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Stories, mine and yours, hold in them the charisma that can  keep the world  moving ahead. Converging stories of inspiration from almost all walks of life, Youth ki Awaaz’s Converge 2016 brought to the fore some tales that told the audience to raise their voice and give a damn. Find out how the event unfolded some of the most inspiring life-lores.

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Giving a better life to innumerable children in the country, Nineismine’s young team set the pace of the event with their drum performance highlighting the organisation’s 17 goals to a better life. The first speaker for the event, Kartik Lokhande from Hitavada enlightened the audience about sanitary hygiene, something which is never paid heed to. During his conversation Kartik welcomed 10 year old Ram from Nineismine who only wished for one thing when he said, “Main nahin kehta mujhe paisa do, bas humein humare adhikaar de do!

Drawing attention to the ill practice of Racism in the country, Monika Khangembam shared her experience of racism in India and the inspiration to fight against the practice. Next came Sabbah Haji, who had envisioned to provide quality education in a village 7000ft. above sea level in 2009. She shared with the audience her journey of successfully realizing this dream. The smiles of her students brought many smile around.

Making the audience rethink about the definition of success, Ankur Warikoo, CEO and Co-founder of Nearbuy told the young audience “Don’t let others” opinion of you become your reality” and inspired them to shun the predefined notions of success. M. Suman gave a glimpse of  her trans rights and HIV awareness through her work at Samara and currently through her role as director of Swatantra Organisation.

Deepak ramola, educationist and the man behind project-fuel was his reminiscent best in talking about his tryst with stories  and the experience with the migrants in France. “The world, as you sit here, has 7.447 billion people, which means there are 7.447 billion mistakes to learn from, heartbreaks to mend and life lessons to live with.” he said amid his smiles.

Sabika Naqvi, the eloquent speaker from Pinjra Tor, the women’s rights champion made her stance clear in the best way possible. She mocked the patriarchy, sarcastically crushed the sexists and took the curfew at girl’s hostels across the indian universities at her point-blank and effectively made her way into the hearts, minds and souls.


The man of the hour, Tanmay Bhatt, the AIB man pragmatically defined the power of comedy. He talked about his struggles, success and the feminism and similar  issues he is taking up at different platforms. ” The biggest global crisis is that the intellectual haves are not conversing with the intellectual have-nots. This is what the comedy can do at times“, the man was quoted as saying. The roaring, clapping crowd only proved that “Comedy is contagious”.

At 6.30, the show was far from over. The show-stopper in Ska-vengers came up with back to back numbers on varied nationalist causes, only to be followed by the socio-rap. The crowd made those noise and moved to the beats, till the very end.
Very few events charge your mind, body, heart and soul all at once. For me, this show did just that.” Vikram from Jamila Milia Islamia quipped, munching at the delicious snacks at offer, after the show was over. This quite summed up the fantastic day the audience at Converge 2016 had had.

 

Reported by: 

Nikhil Kumar ([email protected])

Niharika Dabral ([email protected])

Priyal Mahtta ([email protected])

Images by : Stanzin Yangdol

It has been all over the news. Everyone, starting from bollywood celebrities to political parties, is talking about it. On 26th May, Tanmay Bhat, the co-founder of AIB released a snapchat video of Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar battling it out on how good a batsman Virat Kohli is. Expletives-laden, the video sparked an outrage among all the top brass and the general community too. The video was later taken off Snapchat but the Facebook post went viral.

Now, I believe that the video was over hyped and it deserves a passing glance at most. But an issue so insignificant has been blown so out of proportion, that voicing out opinions seems to be the necessary thing to do.

Here’s what happened: After a nice online thrashing by the public came the bollywood stars. Anupam Kher, especially, along with Riteish Deshmukh and Celina Jaitley condemned the video as disgusting and demeaning. Then the parties. MNS wanted to file an FIR and remove it from the online platform. One of their top leaders wanted to catch and beat the accused (Bhat) on the streets. Finally, the NCP’s women’s wing protested on the streets and burnt his effigy, which was the cherry on top.

We take our celebs and icons too seriously. That is a fact. Call Rajnikant a flop and not a single bus conductor will give you a ticket. But do we see Rajnikant fretting about who is calling him what? No. Because he simply does not care. A few people’s opinions is not going to change anything for him. That is what we need to understand. Defending one’s favourite choice is good. Burning an effigy is ridiculous. In all these days, neither Sachin nor Lata ji has made one comment on the matter. Because it does not affect them.

As for all the self righteous people out there, please shift your focus to more important things. We are living in an age where a snapchat story becomes the talk of the nation and a poor girl gang raped by  20 or more men does not even make a headline. Where farmers are commit suicide everyday because something about the Green Revolution was just not right. We are still living that era where the graver problems of the city are ignored and biscuit talk about social media trends is all that is going around.

What Tanmay was doing was simply poking fun at two iconic celebrities. It might have been a spur of the moment with, granted, very bad jokes but that was it. It was just a joke. But we have once again proved that any attempt at fun making of celebrities is not cool. Yes, India is very tolerant except for a few topics, which are taboo. Surprisingly, the list of taboos is ever increasing. So yes, we are very tolerant. But make fun of us and we will twitter slam you.

Featured Image: NDTV

Arindam Goswami

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