“All language is but a poor translation.” 

Franz Kafka

 

How strange it is for someone whose first love is writing to find a reflective melancholy in these words. 

 

Greetings delegates, and respected faculty.

 

I am Aishani M Nanda, and I will be serving as the Editor in Chief for the twelfth edition of Inter SMUN. 

 

The experience of being human is so fundamentally bewildering- joys and sorrows like hills unyielding, stretch across vast would-be plains of nothingness. This landscape is rather deserted- the only sign of life being your footsteps, eroded by a breeze grazing over your past. It sounds quite lonely, does it not? And thus, language is born- a need to communicate, a need to tell. And stories, and song- and life is bright and the hills are alive. 

 

Model UN, for me, has always been about this need for language. A need to speak, a need to communicate. A need to exchange in common tongue the happenings of a world in the past or future, a need to be furious- a need to speak, a need to listen. It is a dealing in language- words are tokens that buy time. These words are a result of immense hard work. That makes them precious. Delegates will find themselves recalling a passionate speech, a gutting phrase- perhaps years down the line. 

 

Model UN, as a result, is an activity that fundamentally opposes the melancholy of human isolation. It is kind in its trials- equally strenuous and equally pleasurable. Joyful am I, to be a part- I find myself drawn to MUNs. I find myself keen on observing these words- the swipe of silver tongue and the borrowing of phrasing. I find myself keen on watching these dealings in language destroy worlds or build new ones. 

 

In the end, all language is a poor translation. And yet, we try. 

 

I encourage you to try, this Inter SMUN. You will be imperfect, but you will have tried. You will have dealt in golden words, never to be repeated. And that is what will matter. 

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Warm Regards, 

Aishani M Nanda 

Editor in Chief