“It may sound cliché but I see my life in the before and after filter of UNREAD. It was shitty before, it is shitty now, the difference is I HAVE BECOME AWARE OF IT- my life, my role & initiative in it- I am not a mere passenger, I have the capability of being the sailor myself, maybe I already am, just need to start commanding it, owing it. I got to witness WHAT MY LIFE CAN BE LIKE, all my thoughts weren’t “khayali pulao” anymore, I EXPERIENCED how to feel the change, how to bring it, bare the tides and survive those that come along with it. Learning how to do assessments, clinical work, etc was the minutest part of it, but the major impacts were:

1. Feeling ready for the world- the ease with which I was able to make some decisions and in fact felt at ease when it surfaced in consciousness like becoming a private practitioner.

2. Experiencing what support feels like and community belongingness is NOT “ji hazuri of others”. It is becoming a part of the network where others fall, you hold, you fall and others hold and feeling of being an equal, a connected individual.

It is like melody chocolate- Khao aur khud jaan jao!
This program is a major event of my life and fills me with emotions everytime I think or have to share anything about it.”

“UNREAD was a self-exploratory journey that encouraged me to reflect on myself as a learner, an enthusiast to understand others, and a newcomer to being in a group. The group discussions taught me to critically think, question my own view, and deliver my own perspective in the conversation. The course taught me to break down mental health into an experience, beyond a label or a diagnostic description. This shifted my perspective, making me curious to understand the context behind the difficulties a person experiences, including mine.

The course was designed to be experiential through community meetings, therapeutic community, adjusting and confronting the realities of working collaboratively in groups through community projects and outreach work.

Expressing my feelings openly showed me the strength of vulnerability and the power of learning new ways to overcome my own distress. Our training sessions have left me with more questions and perspectives when we connected the learning material to our own lived experiences. The course symbolizes how learning can be about exploring ourselves, our narratives, and experiences by getting a glimpse of what we appear as in groups, as interactions unfold and we learn about ourselves through others.”

“We must grope around each other through a dense thicket of absent others” When Janet Malcolm wrote this, she intended to summarise transference. Interactions had through the course of UNREAD entailed navigating through these dense thickets for me and how. The experience was instrumental in the creation of an internal environment, capable of facilitating a dialogue between conflicting needs and experiences, which is more than I can say for any other learning environment I have been in.

My wish for alone-ness and capacity for togetherness felt acknowledged across spaces and I learnt the importance of ‘responsibility without blame’, which is key to taking onus and learning. My journey was filled with ambiguity but HNI provided me a reparative experience and contributed to my development as a therapist. It is the kind of learning that is hard to put in words, it prepares you for life and reminds you that at any given point whatever you carry Is not just your own, but a shared experience. I have three degrees but what I learnt in these 6 months about myself and being a practitioner far exceeds anything I have ever learnt. Not perfect, but a ‘good enough’ environment is what it is. You’ll find parts of yourself buried deep within in the process and even if people don’t understand them, they will respect your journey and help you chisel out a version of yourself you never knew existed.”

“The journey was filled with more questions than answers. It was like stepping into another universe where everything is governed by different laws. I was fascinated by the conversations here, from our community meetings to the training spaces to thinkatory to phooltympas (not to forget NRTFP, Chai logue, mosaic and green cloud, the spaces I am part of even today) I loved every bit of it. I also got to learn how to hold on to conversations in a space. I have always been a very distracted kid in school and college but this time around, instead of looking out the windows in a learning session, I managed to be the kid who stares at other people’s faces, be there for most of the conversation and rearrange everyone’s zoom screens by colour order rest of the time.

The first few months were especially overwhelming. Suddenly I was in a space where people wanted to hear from me. The process was full of learnings and unlearning. I had always thought about power from a distance, as something that people have and use but that was the first time, I realised that even I have some kind of power. As much as I learned new things, I also let go of my urge to always know everything, I learned to sit through the discomfort, learned that conflict doesn’t mean the end of the world and it can be resolved, I understood how important it is in relationships to have difficult conversations and still have that support and how with support comes accountability and responsibility. This time I wasn’t an outlaw or the one who just can’t fit in but an integral part of the group. I felt a sense of belongingness that I haven’t felt anywhere else.

To be honest, I still don’t have all the answers I was looking for but this time I am okay with not knowing all of it, I understand that there will always be more of something, more to learn, more to grow, more time to spend and more to discover and to create but just because there is more to go doesn’t mean I haven’t come far.”