Storytelling by Nikhil Taneja

March 27th, 2019. Society Hall. Nikhil Taneja recounted how he had woken up in a cold swat one fateful night in New York and realised the futility of all that he was then doing. But unlike many of us who go right back to sleep, he didn’t. He quit his cushy job and started a movement – Yuvaa, a platform that provides young people to share their stories, so that the audience can gather the impetus we all need to reach out for our dreams.

This ex MTV warrior and position holder in Yash Raj Films has not looked back since. Today, Yuvaa is one of the foremost youth movements in the country and has a string of successes that owe their first push to it. His Kindness Project visits colleges across the country where it provides the Open Mic to the students, urging and cajoling them to share their stories as an effort to speak up to step out. Not that many need the cajoling, though.

 

 

It was an interactive, fun session that was on your face in honesty. The seventy students who had participated all had their stories to share and soon the audience was empty as it was in the queue to share stories.

Nikhil Taneja did not mince his words – pointing out the hypocrisy that is all around, especially in Bollywo0od where he had spent a good amount of his time as an insider. He also denounced society’s obsession with putting labels so as to force people into the mediocrity of conformity. What was left unsaid was equally explosive – life is not about being just another brick in the wall and it is worth the fight, when the fight is against an unfair world order that seems to browbeat one into submission, consign one to being another sheep in the herd.

Prof Dilip Shah, the dean of student affairs took up the gauntlet that Nikhil Taneja had thrown and the raconteur that he is, his story told in his inimical way, drew the most strident applause. Students from the college who shared their stories – from one who had saved for years to buy his mother a musical instrument to make her dream of becoming a musician come true – a dream that was compromised to provide the best for the family; to how one had to spend a few hours in a police lock up for no apparent fault – each highly relatable and what is more, doable. History is after all, not about the monuments that a people leave for posterity, it is not even about the great wars and the achievements, but the little things that bring joy and tears in the lives of ordinary people.

The student response overwhelmed the spirit behind the show and he went on record stating how impressed he is with the spontaneity and the youthful zest of the campus. The students on their part too were overwhelmed by the man and his mission and both sides decided to turn the first step into a journey of a million steps towards a destination of common achievements.

(This report has been filed by Quazi Mowaz Ahmed along with camera person Yash Gupta of the Expressions collective of the BESC)