In the Rights direction!

Proud to be an Indian….MAY BE THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

2008-11-30T20:34:00.000+05:30

Proud to be an Indian….MAY BE THAT IS THE PROBLEM!

There have been many times when I have thought about the answer to that question (in case it is asked), and I realized I can never bring myself to say “I am proud to be an Indian”(IAPTBAI), I will be lying otherwise.

I response will be, “I am OK to be an Indian”, or better “I am cool to be an Indian”, or may be just state it as a basic fact “I am an Indian” take it or leave it.

I believe we have for too long and with disastrous consequences lived on IAPTBAI. Think about how many of us are proud Indians and how many are questioning Indians. I am often surprised by between Proud Indians and foreign nationals, where the Indians tell them so many Good things about India that when the foreigner passes by a slum he gets utterly confused about the tales of Proud Indians.

Another example of Proud Indians goes back to the last year of my college in Durgapur. There was a stabbing incident where an Indian student stabbed a Palestinian student. The Palestinian student was a friend and we wanted some action to be taken against the Indian student within the law. I was horrified when a lot of my batch mats and some people form college staffed actually came up to us and in casual conversation told us, “why are you bothered, the victim is not an Indian”. I can not in my life understand what makes a human being come up with such a Hitleristic thought.

OK so I am a Proud Indian, the question I will ask myself is what about millions of people who don’t get 2 square meals a day? What about 100,000 thousand women who are forced to be prostitutes in one city alone, Imagine what will be the number if we think of whole country. Take a guess will these women be daughter/sister/wife/mother of someone. Do you think they will be proud Indians? Or may be they don’t count!

History/culture/tradition to be proud about and I am sure we all know all the good things. Lets just balance that with some other not so glorious things about our past. Right from our mythology where Sita was abandoned and Dropdi was molested - something to be Proud about? DO you know about massacre of Jain community in Tamilnadu by a sect of Hindu’s in Tamilnadu? One of my journalist friend has done a PHD on it. What about a whole lot of people generation after generation for centuries being humiliated/insulted/treated as scum and termed as untouchables. Do you think they were proud to be Indians? OR can we today be proud of centuries of discrimination? Now we get angry about reservation and talk about how that has not worked at all?

So many places in India you go and tell your first name, what will be the immediate response – “what is your surname”. May I ask WHY? Can we not be just proud Indians why do we have to be Proud Brahmin Indians, Proud Rajput Indians, Proud Yadav Indians?

I can go on and on and ask about girl child being killed before or after birth by parents Proud Indians??

Garbage on the road, spitting on the wall, bribing to solve our problems, What do we do? What are we doing to change anything that will change even a little bit for better?

The whole politics of IAPTBAI is exactly to make us ignorant and inactive, because a proud nation does not need many changes, it implies things are fine with us, it prevents introspection, and it stops questioning old and outdated social order.

Even if we stop being proud Indians for one hour every day and in that one hour do something to become proud Indians we can make a big difference.

So my request is, LETS STOP Being Proud Indians even if for an hour every day!

Even with this Mumbai attack, why do you think it happened? We can blame/curse many people it will not stop the next one from happening. We need to recognize that we have angry/hateful people who are looking some way of expressing it and someone used them very skillfully to create this whole episode. We can say they are wrong or there is no place for such hatred or that those people are not proud Indians but the fact remains, there are people like them and I am sure the number is not small but significant. The more we hate the more this number will grow. The only way is to find ways to reach out to all angry people.

In Peace

Agyatmitra

The Mumbai Attack - An Appeal for Peace

2008-11-27T11:33:00.000+05:30

The Mumbai Attack
Another attack, life’s lost and in all probability Hate and Venom seeded in the minds of thousands.
I wonder what is the bigger success of people who’s brain behind these things? The attacks themselves or the amount of hatred they are able to generate.

Strangely I remembered what Bhagat Singh the revolutionary of Indian Freedom struggle said after throwing smoke bombs in the parliament run by British rulers, he said, you need a bang blast to open the ears of people who have stopped listening to the calls of freedom.
The question in my mind is what are we suppose to listen to. Also what state of mind we need to be in to listen.
Compassion is what comes to my mind.
The easy way out for all of us is to blame a group, a community, a religion, the inefficient security, and what not. It will allow us to curse them and wish horrible things to happen to their near and dear ones as has happened to 100 or more people who have died. Again will it stop anything is the question?
But can be listening to the pain or the hatred in people, who do such things, Imagine 22 year old young people, putting their life at stake, how many us will risk our life for anything. What will be the reason, what passion (hatred/pain) they might be carrying? In coming hours and days, you will her a lot of rhetoric about how terror is taking over, how Mumbai is so resilient, how we need to act against terror (like Bush said). Watching countless hours of TV and reading news and discussion we will also get passionate and speak with hatred about some group/community. I am wondering how more HATRED will help any of us? Can we be different from people who do these kinds of attacks and actually listen to what is going on, what is making us more violent?
Normally talking about peace is seen as weakness at such times, and I want to reaffirm that Peace is not absence of violence it is way of living. We all have a choice we can contribute to the hatred that exists between groups/people/communities/individuals and it will only create more hatred and lead to more violence. Or we can distance ourselves from any kind of hate and even doing that will tilt the balance in favor of peace.
Question is Do we have the courage?

A lovely story

2008-07-11T17:01:00.003+05:30

Just as Play for Peace had become a familiar concept, i stumbled upon Chalk for Peace! It's a beautiful story and regardless of whether anyone decides to take it up or not, have a read, here.

Play for Peace (workshop report)

2008-07-10T14:33:00.001+05:30

The Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre and PeaceWorks organized a three-day Play for Peace workshop on the 27th, 28th and 29th of June at Seagull’s Satish Mukherjee Road address. Play for Peace is a unique international initiative that teaches young children, especially in conflict-torn areas, to play together as a first and crucial step towards peaceful community-building. The Indian leg of Play for Peace is located in Pune and has previously worked with Hindu and Muslim communities in Hyderabad, riot relief camps in Gujarat and tsunami relief camps in the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The workshop was conducted by Agyat and Swati (who prefer not to use their surnames as a stand against the prevailing caste system in India), youth facilitators of Play for Peace in India. Attended by a group of 26 people ranging from college students to NGO workers, the objective of the workshop was to learn playing community-building games, become aware of the psychological processes that lead to conflict, and finally learn to conduct these games in a way that avoids these processes and encourages children to play together irrespective of their differences in background and experience.

The first day of the workshop began with games that familiarize the participants with each other’s names, moved on to alertness games and group games requiring each other’s co-operation. These were punctuated with song-and-dance games, where the entire group came together with silly and fun lyrics and dance moves. The lyrics were simple, ridiculous, and often wordless onomatopoeic sounds (like “Aga Zumba Zumba Zumba…”) – the sort would that appeal to children of any background; otherwise they were kept within simple words in English or Hindi. The games, even the most competitive ones, were characterized by the absence of elimination – in short, nobody would get “out” or be humiliated for being less apt at playing than others. This practice was explained by Swati and Agyat as one of the “core values” of community-building games, the others being always ensuring the emotional and physical safety of the players, and always keeping an invitation to join in open to anyone who is interested. The participants were also taught how to introduce a new game to players, how to conduct it, and when to finish. By the end of the day’s workshop we had learnt 22 games and how to make others play them.

The second day concentrated on psychological experiences of conflict and how to deal with them. One exercise done on the first day had already given us a taste of it, when we were given a list of 15 essentials of day-to-day life and gradually eliminate the ones we could do without till we were left with only four – a tough ordeal; and then reminded that there were people in the world who did not have access to even those. The second day also began with new games, but these were awareness-building games. One game taught us how we succeed better if we pay more attention to our own growth than on stunting the growth of our peers. Another game divided us into four quadrants according to our individual stands on several debatable issues and encouraged us to share our opinions, but not with the objective to debate and win but to notice and learn to accept how different the opinion of a peer can be from ours. There were stories shared, penned by other Play for Peace volunteers from different places; and the songs learned were about peace, unity and the value of human life.

On the third day of the workshop, the participants were given a list of books, films and websites which will enhance our knowledge on child development, building peaceful communities, constructive thinking and such related topics. We were also taught how to create a report for each play-conducting session, so as to have a consistent log of data. Then, or the main part of the days session, we were divided into two groups and each participant in turn was made to demonstrate the skills of teaching and conducting a game, while his/her other group members posed as children. After this session, we sat and discussed various projects to carry forward our training with Play for Peace. Ideas were put forward, proposals made, and many of the participants came together in small groups to carry out certain projects, some of which are already on the way. Later in the evening, a group of visitors were welcomed at the workshop space and we practised our recently acquired play-conducting skills by inviting them to join us in our games. The day was concluded with a screening of Anand Patwardhan’s anti-nuclear destruction video Ribbons of Peace.

The Telegraph (Metro) article on PFP

2008-07-09T08:19:00.003+05:30

Here's the link for those who haven't read it:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080701/jsp/calcutta/story_9483647.jsp

2008-07-04T00:01:00.010+05:30

Hey guys,

I've been sent 92 pictures from the workshop!! In order to prevent overloading everyone's inbox, i'm uploading a choice few here. All the remaining pics will be put up on flickr asap...we have a peaceworks defender's group there as well, esp. for photographs. I'll send out invites for it. I guess putting up pictures on a large scale is better done on flickr so as not to clutter the blog. Here's the link to the flick group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/peaceworksdefenders/. Meanwhile, check out these!

DAY 1

an ice-breaker...possibly the pair tag?

mingle mingle...7 common things n a song people to people!

the monster!

DAY 2

Collecting coup!

production ball - first round

a classic moment!

Day 3

Ways of Seeing

mock session planning

...and on the other side!

mock session in action!

elephant!!! :)

the session inside

aur...hariyaali idhar udhar!! :D

cheers!!

Format of Games.

2008-07-03T21:38:00.002+05:30

This is so much tougher than I thought it would be!!! The good Lord above knows why volunteered to take on this self-inflicted torture!!! I would have been totally lost had it not been for Prachi who decided to take pity on poor little me..... :P

So what we have come-up with is a format under which all the games can be put into categories.

So here goes......

First we have the F.U.N.N. games:

Action/chase

Song {memory and follow}

Alertness/memory

Ice-breakers.

1. Action/chase.

Tom and Jerry

Save me

Imitation tag

Pair tag

Kabadi

2. Song

Memory:

Arum sum sum

Aga zumba zumba

Alive alert awake enthusiastic

Follow:

Hum gol tum gol

Haryaali

Watermelon....

Hathi ka baccha

Dekho apni dosti

Penguin

Sepo

Ride Ride Ride My Pony.

3. Alertness/memory

Zip zap..../elephant/rabit/monkey.....

Big fish - small fish

Idly/dosa/vada/coffee

7-up

8 step dance

Arista cha

Stop-walk

Save your finger catch your partner's!

4. Ice-Breakers

Name toss

Mingle mingle

People to people

Walk-stop (with greetings)

Have you ever...... been to jail?/watched 5 movies back to back.....

Another one is "Tara Bai" which is a voice modulation exercise which is one of its kind, hence no separate category for it. It is as of now a category in its self.

F.U.N. Games

Human knot

Collecting Coup

Production Ball

Quadrants

(a.) Acceptable/ Non-acceptable + Violent/non-violent

(b.) My way / Highway + Expressive/non-expressive.

The break-up of the sessions will follow really soon. Till then opinions and comments are most welcome.

The PFP Experience

2008-07-03T19:30:00.000+05:30

Fun! Fun! Fun!

PFP was much more fun than I thought it would be. The concepts and ideas were things that we either or already knew, agreed with or understood but hadn't necessarily found ways of implementing in our daily interactions or spreading on a mass scale.

We all know that while playing we forget social and mental boundaries. We all know that while playing we are 100% present and focused. We all know that it doesn't matter who you're playing with as long as its fun to play.

What we didn't know was that small things like our word choice could change the feeling of a game and its effect. What we didn't know is that if we leave all previous experiences outside the door, our interaction with each other completely changes. If we decide to "move together" the game completely changes.

PFP have given us tools and power to affect not one or two people but hundreds and hundreds of people, and have fun while doing it. It’s like having a master key - a trusted entry to all the doors.

New Market, Din Number Do

2008-07-03T18:58:00.003+05:30

Heyho!

OK...so this is a really late feedback mail, and we apologise.

To pick up from where we left off, Anirban, Satish and me met on the 1st of July at around 9 15 pm outside the main entrance of New Market (Anirban had brought two friends along). S and A had already identified about 5 children who were playing football. They however, were engrossed in the game so we moved on to see if the children we had met the previous day had turned up. When we finally met them, they were ecstatic and rushed off to call their friends. Very soon we were a group of around 15.

We started off by forming a circle and everyone said his (i wish there was a her too but we couldn't convince any girls to play this time :o( ) name and age. We felt it would be useful to have the average age of the bacchas we were playing with (which incidentally that day was 11). We played Name Toss and Dibbi Dibbi Dabba...with just a minor twist...the boy who forgot a name got to choose a dance step which everyone had to then follow while singing D D D.As noise and laughter rose into the night (sigh!) lots of other bacchas joined in. Very soon we had a group of 30, excluding ourselves.

To cut a long story short, we then proceeded to play The Finger Game, Apple Mango Banana, Zip Zap and River Bank. After the first game, we all sang Hariyali, which was a BIG hit, even though it was impossible to get anyone to stay in the circle!Then we all sat down n a circle and repeated our names...with everyone 'echoing' each name Tazran ishtyle!

Tarpore it was bhaashan time....everyone came close...and sat together. We presented the Israel-Palestine conflict in the form of a short, simle story and ended it by telling them how children there had come up with a song for peace, a song that we would teach them if they would come up with two songs by next week. The challenge was met with cheer and so we told them to come up with two new games too (We have two goups and SEVEN enthusiastic captains....i see possible conflict....even though the challenge was that they co-operate!). After that we played a spontaneous association game...where one of us would give a word and the children would raise their hand if the wanted to speak. We touched on topics like football (a LOUD hurrah), cigarettes ("it's bad for health. your liver burns out") non vegetarianism ('we should be vegetarians" - but none of them were! ), jhagra ("oh! we LOVE it") and so on.....

Anirban ended the session beautifully....by asking everone to hold hands and say "Hum Sab Ek Hain". It sounded so GOOD.

Then, since we had promised everyone we would play football, it was match ahoy! The security guards played spoilsport tho...apparently no one realized it was already 10 15!!! We have given our word that we shall play after Sunday's session.

Now the 'analysis'....

#There was violence, quite a bit of it...apart from the usual hitting, biting, scratching (and everything in between) there was apparently some kind of a "gang war" going on.... a lot of youngsters chose voluntary exclusion because of that. A boy of about 15 came to me and after we chatted a bit he lifted his shirt to show me a 15 inch knife...i was awed and a lil astonished! He ran back home to leave it there and came back to play. :))

#These guys get bored EASILY. I would suggest a few games that require running around or some such activity. These could be intersperced with songs or games that require sitting down, which the children would then be ready to give their attention to while they rest.

#As mentioned earlier, the few girls hanging round were painfully shy. I think the boys can be asked to gently ask the girls to join in. Or, as cliched as this may sound, maybe in the next session one of the Didis (you, that is) can do what we were unable to.

#FOOTBALL.........MAJOR threat ;o) Someone (preferably Sumeet) please see if you can come up with a super fun, non or semi competitive form of the game...trust me you will go down in New Market history...(unless of course i take credit ;o) )

#We had LOTS of onlookers who we couldn't really keep inviting to join us simply coz we had our hands full. Maybe next time.

#The children are fascinated by facilitators...they want to hold your hand (they fight over it!) to hold you, to talk to you. The stonger ones get to, but the younger and not-so-tough ones want your attention as badly.

#No one complained about the noise level or about the fact that we were using the Simpark space. SFSG.

#We need to come up with a fun way of establishing dialogue, because these bairns (im sick of using children and bacchas...I wish 'kids' was ethical!) have a LOT to say.

Apparently so did I....

That's all for now folks,
A

P.S.- Be there in front of New Market on Sunday the 6th at 7:15 pm! That's deen nombor teen.

P.P.S.- The schedule for Sunday shall be mailed tomorrow.

P.P.P.S. (only for Anirban and Satish) - I've obviously left a lot of important stuff out. This was just off the top of my head. Do fill in the blanks.

New Market, Day 1

2008-07-01T02:48:00.002+05:30

Hola people!

Took PFP into the field today and it was a friggin' wonderful experience!Since I'm hell-bent on rambling and writing this as a non-report, please bear with me! Or, just skip to the important bits! :op

Anirban, Satish and me met at New Market around 8:30 (sorry Anirban for keeping ya waiting!) and began by discussing our playplan. We decided to introduce ourselves and tell the bacchas (not kids :op) that we would be coming back on a particular day.

Unfortunately it was drizzling so there was NO one around! So we went onto the New Market terrace ( which is a sexed out place!) and lolled around there. Then, as there was still no one playing, around a quarter past 9 we walked to Anirban's school. Obviously the gates were locked but Mr. A felt really nostalgic and desperately wanted to enter his school. In fact, he wanted to get in so bad, that he suggested breaking in. After some protesting from my side, we entered the building adjacent to the school ( a firestation FULL of policemen) and climbed over the wall. When the security caught us, we claimed that we were just VERY loyal ex-students. heh. This had to be a first; breaking into a school instead of the opposite!

Now the important part... We met a few children and fortunately some of them had danced for my music video so establishing a rapport was easy! We just casually talked for a bit and mentioned that we had a few games ready that we wanted to play with them soon. They were delighted and said, "Kal aao!" (today the turnout was nil coz of the rain). One of them wanted us to get a football so we could play soccer. Thanks to the workshop we knew how to reply to that! :O)

While this was happening we were also constantly dodging bricks being thrown from above by what we can only call the madar-c*** gang, a group of 20+ year olds who punctuated every word with the M phrase (incidentally we have no idea exactly WHY they were doing that....throwing bricks that is). Anirban was optimistic enough to suggest that we include them while playing. I dunno about Satish but I definitely went *ahem*!

Before leaving the place, we exchanged names.....we met 6-7 children but i can only remember a few names....Rohit, Rajesh, Bablu.... They promised to get a large group of children tomorrow. The deal was that if it rained, the 'prograam' would be shifted to the next day. I'm not sure if being so hasty was good, epecially since a lot of us are meeting on Wednesday and would have prolly liked to be included (plus we WILL need AT LEAST 5 volunteers). However, the kids were so enthusiastic that we really couldn't say no. Maybe the three of us can go early tomorrow and tell them that we'll come on Thursday. That way we can not only be slightly more prepared but also inform others.

Signing off now...

YaYness!
A

2008-06-23T18:51:00.000+05:30

PEACEWORKS, An initiative of The Seagull Foundation for the Arts presents

A 3-day intensive workshop on peace-building and conflict resolution conducted by 'Play for Peace' (PFP) – a global organization now in its 10th year which brings together children, youth and organizations from communities in conflict. PFP has worked extensively with young people, notably with Hindu-Muslim and Arab-Jew children/ youth in Gujarat, and in Israel.PFP is a process of community building. It is the creation of ongoing learning partnerships that teaches people to be leaders for peace.

The workshop is aimed at training socially committed young people and professionals with the PFP tools to become peacemakers in their own unique ways.

WORKSHOP VENUE:

46 Satish Mukherjee Road,

Calcutta-700026

(near the Rashbehari crossing)

WORKSHOP DATES27, 28, 29 JUNE 2008

10 am TO 5 pm daily

ELIGIBILITY: AGE 16 AND ABOVE

REGISTRATION FEE: RS 500 for students

Rs. 700 for sponsored candidates

SEATS: 30

CONTACT:INDRANI ROY or SUMEET THAKURat 2455 6942/43

SEAGULL ARTS & MEDIA RESOURCE CENTRE

36C S.P. MUKHERJEE ROAD,

CALCUTTA-700025

www.seagullindia.com

www.playforpeace.org

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T11:50:00.000+05:30

A very Happy New Year to the Defenders and to you who are reading this right now. Wish this year witnesses more participation, more events, more activity; may we all be able to look back at the end of this year and feel that we have achieved something - even if it be a single smile, a tiny change, one positive feedback...Here's to doing our bit, one step at a time!

DMSC trip....

2007-10-28T22:31:00.000+05:30

This is Bharati De, the director of DMSC. We had a candid interaction with her at her office as she explained their worker-rights demands and their past and future course of action.

-at the clinic in SonaGachi.

At the DMSC office, waiting for the children from Padatik to arrive.
Interacting with members of Padatik. And below's a pic of the DMSC office walls.. with news cut outs, as you can see:

Stroking Dead Man’s Hair: The polemics of Third Theatre and Us!

2007-10-16T18:23:00.000+05:30

The Human Rights Defenders held their first play ‘Stroking Dead Man’s Hair’ on the 11th of September, 2007 at the Seagull Bookstore. The play touched upon a variety of human rights violations. The already value-laden date was not a co-incidence but purposely chosen as we wanted to bring to light some lesser known but equally important India centric events connected with September 11th – for example, not many Indians know that on the 11th of September, 1948 the Armed Forces Special Powers Act was enforced in Manipur. Also, since it happened to be W.H.Auden’s centenary year, we decided to incorporate one of his rarer but extremely pertinent poems called 1st September, 1939 into what we called our ‘cross-media triptych’.

The possibility of developing theatre into a medium that the Human Rights Defenders could use to protest and raise awareness was raised by Oishik at our first post-workshop meeting. September was finally narrowed down as a feasible time to hold the one week workshop that was to be conducted by noted theatre-person and activist Parnab Mukherjee.

We finally started the workshop at the Seagull Bookstore on the 7th of September with Parnab introducing us to the concept of Third Theatre– intimate theatre characterized by moulding the space around the play and not vice-versa, as so often is the case. The day was concluded with watching an extremely disturbing video called ‘Manipur Burning’ and with discussing extracts from Tariq Ali’s ‘The Clash of Fundamentalisms’ as well as Agha Ali Khan’s poems.
On the 8th, an afternoon of what was supposed to be poster designing turned into a tug-of-war between a couple of reluctant softwares and some graphically challenged Defenders! In the end victory was ours and we managed a decent enough poster!

The next two days were spent in getting our sequences right; something which we managed to finish in record time since Parnab insisted on only one take to ensure spontaneity! Some of the choreography was pretty violent and in the end all of us had a few bruises or cuts as proof! Later, we were asked to come up with 2 minute narrations on a general theme of violence that were as personal as they were hard hitting. Then came the dreaded part where we were asked to recite our lines from Auden – with a few exceptions, it was a MAJOR disaster! Thus encouraged, we departed for the night!

Monday morning and afternoon was spent in printing and distributing the posters. The Defenders managed to put up posters in places like St. Xavier’s, Loreto House, Jadavpur University, Oxford Bookstore, SRFTI, etc. Towards late afternoon the Defenders met up at the bookstore to begin rehearsals in earnest. Much to our surprise Parnab decided to initiate discussions on theatre, film and human right violations rather than make us do multiple runs. He explained that the debates and discussions were as much a part of the play as the choreography. Also, as mentioned earlier, he did not want to ruin the spontaneity of the play by having multiple run-throughs. As we left the bookstore that night, all of us were unsure about the outcome of the play.

11th September, 2007. D day! We met in the morning and had one run through. Parnab unfortunately came down with a temperature and had to be mattress-ridden for most of the morning. Utter pandemonium broke out as we attempted to come up with last minute transitions between sequences. As the tension mounted the cast went out for lunch to take a break. We soothed our frayed nerves by mock seriously threatening mutiny! By 6 o’ clock, a sizeable crowd had gathered and as they watched a video of Bant Singh, we applied our grease-paint. After the video was over we launched into our sequences while Parnab managed to weave our actions into his narration. The choreography mostly went off without hitches and we ended by playing the extremely disturbing ‘Manipur Burning’ video. The second show also ran smoothly and suddenly, just as abruptly as it had started, the workshop was over.

The feedback was, for the most part, very encouraging. There were a few people who admitted that they didn’t quite grasp the ‘inner meaning’. I guess on some level, neither did we! The fact that we were able to reach out to people in a small way was overwhelming and made the entire exercise worthwhile for the Defenders. We gained a lot from the workshop. Apart from getting a taste of Third Theatre, we were exposed to Parnab’s fiery style of activism. We learnt the value of being organized. We also realized that a motley group of enthusiastic individuals with conflicting time schedules CAN come up with something as constructive as a play in four days. Of course, other indispensable factors include endless cups of chai, lots of food, an extremely patient organization like Seagull and a generous helping of Parnab Mukherjee!

DMSC visit

2007-10-14T17:23:00.000+05:30

Google Groups PeaceworksDefenders

2007-09-10T08:32:00.000+05:30

The workshop experience

2007-08-30T19:26:00.000+05:30

Its more than two months now that we attended the Human Rights workshop but then could not think of a better to topic to start blogging here. Before attending the workshop I was expecting something like Civics classes and having to listen to lectures which would make me a more aware individual. My this expectation was of course fulfilled but in a much better way than mere lectures.
The activites, games and movies made it thoroughly enjoyable and along with awareness what I gained was this will to question set norms and think beyond the stereotypes.
There are certain myths and beliefs that our society conditions us to and sometimes education makes the prejudices even more rigid. It is not easy to get over all of them at one go but definitely the workshop and the friendly interaction with different people there helped us to take a step towards that direction.
Play for peace was a sure winner ... Prachi, you will surely agree on this and the chana game, teh powerplay etc. were no less.
The workshop was surely an eye opener and clearly it showed a lot of things around us, injustice, brutality , and lots more that we usually fail to see being so used to them and habituated to have things the way they are.
And then I realised, the workshop was just the beginning ....

How it all started

2007-08-28T20:21:00.001+05:30