Now, have your voice heard on Green issues

Lucknow: “Bol, ke lab azaad hai tere …” These iconic words of famous Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz will soon ring true in Lucknow. Under its Live Green UP campaign, which was launched on Friday, The Times of India will make a unique beginning in the city’s cultural calendar – a public speaking contest on the theme of environment to be held at an interesting site – the “Bol, ke lab azaad hai tere …” corner at the Janeshwar Mishra Park, which has been modelled on the Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, a place where anybody could walk up and voice his or her opinion freely.
The contest will have students of standard 10, 11 and 12 from city schools, who will have two minutes to speak on a topic related to environment. A panel of experts will judge the performance and the top three speakers will win prizes. Topics will be provided to schools once they confirm their participation.
Also, keeping with the name of the corner, literary enthusiasts Samam Habib and Amit Mishra will recite and sing stanzas from the poem by Faiz that has the line “Bol, ke lab …” to kick off the programme.
The corner, that gets its name from Faiz’s iconic lines, is an idea developed by UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, with the belief that freedom of expression and speech is inherent and inalienable to a person. “The thought was simple when it the idea was conceived – There should be a place where anyone can say what they want,” said an official of the UP government.
The lines by Faiz, which translate to ‘Speak up, while your lips (thoughts) are (still) free; speak up, (while) your tongue is still yours’ are part of a longer poem written in 1971 by Faiz in Pakistan.