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On This Occasion
We Ask You To, Think What If?
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“Now, close your eyes and imagine the future you want to create.”
Everyone looked at each other. There were three boxes in the zoom call. One box was us, the FoV team in Bangalore, and the other two showing faces from an organisation working on feminist education, dressed for the cold in Uttarakhand. We asked them to write, doodle, paint images of the future they were working towards.
“Of course, the future has to be better,” we said. “What is your idea of better?”
The conversations then erupted, and roughly went along these lines: Nods of disbelief. There’s no of course. We cannot be airy-fairy, and imagine some impossible utopia, right? Change is hard. I am not so sure things can change, you know. We have to be realists. Pessimism is valid. How can you not be depressed looking at what’s going on? I don’t think I am a cynic, but one has to face facts.
What this group of committed, talented, and hard-working people were struggling with, is something any group working to change how things happen faces. In the face of constant doom and gloom, will things change? Will we see a ‘better’ future or is all this effort futile? (Plug in a quote from your favourite nihilist philosopher here.)
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Time for a true story. The surrealist poet Robert Desnos was a prisoner in a concentration camp. Him and others were being taken away in a large truck. Everyone, including the soldiers were silent, as they knew where they were headed. The gas chambers. Suddenly, the poet grabs the hand of a fellow prisoner, and reads the man’s palm. You are going to have a long life with three children. He reads the palm of the next prisoner, and the next, and predicts a future filled with life and the laughter of children. Everyone is exuberant, and even the guards feel the shift. Now, they are not too sure; death does not seem inevitable.
How could Desnos step outside the circle of inevitable death and despair he was chained to? Can imagination save us?
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1. This story is from the essay ‘To Love the Marigold: Hope and Imagination’ by Susan Griffin, which was part of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb.
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The group had 15 minutes to show us their ideas for the future. We asked them to take sheets of paper, colour pencils, pens, camera, and spread out. They all went in different directions; some chose to stay back and doodle on the table they had been working on. The clock ticked.
Folks came back, and everyone went around in a circle on what they thought for them a ‘better future’ is. A young woman said that one image came to her when she thought of the future and showed it to us. The image was a depiction from Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream’ written in 1905. The zany feminist sci-fi story starts with the narrator lounging in an easy chair.
The image by artist Chitra Ganesh that the young woman showed to us was that of an older woman in a chair, lounging, dreaming, cooking up visions for the future.
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The young woman said, this is what she wanted for the future – women to have the time and space to imagine possibilities for the future.
Yes, reality will always be there, ever looming. The poet Desnos died a few days after liberation due to typhus. Imagining an alternative does not mean denial, but is more about ‘passion for what is possible, rather than rely on what has been certified as probable.’
The mood in the zoom room had shifted. Tentatively at first, and then with more assertion, people shared poems they had written, wish lists, and imaginaries for a future that they knew would be better. They were actively working to make it happen, and that doing was an act of daring, an act iridescent with passion for what was possible.
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2. The quote is ‘He who looks for large-scale social change must be possessed … by “the passion for what is possible” rather than rely on what has been certified as probable …’ from the essay ‘'‘The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding’ by AO Hirschman. The quote is referred to in MA Sharan’s book ‘Last Among Equals: Power, Caste, and Politics in Bihar’s villages’, which reads like a testament to tempered hope.
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Ten years ago, Fields of View started with a passion for what was possible and a bagful of what-if questions. We held those questions with a tentative grasp. What if people’s stories were also seen as data for public policy? How would our cities look if shaped by the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized? What if we lived in a country that is envisioned in our Constitution?
Today, those what-if questions are resolving into concrete possibilities. We look ahead to the coming decades with the same passion for what is possible, and start again, with another bagful of what-ifs.
Of course, all these dreams would not be possible without the support of each and every one of you. Every milestone we achieve is thanks to you, our constellation of care. And even if we cannot meet to share a hug and chai given the pandemic’s reign on our lives, do join us and celebrate – we have planned events virtually, all year long.
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Game Sessions
In celebration of our completion of 10 years, we shall be hosting a game sessions all across the second half of February. We shall be featuring two our games.
Find the schedule and sign by clicking on the images below.
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Upcoming Events
Look out for our upcoming projects this year.
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Polity
India's first experiential policy course for creating the next generation of policy leaders.
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Solemnly Resolve
Re-think, deliberate and explore the diverse interpretations of the sacred constitution to build the preamble to your future society.
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Brand New Website
Our own fresh take on today's public policy challenges, via a brand new website, reflecting the change in the ecosystem over the last decade.
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A Game on Air Pollution
A modular-scalable interactive experience being developed in collaboration with Khoj for the Air Expo at Delhi 2022, around “Air Quality Index”
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Find Fields of View’s developments
across the second half of 2021.
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