Jamia Students Present a Play at the India International Center

The Public Health Foundation of India, under the aegis of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, organized a festival on mental health entitled “Uniting Hearts and Minds: A festival of creative expressions on mental health.”

The event was held at the India International Center in New Delhi, on Monday, Oct. 10, 2011.

The festival was held to create awareness for mental health through panel discussions, documentary screenings and student performances.

One of the student performances included a play by the first year Mass Communication students from the AJK Mass Communication Research Center titled “Mere Umar Ke Naujawano.”

The play dealt with rage and it’s manifestation in society in the form of domestic abuse, vandalism, road-rage and such.

The play starts off with a scene of a home in which a young child in traumatized by the sound of his parents quarreling and yelling at each other. Then later at a different stage of his life he gets picked on at school by school bullies. All of this trauma as child results in this youth turning into an antisocial element  which he exhibits in the form of vandalizing public property and taking part in street brawls.

The message of the play was that violence and anger is a vicious cycle. If you don’t stop it, it will perpetuate itself from one generation to another. And the only way to break this cycle of rage and violence is by overcoming it with compassion.

Priyanka, one of the actors in the play said, “We chose aggression and violence because it is the most common issue, and it’s kind of a mental issue … and our play as you could see was centered around a little kid and it started at home and as he goes outside it spreads outside … if you don’t break the chain it continues … and all you can do to stop it, is with a little bit of love.”