When the guest list of an event features Kollywood royalty like Mani Ratnam and wife Suhasini, actresses Revathi, Shobhana and singer-performer Shruti Haasan, one wouldn't expect the programme to be not related to the cinema industry. But that was the case on Saturday (July 21), when these stars got together under the roof of the grand banquet hall of the latest boutique resort to launch on ECR, Sheraton Grand Resort & Spa (to be launched on July 28).
The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the Chennai-based organisation The Banyan, one of the oldest NGOs in the city that looks after homeless mentally-ill women and provides them with shelter and means of living. Currently servicing in three Southern states, The Banyan is regarded as a unique organisation that looks at the all-round mental well-being of their patients, and has benefited thousands of women over the past two decades.
The three-hour long celebratory programme featured the launch of two books - The Psychological Impact of Partition in India and Like A Girl: Reel stories for tough kids. It was followed by talks by dignitaries like Vijay Narayan (Attorney General, TN), J Radhakrishnan (Health Secretary, TN), Nachiket Mor (Director of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, India) and others. Mani Ratnam and ace photographer Venket Ram launched a photobook with stories of survivors, while Revathi and Ranvir Shah co-hosted the programme.
In the end, it was the turn of Shruti Haasan to steal the show. The actress, who was accompanied by her sister Akshara at the event, started with a piece of spoken word poetry, followed by a few originals by her band, and covers of songs by legends like Kurt Cobain and John Lennon.
Shruti Hassan's soulful performance at the celebrations! #BANYAN25
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Below is the poem:
You’ve could’ve looked right through
Right through the centre of me
Right through into a dense greed
Fill it up like the words to a nursery rhyme
With anything you find
Liquid skin and smoke
Filling right through
Right through the centre of me
It’s sinking and staying afloat
It’s searching in the dark room
At the bottom of the ocean
For the keys
Hoping that a word a touch
A whisper or a hug
Would drown out the silence
Of the hole that went right through me
You could still look right through me
Maybe not as much
Maybe not in the same ways
I’ve been told
But we all have one thing in common stranger
That varied needy black hole
Always pleading for more
Fill it in or let it be
Succumb or succeed
Watch and weep like you do with flowers
Tip toe around like kinder garden games
Hide in the corner like a wet kitten
Bury the depths of it with secret sands
Go the edge to test your Steel
Only to realise the bottom was never real
Listen to the answers it pretends to give you
About that day that man or mommy
The things they never said that they should’ve
Or the thoughts they should’ve never set free
Hover above it on Saturday night in high heels
Stumble down the sharp edges all on your own in last weeks anxieties
Under the wheels of regret
Smother it with solitude
Ignore the echo you hear
When you lose the pebbles of an idea
Tumbling down that face of fear
Do what you must
Say what you will
And remember in the end my friend
I’d let you look right through me
And the words of a story
May speak to you in the code of what some people call hope
The words of a story meld into the sighs
Of what you meant to say
And you’ll hear the words again and again and again
“Oh it’s alright , it’s alright it’s there
It’s alright my child
Cause that’s what we will always be
For That was the beginning
And even when it never goes away
And you start right back where youve already been
Just remember my child , it’s alright
Because We can always choose to sink
But we must always learn to swim