At LILA, we call every friend a Mitr. Mitr is a very ancient word, belonging to the Proto-Indo Iranian root, which preceded the separation of Indo-Aryan and Iranian language families.Slowly, the word entered many different traditions: Mitra, the Rgvedic deity in Sanskrit, Mehr in today’s Persian, derivated from the ancient Zorastrian, Maitreya, the Bodhisattva showing the path to enlightenment in Buddhism, and also the Mithraic mysteries of Greco-Roman religion…

The word Mitr comes from the Avestan roots mei, “to bind” and tr, “that which causes”. A Mitr is that which causes a binding. As the linguistic history shows, this concept cuts across boundaries and cultures. It is a covenant, a promise that is kept across distances.

A contemporary assumption, according to which Mitr is uniquely a Sanskrit word, is totally wrong. Such divisive attempts to monopolise the term have to be resisted, through the multi-dimensionality of Mitr. At LILA, we use it across parts of speech, genders, languages and cultures. For us, ‘Mitr’ means ‘Friend’ as much as it is ‘to Befriend’ – the initiative to get closer to each other. The knowledge of any particular language is not required to understand and use the word ‘Mitr’, and it applies to and finds its inspiration from all cultures. ‘Mitr’, finally is gender-free – not just open to two, or three genders, but to the possibilities and potentials of innumerable genders.

 

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‘Mitr LILA’: Being our Mitr

LILA is conceived as a rich and complex undertaking, meant to evolve in unexpected ways in untrodden directions. Our own team is keenly aware that we may not, at any point in our history, know all the forms that LILA would take. Implicit here is our surrender to the dimension of time — LILA is an idea that would continuously manifest through time. Hence, against the anxieties of our epoch, we reclaim time as our ally. To do this, we must be surrounded by people who share the faith we have in time.

Attention is the hardest thing to come by these days. Our times are marked by a multiplicity of interests and activities. While this may seem an improvement in terms of human well-being and immediate satisfaction, it also bears the inherent risk of players losing rigour in the long term, thus jeopardising the relevance, scope and sustainability of enterprises and investments. That is why we need life-long friends whose attention and intensity never flag.

As a Mitr, we will count on you for the larger process of LILA’s evolution. LILA is a people’s movement, but it can remain so only on the condition of genuine and profound commitment of the people involved. We consider each of you a real friend, whom any of us at LILA would feel free to go to, to ask for help or advice. We rely upon our Mitron . We hope to see these friendships becoming long-standing relationships with LILA.

We wish to feature here a few of our Mitron, people as well as organisations. They have shown their commitment to become our fellow travellers, by offering us their companionship, ideas, and support (in finances and kind).

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‘Mitr LILA’: Become a Friend!

As a Mitr, you become a stakeholder in what LILA envisions and actualises. Through your interventions, your points of views, your comments and criticisms, you too will make LILA.

We make Mitron through different modes and events, but we also open our invitation to receive friendship through your initiative. If you think you share the commitment that connects us, please leave your information below and… mitr LILA!

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