Inside a living library

When was the last time you sat face-to-face with a family member or a friend, and talked about life? And we're not talking about the club-hopping, beer-guzzling Friday night conversations. We are talking about the real ones - the one we read about in storybooks; the one where your friend or sister tells you, in detail, about what happened with her day and you just listen. When was the last time you yearned for an ear that would simply let your voice spill over like an overenthusiastic story? You know, if there's one thing wrong with 21st-century life, then it's a lack of dialogue. And Andaleeb Qureshi, founder of Human Library Mumbai, agrees.

"Human Library is a global movement, in a way. And we handle the one in Mumbai. What we really intend to do is get people to talk about their real-life experiences and judgements they have faced. The stories are authentic and explicit with their emotions. There are no scripts," she says.

The upcoming session, Power Over Prejudice, that Human Library Mumbai will organise, in association with Barrel and Co and Kahaniya, are about stories on prejudices. "It will be set up like a library and instead of paperbacks, there will be human books. Readers will get to pick stories based on their stereotypes. At the end of the session, readers will understand the prejudice they are interested in from a human perspective, and not from hearsay alone. Through this process, sometimes even your myths get busted," she explains.

Andaleeb Qureshi

Qureshi has been curating such events for the past 10 months now. And what she has noticed every time is that, as a reader, one gets very connected to the human book. "You have nothing to do with your sexual identity, but when you listen to a story from a person who has a different sexual preference, you realise that at the end of it, you two are similar with only one difference," she shares.

But who are these human books? "They are just normal people. It could be anybody. These are the people who have volunteered themselves. And we select them and filter them out through a process," Qureshi adds. For this event, Human Library Mumbai has put up a lot of little details such as the titles of the books on their Facebook page. "We call them by their titles because they are just books for us. Each of these books has his or her own prejudices, like one will be a lesbian who will talk about her anger management. We have one who was born in a ‘kotha' and he will talk about his upbringing, and how people perceive a person who was born there, and how people treat you if your mother's a courtesan. So, every book is different," Qureshi says.

At the end of it all, she adds, "We don't try to preach or teach. We just lay down stories that we have. But trust me, out of the things that you hear, one might just click and stay with you. This time, we have 10 books. And the best part is that people love this. Some even get a little emotionally touched. A few others get uncomfortable but these things make you think. People enjoy the process. It's therapeutic both ways and a lovely way to bond with fellow humans."

ON March 18, 2 pm to 5 pm
AT Barrel & Co, ground floor, Kotia Nirman building, next to Fun Republic Mall, New Link Road, Andheri West.
Register goo.gl/rrYzVQ

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