In the footsteps of the great

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." - Elie Wiesel

There is something special about the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo. Everyone's heard of the Nobel Peace Prize at some point; it was founded by Alfred Nobel, bequeathed in his will, and is the only one of the set of five Nobel prizes to be awarded in Oslo (the others are awarded in Stockholm).

No one really knows why Nobel chose Oslo as the place to award the Peace Prize - no one even knows if Alfred Nobel even ever visited Oslo.

The pale yellow building of the Nobel Peace Centre stands out in an understated way against the rest of the city - a small singular building with arched windows. The entrance hallway isn't anything spectacular, either, and at first when you stand inside you might start to wonder what the big fuss is all about.

But you know, you've come all this way, so you buy your ticket (adults 80 NOK, students 55 NOK) and go inside anyway. And that's when the magic starts.



I went at 1PM on a weekend afternoon, which is when the Centre holds free guided tours for visitors - at all other times, you explore the exhibitions inside on your own. "Mahatma Gandhi," my tour guide tells me, "never was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize but he is connected to the Prize in so many ways." I was surprised - I always thought he had been. She continues, "He was nominated several times but was never awarded it."

We walk up the stairs and go to the first gallery: Sheroes, dedicated to the three women who jointly shared the Nobel Peace Prize of 2011. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen have each been nonviolent activists of ending the wars in their home countries.



The exhibition is small, but filled with information and interactive sections. I suddenly found myself embarrassed that I had never heard of these women before going to the Nobel Peace Centre. I watched sections of their acceptance speeches, at City Hall just across the road.

There was something that stuck with me about Tawakkol Karman's speech, which she gave in Arabic rather than English, the reason being that she found it more important to be heard and understood in her native Yemen than around the world. Little things which don't seem terribly significant suddenly mean a lot more - here she was, Tawakkol Karman, with the opportunity to let the fame and glory of all the world shine on her for one evening as she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead she chose to use it to shine the spotlight on Yemen and let herself be heard there.

Inspiring people have a way of making you feel that way.



We walked through the Nobel Field, an exhibition with the concept of a garden - that you would walk through the lit LCD screens and fibre optic cables, discovering or rediscovering people you never knew had been awarded the Prize.

Returning to the section of the Centre that focused on how intricately Gandhi was involved with the Prize, I started wondering why it was that Gandhi never was awarded it. Certainly he was nominated for the prize several times, and by so many different people - previous laureates, academic departments, world leaders - and certainly the people at Nobel are proud to be associated with him.

Somehow, even though we were in Oslo, Norway, and a very very long way from India, it was like we had entered into his life - from birth in 1869 to death in 1948. Born in India, married at 14, trained as a lawyer in England, father to four children, leader to all of India, shining example to the world.

How curious a man he must have been in his life, when one discovers that on the occasion of India's independence from the British his way of celebration was not to go out and party with everyone else, but to stay at home and spin his charka-wheel.



One of the nonviolent things Gandhi did as part of his work was to lead the Salt March, a protest against British salt tax laws - simply by producing salt on his own without needing to pay tax for it. On his 24-day march, Gandhi was joined by more and more of his countrymen. I got to join in, too.

I didn't really walk 24 days just to produce salt at the sea coast of Dandi without needing to pay tax, of course. I just stood in front of a sensor while my movement was recorded by a camera and my image was added to that of others who had also time-travelled to March 1930 to join the Salt March. You can try spotting me in the crowd of people, if you would like.

I guess I like to think that a little part of me has stayed at the Nobel Peace Centre, eh?



Aung San Suu Kyi, The Lady. Who, who has been listening to the news in the last five years, has not heard of her? So much has been written and said about her - films, books. Awarded the Prize in 1991, but only got to collect it in person in 2012, eleven years after it was awarded to her. Under house arrest for some 15 years, yet unfaltering and steadfast in her commitment to work towards democracy of Myanmar. How much strength would it take for someone to hold that sort of dedication?



I left the Nobel Peace Centre feeling I had been thrust into the awareness that the world is so much larger and scary than we often realise. We are caught in our little bubbles, with things like the radio, the internet, TV and newspapers the only avenues of our learning about the rest of the world. And even then we don't always pay attention - we can shut them off if we want to, turn off our computers or choose not to read newspapers.

But for people in war-torn places, there is no such thing as turning it off if they want to. They cannot choose to switch off the gunfire, bombs, or armies of soldiers marching into their towns; it is ever-present, a part of their lives, things we cannot ourselves even imagine, living in constant fear and unrest.

 The Nobel Peace Prize is double-edged: it recognises and pays tribute to those who have worked for peace, and yet the very necessity to work for peace presupposes the existence of violence. These people and so many others continue to fight, every day, to end it and to achieve harmony and peace. It can be tiring work, stretched out over an extremely long period of time and seemingly endless.

Perhaps it is because of this that things like the Nobel Peace Prize exist - to celebrate these individuals who continue to work for peace and to make the big world a much kinder place.