Life changing
My memories from a Friday morning in the middle of January 2018 are ones that will stay with me forever. As the founder of UK-based charity Postcards for Peace, I’d found myself in India invited by writer and activist Gurmehar Kaur who was about to launch her debut book the following week at the Jaipur Literary Festival.
I began my adventure in Chennai, formerly known as Madras, on the south-western coast of the country. My contact in the city — Kirthi Jayakumar — had arranged for us to visit Akshar-Arbol International School, a school to which she had close links. After being greeted warmly by teachers, we were led to a wonderful roof-top space where we were introduced to a group of young teens.
The previous year, I had given a talk in the UK called Human Like You and was keen to push the idea that, wherever we are in the world, we will all have more in common with others, than we have differences.
After explaining this proposition to them, I asked the pupils to draw things they love, or for those more comfortable with words than pictures, to write about their passions.
As they sat on the floor, I mingled: talking to them about what they were drawing. It wasn’t long before I realised what a special morning it was going to be. Even recalling it now makes me feel incredibly emotional. It started when one boy mentioned basketball and when I asked him his favourite team and players, he gave the same answer as my own son would have done at the time: Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. Another lad talked about The Diary of the Wimpy Kid and as we laughed about the “cheese touch” I realised how similar these boys were to my own sons and other boys back in England. If I wasn’t missing my family before that point, I certainly was after.
Moving on, some of the girls talked about art, and a discussion on climate change followed. Again I was able to talk about my own interest in these subjects.
A small group of boys gathered together were all drawing football (soccer) related pictures and they chatted confidently with me about the English Premier League and my own favourite team, West Ham United, who some of these boys had watched on TV.
“Dmitri Payet!” One of them said, recalling one of the team’s best players in recent years. “Yes!” I said excitedly, telling him how I’d seen him play many times. I showed him the pictures I had on my phone of the London Stadium, formerly the Olympic Stadium, where West Ham play.
Later that morning we went to the visit the site of the school’s younger children and asked them to do the same exercise. It was funny how so many children drew food, and not Indian food either but pizza, ice cream, KFC, McDonalds, Coke and chicken nuggets. Many of the girls drew rainbows, unicorns and cup cakes. One boy drew a cricket match between India and England: he drew himself as the batsman and asked my name so that he could draw me as the bowler.
As we left, it really felt that we had accomplished our mission: showing how simple it could be to build friendships with others through something as simple as a ball game, books or unicorns; that with very basic starting points, greater, stronger relations between different nations could be possible.
The day was life changing for me.
I’d like to think that it was for the children too.
