For Indian Independence Day, 2018, One Future Collective, organised a Peace Adda in collaboration with Prajnya Trust’s Education for Peace Initiative, facilitated by Chintan Girish Modi.
The Peace Adda was an intimate gathering of professionals from different fields, excited about the idea of celebrating and understanding peace through dialogue and poetry. The sessions started with a conversation on peace and our personal understanding of peace and moved across three poems, to delve into it deeper.
Poem 1: The Unknown Citizen by WH Auden
The first poem made the participants explore themes of peace as flowing from an individual to the society and the idea of a state regulated being of a person. It lead to multifaceted discussions around what influences our decisions and choices, how do we respond to and absorb news, the idea of manufactured narratives – it also tapped into discussions around the surveillance state, data privacy, and its relevance and context in present day India.
Poem 2: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
This poem aided discussion around empathy for the other and for oneself as a way to peace. It discussed the theme of kindness being the key to the world moving forward.
Poem 3: The Place Where We Are Right by Yehuda Amichai
This poem helped participants explore ideas of collaboration and community as a way to peace. It focused on discussions around the idea of being stuck in a ‘hard place’ and how growth and synergy cannot originate from such a place. An interesting example that came up was a quote by Rumi, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” and a corresponding experience of an exercise at a Seeds of Peace camp which had an open area tagged, ‘this is the field’, where people of different nationalities played games as a way to learn to work together.
Photos from the event:
