Resilience of the human spirit
Written for an essay competition, somewhere in 2017.Before I lose it somewhere,let me put it up here:)
A week ago, on a mundane afternoon like many others, my friend was scrolling through her phone. A minute later, she said: “There’s an event happening this Saturday called The Human Library. Sounds different. Let’s go?” The next question was inevitable “What’s it about?”. “You have a set of people who call themselves books. They share their stories and we ask them questions.” While such an idea would have been greeted with scepticism by most people, my friends did not belong to that category. We agreed to go, with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty.
Come Saturday and we set out well before time. However, Bangalore’s infamous traffic can make the most punctual of us seem tardy. There were 7 books in all, with a tremendous diversity in genre. We could only listen to two books owing to time constraints. But the quality more than made up for the quantity--predominantly why I’m writing this.
The first book we listened to was called Cancer Survivor. The narrator was a woman of 52 who had been afflicted with breast cancer and had survived it to tell her story. I will paraphrase her as best as I remember: “I was born in an orthodox Muslim family with a clubfoot. Although I was excellent at academics, my parents did not encourage me to study and got me married at 18. I was a pre-university dropout. My father was the first in my family to be diagnosed with cancer. My sister followed in rapid succession. My daughter was born with brain atrophy. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I myself was diagnosed with breast cancer. My husband, who was abroad at the time, stopped contacting me because he blamed me for everything. Cancer runs in your family; it’s because of you that our daughter is born this way, he said.”
For the joint sakes of brevity and not wanting to turn this into a woeful tale, I will omit the other grisly details of her life. She infused humour into a lot of parts that would have otherwise been ruthless to hear. She supported her family’s treatment as well as her own, brought up her kids, completed her graduation and post-graduation and works as a counsellor now. She is also a passionate gamer and the founder of a pre-school. Today, this woman sits here talking, and I see an inordinate strength and an indomitable will in her. Despite all that has happened, there isn’t a tinge of sadness about her. She sees herself not as a victim, but only as a survivor.
The second book was called Racism. It was the story of a young Brazilian who is living in India working as a product designer. At the very outset, he said: “I looked around at the other books, and they were all a bit sad. Granted they have profound messages, but I don’t like the idea of so much negativity. I’m going to make this a fun session.” He began by asking us to guess where he was from –this made me realise how we stereotype people the moment we see them. He told us: “Discrimination has a lot of forms. For instance, I see that people judge based on professions here. A doctor or an engineer is considered to belong to the higher echelons of the society while others aren’t respected as much.” All of us take a high stand saying that we don’t discriminate, but we actually do. There are a lot of biases that are ingrained in our very thinking!
He had several funny anecdotes to share, but one was unforgettable. “I take the BMTC bus to work everyday. Once, there was a conductress who asked me to show my pass and ID, which I did. She then asked me for Indian ID. I told her that I wasn’t from here so I didn’t have any. She immediately started yelling at me. Everyone in the bus stared, assuming I had done something wrong. She then called up her superior who told her that it was okay. When I was getting down, she gave me a note written in Kannada. I thought it was probably an apology for creating a scene. I took it to my landlord who could translate it for me. He seemed hesitant to convey the contents. Upon my insistence, he read it out to me: ‘When you breathe our air, drink our water and eat what is cultivated in our soil, the least you can do is to learn our language.’ ”
It saddened me immensely to hear this. It is all very well to be patriotic, but it is our foremost duty to be humane. I believe how we treat “outsiders” speaks a lot for who we are. One day, we too might be on foreign soil without speaking the language. In those initial days where we already have enough struggles, how would we feel if someone not only humiliated us publicly but also added salt to the wound by writing us a hateful note?
Someone asked him, “I’m sure you must have faced a lot of such incidents. Time and again, when you found your faith in humanity shattered, why did you still choose to stay?” “I’ll be honest. I’ve had days when I just wanted to pack my bags and leave. But it’s really the way you look at people. There are good and bad people here, and so it is everywhere. I choose to believe in the goodness of people.”
So ended our visit. As I was about to drift off to sleep that night, I saw in my mind’s eye this woman and man; from entirely different walks of life, from different places, facing altogether different problems with the same undefeatable attitude. The sparkle in her eyes, the warmth in his smile; these two epitomised the human spirit in all its infinite glory—resilient, forgiving and forever hopeful. And that image, that night, just wouldn’t leave me.
A week ago, on a mundane afternoon like many others, my friend was scrolling through her phone. A minute later, she said: “There’s an event happening this Saturday called The Human Library. Sounds different. Let’s go?” The next question was inevitable “What’s it about?”. “You have a set of people who call themselves books. They share their stories and we ask them questions.” While such an idea would have been greeted with scepticism by most people, my friends did not belong to that category. We agreed to go, with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty.
Come Saturday and we set out well before time. However, Bangalore’s infamous traffic can make the most punctual of us seem tardy. There were 7 books in all, with a tremendous diversity in genre. We could only listen to two books owing to time constraints. But the quality more than made up for the quantity--predominantly why I’m writing this.
The first book we listened to was called Cancer Survivor. The narrator was a woman of 52 who had been afflicted with breast cancer and had survived it to tell her story. I will paraphrase her as best as I remember: “I was born in an orthodox Muslim family with a clubfoot. Although I was excellent at academics, my parents did not encourage me to study and got me married at 18. I was a pre-university dropout. My father was the first in my family to be diagnosed with cancer. My sister followed in rapid succession. My daughter was born with brain atrophy. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I myself was diagnosed with breast cancer. My husband, who was abroad at the time, stopped contacting me because he blamed me for everything. Cancer runs in your family; it’s because of you that our daughter is born this way, he said.”
For the joint sakes of brevity and not wanting to turn this into a woeful tale, I will omit the other grisly details of her life. She infused humour into a lot of parts that would have otherwise been ruthless to hear. She supported her family’s treatment as well as her own, brought up her kids, completed her graduation and post-graduation and works as a counsellor now. She is also a passionate gamer and the founder of a pre-school. Today, this woman sits here talking, and I see an inordinate strength and an indomitable will in her. Despite all that has happened, there isn’t a tinge of sadness about her. She sees herself not as a victim, but only as a survivor.
The second book was called Racism. It was the story of a young Brazilian who is living in India working as a product designer. At the very outset, he said: “I looked around at the other books, and they were all a bit sad. Granted they have profound messages, but I don’t like the idea of so much negativity. I’m going to make this a fun session.” He began by asking us to guess where he was from –this made me realise how we stereotype people the moment we see them. He told us: “Discrimination has a lot of forms. For instance, I see that people judge based on professions here. A doctor or an engineer is considered to belong to the higher echelons of the society while others aren’t respected as much.” All of us take a high stand saying that we don’t discriminate, but we actually do. There are a lot of biases that are ingrained in our very thinking!
He had several funny anecdotes to share, but one was unforgettable. “I take the BMTC bus to work everyday. Once, there was a conductress who asked me to show my pass and ID, which I did. She then asked me for Indian ID. I told her that I wasn’t from here so I didn’t have any. She immediately started yelling at me. Everyone in the bus stared, assuming I had done something wrong. She then called up her superior who told her that it was okay. When I was getting down, she gave me a note written in Kannada. I thought it was probably an apology for creating a scene. I took it to my landlord who could translate it for me. He seemed hesitant to convey the contents. Upon my insistence, he read it out to me: ‘When you breathe our air, drink our water and eat what is cultivated in our soil, the least you can do is to learn our language.’ ”
It saddened me immensely to hear this. It is all very well to be patriotic, but it is our foremost duty to be humane. I believe how we treat “outsiders” speaks a lot for who we are. One day, we too might be on foreign soil without speaking the language. In those initial days where we already have enough struggles, how would we feel if someone not only humiliated us publicly but also added salt to the wound by writing us a hateful note?
Someone asked him, “I’m sure you must have faced a lot of such incidents. Time and again, when you found your faith in humanity shattered, why did you still choose to stay?” “I’ll be honest. I’ve had days when I just wanted to pack my bags and leave. But it’s really the way you look at people. There are good and bad people here, and so it is everywhere. I choose to believe in the goodness of people.”
So ended our visit. As I was about to drift off to sleep that night, I saw in my mind’s eye this woman and man; from entirely different walks of life, from different places, facing altogether different problems with the same undefeatable attitude. The sparkle in her eyes, the warmth in his smile; these two epitomised the human spirit in all its infinite glory—resilient, forgiving and forever hopeful. And that image, that night, just wouldn’t leave me.
Comments
Post a Comment