Keeping up its aim to foster inclusion and sensitisation towards the LGBTQI community, IIM Ally hosted an interactive session with Devdutt Pattanaik, famous mythologist and author, on September 21, at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. The event witnessed an enthusiastic response from the audience who turned up in large numbers to lend their ear to the renowned speaker.
The session attempted to challenge the notions of binary thinking and how we perceive people around us. The speaker drew attention to instances from mythology and scriptures, such as the Ramayana, about the presence of the other gender. Pattanaik also threw light on the presence of the other, apart from male and female, in the plant ecosystem. He stated how a majority of plants are referred in neutral gender while gender exists in plants such as papaya.
Talking about specific stories from mythology, Pattanaik referenced two stories from the Mahabharata and Greek mythology to compare and contrast different reactions to confrontation of situations that challenge an individual’s definition of reality. The stories of Bellerophon-Chimera encounter and Arjuna-Navapunja encounter were leveraged to highlight human reactions. These references were juxtaposed with Adi Shankaracharya’s saying ‘Bhrama satya jagat mithya’.
The speaker mentioned that the way in which we see reality is based on our assumptions and preconceived notions and such assumptions stem due to our need for certainty, predictability, and desire to manage things. Addressing the ways to be supportive of LGBTQI community, he encouraged the audience to embrace flexible thinking and outlook in our perceptions. He suggested being open to others’ perspectives and assumptions while being aware of one’s assumptions and embrace diverse viewpoints.
The session concluded with the insight that “what cannot exist in imagination can exist in reality” and whether we chose to react to the other’s truth with denial, disgust, rejection or we wish to broaden the horizon of our thinking and accommodate what is not known to us is what makes the difference.