Report: Thinkers' Club Session 25

Date: 1st February, 2015

Session # 25

Attended by: 10 participants

Report Written by: Fatima Salman

This session started with a round of introduction. Everyone had to introduce themselves and tell three of their interests. 

Then we played two rounds of a guessing game.  We were divided into two teams of five people in each team. First, one team had to think of a person or place and the other team had to guess it by asking fifteen questions, and each question had to be answered in a yes or no. We played it for a while, thinking of different people and places and trying to guess each one quickly. 

After the game, we were told a story by Rumi. Rumi was a Persian poet and he had written many poems and short stories in Persian. His stories have been translated into many languages, and are called ‘Hikayat-e-Rumi. The story was a Hikayat. It was about animals. Below is the story, quoted in my words:

In the story, there is a jungle in which many animals lived peacefully.Then a lion came and attacked many animals and ate them. The animals got worried and decided to do a deal with the lion. They went to him and said; “You are our king, we will serve you. You should stay in your home and each morning, we will send you an animal for your meal. But you must not come and attack us suddenly”. The lion agreed, and said; “You must stay true to your word, and if you break the deal, I’ll eat every animal in this jungle”.

The animals had done this to avoid a sudden death, and so, each morning all the animals would gather in one place and draw lots and the animal whose name came in the draw, would say goodbye forever to everyone and go to the lion to be eaten.

This happened for some time until one day, a rabbit’s name came out in the draw. The animals teased him, saying; “You’ll be just one bite for the lion! What will he say when he sees you?” But the rabbit said bravely; “I may be small, but I will do something that none of you have ever done and will do. By the will of God, I will come alive from the lion, and save you all from him”. But the animals didn’t believe him and still made fun of him because of his size. And in all of this, the rabbit got pretty late in turning up for the lion.

The lion was very angry and roared; “Why are so late?” The rabbit pretended to be frightened and said; “I’m so sorry, your majesty, but I was coming with another rabbit as well, you see, I’m so small that two of us were coming for you, when we met another lion. He took away the other rabbit to eat it, but I somehow saved myself and came straight here”.  The lion got madder and said; “There’s another lion in the jungle, and he has my dinner? Take me to him at once!” The rabbit agreed to take him and came to a nearby well. He and the lion looked inside the well and saw their own reflection. The rabbit said; “Look there is the other lion and the rabbit inside”. At once, the lion jumped inside the well and drowned. And the rabbit returned home with pride.

After the story, we discussed the messages given in the story.  This story is a bit like the way things are in real life. The lion can depict a cruel leader and the rabbit was a change agent. There are many messages in this story and we discussed them all. These are the things we discussed:

• Never to lose control of our emotions, like the lion did and jumped in a well.
• Size does not matter. The rabbit was very small, yet he did something that even the larger animals did not do.
• Do no become dependent on others, like the lion did. He became so dependent on the animals to come to him, that when the rabbit became late in coming, he didn’t go to hunt by himself.
• Do not give up and submit yourself towards the evil, like all the animals did when the lion came. Instead of making a plan to make him go away, they sacrificed themselves for him.

These are some of the messages in the story. If we think harder, maybe we can find deeper meanings in it. Some stories really have deep meanings. Overall, this session was great.