My First TV Interview for Japan TV

"I have been here for a 13 years and nobody noticed, you are here for last 3 weeks and you are going to be on Japan's national TV already?? I can't believe it !" That was the reaction when I told my American client in Japan that I was interviewed while coming to work by NHK (Japan's public broadcaster). The life is obviously unfair.

So I started for office early morning as usual from my Nishi-Kasai apartment . I dropped some garbage in 3 different trash cans as the Japanese do and pressed the iPod's 'play'. A few steps later I found a girl, a cameraman and a sound assistant with a microphone almost lurking behind some invisible hideout, crouching for a prey . They were silently waiting for something or somebody. I looked on curiously and then turned and started waiting for walk sign to cross the road. "Hello" I heard from behind, and found that the crouching tigers have found the hidden dragon, i.e. me!.

The girl started "We are making a program on the Indian proficiency in Mathematics... can we ask some questions?" . "So I am being interviewed", I thought, I felt exited with the prospect and at the same wondered what they would ask . I tried to summon all my forgotten Maths knowledge thinking that I might finally spoil India's name today . Will they ask me about the differential calculus or some Fourier transform ?? I wondered.

My thought train was halted by a microphone which was thrust towards me and a cameraman who seemed be already in the process of filming the events. But the girl reporter was the most merciful who showed me a cardboard with a problem and said "I will show you some problems, could you please answer them?", I was relieved when I looked at the cardboard, it was something like 4 *6.I answered it . Then another card with a similar easy problem, I answered it correctly too. Then she showed me 25 *25, it took no time to answer that it is 625 ( square of 25). Two more such questions were answered with increasing difficulty. I received each further question with some trepidation which I had almost forgotten since the school days. Then she showed me her most difficult question : 19*23. A few seconds later I could reply that it was 437. She seemed satisfied and then asked me to show how I arrived at the answer so quickly. The cameraman focused once on me and then on the card where I started revealing the secret of how I arrived at the answer. The calculation is : 23*19= (23*20)-23 = 437.

Then she asked me to hold the cardboard and look at the camera for 5 seconds, I stood with a smiling face . I was thinking all the things that could have gone wrong but didn't. I was smiling because I had just finished my life's first interview in Japan. The myth of Indian mathematical proficiency was alive for another day, and it was done by just showing that I could do some primary school multiplication.. very generous of the reporter.

This interview is hopefully going to be broadcasted tomorrow in one of the two channels of Japan's national TV. I am already a micro-nano celebrity :) .. in Japan.