APROPOS ‘ThinkFest Thoughts’ (Jan 16). The writer has lamented that at the ThinkFest in Lahore one of the keynote speakers had to manually operate the multi-media. Blaming the ‘incompetence’ of the South Asian, which he caustically blamed on our ‘genes,’ the writer advised the Nobel Laureate to bring his own multimedia the next time.

With such derision for his fellow South Asians, it never dawned on the writer that the reality might be something different than what was apparent to him in the audience.

As the hall in-charge that day, let me explain what actually happened. Our multimedia set up was working perfectly fine.

It was Dr Venki Ramakrishnan’s iphone which would not connect to his ipad. Therefore, he chose to stand next to the projector and operate it himself. It would bode well for the writer to actually first find out what really happened before berating his fellow countrymen.

Shams Ur Rahman
Lahore

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2020