Dear Friends,
In the early days of my first job with a Bangalore based NGO that worked on urban ecology and development issues, I remember asking the founder why he chose to do the work he did. It was a small organisation with limited resources. Often each of us, its few employees working on small salaries, would find ourselves stretched trying to respond to everything from basic administrative issues to field visits to doing research, showing up for events, filing all sorts of paperwork and what not. Some days I would get that Kafkaesque feeling of treading through endless corridors, chasing an issue from one room to the other to the third and somehow seemingly winding up in the same place where I had begun. So the query to my old boss came from a place of wanting meaning midst chaos, needing to know again why this work was significant. I remember he turned, smiled, gazed at me a second and then simply asked, “Well this is my home, what else do I fight for?”
Strangely, almost two decades later as we began TCC, this straight-forward statement defined the why of our organisation too. As people born and brought up in Indian cities – having scraped knees on its footpaths, played on her many street corners and listened to the mild electric thrum of the city as we fell asleep each night – at the heart of TCC is the dream to reclaim our cities from a harmful dominant narrative leading to their increasing state of crisis. On most days this feels like an unimaginable idea. How does one little individual dare to dream so big? Yet what our two years of collecting conversations and stories has taught us is that many amongst us already have been daring to not just dream but also do – with profound results! Season one was as much a hope building and learning exercise for the three of us here at TCC, as it was an exercise to share that hope and light more candles and torches.
As we release the first episode of Season 2, we continue on this endeavour. Thank you for being with us thus far and sharing this dream.
In season two we explore further the many facets of well-being – what it takes to go beyond the mere idea of economic development to truly build systems and spaces which are healthy and support the well-being of all. In August we explore our individual and collective relationship with work, attempting to engage with the many questions that the pandemic has thrown up and brought light to. We hope you continue to stay engaged and join us in this journey of transformational change.
Warmly,
Arpita
(Team TCC)