Of scarred present and fragile futures
It was sometime late last year when an email landed in my inbox, offering us an exclusive opportunity to speak with some of the inmates of Dubai Central Prison. The team of Emirates Airline Festival of Literature was facilitating an interaction with a clutch of men and women in there who were taking baby steps in their journey as writers. No other publication in the world will be given this access, we were told.
As journalists these are some of the milestone moments that define our careers. We rubbed our hands in glee, gloated over the honour bestowed upon us and high-fived while we story-boarded the feature. And before any one of us realised it, the seed of narcissism had begun to germinate.
Self-glory is shallow, we know, but there is no denying that it did try to gate-crash our creative process, making us question, ‘‘Are we – the ones telling the story – bigger than the story itself?’’
Opinion should never colour truth, we were taught, but it was only now when we understood the full gravitas of its context.
Shaking ourselves out of presumptuous stupor, we waited for the event to unfold. And then it happened.
A couple of weeks ago, Friday’s Features Editor, Anand, got the nod to go into one of UAE’s correction facilities to meet those who were serving time and speak with them not just about the benefits from the writing workshops that Clare Mackintosh and Annabel Kantaria conducted, but the indelible impact the creative process had on their personality and perspective of future in general.
It is well proven that there is therapy in the act of putting pen to paper. Reflection places you on that long arduous road to change for sure. And it wasn’t just the inmates who felt it, Anand too came back different... can’t put a finger on it right now, but it’s true...
Turn to page 16 to read the feature.
Self-glory is shallow, we know, but there is no denying that it did gate-crash our creative process, making us question, ‘‘Are we – the ones telling the story – bigger than the story itself?’’