Hmmm, half past seven on a Sunday morning, and my fingertips slur these words on the keyboard... Am a spot sleepy, a spot tired, a spot hungry, a spot woozy... and yet, the predominant emotion in my head is a pleasant high... a light optimism.
I lucky to have been part of a truly remarkable experience last night... one that made me think, feel, and more importantly, lose some of my cynicism at us descendants of the primordial soup and our foibles, large and small. When P alerted me about
Pangea day, I was pleasantly surprised to read about the whole project, and what it set out to do. My mind drew parallels to Live Aid and Live 8, but this was even more phenomenal. It had started from scratch and is a testament to the vision and perseverance of
Jehane Noujaim. [No disrespect to Bob Geldof :-) ]. Out here, at ground zero / Bangalore, the folk who organised this event did so at extremely short notice, and pulled off a resounding success.(Check the
Indian Pangea day site for details of the people, the place etc). Thoughtworks hosted the event, and also pampered us folk through the course of the event... I also joined a couple of folk to make some vague attempts at music before the event began... Ah, there, now that I've gotten all that out of the way, time to get down to brass tacks.
The event itself... sitting with a hundred odd people, looking at a program a few million people around the world were watching simultaneously, cant help but set a tiny tingle in your spine. The night was a magical swirl of images that danced in my eyes, in my thoughts, in my awareness, in my conscience. The movies screened were snippets that ranged from the whimsical, the hilarious, the stunning to the shocking, the disturbing, the confusing... but almost all of them were thought provoking and in some ways profoundly moving. The simplicity of the concept that was the undercurrent of the project, and the clips screened- reaching out to and understanding people- belied the profound impact of doing so. I won't enumerate the movies here, you'll find more accurate and complete listings at the Pangea Day site. Instead, here, I guess it's more pertinent to recount how each movie-ette, each insight, each moment captured there held us and carried us along on a wonderful journey of thought. A majority of us who had assembled were touched in some way, big or small, by what happened last night. It really was an experience worth remembering. To an extent, we cannot look at the news of the strife or suffering among strangers with the same dispassionate apathy anymore. We have a fragile, ephemeral existence, on an individual level, as a people, as a species, as a planet... will we make something significant of our co(s)mic insignificance? Hmmm, after last night, I realise that there still is hope...
A lot of it was exemplified by the attitude of some of the people present yesterday. After a rather fun breakfast at Capitol with some of the folk, and an awesome solitary ramble through Lalbagh... I couldn't help but feel, yes, there is hope. Not easy, not even clearly visible, but can't help but hope. Here's to dawn!
