Great thanks to poets, speakers, audience, sponsors, volunteers and supporters of the Urdu Hindi poetry session on pluralism

Thanks to the audience, participants, poets, speakers, organizers, sponsors, volunteers and panelists for their effort, support, enthusiasm and the energy to stay through the event.  The program did start ten minutes ahead of time at 7:50 PM,  and closed at 11:30 PM as scheduled. With your support we can regain the tradition of respecting the time and starting and closing the Mushaeras/ Sammelans on time.  

URL - http://urduhindimushaeraonpluralism.blogspot.com/2013/06/great-thanks-to-poets-speakers-audience.html

We thank each one of you for making this program successful in sowing the seeds of pluralism in our thoughts, minds, and consciously making it a part of our thinking in our day to day life. It is a good beginning, and a small step in respecting the otherness of others, but a giant leap for the those who always had their hearts open, but had not found a medium to express it. Indeed, the air was filled with the energy of pluralism. We applaud you for taking this step. 

The documentary on the Pluralism in poetry, the pictures, the reports and the book will be out as soon as possible.  We missed doing the interviews for the documentary, and we will do that after July 4th. Let us know if you can make it.

If you have a poetry that reflects Pluralism in culture, politics, religion, society, customs, familial relationships and other aspects of life, please share, some of it will go into the book and some to the website. Your esteemed comments and hope will make it to the book and the site.

Pluralism is simply an attitude of respecting the otherness of others and accepting the God given uniqueness of each one of us.  It is about doing our share of work in creating societies where no one has to be nervous, apprehensive or fearful of the others. 

If any one of you is planning to write a report about the program, we will share it here on this site at this time. You are welcome to write your comments here.

Dr. Qaisar Abbas will be writing a report. His opening and closing statements were incredible, and reflected the ideals of this poetry session, he addressed the nature and purpose of the program and had summarized it very well. Dr. Raghunath Singh' scholarly study on Pluralism was exciting to hear, it is the same energy being reflected in research as well as the common man's life - to communicate and get along. Shabnam Modgil's poem that she starts her daily Radio program is pluralistic indeed. We thank the panelists for their wisdom. I will be compiling the report as well, this is the initial report. 

Our team's enthusiasm and moral support for each other is worth emulating. Each one of us contributed to the success of the event, and we need to thank each other for the support.

The most exciting thing for me personally was that our esteemed poets focused and wrote on the theme, it’s not only here in Dallas, but Dr. Kalia Humdum, a Pakistani Canadian, Dr. Teja Singh from India wrote incredible poetry. Fateh Ali Chatur delivered Dr. Chakradhar poem flawlessly. Dr. Hashmi, Hillol Ray and Dr. Rosho's poems were mentioned but will be included in the booklet. As an MC of the program,  I could not include Nishi Bhatia’s poem due to the flow of the program, indeed, I skipped many of the anecdotes I wanted to share about Pluralism. All the poets were incredible.

Our long term plan is make this theme to become a household theme in the next ten years. One day, it will be reflected in the movie songs, Kavi Sammelans' and Mushaera's - and gradually germinate into other languages. A decade from now, you can take pride in seeding a thought that you invested in nurturing a culture of inclusiveness, co-existence and pluralism. Would you be willing to propagate this idea, and willing to spend your time? 

Who does not want to live in a world where there is less conflicts and acceptance of each other for whatever we look like, talk like, wear like, believe like? Shouldn't we do something about it? Here is one such small step that you can do on your own or join us in walking together.

Everyone on the list spoke except Dr. Basheer Ahmed, and we will have him write for all of us to hear him out, its a great anecdote.  Dr. Shamsa Qureshi's inclusion was not planned but accidental and was good. My poetry would not have been read, had we not managed our time effectively. There were two of our friend poets who wanted to recite in the last minute, but I guess they did not realize we had finalized the program a week ahead of the date and there was simply no room to add them, unless we dropped someone, and that would have been the wrong thing to do. Everyone in the town was asked to participate, not once, but at least thrice and a few over 7 times on the theme, and thank everyone who wrote the poetry and spoke on Pluralism.

We also thank Naheed Shad, she is the one of the four poets and speakers in this entire program who did what she said she would do without follow up, the other three are Saeed Qureshi, Shah Alam Qureshi and Fateh Ali Chatur with two follow ups each. If there was no information with the name on the slide presentation,  it was because we failed in getting the information.  We have made at least seven follow ups to every one, and only one call to Naheed. We appreciate this and honor you, Mrs. Naheed Shad for respecting our call and ask you to be on the Panel in the next Mushaera with a special permission in behalf of our team.

We thank the sponsors (Desi alphabetical order):  Dr. Basheer Ahmed, Shri DD Maini, Desi Roots school of Indian Music and Hindi by Anand Punjabi,  FunAsia Center -  in Kind, Irfan Ali, Javed Rashid, Javed Samuell Gill, Rashid Jetpuri, Mani Rahman of Rahman Financials, Mike  Ghouse, Dr. Qaisar Abbas, Syed Moeenuddin. We have collected a sum of $ 1525 v projected expenses $2000. To complete the book and documentary, we need more funding. All the funding over $100.00 will be listed in the book as supporters.

We encourage you to donate at: http://americatogetherfoundation.com/donate/
Foundation for Pluralism is a part of the America Together Foundation.

Thank God, every one delivered the message beautifully - and it was a delight to observe and admire the humility in our poets, each one of them was focused on sharing his or her message.

My apologies for not following the Mushaera/ Sammelan tradition to the letter, as I was focused on the message. Next time around, we have to increase poet/speaker's time to 6 minutes and plan on fewer items, and hope to do the program in two and a half hours with 20 items. It will be on time. 

Thanks to FunAsia for the live broadcast, tea and pakoras, thanks to Zia Khan for the pictures and thanks to Vijay Gurow for filming the event. Thanks to AG Chini and Amin Tirmizi for the interview on their shows and thanks to Shabnam for the announcements on FunAsia Radio.

We thank John Hammond, Farrukh Hamid and Shabnam Modgil of FunAsia for their dream to bring the communities together, indeed that is a similar to the dream of all of us - bringing the communities together, getting along, minding our own business and doing our share of good. 

Above all thanks to the audience, whose presence was mighty encouragement to us, they sat through the end of the program. I have the registration information and will send them an email to thank them.

We thank the following poets, speakers, sponsors, volunteers and organizers.

1. Dr. Qaisar Abbas
2. Dr. Raghunath Singh
3. Shabnam Modgil
4. AG Chini
5. Amin Tirmizi
6. Anand Punjabi
7. Dr. Harbans Lal
8. Irfan Ali
9. Javed Samuell Gill
10. Noor Amrohvi
11. Dr. Basheer Ahmed
12. Shri D D Maini
13. FunAsia
14. Javed Rashid
15. Mani Rahman
16. Farooq Wazir Ali
17. Syed Moeenuddin
18. Zia Khan
19. Vijay Gurow
20. Dr. Kundawala
21. Amer Suleman
22. Dr. RajKumar
23. Dr. Teja Singh
24. Ashok Chakradhar
25. Fatehali Chatur
26. Dr. B. D. Kalia Humdum
27. Ahmed Rahi
28. Rehmat Raza
29. Kundan Sharma
30. Shah Alam Siddiqui
31. Zohra Chisti
32. Dr. Taj Hashimi
33. Dr. Ravi Kumar Rosho
34. Hillol Ray
35. Naheed Shad
36. Saeed Qureshi
37. Tariq Hashmi
38. Younus Ijaz

. . . . .

A big thank you from the team, if you could, please share your comments here at  this link:

http://urduhindimushaeraonpluralism.blogspot.com/2013/06/great-thanks-to-poets-speakers-audience.html#comment-form

The team: Dr. Qaisar Abbas, Dr. Raghunath Singh, Shabnam Modgil, Irfan Ali, Amin Tirmizi, AG Chini, Dr. Harbans Lal, Anand Punjabi, Noor Amrohvi, Javed Samuell Gill and Mike Ghouse