Vaissnavi Shukl
It was naive of me to think that justice was always served in the Courts of Law, often identifying them as buildings with high plinths, long walkways, large rooms, the typical setup that we see in movies and TV shows. I had no idea what restorative justice was, up until two years ago. And because I did not think it was possible to create spaces for conflict resolution and reconciliation outside of the courts. The first time I saw Circle work being done within the restorative justice method in a beautiful garden by the river. I was surprised by the candidness and vulnerability of the Circle participants and how deeply satisfying the process was. Our guest today, Shailly Agnihotri, is the founder of The Restorative Centre in New York, which she started in response to the heartbreak she experienced as a public defender trying to attain justice for her clients. Shailly has spent more than twenty years as an attorney, with expertise in criminal justice through working as a prosecutor in the Orleans Parish, teaching at the Georgetown Law School and Southern University Law Center and as a public defender in New York City.

I am Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off-Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design perspectives, practices, and research projects that reflect emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture Off-Centre features conversations with radical designers, thinkers, and changemakers who are redefining the way we live and interact with the built environment.

Okay, then let’s ease into our conversation by understanding what restoration of justice is, and what is it that we’re seeking to restore? If you could also talk about your experience as a public defender and how that led you to starting the restorative justice centre?

Shailly Agnihotri
The definition of restorative justice is really, I think, evolving and requires sort of an evolution of thought, for all of us to come to terms with what it is that we’re seeking to restore. At this moment. I would say that what we’re seeking to restore is a multi-layered, at a most primal level, we’re seeking to restore our own disconnect to our essence and ourselves and building from that, we calibrate our relationship to others so that we together as a community can build systems and institutions and visions of justice that serves who we truly are. I think that that is as deep as that can go at this time but I’m sure that as we continue to evolve these bots, it can go deeper than that. What I would reject is a superficial label being placed on restorative justice as merely a bandaid or a reactive model of engagement, rather than a responsive model of engagement that is building systems together. I love talking to an architect because I really do think of restorative justice as structural, the structural space that we create in a circle is also the structure of how we land the structure in the world, on solid footing in some bedrock of human connection, so that we’re not building upon fractured ground. We’re not becoming just the ancillary building to a building that is crumbling, as I believe the criminal justice arena is so that we’re not just under the umbrella of systems that are dysfunctional, but we are creating our own solid structures together. So… So I do think of it as structures not only in relation to the environment, but also the structure that we create within the space of circle work. So… So you’ve sort of started with a heavier question. So you feel I start light I’m like, Oh, that is the question. But I think… I think that an answering it in any superficial way is not doing justice to the true power and potential of restorative justice. So I do want to start you know, I do want to be starting with that framework.

Vaissnavi Shukl
And… and if you can talk about your journey a little bit and how you shifted from the very structural or functional or however we want to call it criminal justice system, to the restorative  justice system?

Shailly Agnihotri
So I practised law for more than 25 years, I guess. I have been a prosecutor, I’ve been a public defender, I’ve been and I am still a law professor. And also I have worked as an administrative law judge. So I’ve been a judge. So I’ve really gotten to know the American experience with the criminal legal system from the inside. And I really love the US Constitution. I love the Constitution. I love the vision behind it. I love the idea of really be… holding the government back, modulating the propensity of governments for tyranny. I love the… the constitutional protections that are given the accused in the United States pursuant to the Constitution. The journey from that vision of what the constitutional protections are for the American experience, and the reality on the ground is really worth understanding… For me, it’s been really interesting to how do we go, how do we get where we are like why when we have this beautiful vision of presumed innocence proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you don’t have to testify against yourself, you have to be able to look at a witness in the eye when they testify against you, you have a right to cross examination, you have a right to counsel to assist you. These are beautiful ideals and how the implementation of those ideals which is always a challenge for humans, is we have these visions, but when we start implementing it, we rub against the internal and the personal shadows, the community shadows and the civilization shadows, meaning that the parts of our civilization that we have not addressed with a clear eye, the unspoken truths and those unspoken truths end up being the the power that ends up building structures that are dysfunctional like I’ve just said a lot but I think but what so what I’m what I’m… the conclusion I came to in a very painful conversation with one of my clients when he was in the process of taking a deciding whether to go to have a trial,this was in New York City while I was a public defender. The jury pool was waiting outside the district attorney had offered him, I don’t remember exactly, the number but let’s say eight years if you were to take a plea, and if he were to go to trial, he was facing 15-20 years and the Supreme Court said that my obligation as a defence attorney was not only to try cases, but to actually advocate for resolution on behalf of my client that was in his best interest. So these are conversations that public defenders around the country are having every day with a client… it’s… there’s nothing unusual about it. But what was interesting at that moment in time is that we all have sort of these go to… go to language that we use in certain situations, and at that moment that goes by go to language was you know, “Look, I’m a great trial attorney have tried a hundreds of cases but I’m telling you that the possibility of you winning is slim. Because this is a…these are the documents that have already been given and these are the witnesses and you have a bad record. You can’t testify.” Okay, so we’re doing all this and the client looks at me behind the bars, and we’re speaking in the correction facility. And he says, and this is the older gentleman, he says, “Miss this isn’t fair.” And I look at him and I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times already, but this time and I’m looking at it I say, “Are you kidding me? You’re looking for fairness here.” And you know, and we have this meeting of the minds, which was actually kind of like we both burst out laughing like what a farce. Like we’re sitting in the so-called “Hall of Justice”. There is no there is no discussion about justice anymore and nobody pretends that there is. This is just making choices up… you’re between a rock and a hard place and you’re just making the choice there. There is no aspirational aspects to this anymore. And you know, there is some aspect of, of the work of a public defender or anybody that engages in the criminal legal system of understanding that you feel like a cog in the wheel, you just keeping the system going without addressing the bigger picture. Yeah. So I… I sort of gave myself a mandate because I have a tremendous amount of educational, you know, resources that have been given me. I’ve been gifted experiences that very few people have the privilege of having that if I can’t tackle this myself, like who else is going to do this? Like if I can’t say what is this non what is another system? Of what is… what are we missing here? What is another approach towards justice, that… that… that I could begin this journey of looking for it? And the terminology, you know, as I became a certified mediator and looked at that model I studied the peacekeeping model of the indigenous people as it’s articulated these days. I studied these sentencing circle models that are being taught as restorative justice. And nothing really seemed to land to me as what we needed in this moment of time, because either these systems of restorative justice were just ancillary to the existing systems, sort of like the so-called reform movements within the criminal legal system. That to me actually did the opposite of what they were pretending to do or the propaganda was about it, which is they weren’t really they were just giving people within the system that, “Oh, one person out of a million gods some kind of process is different, therefore, we all should get awarded medals and acknowledged for being our visionaries”, whereas nothing’s really changing for the rest of the people in the system. So the idea of restorative justice seemed intriguing and interesting, and I went to the country of Jamaica, because I had some money to start community based restorative justice circles and I… I went and spoke to those facilitators there. I went to the Rastafarian, I went to Trenchtown and there was a Rastafari man that would come to the community centre and I got the privilege of speaking to him and I’m like, “Why do you come here? Why do you come to this restorative justice centre?” And he said, one of the most interesting things anybody said about restorative justice that really shifted my perspective, and he said, “I come here, because I’m giving the government a chance to restore its relation to my community.” And I thought, oh, that’s pretty profound. There’s so many ruptured relationships, that so… it’s so what I’m really trying very hard to do in my work is reframe the conversation. It’s what beyond the sort of binary thought process of offender-victim. We’re gonna sit in a circle and somehow everything’s gonna be fine. Because it’s… it’s not addressing the most profound issues and it’s also creating this false narrative, that… that you can actually enter a restorative justice process with a label of offender and victim and get to any meaningful conversations. Yes, you can come to some kind of resolution. That feels much more humane than what you know, sentenced by the Judge, but it’s, you know, it’s a sliver of the reality of the possibility.

Vaissnavi Shukl
That gives me so many ideas and so many questions at the same time, but from an outsider’s view from an outsider’s perspective, which is looking at the process, and kind of underscoring the word justice and you mentioned just kind of the big word. I wanted to dwell on a few ideas that I automatically think about in, and almost progressive manner when I think about justice, right, so and I want to be mindful when I use the word crime, and I’ll try to phrase it as I think about it. So there’s conflict, or quote unquote, crime there’s grievance, confrontation, acknowledgement, acceptance, resolution, or in I don’t know, criminal justice, system, punishment, and they’re somehow all interconnected in this very complicated nexus with the overarching big word justice. Now, from my understanding, in the restorative justice process, the circle plays a major role in everything that happens after the conflict, which is all the way from confrontation to resolution. I want to probe a little bit on creating a space which is, I don’t mean space, just physically because I’m an architect, but also metaphorically to facilitate the restorative justice process. And if we can also touch upon the idea or the role of Circle Keeper, and how this space with capitalists is conducive for the circle keeper to do the kind of structural work that is required in a restorative justice system.

Shailly Agnihotri
Okay, I’m going to sort of get into a little bit of Professor mode now. A lot of you made a conclusion about restorative justice that I have to really unlike a bit, you said restorative justice is after a response to something and I would have to disagree with that. I have to disagree with that definition. It’s not even a pushback. It’s just not my definition. And this is what I was saying earlier, thinking that restorative justice is just an answer to a conflictual situation, and is missing the power and potential of restorative justice. Restorative justice is about reconnecting to ourselves and each other. If you create those bonds in communities, then conflicts have a space to be unravelled instead of charged with this functional behaviour. So this is what I want to say because I you know, you vote you know, circling the same thought from different vantage points, but this is what needs to be said, a strong formula.

Vaissnavi Shukl
If I can reiterate in a more again, amateurish way, do we mean that it’s more maybe not the right word preventative instead of remedies in a certain way…

Shailly Agnihotri
The way that I would say that, that… that language… I mean, that’s language that’s better than me, but one way to look at it is that maybe I’d like to share with you and maybe this, you know, works for both of us is that we’re building in more time. What does that mean? So there’s a war going on, limbs are being blown off over there. And here we are sitting in our little space, creating structures for human beings to coexist in a more easeful relation with each other. Not excising members of the community with conflict but actually welcoming them back in so because understanding that we’re one of the whole so like it’s almost like we’re sitting here giving herbs for you know, for building up immunity and and people are yelling like wait, those people need their limbs are being blown out. Why are you sitting here giving herbal remedies? Because we need both. We can’t just be navigating the world that requires constant attention because of extreme conflict. So that all of our resources are just reacting to the world, because then we’re not building anything new, right? So it’s kind of like it’s both. It’s both sitting in a space, building relations, creating new…new… new formulations of human engagement and systems of human engaged, not new but we imagining the human systems of human engagement for the current time, so that we can sit in spaces together and build together yet also have a system in place so that when conflicts arise, there is a potential to resolve them. Without you get… falling into the deficit model, meaning that one person wins one person loses instead thinking that we all are… we are all in this together and have to get to the other side. So that you know, sending somebody off to prison for 20 years and then they coming back to the community. Part of us has gone away to prison. We’ve all been in prison for 20 years. When that person comes back. We all need to be reunited and integrated from the lessons learned from the people gone and the people that are here, like it. This is a community crisis that is happening, that we are no longer aware of our true essence, individually and collectively, and therefore we are thriving, that the world is thriving by dividing us from ourselves. So this is an antidote to the us versus them model of the world. That’s why I don’t want to formulate the restorative justice process in that victim offender model and take that binary thought into a step back and create a whole different paradigm.

Vaissnavi Shukl
As we continue a conversation with Shailly, here’s a snippet of our upcoming conversation with criminal psychologist Pia Puolakka, who has been working on the smart Prison Project in Finland. 

Pia Puolakka
 “And there must be a balance between the punishment…the punishment side.. side, which is inevitable, since it’s a prison…its a prison sentence and the rehabilitative side, which anyway provides prisoners services during their prison sentence in order to have an effect on their risk levels, recidivism, and in order to reintegrate them back to the society.” 

Vaissnavi Shukl
Tune into our next episode to learn more about how Pia and her team are using digital services for rehabilitation, integration and education of prison inmates.

I mean, why are you talking about it? I’m almost thinking that we were taking off the labels of “victim-offender”, “victim-accused”, all of the above. But I also want to talk about the power equation somehow because in our initial conversation, you mentioned the Circle as a place of holding space for discomfort. And the circle inherently as a geometric form, makes sure that everybody who’s part of the circle is at an equal footing there’s nobody who’s at the focus of this.

Shailly Agnihotri
Beautiful. Can I just read you a part of the essay that one of the one of the original, you know, people that were involved in creating our specific model of the restorative centre what he wrote? Can I just read your paragraph? It’s, it’s, he’s… he’s actually an artist in Newburgh, New York. His name is John Delk. And he wrote this beautiful…and he’s an artist, so this is also related. It just got this instantly when you started speaking, okay. It’s called “On Circles”, by John Delk. “Circles because they connect. They do not start and end at points but flow and accommodate many, while privileging none. Circles are created and held together by their makers. They’re brought into existence by presence. They are gifts collectively given. A line can never be so beautifully alive. A line sacrifices all four points and is locked along…alone. Missiles travel in straight lines aimed at targets. A circle is sitting amongst others together to allow a collective knowledge to surface. Circles are like radios tuned to frequencies of shared wisdom that cannot be otherwise heard. Lines are ruled in a binary fashion and measured on a grey scale. Circles move like weights and function as prisons, which makes spectrums visible. Lines, clear cut divide and conquer. Circles meander and move in response to their terrain shaped by voices that generate unique contours of infinite variations. Lines are limited to agendas harbouring specific meanings and interpretations. Circles generate meaning as a conduit for open interpretation. A line as a means to an end circles or ends in themselves, they ripple out rather than cut through.” So there is something about there is a profound experience of circles when they form and I would take it a step further saying just putting certain chairs in a circular formation does not a circle make. Yeah, there… there is an energetic aspect that can be invoked in a Circle formulation, or it can be ignored like right, a lot of us I mean, it’s you can you know, just putting just putting space just putting chairs in a formation, yes, it does create the possibility of, of that energetic experience, but does not oven in of itself do so. So the Circle Keeper is getting back to your question: we train our Circle Keepers in a formulation of the Circle process that is based, like it’s sort of, you know, there are many, many, many modalities that use Four Act structures plays use it. But the so…there’s a Four Act structure to sort of complete the journey. There’s the Medicine Wheel, and the way that it’s articulated in many indigenous civilizations. So that the Medicine Wheel has four directions and that you, you start and you have to sort of go all the way around to really complete the journey. So we sort of approach the circle process with this understanding of structure within the space that we are creating, to create a landscape for the most difficult conversations to unfold. So that we believe that we are starting with a place of conflict is a… not recommended that really starting finding the place of human connections is the way to go forward into discussing the issues that divide us. And in the way that we’ve come to understand how we create the space for human connections is very specific, because it’s not just stories about our psychodynamics or our emotions or feelings because actually, those can often disconnect us from each other. They’re culturally specific, they’re sometimes rooted in narcissistic disorders that most of us are prone to right now in this world. Like everybody wants to talk about my feelings, my feelings, my this my that. So instead, we talk about we asked, we have created prompts that are specifically aligned with the elemental qualities of being alive on this planet, and the experience… individual human experience of that. And that sounds very abstract, but it’s really about connecting to the elements on this planet, the air, air, water, fire, earth and sharing those as humans. And what I find is that those are instantly compelling human stories like and you can share those prompts anywhere in the world and any human being really would have any relationship to the elements of the Earth, so that we build in the most primal resonance of being alive on this planet. And from that sort of awakening of ourselves in that way, we can sort of deselect the specific ways our human existence has caused, you know, rupture with another it. So we really reclaim humanity first.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Would you… would you say this is another way or another medium to practise empathy or am I off track?

Shailly Agnihotri
No, absolutely.

Vaissnavi Shukl
But what you said is so profound and when you… when you put it that way in terms of natural elements, that is the one common thread. I just think about constants and variables, but I’m going to step back a little bit because you read that wonderful piece by an artist and your team at the Restorative Centre is very diverse. You of course have lawyers on the team but you also have architects, artists, yoga practitioners and healers on board. In a traditional justice system and the physical infrastructure that suppose that system, viz-a-viz the courts, you would never find people from other backgrounds become a part of the justice process. And because I am an architect, I’m going to ask you a speculative question. In an ideal world, where restorative justice becomes the new status quo, what kind of an institution Do you imagine replaces the existing setup? What are the courtrooms replaced by? What are the long corridors replaced by? What are the high plains and the grand staircases replaced by? What are the new spaces that we can design to holistically encompass the restorative justice process?

Shailly Agnihotri
Well, that’s fun. That’s fun. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I just want to say one little, you know, in very specific, this is my training, but so I’m not advocating for 100% abolition of the criminal legal system. I am, because I believe we need the criminal legal system, for there are some sociopaths in the planet, and with them happened to be politicians. Some happened to be police officers. Some of them happen to be white collar criminals. It’s not all just one you know, the communities that are currently being targeted. So I believe that there is a way to formulate the constitutional provisions in a..in an equitable way where people feel, “Oh, the courts are upholding some ideals of justice, with regard to the broader issues that really need space to be addressed.” Like think about corporate criminal behaviour. Think of you know, all the things I’ve just said. I believe that there is a place for the courts. I’m not saying 100% or more down. But what I do think is that right now, the way we’re using it is to oppress and fund certain segments of society. Okay, as far as the beautiful vision of freestanding spaces, where coming in community members are coming together to sit in a shared space of power to unwind and connect. I mean, that just makes my heart soar to imagine these. I would love them to be like, you know, like, like, we claim some of our… of our spaces that like nature like I cannot and then architect but I can …I can feel the beauty of these spaces in my body if you know what I’m saying. I cannot imagine what you’re going to create, but I imagine them to be a sort of community based on this beautiful sort of gift to ourselves, right? Instead of, oh, I’m going up the steps to surrender my humanity to the altar of the criminal legal system. It’s like you enter these spaces and you’re like, This is a gift. We’re giving each other to come together in this way. It’s sort of this sort of, I don’t know, I have this almost like fantasy novel vision right now in my head, you know, greens and flowers and rocks and like, you know, a place for fire like so just sort of we are, you know, honouring earth once more and therefore honouring ourselves and inhabitants of on this beautiful planet. That’s what I imagined when you started speaking. I don’t what do you imagine? I’m really curious, what do you imagine? 

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah. What…what I was thinking about the questions I was thinking about, you know, what if? Tomorrow maybe you come to me with a brief that you have this piece of land and you want to create a restorative justice system? That’s like how would I approach this as a design brief and I kind of hit a blank wall because by default, the way the whole idea of justice, the way it’s drilled into our brains is that it has to look like a courtroom. And that’s flawed right? That we directly relate, yeah, justice to places that are that have those corridors, and they those places that have courtrooms, and high plinths and these grand staircases, and I was like, “Well, is this again, a fundamental issue of how we think about justice and the places that can provide justice?” 

Shailly Agnihotri
Well, it’s you know, so we use this expression, we claim justice at TRC. And that’s sort of what you were talking about, right? So if a community has reclaimed justice, right as this as is we are going to get to we’re going to get to our humanity. We’re gonna get there humbly. We’re going to sort out this complexities of lifting others together. Like it for me, it is a Circle, right? It’s a space that can hold a Circle. It’s a Circle that can expand or constrict as needed, right? So you can have five people, you can have 30 people you can have. So you need moveable chairs, right? You need a space that lets in the light, lets in the elements so you feel a sense of grace  in the space, that you know that you’re humbled by being on this planet, you’re not humbled by the power of another person, you’re humbled by this planet like right where we’re gifted this life here, and then you can see everybody in the Circle. So that Circle is created so that you know, there’s space you can make eye contact with everybody, there’s a space for the centrepiece so that you can have this common was centrepieces are really important in our work for me, so I’ve had Circles and like, you know, on schools when the windows so I go in there and I’m going to have a Circle. So what do I do? I move all the chairs to the side, just so a desk to the side, I put a round table caught in the middle, and we put… represent each of the elements of this planet on the centrepiece. So we put rocks down, we put up fresh flowers, we put usually a candle or sometimes only once if I had not been allowed to do a candle, but usually we put a bowl of water and we put other items that we would use as talking pieces. So it’s like I bring the earth to the centre of the work because it just that’s where I believe the centre of the work is so, so it can. I can imagine like if we had that experience at the centrepiece, not just between us, but around us. It would be so magical oh my gosh…

Vaissnavi Shukl
I can’t see that’s… that’s a… the issue with the way even we as architects think about spaces. Until you mentioned nature and the elements you know, fire and water and rocks. That is when I started thinking about it as not necessarily again, a place that is rigid but something that is almost, you know, like a retreat of swords, you know, that that allows you to not be constricted by the physical environment you’re in, but also expands it to places that can be outdoors, maybe you know, you, you can

Shailly Agnihotri
Yeah we can have Circles, outdoors for sure.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Pretty sure I’m going to go ahead and sketch something and you know, put my thoughts down, but I would never have thought about it in the way he would describe. So thank you for igniting a little flame.

Shailly Agnihotri
I want to say something because what you just said was really interesting to me. So the idea, okay, so the word that came to you is retreat, right? So it’s so like, that’s an interesting word, right? Retreat is like a retreat is like in a…. in a war like what’s going on now right? Retreat is stepping back from engagement or leaving the world and finding some solace or something but…

Vaissnavi Shukl
Well I was actually thinking about it more in terms like wellness retreat, you know, where you…

Shailly Agnihotri
I know, but the word is interesting, right? I’m just fascinated with…by that choice of word and I’m thinking, even a wellness retreat, right? That means you’re leaving the world to just go replenish yourself, actually, right. That’s what it is right? But I want to expand this idea a little bit in your brain thinking about it’s not… it needs to be the town centre, this place. Like it’s not to leave the world, it’s to engage with the world with new tools. So it’s so I mean, if I could just add this to your mind, like, it would be beautiful if these spaces were in the town centre, it was like the centre of the community the way they should know like, look at indigenous communities it’s… it’s there sometimes formulated in the circle. So the centre is the community is the centre you know, it’s… it’s also…it’s so it’s bigger than just the space because it’s also around…about what’s around it like what because I don’t imagine it’s like, oh, you have to drive two hours for town to get there. No. It’s right there. It’s accessible to all. It’s, you know, we’ve had Circles in barber shops because we didn’t, we were having Circles in an art gallery. And then it’s like, well, some people didn’t want to go to an art gallery. So let’s start in the barber shop. Then it was like, well, let’s have it outside. So we’ve had Circles every… all kinds of different places. But there is something beautiful about Yeah, I don’t know. Is it like a nomadic idea also of Circles that create these like, like, sort of like this, you know, this tent or something that just can be plucked up everywhere? I don’t know. It’s so interesting, though. 

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I think what you’re talking about is the question of access and an infusion, right? You want to make sure that that place or that space rather that you create is…is inclusive to everybody and that everybody has access to that because art galleries I mean, I’ve, I’ve learned now are not the most inclusive public spaces. ‘

Shailly Agnihotri
So it’s about reimagining public spaces for sure.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I think 100% 100%. I currently work with a public artist who creates all sorts of crazy places for people to come together and talk about civic issues, civic issues, nothing to do with justice, but at least there’s space for those conversations to happen about what…

Shailly Agnihotri  5:11
I just have to, I’m sorry, once more say that civil issues are one of the building blocks of justice. So I wouldn’t say it is justice.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah, yeah. Just…just simple things like you know, potholes and water supply issues and things like that. That’s that’s justice.

Shailly Agnihotri
That is about getting to justice for sure.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah, but well to appease my curiosity, Shailly I’m extremely excited to, you know, see what’s next in the pipeline. And what’s next for you and what’s next for The Restorative Centre?

Shailly Agnihotri
I’m curious too. I mean, I… I took this work on as my karma. I am… I’m you know, I really enjoy thinking about Vedic philosophy. And I sort of think of it as what I’m supposed to be doing so I never looked at it as anything more than the work I’m supposed to do. And so with that, I feel like my job… my role is to continue to stay aligned so that I can answer you know, what is next like to answer the Meet the moments? The way I’m defining the work right now is that we are deeply looking at together the shadows of American civilization, which is very hard work. We’ve been holding space. For example, in June in Jackson, Mississippi, to families of lynching victims from the South. We’ve been working with organisations that are national that have a history of you know, have a troubling history past or engage with systems with racism or sexism embedded therein. We are working with school systems that are trying to figure out ways to work, work or have the victims of disciplinary recourse that are not punitive, then destructive. So it’s almost like we’re looking at we have this beautiful vision of America and we have this very dark shadow, this abyss that we need to look at. So right now the work with our Circles is very dense work. It’s really the work of the moment from my point of view is looking at the things that have been ignored or not reckoned with bringing some truth to it, giving some… holding space for the voices that…that need expression, learning from each other. So right now we’re in the process, I feel as a… as an organisation, meeting the moment in this country where that’s where the needs are right now. Going forward. I think these conversations are going to have to continue for some time, and… and hopefully, not too long in the future. We can start to build spaces that you’re talking about so that they are embedded within communities everywhere. So that people because right now all the structures that exist actually are moving energy away from each other. Like when you walk into a court system, you’re…you bifurcate from the other people, you know, you create your own space, almost all spaces that exist now, as…as people in this country are dividing us further and further from each other. So if this vision of creating bases that hold the potential for human beings to engage with each other, with a new energetic formulation, which spaces to hold specific energy potential, is the vision. So it’s… it’s a vision that’s rooted in sort of a long term process of work that is unfolding right now.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I would love to offer myself in any capacity that I can be helpful. Whenever you start with that process. I’d love to..

Shailly Agnihotri
Yeah, start now. Today’s the day starts. Thank you. What a beautiful offer and I accept there’s so much work to be done.

Vaissnavi Shukl
On that note, thank you so much for your time Shailly. This was, I don’t know, I want to call it a deeply nourishing interview. But this was great. Thank you so much.

Shailly Agnihotri
Thank you for reaching out. It was great to talk to you.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.