Chobi Mela VI: Dreams
The theme Differences for Chobi Mela I was prophetic. Soon afterwards two tall buildings fell. Buried with the ashes of those concrete citadels, trapped with the lives of those innocent victims, lies the unresolved mystery of what really happened. Beneath the rubble lie the freedoms that the world has since lost. The lowest credible count records over a million dead in Iraq and thousands more in Afghanistan. The destroyed lives in Pakistan are uncounted.
Against this backdrop the sobriety of the themes of subsequent festivals exclusion resistance and boundaries are perhaps unsurprising.
Too many evils are being perpetrated in the name of the words Democracy and freedom. Between Chobi Mela I and Chobi Mela V. with Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq under occupation, with children dying of hunger with more money spent on pet food and cosmetic surgery than the cost of providing drinking water and education for the majority world, it was necessary to re-appropriate the word freedom. It was an act of defiance.
