aikyam fellow ‘24
The day Haneen and I sit down for a video chat (yap time, as she loves to call it) for this profile, she starts the conversation with, “I have one good update and one bad update.” Ever since she moved to Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, for her Master’s in English Literature, this comms fellow at aikyam fellows has been starting every conversation with these updates. Essentially 5-6 bullet point summations of the highlights of her day and follow-ups on the work assigned to her.
“The bad update first,” I say, and she delves into the story of this huge, fluffy cat that roams around the vast, tree-filled expanses of her college campus.
“He has a very loud, unattractive voice. So once, at 1.30 am, he came to my room and said meow, because he wanted to be petted. And I was so proud the day he recognised me and came running to me,” she explains animatedly, before going on to say that he was no more. As she spoke, I could imagine, in great detail, her coming back to her room night after night, exhausted from lectures, projects and the occasional protests, and petting this cat for relief. Haneen has a way of describing things in a way that makes them come to life for her listeners and readers.
Which is why, for instance, I know the intricate pattern of flowers that adorns the new spectacles that she bought herself in Delhi. Conversations with Haneen are often peppered with insights, many an aside, anecdotes and at least one literary or art reference. “It’s interesting how all of my friends have some kind of art they're interested in. They don't have to be artists, but they need to appreciate it,” she says.
The magic of books and storytelling
Haneen’s appreciation for all kinds of artistic expression stems from childhood. The youngest of three siblings, Haneen is more than a decade younger than her elder sister and brother. She remembers a childhood filled with story time with her mother, and this constant book talk between her mother and sister.
“My mother and sister are Harry Potter fans. There was this bed at home; my sister would lie on one side of it and my mom on the other, reading. The seventh book in the series came out when my sister was a teenager. I was really small then but I have this very vivid memory. My mom went to the bookshop at 6 in the morning and bought the book. And they used to take turns reading the book, fighting over who gets to read it first. I kept asking them to come play with me, but they were not even listening. That is when I first thought that there was something interesting in those pages,” she says.
Haneen remembers with admiration her mother’s patience to tell her stories. “All our birthday gifts from her were books. When I was in second standard and couldn't read properly yet, my mother read every line of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows and translated them for me. The entire book, all 700 pages of it,” she says. “All these things have had a huge impact on me ending up in a literature course and continuing to pursue literature.”
Storytelling at aikyam
Haneen tells the stories of changemakers at aikyam space and aikyam fellows. Though she had read up on the work aikyam fellows does when she first applied for the fellowship, it was her conversations with Shemeer and the team that got her hooked. “The conversation was professional, it was about the work, but still, it was personal, and I felt that aikyam would be a space where people are valued rather than seen as some sort of labour, which is what happens in a corporate setup.” This is the reason why, even though she could not take up the fellowship, which required full-time commitment for a year, she decided to start interning with the team. What keeps her excited about her work at aikyam are the amazing changemakers she has met, like Mehar, Hridya, Mashqura, Shilanjani and Nidhi, and the fact that she has been steadily improving on her writing and communication skills.
I feel like I want to do the work not because there is a deadline, but because I feel connected to the people here at aikyam and to the work that I'm doing, and I want to show up for it. - Haneen
She calls the mentorship at aikyam a kind of hand-holding, where she gets “the space to figure it out myself, but I don't feel like I'm completely alone in doing that. It doesn’t take away from my individual learning, but there is clear feedback, and I get a direction to work in.” She also loves the personal aspect of working at aikyam (read: daily life updates). “Nobody else that I know who's working or doing an internship actually does this with their managers or their team. This is a huge factor in helping me work properly because I feel like I want to do it not because there is a deadline, but because I feel connected to the people here and to the work that I'm doing, and I want to show up for it,” she says.
I point to the wall filled with posters behind her head. Everything finds a place on what Haneen calls ‘the unrevised wall’ from her undergrad days. Everything, from Klimt’s 'The Kiss' to Charles Baudelaire and Toni Morrison quotes, and even an eagle feather she found when she first moved to Delhi many years ago. She jokingly dubs her interests as that of “the below-average literature student’s” and half-agrees with someone calling her one-dimensional.
And I wonder if she knows that she is anything but that. How a young Muslim girl from a semi-conservative family from Kottayam, who travels where her whim takes her, taking detours just to look at leaves and the sky, is as inspirational to her friends and peers as the plucky heroines in the books she reads. That when she describes herself as knowing nothing but to write, she doesn't think about how she learned to blog on Ghost to tell changemaker stories. That when she takes her frail, barely 5-foot tall frame to march in protests against social inequality and makes friends with the shopkeeper bhaiyya who joins them in solidarity, she is, in fact, making a rather tall statement, as dramatic as any book she has ever read.
Haneen is a postgraduate student of literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a comms fellow at aikyam. She loves telling powerful stories of change and changemakers. Some day, she hopes to combine her love for travel with these stories of change. You can connect with Haneen here.
