As someone born and raised in rural India, I have often felt that opportunities to learn, pause, and connect are rare. While people in larger cities and institutions move within ecosystems rich in resources and exposure, our work in rural areas often feels lonely. The chance to meet peers working at scale, to listen to their struggles and successes, seemed like a faraway privilege. And so, when I first spoke to them, I held this mindset: this is my time to tell my story.

But during that conversation, one of them said something that shook me gently but firmly. They said, “You are coming to connect, regardless of the emotional and physical boundaries.” Those words stayed with me like a compass. They told me that this journey was not going to be about proving myself or narrating my work. It was going to be about opening myself to others, to the unknown, to the parts of myself I had kept hidden. That was the mindset shift I carried with me as I set out for Naukuchiyatal, Uttarakhand - the venue for the 2025 Agamishaala.

As the road climbed higher, I felt the landscape slowly quiet my mind, preparing me for the unknown that awaited. The 3-hour ride to the venue was taken along with other members in this year’s cohort. These were people whose passion for their causes was evident not only in their words but in the way they carried themselves. Many of them had been walking their paths for much longer than I. Their work was larger, more visible, more seasoned. Sitting among them, I felt a mix of admiration and intimidation. A part of me whispered, Do I belong here?

But what unfolded over those three days was not a display of credentials or hierarchies. Instead, it was a slow unravelling of walls. I began to feel something I can only describe as comfort in strangers. The kind of comfort that comes not from similarity, but from sincerity. Each person brought their own fire, their own wounds, their own stories and in sharing them openly, they created a circle where I, too, could sit and breathe.

When I look back at those four days of the Shaala today, I realise that my memories of it are not just in my mind. They are in my body. I work in rural Maharashtra, where I run a collective for women and girls called Aruna Education Foundation. Through the collective, we walk alongside women’s self-help groups and young girls, creating small but steady pathways to resilience, access to justice, health, and opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach. It is deeply meaningful work, but it is also exhausting — full of struggles, and the quiet weight of responsibility. Perhaps that is why Agamishaala felt like more than a gathering; it felt like a rare pause, a chance to breathe, and to be held in the company of others walking their own demanding paths.

For the first time, I learnt to notice that my body had been speaking to me all along through exhaustion, through aches, through restlessness. For years, I had carried stress in my bones, but I never stopped to listen. During the three days, I realised that the body holds stories our mind refuses to tell. That our bodies often speak louder than our words. There were moments of stillness, of silence, where my body became my teacher. I learnt that the synchronisation of body and mind is not automatic; it is something to be learnt, practised, and nurtured. Agamishaala taught me to become aware of the parts of myself that were blocking openness, to soften into awareness, to face the emotions I had been suppressing.

This was not easy. It meant facing my sorrows, my patterns of reaction, my griefs that I had never acknowledged. It meant noticing how I respond to others’ pain, how my body holds stress when listening, and how it relaxes when held with care. Agamishaala became not just a space of external learning, but of internal atonement.

One of the most powerful practices at Agamishaala was open-heart sharing. Sitting in a circle, listening deeply, speaking honestly, these may sound like simple acts, but they carry immense power when done with trust. For me, these circles were transformative. They showed me that vulnerability is not weakness. In fact, it is the gateway to connection. When others shared their raw truths, I saw strength not in their victories but in their willingness to be seen in their fragility.

This shifted something in me. I had always thought that to be strong meant to be unshaken, to carry everything silently, to not reveal cracks. But Agamishaala taught me that true strength lies in saying, I am struggling. I am hurting. I don’t have all the answers. It is in those moments of raw honesty that we meet each other as humans, not as roles or titles.

Through this practice, I became aware of how my actions and words ripple into the lives of others. I realised that true connection is not about polite listening, but about holding space with presence and care. This came alive in the conversations that unfolded in our circles. Listening to Gyan, who shared his struggles, reminded me that strength is not the absence of pain but the capacity to adapt and keep walking. In Prabhat, I found someone who felt like a brother, a bond that cut across geographies and experiences, showing me that friendships can take root for life, regardless of age. My exchanges with Utkarsh and Nivedita left me reflecting on the power of the inner voice, how often we silence it, and how much courage it takes to truly listen.

Each of these conversations became a mirror, revealing not only their journeys but also my own. They taught me that every story, when shared openly, ripples outward and reshapes those who receive it. These ripples continue into my work with ARUNA, where we create pathways to justice, resilience, and opportunity. Agamishaala has enabled me to show up differently: to hold space with more patience, to notice silences as much as words, and to encourage women not only to fight for rights but also to honour their own inner journeys of healing.

At first, I thought the magic of Agamishaala came from its location. After all, the mountains of Uttarakhand are breathtaking. The air feels lighter, the silence deeper, the trees older and wiser than us. But with time, I realised that while nature created a gentle container, the real transformation came from people. From the journeys of those who had moved from ego to eco from self-centeredness to collective consciousness. From their willingness to unlearn, to question, to hold contradictions without rushing to solve them.

Nature reminded me of stillness. People reminded me of courage. Together, they created a space where healing and transformation could happen.

It would be easy to romanticise Agamishaala as a beautiful retreat. But the truth is more complex. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was thought-provoking. But it was also painful, raw, and confronting.

I remember Anuradha ji shared a line that has stayed with me ever since: “The wound is where the light enters the soul.” At first, it felt like poetry, but the more I sat with it, the more I understood its truth. Our wounds are not just scars of pain, they are openings, tender spaces where something new can enter. For so long, I had treated my wounds as weaknesses, as things to hide or heal quickly. But Agamishaala taught me to see them differently. To see that it is precisely in our brokenness, in our vulnerability, that we become open to light, to compassion, to transformation. That sentence became a mirror for me, reminding me that the parts of myself I wanted to cover up were actually the very places where growth and connection could begin.

There were moments when I had to face sorrows I had buried. Moments when I realised the stress I carried was not just temporary but had seeped into my very bones. Moments when listening to others’ stories shook me, challenged me, and made me question the narratives I had held.

And yet, within that pain lay the possibility of growth. Because growth is not always about comfort, often, it comes from discomfort, from staying present with what hurts, from allowing yourself to be reshaped by the encounter.

Agamishaala was not about giving answers. It was about opening questions - questions that stay with you, questions that refuse to be rushed, questions that invite you to live differently.

It has been two months since that experience, and I am still learning. The lessons did not end when I left Uttarakhand. They continue to unfold slowly, like seeds planted in soil, sprouting quietly in unexpected ways.

When I think of leadership, I realise how often we create invisible rules for ourselves. We are trained to appear strong, composed, and emotionally unshaken, because none of us wants to be seen as weak leaders. But the process made me question this notion. I began to see that true leadership is not about perfection or always having answers. It is about vulnerability, about allowing yourself to feel, to be open, and to let others see your humanness. That is how we connect, not from behind the fences we build, but from the courage to step outside them. Leadership, I learnt, is not about finding immediate answers to every problem. It is about holding questions long enough for deeper, more sustainable responses to emerge.

The biggest gift Agamishaala gave me was the courage to be vulnerable. The acceptance that it is okay not to have all the answers. The realisation that connection is not an afterthought, but the very ground of any meaningful work.

I carry forward the memory of sitting in circles, the echo of mountains holding our words, the feeling of my body finally being heard. I carry forward the reminder that my actions ripple into others’ lives. I carry forward the lesson that growth is not linear, not immediate, but a slow sinking in like rain into the earth.

For me, Agamishaala transcended a workshop. It was a threshold, a crossing over from one way of being into another. It asked me to pause, to listen, to unlearn, to face what I had hidden, and to accept what I had denied. Most of all, it gave me something I did not even know I needed, at exactly the time I needed it. Perhaps that is the true gift of Agamishaala: it does not arrive as an answer, but as a gentle turning of the soul, reminding us that the journey of justice begins within.

In its essence, it is a community of people daring to imagine justice differently. For me, it also became something deeply personal, a mirror, a teacher, and a companion. It reminded me that the journey from ego to eco does not begin in grand ideas, but in the quiet courage to sit with yourself, and with others, with an open heart.

As I return to my work at Aruna, I carry these learnings not as abstract reflections but as living practices. The pause, the vulnerability, the courage to listen deeply, these are not only personal shifts, but tools that I now bring back to the women and girls I walk alongside. In our collective, where we create pathways to justice, resilience, and opportunity, I see how these lessons ripple outward. Agamishaala has enabled me to show up differently: to hold space with more patience, to notice silences as much as words, and to encourage women not just to fight for rights but also to honour their own inner journeys of healing.

In many ways, what I learnt in those circles in Uttarakhand mirrors the spirit of Aruna ie that true change emerges when we create spaces of trust, when we allow wounds to speak, and when we move from isolation to community. Just as Agamishaala reminded me that leadership begins with vulnerability, Aruna reminds me every day that justice is built not only through policy or advocacy, but through the quiet, consistent work of holding women’s hands as they step into their own strength. I see the bridge between Agamishaala and Aruna as this: both are communities of courage, both believe in the power of open hearts, and both are committed to reimagining justice from the ground up.

And alongside these learnings, I carry with me the friendships born at Agamishaala, bonds I will treasure for life, as reminders that our journeys are lighter and richer when walked together.

This is a guest post by Adv. Abhidha Niphade, a lawyer working closely with communities in rural Maharashtra to make justice and safety more accessible. Her own experiences pushed her to create spaces where women, children, and youth feel seen, heard, and supported. She is the Founder-Director of Aruna Education Foundation, which focuses on building everyday tools like legal literacy, social security, life skills, and emotional strength to help people navigate systems with dignity.

Abhidha can be reached at abhidhaniphadeindia@gmail

Every year since 2021, Agami has hosted a reunion of past Agamishaala members - Agamishaala United - right before our annual field convening. In 2024, this took place in Bhopal, 2 days before the Justicemakers Mela.

In an attempt to capture and learn from what emerges when a group of Justicemakers get together in a space like this, we once again invited roeqin, an artist and arts-educator, to scribe what he sensed and witnessed.

Foreword

I attended this year’s Agamishaala United to observe us and the ways in which our learnings emerge from this experience—That is my role as a scribe. But beyond this role, there is a deep sense of belonging to this community and a genuine curiosity to see how these experiences shape us and our work. I have myself experienced the growth that spaces like this can induce within people, having begun my own Shaala journey in 2023. Agamishaala is a community within itself, with its own shared vocabulary, and so my language of documentation tends to take the tone of an insider. But i* will try, to the best of my ability, to open this world out to readers who aren’t acquainted with the Shaala.

In my scribe documentation, this time, i was keen to deliberate on our experience at Agamishaala United with Artika, Manish and Aditi—the quiet, ever moving cogs behind the Shaala, who have had these 2 days in their consideration for many months prior and many more months after. I met them a few weeks after our gathering in Bhopal. By this time we had all made our way back to our respective homes, and we had to converse through the little rectangular windows of a video call, although in an ideal scenario, we should have been having this conversation in a park somewhere, sitting in a small plot of green, a canopy of leaves and branches overhead. The conversation we had that afternoon was extremely heartening. It was possibly the first time that i had heard them talk about the Shaala so candidly.

As much as i might draw out a semblance of meaning from my own experience, i’d want to refrain from assuming that it is a shared understanding, to force a meaning out of these experiences that serves the entire group. The learnings we take away from Shaala are like clouds on a bright, windless day. The shapes slowly change, meet and diverge, become wispy, all the while moving ever so slowly in a particular direction. The shapes they make speak differently to everyone—the meaning is for the observer to make. I’d want this scribe documentation to just provide glimpses into this shared space that was held for us, and that we held together, to open the opportunity for these learnings to make themselves felt even if not fully understood.

~ roeqin

*The uncapitalised ‘i’ has been deliberately used since the ‘I’, as stipulated by English grammar, feels too egotistical to my liking.

What is essential is invisible to the eye

“What did those moments of doubt look like to you?”

“It’s the other way around—there is a large cloud of doubt and then the sun shines
through and you have clarity, and you keep moving with that clarity…”

“And clarity? What about moments of clarity?”

“There is clarity about the process, that is the light that shines through.

The sun didn't make an effort to hide. Stuff came up and obscured it, but it is always there.”

The metaphor of the container is deeply embedded within the culture of Shaala. The practice of building a good container, or rather, being a good container, is one that the Shaala, its people, and its moulders are well acquainted with. The container holds, it unifies, it enables. Anything that is held within the container finds an acceptance and a closeness to everything else that lies within it. And those of us that have the opportunity of being held by the container carry an intangible impression of it, one that holds this community of Agamishaala together.

And yet, the container is not impervious to the feelings of doubt. Rather, it is equally shaped by it.

Artika: “Our job is to create the right container, those enabling conditions in which different kinds of things can grow and flourish. I guess it comes with its own doubt, but the clarity I have is in the fact that this work is critical in what it makes possible.”

* 20 minute dance is one of the many Social Presencing Theatre practices that we are introduced to in the course of Agamishaala, derived from the Presencing Institute (MIT, USA).

When i asked them to give me metaphors that might represent the Shaala, both Aditi and Manish imagined different kinds of containers—

Aditi: “You know when there is a water canister or a matka, with a tap, there is usually a container kept below it to collect the water that trickles out so that it doesn’t go waste. It is actually the care in that act, to hold something precious, which I think is a metaphor for Shaala.”

Manish depicted a nested container in a diagram.

Manish: “There are so many containers. The three of us contain the Shaala, the Shaala contains the Justicemakers Mela. it is a container within a container within a container. It looks so unstable! But it is also so beautiful.”

I sense this container every time i step into a gathering of Shaala members, like an echo in a closed space that hangs in the air. Even as it engulfs the senses in its vastness, it signifies the presence of a container, the walls that hold the sound within. If one has to trace that feeling of belonging that resonates through the people that are a part of this space, it leads back to the three of them who create this space for us. The container, even when it tries to remain invisible, is felt in every reverberation.

We met in Bhopal for a little less than 2 days. Thinking back, it feels like a blur—it was over, just as i had begun to settle in. It is such a small window of time, and yet these 2 days offer so much to each of us. For some it means rest, for others it is an opportunity to meet their friends and companions, yet for others it is an attempt to seek answers—we all come together carrying so many different intentions. Some of us find what we are seeking, others find directions to pursue in search of what they seek. There were so many people that i hadn’t seen in ages, so many that i would be meeting for the first time. Stepping into the venue, i could sense hesitation within me, maybe even nervousness. I walked through the huge glass doors, and as i made my way to my room, i kept meeting friends at every turn, my progress halted with smiles and hugs, pats on the back and polite pleasantries. I sensed the knots untying as i gave in to the embraces.

I found myself sitting with Hameeda and Lubhyathi a little while later, all three of us having met in person for the first time since our Shaala in Ranikhet. I had heard that Hameeda wasn’t feeling well, and was immediately reminded of her disappearance through our last day at Ranikhet under similar circumstances. I said “यार, तेरेको हर बार कुछ ना कुछ होता ही है !”, and she laughed. A sudden wave of comfort and familiarity washed over me, a reconnection with the intimacy we had felt in Ranikhet with every member of that cohort. I sensed that i had truly arrived.

It is understandable why all of us look forward to these occasions that Agamishaala offers us. Regardless of the intention with which we come into these spaces, the excitement and the warmth draws us all in, and the spirit that we bring with us is the magic that charges these spaces with a palpable potential.

The act of containing can also have a passive, almost negative connotation—associated with ideas of limiting, constraining. The contents may take the shape of the container and would be limited by it. But in the case of the Shaala, the container must take the shape of the contents. Knowing how we, as the contained, come with such a range of intentions and expectations—each of us at a different point in our journey, each working at a different pace, and inhabiting different headspaces—building a container for a group as diverse as this is bound to be challenging.

Artika: “Since we are working towards building an emergent form of leadership and learning, we can’t ever be sure that ‘this approach or this activity will work’. Make it a template and ‘हो गया’. These are people who are incredible problem solvers, entrepreneurs, people who are doing the work. There is no telling them ‘how to do problem solving better’. they are already champs at it. You are only holding space to see and sense differently.”

The need to ‘see and sense differently’ becomes ever more crucial in the face of conflict and dissonance. The Justicemaker’s Mela was taking place in Bhopal around the same time that the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas tragedy was being observed in the city. One event bringing together innovators and actors within the field of justice, and another seething over the injustice meted out to the victims of the largest industrial disaster of the 20th century. A few organisations from Bhopal raised objections to the Mela, opposing it to the point of boycott. The conflict was deep seated, pertaining to funding bodies, associations and affiliations—fundamental questions that had to be addressed. The questions loomed large in all our minds. But how is one supposed to seek mediation when the source of the conflict comes from unarguable pain, tremendous suffering, trauma carried by generations, and a disillusionment that has seeped into one's marrow? For the first time in several years, i found myself thinking—Which side are we on?

The container had to accommodate for this dissonance too.

Manish : “There is a longing to engage with those who are wounded. In that moment, there is a voice that tells me — there is no going back, you have to develop the capacity to listen. You need to let go of the excitement of innovation, change, transformation—and whatever those words mean—to be with the unresolved pain.”

“Challenges change changemakers—We are here for resolution but can you sit with something that hasn’t changed?”

As Artika mentioned during our conversation - “the lenses that we bring can limit us to thinking what the entirety might be”. Our sensing journey had to begin with a shift in perspective.

Swapnil and Abhay, fellow Shaala members and the co-founders of Zenith, were invited to set the context for us, both of them having worked in Madhya Pradesh for several years and bearing a knowledge of the movements, histories and undercurrents that inform the present landscape of this region. They told us about the various people that make up the state and the hidden threads that connects everyone to form a larger identity of Madhya Pradesh; that some of the strongest movements in the state were around the forests, due to the influence of the region’s Adivasi culture; about the divisions within the people’s movements in Bhopal, rifts caused by differences in ideologies and clashes over resources; and how the new generation is just not able to see themselves fit into these movements, as they have not been able to make the vision that they spoke of any more ‘real’ than when they began…

A question emerged that seemed to resonate with everyone.

‘इस नए युग का आंदोलन कैसा होगा?’*

Manish : “That question—Abhay was the first glimpse of that light. The question didn’t land immediately, it was developed in Muskaan. मेले में clearly दिखा , movement को पहले समझना होगा. नए युग के movement में जाने से पहले, इस movement को समझना होगा.”

That is the clarity, the light that comes through the crack. Manish referred to the song by Leonard Cohen, where he sings “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.

Artika : “We are operating in a world that has shifted and changed in so many ways. The question to ask is not ‘how to disrupt what has gone on or question it’, but rather ‘how can we honor what came before us and yet grow into a new paradigm’.”

*What will a movement for this new era be like?

The sensing journeys at Shaala are those which require an intrinsic, bodily understanding. This took us from the practice space on the terrace of the Jehan Numa Palace to the mitti ka ghar within the premises of Muskaan—an organisation in Bhopal that has been working towards the empowerment of children and young people from denotified tribes through education and community development. The floors changed from polished marble to rough hewn stone; the walls, from pristine white to a patchwork of muddy browns. This transition between two spaces that are diametrically opposite to one another in structure, character and symbolism neither felt jarring, nor uncomfortable. It is quite possible that the diversity of realities that our group contains within itself, the various spaces of work that each member is acquainted with, prevents the group from feeling alien to either end of this spectrum. There are members acquainted with the tiled floors of corporate offices, the clicking of shoes that echo through dimly lit corridors of government institutions, the squeaky swivel chairs and the office desks stacked high with papers; while others are acquainted with the clamour of panchayat meetings and community gatherings, the cool dung plastered floors of village homes, the respite of woven charpoys under the shade of trees. All of us, inhabitants of starkly different worlds… and yet, here we all are together!

Muskaan welcomed us with open arms. Walking through the premises of the Jeevan Shiksha Pehal, the school that is housed within the mitti ka ghar, we could hear the muffled sound of activity coming from the classrooms on the floor above us, glimpses of children peeking out of windows. They breezed in and out of the classrooms, with not a hint of the disciplinarian temperament that is so intertwined with the notion of educational establishments. The children, the teachers, the resident dogs and the birds, were all allowed to move and settle by virtue of their own free will. And yet, the classrooms were full, the teachers attending to an eager, attentive audience, the atmosphere charged with purpose.

We gathered in the aangan, and formed a circle in the cool shade of the mitti ka ghar. Shivani, the founder of Muskaan, along with Roli, the founder of Youngshaala, were a part of our circle. They spoke to us about the nature of their work, the realities they have to confront, the way the movement is shaped around the needs of the children and youth they work with. As they spoke, we received their experiences in tender, attentive silence.

In the distance a lone kite jittered in the wind against a clear sky. There was a quality of stillness to the gathering, or as Manish puts it, ‘ठहराव’. The conversation trickled, bubbling out gently, unhurried. We spoke about hope, about exhaustion. The difficulties of working within marginalised spaces, the contradictions that come up within these societies owing to socio-political tensions, the impact these factors have on children.

My attention drifted, from the conversation, to the surroundings, and back again to the conversation.

The mitti ka ghar—with different shades of brown visible in segments all along its exterior— exuded such a powerful character. The elegant arched windows and doorways, the bare beams of wood that showed themselves unabashedly, the stylised motifs of the triangle and the square, all came together in a cohesive uniformity. I noticed the lack of crisp, sharp edges, the precise corners, the unbreaking straight lines— hallmarks of modern construction. I myself find a lot more comfort in slightly wavy, imperfect lines that are achieved when one draws free-hand, rather than the clinical, characterless lines one achieves with the use of a ruler. They just feel more… humane. The entire mitti ka ghar was filled with these beautiful, imperfect lines.

There was one child who decided to attend our gathering in the aangan. Like a little butterfly, she made her way from person to person, settling down in one lap, and then fluttering over to another. The people within our circle extended their arms and smiled as she passed, and she in turn settled with them for brief spells of time. She responded only to affection, the image of innocence, and she returned the affection almost as though she knew no other language—clinging on to Mohit’s arm, wrapping herself around Sachi, perching on Himanshu’s lap—happy to be held and included.

“How do you look after yourself?”

“There is more hope with reversing the thoughts for children than it is for adults.”

“Since things are improving, the best i can do is wake up and continue working
for the 2 billion people whose lives haven’t improved.”

“I sometimes think that I don’t belong in this space.”

“We take pride in feeling superior to someone else.”

“What is the hope you hold on to, when it is so fast to corrupt?”

There was an honesty that the space brought out in us. The questions each of us asked were being dredged out from the deepest reserves of our concerns and preoccupations.

Manish : “It was confronting in its honesty, it confronted us with our own reality. The intention with the sensing journey is that it becomes a mirror that allows us to see an aspect of ourselves. And what did they show us—Shivani ji, Roli ji, and the children? The deep trauma that our society is living within. And that we are coping with it!”

“There was a helplessness within our group, confronting the moment ‘की ये इतना effort जो हम लोग कर रहे हैं, वो कहाँ जा रहा है?’.”

Movements cannot thrive in isolation. The struggle for humanisation, liberation and emancipation is a shared one, where there is a need for solidarity and kindness. Our objectives may be different, but that cannot separate us. The kindness that we were shown by Muskaan moulded the original dissonance into a resonance that we carried forward. The walls that were so filled with love and purpose, assuaged the immutable divide that the group had sensed.

After all, we are on the same side.

From where i was seated close to the stairs, i noticed that our discussion was being drowned out by the happy chatter of students that floated down from the corridors and the classrooms. Maybe that signified our position in that space—we were being gracefully accommodated, but we were not their priority. We too were interruptions at best, in a movement that was already taking place.

To conclude our sensing journey, Manish invited us to participate in a village activity*. I sensed a reluctance in my own body, a restlessness that kept me at the borders. In that moment, surprisingly, everyone felt like strangers. The village activity always has a measured rhythm, a dance that takes place in silence. Bodies at rest—lying down, eyes closed, leaning, sitting; Bodies in motion—walking, rolling, pacing. The light evening breeze rippled through the blossoming clusters of our village. I turned my back to the group, and looked out over the trees. Birds whizzed past noisily, parakeets screeching, swifts and bee-eaters chirping and clicking.

When the question of doing another activity came up, there were a few who said they don’t feel up to it.

Artika : “There are always hits and misses. Anxiety can come from someone saying ‘boss, nothing landed with me. I don’t know what happened’. And you sit with that anxiety. People ask ‘इसका outcome क्या हुआ ?’. It’s so hard to explain with something that is so visceral! But there is an innate sense of the outcome. It shows itself when you are at an Agami Summit, when you are at the Mela. To be able to stand your ground and say,‘It is happening, it will happen, and it is visible in many ways’.”

* The village activity is also a Social Presencing Theatre practice, derived from the Presencing Institute (MIT, USA).

Manish : “There is a clarity I am having now, which is that Agamishaala United is way bigger than what we are trying to do. In their first Shaala, people come in—like trees to forest—in search of their light and their insights and they engage with these practices that are non-verbal, creative, well designed; allowing them to go deeper into the mess to find their light in their own way. They take the inner journey and find a community to take the journey with.”

“Then there is a separate journey, which is that of ecosystem activation. These leaders also long for a journey—‘now that I am finding my own source, my own community, how do I create a movement?’. Shaala is individual focused and United is community focused, लेकिन ecosystem उन दोनों के बीच में है, that is where the movement building happens. That is the work that we still need to do.”

Artika : “Doubt can look like sitting with the ‘not knowing’. Every time we do it, it is a new experience for all 3 of us, and it comes with its own anxieties and discomforts. The practice is to sit with these feelings and say ‘oh, this is what we are sensing’, and we move forward . Our service to this incredible group of people is to be able to do this. Openness comes from the ‘not knowing’ and accepting it.”

The ebb and flow of the Shaala process, from doubt into clarity, and from clarity back into doubt, is the essential quality that allows this space to feel conducive for community building. As Artika later mentioned, clarity is not an absolute that defines the end point of our Shaala journey. Clarity, much like alignment, is an abstract that starts eroding just as you feel like you have it in your grasp. The Shaala journey is a constant process of coming together and sensing, and moving forward with hope and a collective assurance. We find strength in approaching doubt together.

“Clarity is found in how it pans out across those 2 days, in the dance with the field that enters the picture. You see this group of people who show up for their own journeys but also for the journey of the collective that comes after. You can see how they step in to help one another, how they discuss ideas with people, how they stand by one another. The field is growing in ways both felt and unfelt.”

I remember standing next to Shivani, as all of us formed a circle, holding hands, in a final gesture of gratitude before leaving Muskaan. She said - “ऐसा लग नहीं रहा की अपन सब पहली बार मिल रहे हैं. This group has such good energy.”

From my own experience, for someone to have felt this, they must have sensed a good listener in each of us. That mysterious 4th level of listening that i remember being introduced to in the Shaala at Ranikhet has become so accessible, and so necessary. Our group makes it feel almost natural, and maybe that is how it must be.

Manish : “Our work is to help cultivate the heart. कभी कभी ऐसा लगता है कि we will develop partnerships in another lifetime. इस lifetime में यही करेंगे.”

As we were wrapping up our conversation, i asked Aditi, Artika and Manish what they were earnestly hoping for, for each of us, in the coming year.

Aditi: “I hope we get to spend more time together, just to ‘be’. An agenda-less space is so precious, there are very few spaces where you can just be, and nothing is expected of you in that duration.”

“One of the nicest memories of my life is when Sid, Sachi, Rohit, Sam and I stayed together, cooked together. I want to have more of those core memories with these people. Just ‘be’ around them.”

Artika: “To be a little braver than we have been. Find more courage to step into the unknown.”

Manish: “These are the people i can grow old with, and i want them to be healthy. It gives me a sense of joy to travel with this group. I hope we take care of ourselves. There is so much the world asks of us, that we ask of ourselves. I hope we make spaces where we can lean on each other.”

I stayed back in Bhopal for a couple of days after the Justicemaker’s Mela. It was around this time that i got to spend an evening with Abhay. We hadn’t had the chance to get to know one another prior to this, having met rather briefly at the Shaala United in 2023. It was agreed quite mutually that it would be nice to talk and probably see the city together. We were both clear about wanting to find a place that was quiet, away from the traffic and the crowds, having had our fair share of interactions across the entire duration of the Shaala United and the Mela. We decided to go to the Upper Lake and hire a boat for an hour.

As the boat was pushed away from the dock, slicing through the water, the noise of bustle along the boat club promenade started to dim, and my senses adjusted to the sound of the water lapping rhythmically against the side of the boat, the squawks and screeches of river terns and gulls. Abhay and i sat in silence, we didn’t speak for the entire duration that we were in the boat. Occasionally, the guide would try starting a conversation, but we would return to a state of polite disengagement, each of us suspended in the buoyant solitude of the lake. Time seemed to dilate, the dimming daylight being the only sign of its passage. When an hour had passed we felt reluctant to go back to the shore.

The making of these core memories, the nurturing of friendships, is such a beautiful way to build an ecosystem. It certainly is a movement in the works, and i sense its relevance in moments like this.

Afterword

What roeqin captures through his words and art is something best felt. And yet, we are deeply grateful for the care, thought, and heart he has poured into giving form to the Agamishaala experience.

What began as his quest to understand the act of curating and convening has revealed something deeper - how a field is quietly, intentionally built. In Agami’s case, it is the field of law and justice.

Agamishaala beats like a quiet heart within the larger body of Agami. It draws strength from, and gives strength to, the wider ecosystem of actors and ideas reimagining justice in India.

Here, we hold the justicemaker at the center - not as an abstraction, but as a living, questioning, evolving human being. In exploring the inner biases and questions that shape their outer work, and in seeing what unfolds when these individuals become a collective - a sangha - the field reveals itself. And with it, the discomfiting questions it asks of each of us.

In a world increasingly marked by uncertainty, perhaps our truest work is not to cling to what we know, but to lean into what we don’t. Doubt, in this context, is not a flaw—it is a gift. It affords us openness, humility, and a readiness to imagine differently. Field-building, in our experience, demands this kind of unguarded curiosity.

Trust, too, is not built in a moment. It emerges through recurring shared experiences - through the quiet rhythm of being together again and again, asking deeper questions each time. It is not forged in one-off events, but in the continuity of relationships that remember and respond.

In roeqin’s reflections, we were reminded that Shaala is not a fixed form - it is shaped, moment to moment, by the people within it. Their honesty, dissonance, fatigue, and wonder. A single question - “इस नए युग का आंदोलन कैसा होगा?” - can shift the very texture of our gathering. And in that moment, we glimpse not just ourselves, but the evolving field of justice calling to us all.

A note of thanks to the friends and guides who keep us honest as we learn to do this better. You know who you are.

Gratefully,

~ Artika on behalf of team Agami

Stakeholders here included changemakers, people without access, politicians, youth and capitalists/industrialists along with the highest possibility being the field of future which each of us imagined as a just world from our lens. By tuning into the wisdom of our body and its response to space, levels and proximity to other individuals part of the map, the exercise led to interesting insights. For instance, changemakers felt the closest proximity with capitalists as folks invested in stepping into the future; capitalists themselves felt that they were inclined to work with others and willing to offer resources should someone reach out to them; there was a deep discussion on dropping our own internal baggage with regard to the role we ascribe to capitalists and politicians and seeing the potential in them as stakeholders we should engage; youth’s connection to people without access was interestingly blocked by storytellers in the middle who saw themselves as bridges - much to deconstruct here as you can tell.

The tension, questions and sensations we were left with after the 4D Map found expression in the liberating expanse of a blank canvas, yet another medium for the body to communicate. The discovery and exploration of different media to both story-tell and facilitate has been a thread that has been unravelling over the past year. Beginning with the Scribe Documentation of the Ranikhet Shaala with Samarth, the role of art in its many forms and art-based exercises in the work that we do has been an area of excitement, interest and one that holds many possibilities. Samarth guided the group during Shaala United as we dove into the wonderfully messy world of crayons, charcoal, sketchpens, paint - taking us back to a childlike state of play and abandon.

Prof. Ajay Pandey (ED Clinical Programmes, OP Jindal University) described it as “a great way to unwind, while discovering the creative self in drawing and colours without the inhibitions of being judged. The session was especially unique for me as I never used this medium of expression after my school days. It also gave a sense of being pampered and cared for. Drawing and painting together was about bonding and creating something special that has the entire group in it – in colours, creativity, and expressions.”

The state of play and joy of discovery carried over to Anshul Tewari’s (Founder - Youth Ki Awaaz) workshop on building terrariums - a practice and interest that has taught him patience, gratefulness and understanding that change takes nurturing and nourishing. Through the exercise we were beckoned to see and create a self-sustaining ecosystem as we touched and felt each component that made it whole.

“I think it’s important for us to actually build something together (as small and light hearted as a terrarium) before we can activate the collective agency of a group to start initiatives together….on an individual level also I think it went a long way in showing that if you really care about something and nurture it - how attached you get to it!!!” - Smita Gupta, Co-Lead OpenNyAI

Participating collectively did more than create a shared memory of aspirational structures we all are seeking to build, it was a window into our peer's internal and personal processes of connecting dots and grounding - making this exercise particularly special. The terrarium was also evocative to many of the resilience and ingenuity of natural systems, as Ajay Pandey shares -

“In addition to being a fun filled engagement, it also provided an exposure to necessities of a forest and how to sustain it. Symbolically, our terrarium reminds us to invest small individual efforts in securing and sustaining our natural forests.”

Over the Shaalas this year and by the presence of members who bring the voice and voicelessness of the environment to our immediate awareness, there has gradually been a heightened sensitivity to the Earth, the largest soft container that holds our experiences. At the Baevu Agamishaala, adjoining the Bananthimari Reserve Forest in Bangalore, the sounds of the forest with birds and insects identified by Dr. Anish Andheria (CEO, Wildlife Conservation Trust) through the day, we felt the wild truly knock on our door. While at the Ranikhet Agamishaala, many of us felt in unforgettable ways the emotive qualities of the topography and geography of the place. The capaciousness of the mountains, the landscape unfolding around us, corners in the wilderness that beckoned one to come, sit, absorb, contemplate and reflect. There was a feeling of amplification of our thoughts, a protracted sense of pause and eventually a sinking in and oneness with all around.

In one of our later conversations, Lubhyathi Rangarajan (Researcher/Editor - Databases, Article 14) mentioned how post Shaala, her metaphors for the work she does has changed from a warship to now a garden - more gentle and nurturing.

The year had many moments when Community members took up pieces to hold, from bringing in experiences from their past or alternate lives to shoot and document the group's experience of Shaala, to extending their expertise at facilitating Circles to our convenings among many others - each moment offered us a glimpse into their relationship with this learning space and one another.

An important process we began was to frame our shared values as a group (one of our first endeavours as the community crossed 100) - during one of our calls was a round of articulating metaphors that each one of us associated with Shaala. The communal Aangan of a Haveli, an anthill, a large banyan tree, bhoot ke bache (dandelion), an animated college canteen, a patchwork quilt, a rainbow, water and its stillness and movement - these were some of the images and interpretations that emerged. This exchange revealed not just how we see Shaala now but our desires for where it could go and how we could navigate the onward journey.

Metaphors strengthen our connection with what is being analogously described, they are sensory - often accompanied by personal memories. We step into yet another year with this deepened connection and a deepened conviction towards our collective and individual journeys of change.

If I have to trace the trajectory of how the idea of this documentation began, it really was seeded by the intention that Manish, Artika, Samarth and I held - as people. This intention was fed most certainly by our roles as convenors, facilitators and witnesses of an experience but with it was also an equally potent reserve of what we were seeking for ourselves. It is deeply humbling to see how we sometimes create a little bit of what we are looking and yearning for. In the culmination and process of Samarth's scribe documentation 'It Takes a Village - हमारी रानीखेत की शाला' I'd like to believe there is ठेराव और प्यार, the first few steps towards the next field of play, a deep investment in the journey of the other and a negotiation of the self within the practice of a craft.

As we carried both collective and personal intent into the design of the 4th cohort of Agamishaala to be held at Ranikhet, it became increasingly clear that this edition needed a radically different way of capturing and playing-back what we do. Over the last few cycles, the videos that documented the experience were effective in communicating the premise of Shaala, offering a glimpse of the learning community it fosters and situating the role of this community in the larger movement of building justice solutions. Revisiting our guiding philosophy of the individual being a critical unit of change, we arrived at celebrating the members of the cohort on their changemaking journey, being witness to the shifts they are experiencing and holding space for the inquiries relevant to them as the purpose of this edition of documentation.

A series of serendipitous happenings led us to roping in Samarth (who goes by the pen name Roeqin) as a scribe - to participate and chronicle the process through his craft of building graphic narratives. The deliverable was an artefact for limited circulation within the group that would follow the journey we undertook over the three days and offer a reflection of each individual's experience within the larger collective. The freshness of the medium was exciting, so was the possibility it held to bring in a levity and provide a window to the intimacy, vulnerability and humour that brings a group to life. The explicitness of photographs and videos often becomes a limitation in spaces like Shaala where the invitation is to put aside inhibitions and performance. For a storyteller entering this space there is a constant dance between preserving the sanctity of it and capturing the activity - internal and external - within it. Samarth articulates how he navigated this dance and negotiated the dichotomy between self and collective in the following excerpts from the introduction of the book -

This book is supposed to be a collective memory that is documented and narrated by the scribe. You might ask, what is a collective memory? आप सोच रहे होंगे की collective memory, यह सामूहिक स्मृति, क्या चीज़ है? The collective after all is made up of individuals—समूह तो लोगो से ही बनता है , each with their own unique ways of feeling and perceiving. To add to that, the subjectivity of the author.

How much of it is my own understanding and how much is in the service of the collective?

I had seen the documentation of the previous few Shaalas, the feeling I got from them was that they were created for an ‘outsider’ looking ‘inside’—पिछले कुछ Shaala के documentation को देखकर, मुझे एहसास हुआ की वो बाहरी नज़रिए से अंतरुणी नज़ारा दिखा रहे थे. My intention as a scribe, then, was to change the tone of the documentation. I wanted to capture this Shaala as an ‘insider’ looking at ‘us’—मेरी इच्छा थी की अंतरुणी नज़रिए से मैं हम सब के अनुभव दिखा सकूँ.

… Each of our experiences contain learnings that are themselves mutating and maturing over time. It is no wonder की 4 दिन के इस सम्मेलन को जब collective memory के रूप में दर्शाया गया तो वो 70 pages बन गये —at its simplest. These multitudes don’t separate us. Instead, we find ourselves in each other’s experiences—हम ख़ुद को एक दूसरे के अनुभवों में ढूँढ सकते हैं. Even the pages that talk of one of us, contain learnings that would find resonance with every other member. Looking at the work now, I realise that as a participant-scribe, as a member of this village, as an insider looking at us, this story could not have been captured any other way. It seems like the entire process of becoming a village blurs the lines between the individual and the collective, the scribe and the participants—village की इस स्थापना  ने व्यक्ति और समूह के बीच का अंतर मिटा दिया.

This collective memory has truly come to resemble what I had hoped it to be—family photographs. कुछ जो हम सबने witness किए, कुछ जो सिर्फ़ एक जने ने witness किए, लेकिन यह स्मृति हमारे समूह की ही है —the ownership of these memories lies with the collective. That’s probably what collective memories are.

A memory is a snowball of many things. Samarth's documentation, in its collection and remembrance of the sounds, smells, environment, ambient presence of people and beings is a portal to a moment in time. It helped us, our group of 25, remember Shaala as a vivid and rich moment in time - which leaves us with more than just a residual trace of what surfaced then but a more real feeling of being back there. Each member is able to see themselves at a poignant juncture during those three days, one that held personal value for them.

For Manish, the chief facilitator at Shaala, this was a powerful reminder of the impact of social arts in the context of facilitation - the position of storytelling not just as an ancillary task but as an intrinsic part of design, as something that adds to it. It also brought within our purview the latent third facilitator - the space, its physical, topographical and emotive qualities and how it is a vessel for the experience.

In parallel, there was scribing being done by each member for themselves. It took the form of a calligraphy strewn journal for one, and a beautifully rendered artwork by another. The dance between individual and collective experiences playing out here too.

In Samarth, who held this role for the collective, is the artist’s interpretation and discernment. A way of seeing that revealed to us a different articulation of Shaala in a new language. The choice of using a bilingual script, Hinglish as we use it in common parlance, was a conscious effort to bring a core design principle into the playback of the shared journey, to truly honour the group in its entirety.

The Scribe documentation sits with us in our present, in the now, to bind us not just as change makers on parallel journeys but as a people whose paths intersected for a brief period of time. It sits to remind ourselves of ourselves, a version of us - aspirational, comforting and at times catalytic.

‘Working with brightly coloured blocks and stationary invites levity into the complex work of recreating a system.’ Nitesh Bhardwaj, Founder, Aadiwasi Janjagruti, talks about the exercise’s playfulness and how others’ observations helped him spot some obvious blind spots.

On a different note, A 3D Map does not seem too different from poetry in that much meaning is entrusted to very little. An A1 canvas that attempts to map an entire ecosystem or an even smaller A3 sun board to build the map of one’s current reality. Each element is alive— with its textures, dimensions, colours, contours, shadow, position, and space around it. Ice cream sticks placed head to head are a bridge— a connection; when they are wedged into the dough and stand upright alongside one another, they are a wall— a separation. From model to model, foam butterflies take on a different life— children in one, ideas in another and hope in the next.

In a version of this exercise, attempted as groups, each mapping a sub-ecosystem within the justice space, the perspectives and conversations that emerged from collectively creating the current reality of the members’ work were rich in insights. For some, the ensuing discussions brought a sharper clarity on their role and voice; for others, it offered many immediate insights that have translated to shifts in perspective, movement of ideas and changes in ways of working. The exercise culminated with identifying the question their model posed to them— one group surfaced the question of how accountable systems could be built from active citizenship; another model prompted a more fundamental inquiry on how societies can be encouraged to respect and value truth-telling. Building the field together created an awareness of the people and parties it is composed of; the model provided an aerial view of who is where, what is moving and what is coming in the way. For Erica Arya, the India Head of Project Tech4Dev, this led her to think beyond her individual boundary. “As change-makers, to achieve our collective vision for the sector, sustainable and scalable change must encompass the entire system. This realisation marked a pivotal moment for me, I understood the importance of thinking and acting at a systems level,” she reflected.

As much as a poem is literary, isn’t it visual too? Lines breaking to spill into the next, sometimes just a word by itself sufficient— the arrangement of text, how we see it, is instructive of how to read it, showing us when to pause and punctuate. The spatial relationship between characters, words, stanzas, the body and the white of the paper— all gently guide our reading. Similarly, the 3D model establishes spatial and relational relationships not just on the canvas and among the elements within it, but also between the individual and the model itself— the elevation at which one views the system and the direction from which one observes it. This aspect of orientation was profoundly impactful for Praveen Kumar.

Praveen Kumar, Co-Founder, Law Foundation mentions how changing the direction of viewing the 3D map brought a new perspective.

In a follow-up conversation a few weeks after the offline retreat concluded, Praveen mentions being able to see the stakeholders of his ecosystem— District Legal Service Authority (DLSA), courts, and prisons, among others— from different directions as being exceptionally powerful. An example he shared was how they used to wait for the jail superintendent’s permission to operate within the prison; the work then became contingent on an individual, making it a slow process. Seeing the representative DLSA building in his direct line of sight when he viewed the 3D model from a different position led to a shift in perspective. He realised that the DLSA, which works inside prisons and has the authority to introduce programs, could be a great ally in navigating this space. By speaking to the DLSA official about his work, he was able to align with them on his mission, and they offered to ease the approval process by letting the prison authorities know of his work from their end!

The mapping of a system often surfaces aspects of one’s personal journey and relationship with the field of work.

Prathamesh Kalamkar, Data Scientist at ThoughtWorks, shares how a shift in perspective about certain aspects of his role within the ecosystem came from collectively mapping it. The representation of the system as a vehicle with square wheels reinforced the fact that it is made up of many, many stakeholders and that he is only one fraction of it. All four wheels need to be circular for it to move, and he needs to show up with his bit and trust the often slow process of everyone arriving with the right parts at the right time. Prathamesh moved from the point of view of wanting to change the system to seeing that he belongs within it, and this led to a recalibration of his personal energy. The questions he was asking of himself and the legal tech space still persist but aren’t a cause of frustration anymore.

For some, like Prathamesh, it is in visualising and discovering metaphors that communicate a certain stuckness one has been sensing— like a simile where the analogy is immediately apparent. The metaphor consequently offers a certain degree of resolution to the actual situation.

For others, like many in the 2022 Cohort who built personal maps of their then-current reality, absence was a recurring theme— an absence of what they assumed were priorities, sometimes even an absence of themselves in their own models. The realisation that they were confronted with was a need for balance.

Regardless of the variations in the format of the 3D map, it has the ability to leave a lasting imprint. The image of Himanshu’s model (Himanshu Panday, Co-founder, Dignity in Difference, from the 2022 Cohort) still sits strongly in his consciousness. Over time one gets used to applying a certain faculty— often the intellectual— to navigate our experiences. The disruption that the tactile and visual medium created in his sense-making process led him to see and feel the journey he had mapped more deeply, thereby building an understanding closer to being whole.

We probably can’t vouch for everyone taking back a richer, fuller understanding of themselves and their work, but they sure do leave with a tad more colourful memory of it.

Editor’s Note: This Spoken Word poetry was created by six members of the 2021 cohort of Agamishaala. A special Shaala that ran online as the Second Wave of the pandemic engulfed us all, it is the group’s response to how they thought of reimagining our justice system. One that is empathetic and aims to heal. It was shared in the closing circle of Shaala that year.

These powerful words bring to life a world visible and invisible from each of their vantage points:

Swapnil Shukla, from Zenith Society for Socio-Legal Empowerment

Shabani Hassanwalia, from Third Eye 

Avanti Durani, from Artha Global

Jhanavi Jayanth, working at the intersection of mental health, social justice and education

Swagata Raha, from Enfold Proactive Health Trust

Shivani Singh, working on building digital security solutions

They brought promises of hope, they came with inspiration

We stayed where we were - is this our fate?

Do I cease to be a child because I have done the unspeakable?

Do I have to bear the cross of justice and send my father to the gallows?

Do I not have the right to love because I am not an adult?

I am a protector, but who protects me?

I am responsible, but do I act responsibly?

As I support others, who supports me?

As I build networks, where is mine?

I am unheard by you, and you are unheard by me

Does my reality threaten yours?

I am so much more than the labels you have slapped on me,

I cannot be reduced to the worst thing I have done or experienced,

I am who I am because of those unlike me,

I am defined by the contours of differences between you and me,

I am in everyone, everyone is in me.

So, what is the point of “othering”?

Is there anyone who has never hurt or harmed?

How can I be humane if there is no humanity for me?

Who has the final say, to govern all lives,

I am in everyone, everyone is in me.

Let’s listen and bear witness

Put our ears on the ground and soak the wisdom around us,

Invert the knowledge flow,

Investigate the ‘I’,

Build evidence around what works and doesn’t,

Hold space for difficult conversations,

Be empathetic and inclusive,

Be willing to unlearn,

Show up no matter how hard it gets,

Speak up, especially when silence is the norm.

The Justice system must understand those it is meant for,

It is time to bring the ‘margins’ to the centre,

To share the mic,

To harness the wisdom that already exists,

To create a space to learn from within and without,

To be conscious of our own power and privilege,

To break down barriers and challenge prejudices,

To build unlikely communities, discover unlikely leaders,

To bring different injustices and realities to the fore,

To question the power that doesn’t empower,

To turn the structures inside out,

It is time to reimagine justice beyond the binaries of right and wrong.

In tomorrow’s world,

Structures will not freeze like ice,

But respond and flow like water.

Identities will be respected,

Not targeted.

Power will be exercised “with”,

And not “over”.

Justice will grow beyond fairness.

In tomorrow’s world,

Justice will blend with healing.

“You’ve gone out to travel but haven’t put that into a process. In the sense that I will travel for four days, eat two times a day, make sure tickets are in place, etc. There is a whole lot to list. You will do all this, which is a part of the process, but you will not do it as a process. But, for me, that is learning- when I put that entire experience into a process.”

The journey and methods of how people learn have always fascinated me. This interest has led me to some of the rich conversations in my life. One such is with Osama Manzar, a traveller of more than 10,000 villages across India, the founder of the Digital Empowerment Foundation and resident and curator of various learning spaces.  

Osama has recently been a part of the Agamishaala that was held in the mountains of Ranikhet. There, he had penned a journal in his beautiful calligraphy, words, thoughts, and art that captured how he sees the space, his learnings, his feelings, and the people, which almost became the map that guided our conversation. 

The journal, he says, captures his process of visual thinking. “I started thinking that everything that you are discussing or doing, if you put it into a visual mode, then the articulation becomes better, short and divine. So that is the exercise put into the journal.” He mentions that he will be doing the same for our conversation and had indeed sat for the conversation with sketch pens in hand and a blank canvas bag (picture at the start of the article).

“Learning is not a skill. It is an approach or attitude- driven by your heart and your humility” is what it takes to be a Lifelong learner, says Osama.  He continues, “So let’s say during the interaction between you and me, there is a lot of age difference, but that doesn’t mean I cannot learn from you. But if you look at the physicality of learning, it will look like, ‘Oh, you have so much experience, and she doesn’t, so obviously she is going to learn, and you are going to be the teacher’. But that is not the case. Learning can take place at any moment, anytime, anywhere, in any situation. What I am saying is one cannot learn just by thinking that one knows more than anybody else or one is interacting where they can only give.” In this context, he also mentions that more than any learning space, his children and young people have been his most significant source of learning. Children don’t plan; they think in ways that have not been boxed or pre-designed and have a natural flow and creativity that forms a great scope for growth.

Osama insists that nothing is wasted once one has clarity on why they are pursuing their learning journey. Even if the goal is as simple as being inspired to be better and having that willingness to be in a constant process of wanting to understand, this approach of humility towards learning is also what allows us to be able to stay silent and listen. How often does one think about keeping silent or doing nothing as a learning medium? “So, let’s say, if we take the example of Agamishaala, we were around twenty people. And we participated in individual reflections. So in that reflection, I am learning that the longer I am silent, the more I am learning from the reflection of others. When you wait for long in silence and listen, there is a possibility that somebody would have shared the same reflection as you might be thinking, so then by silence, you have done everything, so you just have to say ‘ditto’. I don’t need to repeat. But yes, we should also have the clarity that if what you want to say has not been spoken, toh zaroor boliye (then, definitely say). If that is the attitude, then in this one single moment, there are five learnings– Learning how to be patient, how to allow others to speak, to listen, to not repeat or say the same thing, and learning how to give rather than take.” 

We continue this train of conversation when we talk about the practice of embodiment at Shaala, where one tunes into the data and wisdom in one’s own body, which he calls ‘a zabardast (great) learning experience’. 

“We had to design and plan our Village (an embodiment practise at Shaala, Manish Srivasatava, the Chief Facilitator, facilitates). It was clearly getting projected that someone was a bureaucrat, someone was running a city, someone was responsible for spreading pollution, someone was talking about building peace and love, someone was doing business, entrepreneurship, whatever, and all of this came out through embodiment.” He believes it is a great way of internalising the learning. One can learn faster and better by placing themselves in the shoes of the various players in a governance structure and embodying their work and its challenges. He feels this would be a great value addition to learning in educational institutes and even within different organisations.

Challenges, Osama says, are great moments of learning. There is learning even in situations where one feels stuck. One of his journal pages has these very curious words penned, “Are you stuck, congrats!” I ask what made him write that.

“...What I am saying is if you firmly believe that whatever happens is happening for good, then your mind is ready to go further and become hopeful. Even in my journey, there has been an era of darkness, but even then, at that time, I was never negative. So that’s why everywhere I feel that you are stuck, so congrats, that means you need to be stuck. You need to introspect, you need to listen, and you need to hear yourself. That is very important. Do you know how to listen to yourself?” 

So, how does one listen to themselves, I ask.

He instantly asks me my age. Curious, I tell him. He goes on to say people my age come to him a lot, confused about their future, career and the direction they should take. He mentions that there are always two voices around us, one very loud and clear; and the other subtle but just as insistent. It is the outer voice that is so loud and clear and visually very rich and attractive, but the inner voice that gives you peace, tranquillity and everything. Osama describes the ‘outer voice’ as the voice of the people around you that tell you what you should be doing, how you should be living, etc.; the inner voice talks just to you. “Ye inner voice aapke mann ko bolti hai, aapko bolti hai, lekin aap agar usko nhi sunenge to woh loudness uska aapko samajh nhi aayega, but agar aap usko baar baar sunenge, to sirf ussi ki hi sunenge.” (This inner voice just talks to your mind, but if you don’t listen, you won’t understand its loudness, but if you do listen, you will only listen to it).

However, he admits that listening to yourself is not easy. The cacophony of the outside world may drown out the voice, and your inner voice may force you to confront unpleasant truths. “But,” he continues, “If we say agree that we do not like what our inner voice says, if it is not loud and clear, if it doesn’t suit you, then why do we like the words of Rumi, why do we like the words of our scriptures or folk music, why do we like the music from someone whose language we don’t understand, you know?”

Nature can help, though. Like what made his learning experience in Ranikhet special, “... there was a speechless curation here… if you come here, then aate hi aapka gussa thanda ho jayega (your anger calms down automatically), you won’t speak too much, you’ll see, you’ll listen, you’ll breathe, and you’ll feel, creating an ideal state of learning with an open mind.”

(Osama’s captures of moments from Agamishaala ’23 ©Osama Manzar)

This is a snippet from my chat with him.

For the uninitiated, the idea of AI’s application in law and justice isn’t new. It stems from the old ideas that have already existed around legal automation, i.e. that repetitive legal processes can be automated. The industrial revolution, really. 

It’s a subject that clearly excites my colleague, Saurabh. One can tell by how he moves closer to the laptop to tell me more. He’s recently been featured in a news article on his work with AI in Bangalore, and the shy grin when you bring it up is infectious.

He continues.

Machine learning has recently advanced significantly due to large datasets, powerful computing hardware, and open-source software becoming available. Geoffrey Hinton’s contributions, including the backpropagation algorithm in the 1980s and the introduction of transformers in 2017, revolutionised neural networks. These developments have enabled the training of large neural networks on massive datasets, leading to solving previously impossible problems. 

From Curiosity to Collaboration

Where does that connect with the legal AI work he and his team have been hammering away at as part of the OpenNyAI mission, I ask. 

In the case of legal AI, he says a lot of work was done by academia. In India, various technical institutions also conducted research and development, creating models and evaluation criteria. Something that we saw happening largely in a commercial setting previously.

Spend just minutes with him, and you will know that curiosity is Saurabh’s driving force. As a student at his engineering college, he bunked classes to attend classes on other subjects. He tells me of the time he decided to work in the chemistry lab of the Energy Department, tinkering with polyaniline— a chemical material to make many things like superconductors, actuators etc. It’s a toxic material, he adds. So he worked on making it green. And was successful. “Kaafi fun tha (Was a lot of fun)” is how he describes it. That’s how Saurabh describes most things, actually. The happy accident (think cloudy chem lab explosions et al.) that led to its making is one that he shares with barely disguised glee. 

As he leans back into his chair, he contemplates, “Duniya kaise kaam karti hai, pata karna hai (How does the world function, that’s what I want to find out)”. If he got it tattooed somewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised, given the intrepid discoverer he is. And once something catches his fancy, he really gets into it. From AI to well, cycling. During the lockdown, he picked up cycling as a hobby— ran with it more likely, because just within the month, he’d covered 500 km in Delhi. 

An engineer by training but a teacher at heart (he is a TFI-ite* through and through), it was while working on the National Education Policy as part of Central Square Foundation (CSF) that he started looking at the law. Policymakers need to look at the law, and that’s what opened this field to him, he mentions. His biggest inspiration to work in law and justice, though, he says, is the movie Legally Blonde. I guffaw at this. So he explains.

The movie, he says, showed him that it doesn’t matter where one came from. “See, she might have gotten into it for the wrong reasons, but she wins her final court case because of her knowledge of chemicals used in a hair perm. Anyone can do anything using logic”, he carries on enthusiastically. At one point, he also attempted the LLB exam at Delhi University while he continued working at CSF. He also looked at getting a Juris Doctorate abroad and was especially intrigued by the work being done at CODEX, Stanford at the time—  a plugin that pulled on many housing laws to create a physical house model for you that fit the legal criterion. The law made ready to use for a citizen, or as he started mulling - is the law a high-frequency use case for citizens?!

Exploring Challenges and Discovering Solutions

With a colleague who was just out of Harvard, he started exploring the idea of working on legal datasets. That went nowhere. They had no legal expertise. Around this time, in 2019, he happened to chance upon a webinar on unlocking the full potential of legal data hosted by Sachin Malhan from the Agami team. Vivek Raghavan, of the UIDAI team that gave the country Aadhar, was part of that panel.

A few months on, Saurabh sent Sachin a message on Linkedin:

“I am keen on starting something in the field of legal tech, potentially in the field with a focus on NLP. I had a chance to see the Learning from Startups video on Agami's youtube channel, and one thing that remained with me is something that you had said - For the next 15-20 years there will be enough room for players in this space. I am keen on getting into the field albeit my understanding of Law is limited. I was wondering if you would be open to providing some guidance on how to approach this.”

Cut to a few months later when Saurabh actually ended up joining the Agami team as part of the open data mission in law and justice. A collaborative effort was underway to build Justice Hub as a repository of clean and usable legal datasets. As part of it, the team launched ‘Summer of Data’ - a 4-week program for crowdsourcing data by working with 65 law students. He calls the experience “savage”. 

He says law students are no easy group to handle, but working with them brought him new learnings, especially through the expert talks he curated as part of the program. They opened Pandora’s box to much more. He goes on, “Lack of judgment-related data, private publishers having copyright over the formatting of judgements, pendency, hiring of judges— all these were recurrent themes. Even to show that there is no data, needed data— and working with these students allowed us to do that”. Three years since, the high demand for that work has proved to him the need and also what shared success with a community looks like. Many of the same students have continued working on other things with him. Speaking to students who he says don’t have the baggage of the past and can ask obvious questions is what he finds most fun - “Seasoned lawyers will not ask the questions on why some things exist or don’t like the way they do.” 

Collaborative Making and Future Curiosities

It’s in these things and a way of working that he finds he operates best. Since 2022, as part of OpenNyAI, where he works with multiple experts and entrepreneurs in the field, he is quick to point out that what really works for him is the peer-to-peer work culture where they are all organised around the idea, rather than who is the organiser. “We call out each other’s silly ideas but also listen. These are, to me, the core ingredients of a collaboration that can sustain. We’re all makers at heart.” 

And they have been up to some serious making. Last December, Jugalbandi was launched publicly at the Agami Summit. That it has exploded since would be an understatement. Satya Nadella spoke of it during his visit to India in January 2023, and in May, this was featured at the mecca for developers globally - Microsoft Build 2023. An internal joke for team Agami is the jugalbandi between Saurabh and Smita, both of whom get a somewhat crazy glint in their eye every time AI and its possible use cases come up in a conversation—mirrored by Sachin (the three of them work the most closely on this). However, he does a better job of playing it cool.   

In what Saurabh is curious about in the weeks ahead, his answer is pretty straightforward, “First, how can we make citizen’s lives easier using a Jugalbandi-like stack which is powering multiple use cases across organisations? Secondly, I am very curious about the role Large Language Models (LLMs)  will play in legal product designs. Thirdly, how regulatory and legislative orders can be more efficiently disseminated. We are working on a few experimental reference solutions of AI in the form of Jugalbandi powered stack - JIVA, Jagrit etc.” 

Suffice it to say that there is a lot in the works that is keeping him and his team busy and excited. Because “Fundamentally hum curiosity driven log hain”, Saurabh concludes. For now. 

To connect with Saurabh or learn more about his work with OpenNyAI, write to him at saurabh@agami.in.

This article first appeared on the Project Tech4Dev blog by Erica Arya, the India Head of Project Tech4Dev. You can read the original here.

When I made the decision to attend Agamishaala 2023, I knew I was embarking on a journey into the unknown, guided more by my trust in the Agami team who was organising the event. The venue for the Shaala was nestled amidst the serene hills of Ranikhet; the location was just perfect for introspection and growth. Over the course of four days, I discovered new aspects of my personality and learned valuable lessons about collaboration, systems thinking, and self-reflection.

As I entered the gathering of close to twenty-five individuals, primarily from the law and justice space, I questioned how I, representing a technology-focused organisation in the social sector, could contribute to this group. With minimal exposure to law and justice, I felt a sense of uncertainty. However, I decided to embrace the process wholeheartedly, recognising the potential for self-development and contributing to the group to the best of my knowledge and capacity.

The journey began with introspection, shifting focus from the mind to the body through the twenty-minute Body Dance session. During this exercise, I relinquished control of my body, allowing it to guide my movements instead of my mind. This simple act of surrender revealed a deeper truth – that the mind often governs the body, but when the roles reversed temporarily, both my body and mind experienced a sense of liberation. This introspection offered valuable insights into collaboration, highlighting the significance of giving up control and allowing others to contribute in their own unique ways.

Next, we transitioned from the individual self to the collective social body in a group exercise. In groups of four and then five, without speaking, we simply observed and acknowledged each other’s actions, roles and the dynamics that emerged. Through this exercise, I gained awareness of my personality traits and the power of empathy and understanding in building connections and fostering collaboration.

One particularly impactful session was the 3D modelling exercise done on the third day, which encouraged me to think beyond my individual boundary. As change-makers, to achieve our collective vision for the sector, sustainable and scalable change must encompass the entire system. This realisation marked a pivotal moment for me; I understood the importance of thinking and acting at a systems level.

Under the guidance of our facilitator, Manish, we delved into the power of listening and the significance of silence. The space between listening and reacting, where silence prevails, allows for the birth of new insights and deeper understanding. This realisation highlighted the transformative potential of active listening and a receptive mindset when trying to understand.

A pivotal moment for me was the fresh perspective I gained on the age-old saying, “To know where the shoe pinches, you need to get into those shoes.” The added insight from “taking off your own shoes before getting into others” emphasised the importance of removing our own biases and preconceptions before truly stepping into someone else’s shoes. This fresh start enables us to approach situations with a willingness to understand without judgement and empathy.

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Agami team for ideating something like the Shaala and organising it with such perfection. The sessions provided such invaluable insights for me.

As I reflect on the four days I spent with my fellow Shaalaites ’23, I am filled with a renewed sense of purpose and determination to contribute to the sector meaningful.

Wishing the team at AgamiShaala— Sachin, Supriya, Artika, Aditi and Manish the very best for future Shaalas.

1. 20 minute dance, for tuning your self/instrument as Manish puts it, through practise. Watch and learn about the practise from its creator, visual artist, Arawana Hayashi, here.

   If you'd like to learn how to conduct it yourself, refer to this here.

2. 3D Modelling/Sculpting, a way of understanding your current reality/system and seeing emerging possibilities. About the exercise and how to do it, here.

3. Stuck excercise, the process by which one experiences going through the whole U journey by moving from Sculpture 1 (current reality) to Sculpture 2 (emerging future). About the exercise along with downloadable instructions, here.

4. 4D Mapping, which makes visible the current reality in a social system, such as the criminal justice system, dispute resolution system and other such. Used with groups who are looking to gain new insights about their own system and with case givers who have a case they want to explore using this method. About the excercise along with downloadable instructions, here.

5. Guided Journaling, which invites practitioners into a process of self-reflection. The journaling questions too follow the U-process. More about it along with a list of questions, here.

Hope these are helpful. And if you would like to practise these together, do reach out and we'd be more than happy to help.