Fourth General Thimayya Memorial Lecture

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

On Saturday, Dec 13th, a few thousand fortunate invitees were privileged

to list to

Mr. Philip Wollen, OAM give a 65 minute talk on Ahimsa - India's gift to

the World

and Occams Razor at Bangalore.

 

This was the fourth General Thimayya Memorial lecture, an annual event

organised

by the old boys of Bishop Cottons Boys High School. Previous speakers

were

Ambassador C. V. Ramganathan in 2005 and Mr. Nandan Nilekani, co-founder

of

Infosys in 2006. Among the audience were at least half a dozen Air Vice

Marshalls;

a like number of Admirals and Vice Admirals; and a dozen Generals.

Playwrights,

sportsmen, doctors, engineers, lawyers, industrialists, cosmonauts, and

about

500 senior students of Bishop Cottons were in the audience.

 

It was undoubtedly the most inspiring talk I have ever heard. At the end

of the talk,

which incidentally had no slides, no power point presentations, no film

clips and,

therefore, depended solely on the spoken word, hard-boiled serving and

retired members

of the armed forces as well as others had tears in their eyes.

 

During the question and answer session, a high school senior got up and

asked

the audience how many of them were vegetarian when they entered the

auditorium.

About 40% raised their hands. The next question was how many had decided

to

change their dietary habits after hearing Philip. Most of the carnivores

in the audience

indicated that they were turning vegan or vegetarian. My only

disappointment was that

while almost every girl student swore off meat, the non-vegetarians

among the boys

were far from unanimous.

 

While a DVD or a CD will never be able to replicate the real thing,

those who are interested

may contact me and I will try and have the recording duplicated and send

it to those who would

like to have a copy. My only request is that all of you play it before

as many people as you

possibly can so that people can understand the urgency of the situation.

 

S. Chinny Krishna

drkrishna