What happens when you start from No Where, hoping to reach Now Here, and end up somewhere, and you have no clue where? Well, our chief correspondent Agent M had such an experience in the heart of India, the economic capital of the largest republic in the world, which gave rise to many a name in the Top 10 of the Forbes list, which left him quite dazed and unsettled for a couple of days. On a specially drafted mission, he found out the very nitty gritties of making a conference not go right, and also the consequences of such actions.
On the 5th of November, our very own Agent M, along with one of his friends, packed bags to go to Mumbai to attend a summit. It was conducted by the largest organisation in the world, in this college which we, sticking to true Witness Times spirit, will call College J. Now College J was all hyped up to be dealing with something at this level. Very hyped up. The easily predictable consequence was that the event turned out to be a major College J PR activity, rather than a well founded conference.
To start off with, the event co-ordinator, lets call him Mr S (yes, it’s a HE!) was an arrogant, pompous young puppy, who wanted to boss over everybody else. Understandable. But when he tried to take the whole event from No Where to Now Here, well, he really met with a lot of problems. Most of them arising from the fact that not much planning had gone into it, and people’s skills were the last things being looked at.
Secondly, it did not help when the college director decided to get drunk and give the belly dancing girl company.
The much awaited discussions were quite enlightening. While Al Gore and Leonardo DeCaprio were beating the heat to advocate beating the heat to people, because of melting glaciers, the sessions in the summit sported healthy and quite heated-up arguments on whether people should be allowed to spit paan(a sort of leaf which is chewed and spat out) in Mumbai, and whether hookers should be allowed in front of Churchgate station. Wow! We almost ended up saving the world!
Not to mention the cameras, which we were supposed to be making documentaries with, ended up whining cacophonous protests, which needed quite a bit of coaxing to finally start recording.
It is also pretty interesting to note how time hit back. Whilst they mentioned “sharp” and accurate time, with punishments for late comers, each event was delayed by atleast 2-3 hours, often resulting in the cancelling or cutting short of certain other events. More importance was given to the cultural exposure to the delegates, than discussions or work (wherein culture was defined by the seemingly obnoxious dances that J collegeites came up with). More care was given to make sure that the delegates had food and were enjoying the party, while precious work lay aside pending. But of course, comfort is indeed much much more important than melting ice caps or strife in Congo.
One of the several of the ironies included them providing us with the classic 12 steps-to-save-the-world card (which advocated us to not use plastics, and recycle, among other things), printed on non-recycled paper, put in a plastic file. Another included providing bottled mineral water and Coca Cola to all delegates, while on the other side of the gates, Green Peace actively campaigned against the company’s commodification of water.
Overall, it was one of the most mis-organised, hypocritic and chaotic summits that the world had ever seen, or would see.
But of course, every cloud is a silver lining. Agent M interrupts, “I saw, and fell in love with, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, which I think I’ll ever see! I met a lot of awesome folk, and I’m sure that I’ll remember two of them for a while, if not for life. A person, who happens to be in the world of education, who has sort of become a teacher, in a higher sense, to me, and a girl who’s simply an awesome person.” Not to mention that he did learn, all that there was to, about the things which could go wrong in an event.
It might be an interesting exercise to track any of the summit participant’s congnitive waves –
Now Here (Wow! I’m going to a UN Conference!) –> Nowhere (Shouldn’t I have prepared?) –> Now here (Wow! I’m here!) –> Nowhere (Intimidated by the crowd) –> Now here (I’m way above these stupid discussions) –> Nowhere (What on earth am I doing here???!!!) –> Now here (Well, I’ll try to make things better) –> Nowhere (This has been an absolute waste of time) –> Whatsits?!!!@*(*&@!
To sum up this post on a slightly humorous note, which also happens to be a wonderful summing up of the entire event, we’ll quote what Agent M heard from one of the organizing volunteers on the inaugural day, near the registration desk –
“Some Yuck was supposed to be here… ”
(pardonne, amigo, for the inside joke)
The Witness Times News Corps 2008
This post is 100% fact, 0% pulp fiction, however much the contrary it appears to be. The views expressed here are entirely my own, and if you have a problem with that, well, go dump your head in the nearest pile of bull feces, ‘cos this is my blog, and I dictate what happens here, and thankfully, I happen to be in India and not China.
