Hyderabad: What if you have a walking-talking book you can converse with, ask questions and share your own feelings and experiences with? And what if you don’t have one such book but a catalogue of books each with a rare experience of life on varied subjects throbbing with emotions and feelings?
It is not fantasy. In Human Library, it has become a reality. Inspired by a novel experiment in Denmark 17 years ago, an enterprising young man has started the unique library in Hyderabad and it is making waves.
In a short span of four months, it has become a movement where the number of “readers” has jumped from a dozen to nearly 600 and the living-books have gone up to 48.
Harshad Dinkar Fad, a content manager at a media company, Silly Monks, came across the concept of the Human Library (HL) through a meme on the Net and got hooked. “I already was passionate about how we can make our society better by bridging the differences and overcoming the prejudices. I always believed that we can do it through conversation. I found the idea of Human Library very exciting and enchanting,” said Dinkar Fad.
After attending the first Human Library event at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore in November 2016, he brought like-minded students together and founded HL in Hyderabad. The enthusiastic response made the group to make it a regular monthly event to bring together the “human books” and the readers.
What makes the idea tick?
“The human books are people with stories of struggle against challenges, prejudices; they are unusual, inspiring experiences, related to the topics not openly discussed like LGBT community, mental disorders, social anxieties and stress. At the same time, we have people like sports persons, stand-up comedians and even an army man, and people at large get attracted to such stories,” Dinkar Fad said.
The concept of HL is different from a normal library of books with a permanent place where people can walk in anytime and pick up a book of their choice.
During a conversation on a rainy evening, Dinkar Fad explained how it works.
Human library is event-based where people can come and go through a catalogue of human books to choose the subject of their choice and accordingly talk to a human book for 30 minutes.
The latest such event, fourth in the series, was held on July 16 and it was attended by 550 people listening and talking to 32 human books on a wide range of subjects and issues, including arts, culture, human struggle to break barriers and prejudices, overcoming distrust, LGBT community and child sexual abuse.
While all human books have names as persons, they also have different titles in the catalogue of Human Library. If Akram Feroz, an artist with the “theatre without borders” has the title of ‘Chains of Freedom’, ‘Breaking Silence” is the title of a group of eight people who run a citizen initiative against child sexual abuse.
Said Ramesh Kidambi, a member of the group, “Our cause is to protect children from sexual abuse as it is such a big problem plaguing the entire world. Our message is that the children should be protected from sexual abuse, as, more often than not, the perpetrators are known people”.
On experience of talking to the people as a book, Ramesh Kidambi says, “You feel more connected with the listeners, emotions are more intense and understanding is better”.
All sorts of people — the young and old — are attracted to the topic, he says, adding, “our book tells the people that help is available. If somebody has been a victim, we tell them to come to terms with the past and move ahead. Reach a sensible closure”.
And after attending a session, some people came out and said that they were victims in the past and were trying to come out of the trauma. “But we will not know who among our listeners were victims and we won’t go into the sexual aspect of the problem,” said Kidambi.
How are the books selected to be included in the catalogue?
“People offer their stories and we look into them from various perspectives like what issues they are talking about, what is their knowledge of the topic and how receptive they are to the questions before they are chosen,” says Dinkar Fad.
India has centuries-old tradition of storytelling and people conversing in a village square. Is HL a continuation of the same? Dinkar Fad sounds the alarm bell.
“I extensively travel in villages and I have noticed a drastic change in villages because of the satellite television. People have stopped meeting and talking. Technology has tampered with human touch and direct communication,” he said.
Dinkar Fad feels that HL where people meet face to face and talk to overcome prejudices has more relevance in present-day Indian society marred by increasing hatred and violence and hyper-nationalism.
“The founder of HL, Ronnie Abergel in Denmark, had undergone a lot of upheavals. The idea of Human Library had come out of Stop the Violence Movement. His motivation was to make a difference through a social innovation like HL. From that perspective, it has more relevance in India today,” said Dinkar Fad.
Akram Feroz is a theatre artist who dreams of a world without borders. “My book Chains of Freedom encourages people to question borders,” he said. During a tour along the borders of India and performing theatre in villages, he was arrested in Rajasthan on suspicion and had to spent a few weeks in custody. “Sometimes our readers question and sometimes they also criticise. One listener called me an anti-national for questioning borders,” he said.
