Padma Parija
“Bad choices make good stories and they deserve to be heard”
Like Audre Lorde said, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” To live in a great democracy like India, where there is a change in culture and lifestyle every fifty kilometres, we need to be able to talk to each other in a reasonable and calm way, no matter our differences. It is when we can talk about why we think the way we do that we can find ways to work on the problems existing in our communities.
In association with Human Library Organization, Denmark, Bhubaneswar Poetry Club will be conducting a Human Library Event. Human Library challenges stereotypes and prejudice rooted in the society through dialogue. Here you can expect to indulge in conversations where one can expect, appreciate, and answer difficult questions. There will be an aura of honesty and pain which, most of the times, works as inspiration to mould yourself into a humbler, and better human being.
This event has been organized in 66 countries worldwide and has recently gained popularity in India. Bhubaneshwar is the first city in Eastern India, and sixth in the country to host this project. Human Library, Bhubaneswar, is to open to the public on 15th of July at Recess Cafe at KIIT square.
This event will have a library of “human books”, who will be people with unique life stories of having struggled with stigma (people from LGBTQ community, acid attack survivors, former drug abuse victims etc). They will interact one-on-one with “readers”, who will be people like you and me, who are interested in interacting with, and understanding such individuals.
In this event, you can connect with the human books through real, thought provoking conversations. You can expect to witness a story that might change the way you view the world.
Bhubaneswar Poetry Club is a non-profit organization that was started by a bunch of poets who wanted to establish, glorify, and promote poetry in every form in 2015. This organization has taken up this event to see how much the people of this marvellous city are ready to have one on one conversations on topics that need to be accepted by the society. Be it depression, or female independency, or refugee crisis, or gender issues, habits that the world at large is not able to adapt to.
(The writer is a civil engineering student in a private university at Bhubaneswar & a member of Bhubaneswar poetry Club.)
