Café Mohalla- BACK WITH A BANG!!

“Theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can  share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
- Oscar Wilde

Participants-Garima, Gunjan, Dipesh, Ritansh, Jimmy, Sunil, Anand(volunteerfrom faith), Bhomik, Keshav, Shyam, Sangeeta, Mridula, Kritika, Chaitanya, Karan, Shivang, Abhishekand Rajesh.

This Saturday Café Mohalla of PJI started with the celebration of Ritansh‘s birthday and its rebirth (applauds!!). It was best to commence the programme with a brief introduction about CAFÉ MOHALLA from the mouth of Gungun, as the idea of café is the seed of her mind only. She explained the concept of 5th space of PJI and how we can build relationships by sharing keeping importance of money constant.Acquaintance with Café Mohalla demanded introduction of everyone present for the café which was carried out by their respective names along with a gesture each.The programme got a step ahead by the question asking the thing that pops up in mind first when the word theatre is heard, and the question was answered very actively and creatively by everyone like


“projection of feelings- anger,frustration,bliss etc.",

”mean to express humanity”,

”expression of thoughts...”

Naveen took the cafe further by a group game of quickly forming groupsof number of members said in random.Next succeeding was movie making game in which everyone got the chance to add on to the play started by Sunil and to show their acting and creativity skills.The next two wereBang-bang game and the Bhains-gawala (blind fold) game which taught participants the importance of trust and listening skills in a very fun- interactive manner. Non-stop fun called for a breakin which everyone enjoyed delicious and healthy sprouts salad andchaach (butter milk) prepared by Gungun and Dipesh.Fun and learning were more tocome as we got served withFarjistan-Ki-Farzi baatein game, yes-boss game and fake-acting game in our plates by Naveen which worked on their skills likes improvisation, presence of mind and creativity. But the real show stopper was the Pantomime game in which participants were made to sit in two rows and been given themes to enact and hence transfer it along the row. Giving them the feeling of competition and team work and also bringing out the essential life skill of inter-dependency.

The session concluded with a little discussion on what all we had learnt about theatre and life through all these games and how easily all these things also describes the quality of our behavior, emotions and perceptions with others in our daily life.

Overall the café on Theatre was all about fun,acting,spontaneity,sharing and learning in a row. Café Mohalla’s return was at its best and credit goes to Naveen for the way he designed and left no leaf unturned to imply acting through various games and also to the ever enthusiastic PJI volunteers to show so much of energy and interest throughout the session (CURTAINS DOWN !!!!!!!!)

Facilitated by Naveen Sharma and Co-facilitated by Aprajita Sharma.

No one to blame

14 July, 2011- Thursday

As we saw our little chat on recent blasts taking shape of a bigger debate and arising many questions we thought of continuing it further as a bigger discussion in the volunteer group instead of the scheduled open space event. Mumbai, a city that has suffered four terror attacks in the past decade, was once again targeted on Wednesday, when three bombs exploded within minutes of each other in various locations around the city causing 18 deaths and 131 injuries.

The discussion has gone really intense as some of the entirely different view points came up from different people though one thing which was clear enough was that everyone was questioning their beliefs of non-violence.

People came up with different reasons for the attacks like some thought it is another terror attack, some thought it’s a political gimmick and even as a pre-planned strategy to counter the budding Lok-pal bill hype.

A volunteer Jaiveer said that we get pretty much used to and careless after a while. Moreover repetition of such events makes us don’t care about it and we get inattentive which cause loop holes in our security system.

Puneet said that he’s pretty much concerned about these issues and try to do whatever he could but he just don’t know what he can do to prevent them.

Jimmy, from states, said that he doesn’t like to judge people and he has his beliefs in non-violence, but incidents things like that make him doubt his beliefs.

Khalil, a film-making unit member, said that we just talk on such issues and then we forget about them without taking any preventive measures.

Another volunteer Jitendra who was pretty sure that the root cause of all this is our flawed political system and hence our bureaucratic administration. As he said that our stereotypes are so strengthened that sometimes they overshadow the reality. According to him the current corrupted political status is responsible for every bad thing happening to our country and each one of us is equally a culprit for these blasts as we are not aware of our responsibilties and rights and we’re not giving worthy governance to our nation and neither taking any steps against them on an individual level.

Another PRAVAH member Abhishek questioned are we really playing our part in being active and attentive citizens. We’re blaming our politicians and defence forces but are we really aware of whom we’re selecting as our representatives in assembly elections.

Soon after our discussion came to an end we get to see some of our politicians giving statements on the blasts when mumbai was still struggling to get back on its feet. But it din’t had much effect on our ministers as they continued to get in their blame game once again. As Rahul Gandhi told journalists that 99 per cent of terror attacks in the country had been halted thanks to improved intelligence and other measures. It is very difficult to stop any single terrorist attack. Our home minister P Chidambaram said it’s not an intelligence failure as it was a coordinated terror attack of ISI and IM. At the other end Raj Thackeray aimlessly blaming the migrants from north and east India for the blasts in Mumbai. While Advani pointed out at Pakistan and ISI, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley commented on TADA. At a time when the political class needed to come together, it's their contradictions which have come to the fore.

But looking at the government’s counter-terrorism record, it shows a complete different picture. The unpleasant truth is that the much-vaunted police modernisation effort the government began after 26/11 has just not delivered. Not one of the five urban terrorist attacks that preceded the latest Mumbai bombings has been solved.

In my perspective, whatever the reason may be but one thing I’m sure of is that these things aren’t going to change any sooner if we won’t start acting like a reponsible Indian citizen. And to some extent I do agree to the point that we all are equally responsible for these attacks. Political statements as such shows us the drastic socio-political status of our counrty and the unprofessionalism of our intelligence and investigation agencies, but that doesn’t mean that we all our innocent. As it is our responsibilty to prompt policemen when we see negligence in security, it is our responsibilty to see in what hands our country’s governance and defence is going in and it is our job to make people aware of such facts by public disussions and awareness campaigns. Otherwise we have no right to blame anyone, so are we really playing our parts?