Malavika Sangghvi: To feel and to think

Events like THINK encourage people to listen, engage and open one's hearts and minds

First morning, first semester, first day of the THINK fest 2013. Unable to get into the main hall where they are hosting the sessions, I secrete myself into one of the lounges full of familiar faces. People who think, whose opinions get featured in the media and people who even write letters to the editors about issues that matter.

As always at gatherings like these, there is the danger of preaching to the already converted, and I am not the only one who is aware of this, nor of the fact that is a certain obscenity of sitting in a comfortable lounge, partaking of croissants and coffee while on the screen are unravelling the most extraordinary and gut-wrenching stories.

What is the meaning of what I am experiencing? How to deal with the obvious irony, the glaring incongruity of 'us and them'? How to handle these stories of abject inhumanity?

This year besides the existential questions that dog enterprises like this, there's the double jeopardy of anti-THINK activism.

As we enter the Hyatt I spot a small group of protestors waving flags that spoof the THINK logo. 'Stink,' the placards say.

For some attendees this adds a certain frisson to the proceedings. But for the more sensitive amongst us, the presence of protestors exacerbates the fault lines that have always plagued them when confronted with the suffering of others.

What can they do to reach out and help? How much of this is an exercise in self serving, feel-good altruism? How can people, aware of the million different sufferings they are confronted with, extend themselves? And which sufferings most call for their intervention?

It is interesting to look around the room for audience reaction while the session on rape called ' The Beast Within Us' unfolds.

When Sandhya (not her real name), the rape survivor from Haryana, recounts the ghastly trajectory of her rape and her mother's murder and of her consequent rejection by the village community, the hall is silent.

But, reading between the lines of body langauge, it appears that the audience, though sympathetic, views her tragedy as some thing 'out there'. Things like this happen in rural India after all. Have another cup of coffee, check your smartphone, reply to emails and turn the page…

It is when Suzette Jordan, the Kolkata single mom, who was raped after a night at a discotheque, begins talking that there is a visible change in the room.

Watching Jordan (dressed fashionably like a member of the audience) describing a day in her life, that could have been experienced by any woman in the crowd, there is a palpable gasp. 'This could have been me or someone I know,' is the collective thought balloon floating above the audience.

This is when I get an answer to the question of whether festivals like THINK have a purpose besides the usual ones that people criticise it for. (Networking, whitewashing of sponsor agendas et cetera)

Listening to Joran and then Harish Iyer, the survivor of a prolonged paedophilic rape that lasted over a decade, I realise that regardless of THINK's critics, regardless of the anomalies of listening to these stories whilst ensconced in our own comfort zones there is still an urgent need to listen, engage, open one's hearts and minds.

Because even a single moment that reminds us of our humanity and universality and helps us connect with another human being can never be unimportant.

To be moved, to be challenged, to feel - and, yes, to think.

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com