What India Today Woman Summit taught me about empathy
The word that resonated with me this week was empathy. It was a frenetic and fun week. It began with a warm, welcoming woman’s summit that really felt like an extended sisterhood. Seemingly ordinary women went on stage one after the other to share their heroic stories.
An acid attack victim, sorry — an acid attack survivor flashed a radiant smile as she talked about her two-year-old daughter named “She” (because what name could be more empowering?), who accompanies her all over the country as she works tireless to ban the sale of acid and help other acid attack victims to become survivors. She understands more than anyone else what it takes to overcome hideous hurdles. Her story of courage was one of many.
A wheelchair-bound athlete breaking myths and winning medals. A mother fighting to get justice for her dead son — murdered for marrying out of choice. An activist fighting for the right to pee in privacy…They were all united by positivity, inner grit and the encouragement they got from compassionate people around them. Listening to them you drew strength and felt motivated to conquer all the big and small demons in your own life.
Somehow you knew that all of them were stronger because they had the capacity to see, feel and empathise with the suffering of others. It’s not sympathy or feeling sorry for another person, it’s the ability to understand that everyone is surviving something. When you can truly relate to the tough times others have been dealt, you stop wallowing in self-pity and your own problems don’t seem so insurmountable.
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| Seemingly ordinary women went on stage one after the other to share their heroic stories. |
The very next day I had to fly to Dubai. Have you ever taken a no-frills, cheaper than cheap airline from Delhi to Dubai? It’s full of awkwardly dressed construction workers and daily wage earners holding their meagre belongings in an overused plastic bag, wondering where and how they are supposed to sit.
Normally, the over powering smell of stale sweat that greeted me as I stepped on board would’ve really bothered my pampered, bratty nose. But not that day. Perhaps it was the hangover from listening to brave women accepting the world and all that it throws at you. Their words of love and understanding reverberated in my ears and all I could see was fear and hope in the eyes of these smelly first-time flyers.
I imagined their back story, the family they were responsible to provide for and how daring they were being by taking this flight into the unknown to possibly change the future for their little universe. My mind played out details of teary goodbyes to loved ones that they had no way of knowing if they’d see again. Cruel employers waiting on the other side to exploit them.
I grew up on a strict diet of Hindi masala films so my musings are never short on melodrama. To be fair, we’ve all read and raged about the endless stories of needy, innocent villagers being conned into paying for jobs that don’t exist and then never finding a way home. We have a strange way of not equating what we’re so volubly horrified to read about with what we actually encounter in real life. It’s like they exist in parallel universes.
They don’t, we just have to allow ourselves to see it. As soon as I became empathetic to these strange men I found myself wishing them well, hoping that they would find their golden goose in the desert and not be scammed or treated like slaves. I happily guided them to their seats, helping them with their seat belts and giving them unsolicited advice about airports.
The feeling that caught me by surprise was the immense gratitude that I felt for my own privileged place in life, when just a few seconds ago I was lamenting about not travelling in style. Suddenly, I was so thankful for having the wonderful life I have, it gave me a spring in my step and all it had taken was a moment to consider what someone else might be going through, someone I was so willing to damn.
Empathy gives you perspective. Cut to later in the week — I end up in my erstwhile hometown of Mumbai at a glamourous awards night. The excitement of going back to a city I spent some of the best years of my life in is ginormous. I find entertainers supremely entertaining and love catching up with them. I was looking forward to top notch milling around. Little did I know that the game has unrecognisably changed.
Being seen and talking to the world that’s not present there is more important than seeing and conversing with the people in the room. All the stars, styled exquisitely by their stylists, walk in at a precisely given personal time, give their sound bytes, pout, pose, stride straight to the stage — give or receive an award and march straight to their cars.
For a moment, I thought maybe this is not a big or cool enough function for them to stay, till I was told “Come on honey this is how you always do it.” Let’s set aside the sheer waste of taking more time to get dressed for an event than you actually spend there, what happened to supporting and feeling connected with the industry you belong to?
The lack of empathy percolates into the whole industry. There is no real unity, no one comes together to stand up to the ridiculous diktats of the censor board or commiserate with the team of, let’s say, a Padmavati. There is loneliness, isolation, depression and persecution because everyone is only thinking for and of themselves.
Empathy could change all that. Empathy empowers.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)