea was vessels are too flat they cannot take heavy seas so when they come down on a heavy sea they crack they have problems they don't last long they cannot sail fast he said if we curve the bow and curve the ship all through towards the back from four to aft our vessels will be able to plow through the oceans better and they will be able to crest the waves better he tried that with small replicas somebody believed in him and moscow the gamma was through his one big idea the creator of the galleon the spaniards took a lot of credit for the galleons it was this little portuguese man who actually created the ship that then went on to create the vessels of today by the curved bows in the front and the tapered edges in the front so that they could cut through the water other than being bored and flat and once moscow got his first galleon he could then traverse the entire coast of africa and head up onto the east coast of africa this opened up another entire reason for him and that allowed him to do many more things differently eventually he did find kerala and that changed the course of history whether we like it or we don't like it that one tiny country that one little man he changed the course of history suddenly the east and west got linked okay the portuguese eventually reached all the way to macau and china the trade routes were all along that road from macau hitting the philippines hitting other parts of southeast asia coming back to india going around the coast of india and then going back to the west and this brought about this big amalgamation of cultures amalgamation of food people everything yes lots of dirty bad things happen they started colonizing areas the slave trade started to happen to bring people in to work for them but food moved around for instance india grows great cashew nuts we go lovely pineapples we grow so many other things that came from south america the portuguese brought them they bought the chili they bought pineapples they bought cashew nuts they brought certain roots like tapioca and sweet potatoes and potatoes from south america from india when aubergine or eggplant or brinjal as we call it and from the spices that went out many other things went across and this now created this big cross filtration of cultures coming from an idea okay so this is what it is ideas changed the world eventually portugal and britain had a very strong treaty somewhere in 1420 it was signed when portugal came under threat from spain it approached england to help it to survive and to fight the spanish that led to a very strong alliance between the two countries the british had a great idea they could not find the route to india but they wanted desperate trade in india by now the portuguese were trading not just in kerala they were trading in bombay basin salsa daman diyu and they also had their position in goa what the british did was they asked the portuguese king whether he'd like his daughter to become they had an idea let me go there first they had an idea that idea was how do we get to india and start to control on the spice trade for ourselves the idea was let's get the princess of portugal married to the king of england make her the queen of england and that way we can have as a dowry a trading right to some of the portuguese controlled areas in india so they had catherine of breganza marry charles ii of england catherine became the wife of the queen of england with charles as the king and the british told the portuguese we will take the rights of bombay bassin and sulset from you as dowry the portuguese gave the trading rights to the british and the rest is now history it changed the course of history completely of course we were overpowered eventually they became our colonizers he changed the course of history but the british then took so many things across the world and before i finish i'll tell you one more last little thing that came out of it came out of this marriage when catherine came to england she asked for cha the british had no idea what cha was they had no clue what char was but because it was the queen a message was sent out to the king to say that there is a request for char and a chest of cha was dispatched from portugal bearing the initials t full stop e full stop a full stop meaning authorized by the emperor for export but when the english read t e a it becomes t and today the entire world calls it t but in portugal if you go they still say like we would say chai or cha they say and so folks i hope you enjoyed that little talk i know i'm limited on time although i can go on about this subject if you get a chance please try and look at this program on discovery called mr toriwala and the galleons of spice it was screened in india many many times it was i think on the discovery channel or one of those channels please look for it and you can get more of this history that emerged out of an idea on trading with spies so thank you very much all of you hope i can get a chance to chat with you again and give you some of the knowledge that i have acquired over the years but for the time being enjoy have fun and remember do not give up on your ideas ideas lead to different things for different people and lead to success thank you bye