My depression was healed because of humanity,” said Sana Iqbal, biker, depression survivor and social worker at MiTalk at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Heal 2017. There couldn't be a more succinct or more earnest summation for a session titled, ‘Health and Humanity’.
On her ‘last ride’ from Hyderabad to Rajkot, Iqbal wanted to commit suicide by coming under a truck. During the journey, she met a dhaba owner who wanted to take her picture to show it to his daughter because he wanted her to become a biker like Iqbal. At a gas station, she met another stranger who saluted her for having the guts to ride solo on such a long journey despite being a woman. The self-worth that she had lost, Iqbal got it back from the people she'd never met before. She realised humanity was bigger than all her miseries. Her last ride became a road to recovery. FICCI Heal is essentially a health conference where newer and better approaches to healthcare are discussed by industry experts. This year, something different happened though. Healthcare was viewed and discussed from an entirely new lens — a perspective that is often overlooked but is equally important as traditional scientific knowledge. At the MiTalk during FICCI Heal 2017, healthcare received a touch of empathy, dignity, hope, kindness, compassion, courage and a willingness to look at patients beyond immediate sickness.
like Iqbal, speakers at this session came on the stage with personal experiences. Each made for striking storytelling, convincing people to understand the need for humanity and comprehending human experiences as passionate tools for healing. For instance, take 28-year-old Kanika Tekriwal, founder and chief executive officer, JetSetGo Aviation Services Pvt ltd and cancer survivor, who is inspiring everyone with her tale of grit.
At the session, the head of a million-dollar aviation company, Tekriwal said, “I couldn't have come so far if it wasn't for cancer.” She revealed how her incessant will to live made her defy her doctor's advice who said she had no chances against the disease. But she didn't give up until she found another doctor who believed in her struggle to survive. Tekriwal, with her unwavering determination, was willing to look beyond the immediate disease that held her captive and now stands as a role model for so many cancer patients in the country. Her story stands as evidence to what Shivinder M Singh, non-executive vice chairman, Fortis Healthcare and chairperson of the session, said in his opening speech: He stated that as human beings, there is a magic in each one of us. This magic is our ability to make the universe give us what we want through our firm conviction. At times, when medicines fail to cure, our belief in ourselves can put us back on our feet.
Humanity, apart from its quality of benevolence, is also the state of being human. And as a human being, one question asked during our course of life is: Who am IIJ. Anu Aggarwal, the actor of the 1990s film Aashiqui, was one of the MiTalk speakers who dealt with this very subject. “Aashiqui gave me millions of fans but robbed me of my freedom”, said Aggarwal. After a near-fatal accident she was in a coma for 28 days, after which the doctors told her the gestation period is at least three years. It was so bad that the doctors believed that she will have to learn alphabets from scratch. That's when Aggarwal found not only her solace in yoga, but the answer to the existential question haunting her for years. She explains her yogic journey thus, “I turned from a skeptic to a scientist.” Today, the actor has developed her own curriculum based on yoga called ‘AnuFunYoga’ to help slum kids and travels the world sharing the benefits of this ancient Indian practice of well-being. She shared that if the miracle story of her life should teach anyone anything that is humanity takes a lot of courage and compassion and this can be achieved by helping oneself as well as others.
The helping hand of humanity can be found anywhere, if only we seek to reach for it. The lyrical verses of a poem is just one of them. “When a man of 56 asked a girl of seven if she knew what love was. She did not know that she would spend most of her time convincing herself love was more than the way he dug his nails into her raw skin only to leave it in pain” — such was the immensely powerful words that Cheryl Mukherji, photographer and ‘Spoken Word’ poet, moved the audience with. The call for help in these lines and our need to stand up against such violence couldn't have been more effectively communicated. In Mukherji's poem, the assault is on both physical and mental level for the victim. The solution, to a large extent, is to overlay our society with characteristics of humanity.
However, like Aggarwal explained, only by helping ourselves first can we help others. In a different way, Singh also stressed this point earlier, when he said that we are all wealthy owners of priceless entities called body and mind. If we do not care about the weight of these aspects, we are depriving ourselves of much more that we can imagine. Happiness is a major part of this overall well-being, as Raj Raghunathan, professor at University of Texas at Austin and author, rightly put it that accepting life as it comes — curve balls and all, is one of the biggest keys to a happy life. So where does humanity come fromIJ 2-ShadeZ, a hip-hop duo from the US and Sudan, may have provided the answer to this. The artists, who performed a resonating song about being grateful, said, “Humanity starts at a young age”, with something as simple as children being taken to visit hospitals and old age homes. It's true, humanity is inevitably in all of us and it only needs a little tapping to come out in full swing. 2-ShadeZ also rightly indicated that “humanity is also the foundation of healthcare”. At MiTalk, through sharing of stories, ideas, songs and poems, healthcare was able to look beyond sickness as a bodily condition, and reflect on the simple healing formula of humanity.
(The writer is founder of Minds Ignited and first Senior Brand ambassador of TEDx, India)