Turning point of my life

 I joined an organization few years ago.

They used to conduct various awareness programs .

 

One such program was conducted on Constitution Day (26th November, 2017)

In this we all were divided into 4-5 groups of 8-9 people each.

We were given a task of spreading awareness related to various Fundamental duties and Fundamental rights.

Everyone was supposed to use a unique way to do so. (Nukkad natak, play etc.)

I was very excited for this.

I first time took part in such an activity.

I was little nervous and was confident at the same time because I thought that so many people are there in the group, I will just follow what they say and I don’t have to do much.

 

(And deep inside my heart I knew that I am not capable of initiating such activities or tasks as I was very under confident and timid back then. )

 

In our team, two were Australian volunteers rest were Indians.

 

So....

           We all were having a casual talk and were waiting for one of our group member .

(He knew the most about all these activities, so I was quite confident that we will perform well if he comes)

But, due to some reason he couldn’t join us.

 

I was completely shattered and my mentors (our leaders who were monitoring us , as we were live on Facebook)  asked us to start the task and said we had limited time.

 

I panicked as soon as he (mentor) said - "Naaz! Plan something and execute it!"

I said -" But I don’t know how to do this . I wont be able to ."

He said -"Everyone of you start discussing and plan something, you're running out of time."

Hanged up the call!

 

Now, in this panicky situation I could only think of grabbing a coffee or just running away.

Everyone started giving their ideas but I couldn't think of any.

I was very frightened.

 

(All this while, I was just thinking about all the incidents in which my ideas weren't accepted and everyone laughed at me. The fear of being judged wasn’t leaving my mind)

 

  Again a telephone call ,

·         "What are you guys doing? Perform well , just do whatever you feel like doing, enjoy this task! Don’t sit idle. Naaz start the discussion".

·         Also, everyone started saying we can do this Naaz we can do that. This idea would go well with this right or duty.

 

(I took a deep breath and told myself even if I am not giving an idea I can just listen and help them execute)

 

I noticed that everyone started speaking in Hindi eventually and forgot about the other two Australian volunteers .

I jumped in the conversation and soon I turned into a translator. (:p)

Now after, 15 minutes of talk we had many ideas. But the task was to execute one idea for one fundamental duty/right.

 

I quickly took a diary of one of the volunteers and started scribbling the whole plan of action.

Divided the group according to the characters planned and did our first task:

 

TASKS:

 

 

TASK I :

 

Right to equality (Article 15, prohibition against discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, gender or place of birth)

 

I decided to conduct a nukkad natak , in which we will reverse the gender roles i.e. a man will live life of a woman and vice versa.

In this we narrated a scene of dowry and how the bride's mother is questioning the would be groom.

 

Do you know how to cook, walk, talk, clean, etc ?

(All the stereotypical questions that you could think of)

 

We energetically recited our dialogues and performed it well.

 

BUT,

Not a lot of people gathered to watch that. I felt bad that maybe we didn’t do well.

Though, a few of them came and praised us.

 

 

(But I was just thinking about the ones who didn’t come and praise!  See, how our mind simply drags us to observe the negative things?!)

 

 

TASK II :

Right to equality (Now we were supposed to talk about transgender)

 

I decided to simply talk directly, to the people in order to increase their engagement .

I went and asked to a group of people who were very well dressed and were discussing some topic in English, they seemed educated.

 

I went ahead and asked :

 

Sir, What do you think is the reason behind the harsh behavior towards trans genders?

Why we don’t consider them as equal as other genders?

 

·         Unke behavior se darr lagta hai, kunki jaahil hote hai sab. Kyu sweekaar kare unhe? Vo humare samaj ka hissa thodi hai!!!

·         We are afraid of their behavior, because they all are illiterate! Why should we accept them, they aren't part of our society !?

 

(I couldn’t believe that they just said this! My face turned pale and my biggest belief that EDUCATION DOES GOOD TO ALL!! Was shattered!  Also, we cannot judge people just by their way of speaking or donning. Isn't it?)

 

 

Take 2:

This time I approached a costermonger. He was in torn clothes, selling few vegetables and sprinkling water on them.

 

Uncle! Do you believe that trans genders deserve to be respected?

 

·         What kind of question is that? Why we have to even discuss about respecting someone!! ?

WE SHOULD DO THAT. Everyone deserves respect. And they (transgender) deserves double respect as they're made up of characteristics of both men and women so they deserve respect equivalent to a man and a woman!

 

(I was shocked! I mean I never thought this way! And again I would say NEVER JUDGE PEOPLE ON THE BASIS OF THEIR OUTER APPEARANCE !)

 

Thanked him for teaching such a beautiful thing!

 

(And now I was confident that am doing the task really well!)

 

 

But then ,

Phone call of our mentors…..

 

·         " You aren't supposed to perform that way, u don’t have to talk directly to the people, instead you need to act/sing/nukkad etc. to attract the audience. And develop curiosity in them."

 

(Back to square one. We sat near a tea stall, planned the next task and this time our ideas were pretty unique.

As soon as we focus in the present moment our mind doesn’t wander and we just try to achieve the respective goal.)

 

 

TASK III:

 

Fundamental Duty 7 (to protect and improve the natural environment including forests , lakes , rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures)

 

This was the funniest thing we did and enjoyed a lot.

 

So the plot was.

 

I will be acting like a earth and all the other members will be throwing litter (Not literally) on me in order to show how we are polluting the earth.

Meanwhile , the earth (me) started crying because of the harm caused.

 After few years, various other phenomenon like climate change, global warming etc. happened and it backfired the human beings.

Now they are crying because of what they did and are facing grave consequences.

 

This time people started gathering and sat there in the park , watched the entire play.

 

Each and every person expressed their concern about the issue of pollution and they promised to plant at least one tree (few of them seriously did it and tagged us on Facebook).

 

 

 

 

Now the whole task was over and I was contemplating that how did I do this. I've surely ruined the whole activity. During the task I received so many phone calls from my mentors and they told me that don’t do this don’t do that. I was quite afraid that the first activity of my life didn’t go well. I was thinking all this and soon we reached our organization.

 

We sat according to our groups and we were supposed to share our learning and what we gained from this activity.

 

LEARNING:

 

I said :

" This activity is a turning point of my life"

 

·          I always thought that I can never talk to strangers or strike a conversation with them. I was always concerned about "what people will say?" thing.  This always restricted me to express myself confidently. Even during the activity I was afraid to speak as I thought everyone will judge me , laugh at me but anyhow I gathered courage and went with the flow. And it turned out well and nothing bad happened.

 

·         Also the phone calls (of my mentors) played an important role in creating a sense of urgency and pressure which didn’t let my fears overpower my mind and I focused on the task completely. (A big THANKS to them)

·         This experience shattered the prejudices against myself. I could observe the insecurities and fears that I had and I could clearly gauge what was stopping me from expressing myself. And I was able to overcome it . This activity gave me an opportunity to keenly observe myself and ameliorate the shortcomings.

 

·         Secondly, It was a great opportunity which broke certain stereotypes and pre conceived beliefs. Like , I always believed that only educated people hold the best opinions and their perceptions are well diversified! But no! its nothing like that. Education plays an important role but the way we think and how well defined and inclusive our thoughts are, plays an important role not just that university degree in our hand!!

 

·         Thirdly, everyone can have different opinions and its not necessary that their/our opinion is completely right or wrong. There is always a grey area. You might be partially correct and partially wrong.

·         For example: The so called educated man said : " Their behavior frightens us."

·         This is somewhere true and not completely false because we are not familiar with their behavior which causes a sense of fear in us. Because we don’t see them often and we interact less but if we will get a chance to understand them this will surely bridge this gap. And will create a sense of belonging.

 

·         Fourthly, I felt that this was like a little renaissance moment of my life, which drastically changed my personality from a timid, under confident, shy and non-opinionated girl to a bold, confident, perceptive and erudite woman.

(I am still learning and am still an imperfect human)

 

(By the way, our team performed the best and everyone literally everyone praised us and said we could have done the activity in the same way as Naaz did. This was an achievement.)

 

 

I feel that we should grab all the opportunities that comes our way because in some way or another it will shape our personalities and hone our skills. These opportunities will reveal our hidden potential and might surprise us and we will end up thanking ourselves that yes! We took up this opportunity and learnt a lot!!

And for a moment we should just leave our judgmental thinking and do whatever we feel like doing.

We should live like a "carefree soul" for a while, and enjoy the flow of life.

 

 

 

Never stop learning!

Explore your hidden potential!

Grab all the opportunities!