A Week full of Prejudices

Contributor: YA Team

Often in our lives, we do everything wearing a lens. A lens of our favorite color, that shows us the world in only one light, just the way we want to see it. When we operate with a lens, we fail to see the reality behind things and hence, operate in the light of our prejudices. This disrupts the rationality of our actions and honesty of our behavior. This was the theme of second week for ONUS, where we celebrated getting aware of our prejudices and taking a step to look beyond them. To introduce the theme, the movie "Ankhon Dekhi" was suggested to the participants, that takes the concept of breaking prejudices to another level as the protagonist Raje (Sanjay Mishra) experiences a dramatic incident and decides to only believe in what he can see. 

We began with an in-house session in the beautiful ambiance of Lodhi Gardens. Using the circle pedagogy, we explored what we mean by prejudices. Together, we also tried to find answers to questions like: How do prejudices affect our behavior and how can we deal with and move beyond prejudices to see the world with a little more understanding. Throughout the session we tried to get into the realm of discernment as against judgments in our daily life. After the session, while one of the participants, Nimeesha delved a little deeper on the concept and applicability of prejudices, another participant Suraj tried to break a prejudice he had carried for a long time about his manager by taking an initiative to talk to him.

The mind-churning session was followed by a leadership circle with Satyashree mam. With more than 18 years of experience in the field, she helped us delve a little deeper into the prejudices related to gender, something that plays a fundamental role in our everyday life. She took us on a ride about the evolution of gender and how the prejudices play their role in our daily life. Some other questions like “why is sex a taboo in India” or “where did the concept of marriage come from”, left people amazed and embarrassed. For some participants like Vikas and Himank, it brought out new revelations and helped in breaking the connotations they attached to things like sexuality and gender disparity. Meanwhile, Ananta realized that we are very far from what the reality is and Amanpreet felt the strong urge for more and more people to know about it.

We closed the week with a social experiment in the vicinity of Iskon Temple. While our participants arrived expecting a hearty breakfast meal will be served to them during the session, they were asked to find themselves some work and earn their meal on an early Saturday morning. Some of them were confused and scared, while most of them excited to find their first job and earn their first meal. The whole task was aimed at getting them out of their comfort zone and helping them break their inherent prejudices about people and different types of work. Most of them found work at different places like a taxi stand, a hotel and a temple and had varying insights. They felt challenged and realized that they’ve been very transactional while dealing with people, failing to understand that everyone has a story.

For Suyashi, it was a very different experience. She said “When I left to search for some work, I was clueless and scared about what am I going to do. But when I saw a lady bargaining with an auto-driver, I forgot everything about food and I just wanted to work with them and be with them. Convincing them was not easy. I worked with an auto rickshaw wala and an e-rickshaw driver. I realized that we don’t see them as people even though we transact with them on everyday basis.” Abhimanyu and Divya worked in service at a temple and Abhimanyu had a great learning. In his words “We cleaned the area where people worship and where the idols are kept. There were people who were literally crossing over us and didn’t even ask us to get aside to be able to pass. I realized that the way people ignore those who are cleaning places is really bad, even when they’re cleaning it for others. Using these things is very important to be able to improve on your own life.”

We all enjoyed a hearty hard-earned meal after that. And while enjoying every bite of it we were also enjoying the learnings of the week that will stay with us for a lifetime. It’s not that we’ve stopped using prejudices to judge the world around us, but we’ve taken the first step of thinking beyond them to understand the realities. We understand that this is just the beginning. The whole week was about developing a mindset of being aware of the prejudices and learning to negotiate with them as we go about doing our living. And this is what forms a very important element in the leadership that ONUS seeks to create.