Thanks to the innovative organizers of this play, I don’t have to think of a title for this post. ;-)

Organized by Nitin Das and the Sheikh brothers, Chana Chai Nukkad Natak featured two plays enacted wholly by kids from the Akanksha NGO (with some prodding from Nitin who sat at the back of the stage directing the kids and correcting their cute faux pases).

The first play was about a man saddled with an ailing mother, and two brothers - one mad, and the other given to drinking a lot. He wishes to get his mother to a good hospital, to get his mad brother married, and to gift his drinking brother a career. To that end, he forges fake banknotes. The man gives a fake 500 rupees note to his mother, who buys groceries (or ration as it is called out of habit in India, thanks to the Raj’s and then the government’s policy of rationing food). The shopkeeper later recognizes the fake and adulterates food in order to compensate for the loss. The adulterated ration is bought by a lady whose jobless husband eats it, and goes to an interview with a sick stomach. Rejected in the interview, he becomes a nakli doctor. Finally the drinking brother of the man who had forged the note falls ill and is killed by the fake medicine administered by the fake doctor. The play was aptly titled Nakli Duniya.
(Click here to read the whole post)

Sunday afternoon at Kala Ghoda meant that you are jostling for space with families, who had brought kids in to see the festival. This time there seemed to be more events for children than ever before. Or, maybe it is that the corporate sponsorship - The Surf Excel Chidren’s Festival - has got the events a higher visibility, simply by being plastered everywhere.

This year, kids were everywhere. From long queues to participate in something or the other, to getting their faces painted, to watching Rajasthani puppets, to sending out messages for peace and goodwill…And it really felt good to see so many children out and about at the KGAF….

(Pictures below)

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Date: Saturday, 9th February
Time: 14:30 – 16:30
Venue: Elphinstone College, Seminar Room 2
Conducted by: Arka Mukhopadhyay

This workshop is intended to serve as an introduction to poetry in performance for young children. It will encourage them to look at poetry as a performance medium, by playing around with the oral and aural aspects of poetry. It will also explore ways of using the body in poetry performance - stamping, stomping,clapping, clucking, moving, dancing and anything in-between! Through all this, the workshop will also explore a number of themes that are of importance to the immediate surroundings of the children, including (but not limited to): countries of the imagination (the title of the workshops is from a Walter de la Mare poem about an imaginary land called Tartary), sights and sounds of the city, heroes and heroines, etc.

(More about the workshop leader and details on how to register below the fold.)
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Date: Saturday, 9th February (Session 1), Sunday 10th February (Session 2)
Time: 10:30 – 12:30 (both days)
Venue: Elphinstone College, Seminar Room 2
Conducted by: Neeru Nanda

The premise of this workshop is that all children can cook up great stories (parents, don’t we know that!!) but when it comes to writing them out they flounder. So, on Day 1 we will generate an original story (on a title to be given in the workshop), which the kids will write out at home. On Day 2 we will discuss each child’s story against the background of Creative Writing. The 3 best stories will be posted on the Kala Ghoda Gazette.

(More about the workshop leader and details on how to register below the fold.)
(Click here to read the whole post)

Date: Saturday, 2nd February
Time: 10:30 - 13:30
Venue: National Gallery of Modern Art, Auditorium
Conducted by: Sampurna Chattarji

This workshop will look at poetry as play. The attempt will be not to teach poetry, or even write poetry, but to experience poetry — with one’s body, with one’s senses, with sometimes an abandonment of logic and sometimes a rigorous application of it. Above all, an appreciation of each poem as a space that can be entered for the sheer enjoyment of it. To look at poetry through the prisms of sound, imagination, everyday language and beat, and to enable the kids to see for themselves the many possibilities that open out though that mysterious arrangement of words on the page that we call a poem.

(More about the workshop leader and details on how to register below the fold.)
(Click here to read the whole post)

Bright golden sequinned suits, colorful little saris wrapped fisherwoman style, spotless white kurta pyjamas soon to remain not-so-spotless, tiny birdies wearing pink, yellow and blue birdie dresses. The dance organized by NGOs with kids performing to Bollywood numbers on Sunday morning was easily the event I loved best among those I caught over the weekend. Crowds clapping and cheering, the kids on stage having a blast, their bright smiles outshining the miidday sun high above, spectators, among them some kids who were waiting for their turn to perform on stage watching open-mouthed, the NGO volunteers notepad in hand, steering the kids to the right place at the right time…

The show which went on for over an hour had these little kids dancing to popular Bollywood numbers starting with suno gaur se duniya walon. The kids came on stage, danced the way to an encore, followed by dus bahane and rang de basanti and more.

It is obvious that nothing captivates the attention of the audience as Bollywood - people stood in front of the stage trhough the performance and clapped themselves hoarse. The earlier evening at Horniman Gaden, just before Sonal Mansingh’s performance was to begin, a cop on duty came up to me (I was of course, standing row 1-plus, camera in hand) and asked me, ab kya honey wala hai? koi sonal woh naachne ali hai kya? (what’s up? is some sonal to dance now?) And that morning, before this dance, I walked into the museum gallery looking for the Jayateerth Mevundi concert - I had been waiting near the ampitheatre by mistake. Seeing the small room almost full, I asked a mother-son duo sitting at the back, is this the JM concert? Son ignored me and continued to paly with his mobile while Mother gave me a blank look and said - I don’t know - we are just sitting here because something is going to happen, so many people here. But Bollywood, never a vague “something is going to happen” - familiar, popular - you can never go wrong with Bollywood.

Dus bahane karke le gaya dil

The last perormance was the everpopular birdie dance - the stage a riot of colors, little birdies wriggling and jumping, sometimes performing with complete confidence, sometimes taking sneak peaks at each other in confusion - what is the next step now?

the birdie dance

a quick pose in the middle of dance

Do you know how big an elephant’s sneeze is?
If you’d been at Desi Stories for Children today you would’ve known. Or about the room with gifts for everyone from every continent, town, city, village, building, inland, outland…
Deepa Balsavar is someone who loves to tell stories, and most of them are in her head rather than in a book. She held an audience of about 30 kids, 50 adults, and 2 kittens absolutely spellbound with her stories.
The lovely purple durries were a great idea, because the chairs filled up with grown ups. Deepa herself decided to sit on the stage rather than the park benches we had had set up, to be close to the kids sitting on the ground. We so loved her first story that we couldn’t help request her for a second one. The interaction with the kids was just great.
In fact we had a great bunch of kids, and while we were testing out all our various visuals (and screening our sponsors’ ads) a cheeky little girl in the front row struck up a conversation with me and wanted to ask why the roses on my shoes were beige, and not coloured. I promptly told her the truth - the shoemaker fell asleep before he could paint them, and they were sent to the shop colourless. This particular girl goes to St Anne’s, a girls’ school, ‘it’s so boring’.
‘Boring’ was what this little girl was mouthing to me when Deepak was reading. Unfortunately, while Deepa’s stories were great for the age group we had, mostly below 10, they couldn’t quite appreciate Deepak’s excerpt from Ranthambore Adventure. I personally know how great those are on the page, because my brother had come along just to see Deepak after reading that particular book and loving it.
Mukand and Riaz was very impressive, but I wish we could’ve started a little later, so that it was even darker. Nevertheless, the kids liked both the film and the book, and thanks to me, they now know its author Nina Sabnani as the filmmaker who only makes ‘cartoon films’ (thank god, said my cheeky little friend in the front row).
The slideshow is when the exits began, purely because we had very few people the right age for it. But for me it was made up for by the voice that piped up and said ‘Red Panda!’ as soon as the said animal made an appearance on screen. This particular child - I couldn’t tell from the voice if it was a girl or a boy - went on to identify a few other creatures with cameos in Wild India whom I must confess even I can’t name correctly. Thank God they still make kids like that!
From the children’s section, we moved on to Room to Read’s presentation by their country head, Sunisha Ahuja, and finally, to the event I had been waiting for.
CS Lakshmi had told me in an earlier mail not to make her come all the way if no one was going to come and listen. Though we didn’t exactly have a packed house for the screening of Women’s Lives, Women’s Voices, we did end with a handful of people more than we started out with. I believe that a forum like Kala Ghoda should be committed to showcasing projects like SPARROW too, besides the usual gamut of poetry and prose.
And there is always a special someone in the audience who stays on till 9pm and makes it worth it all: today’s special person award would probably be a tie between the surprisingly young boy who asked for extra SPARROW brochures and took down the website address, and our friend who shouted out Red Panda.

Sunday evening, 5.30pmonwards, author, illustrator and education material developer Deepa Balsavar with some live storytelling. Deepak Dalal of Lakshwadeep, Ranthambore, Ladakh and Andaman Adventures fame will read AND show a slideshow of his collection of wildlife pictures from his research for these books.
Tulika will launch Nina Sabnani’s book Mukand and Riaz, with readings by Chandita Mukherjee. The author will also screen her award-winning short animation film based on the book.
So bring your little ones, and not so little ones, and if you like me, you can’t resist a trip into the children’s section at a bookstore, please come and join us from 5.30 to 7.30pm at David Sassoon Library Garden!

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

Some things get me peeved. My 6.5-year-old son and I go to the screening of My Fair Lady at the Cama Institute, Sunday evening. Even though we get there 15 minutes before the start, the hall is full. Wandering around, I finally find a seat for him at one end of a row. Nothing else except some seats along the side wall, so I sit on the chair there closest to him.

Many more people stream in after us, also searching for seats. About half an hour into the film, a young mother wanders in, strolls about searching for a while, then scurries over (yes, rather bandicoot-like) to my son and worms herself onto his seat. First, she squashes him to one side, then she actually lifts him up and puts him on her lap. I’m hard-pressed to believe I’m seeing this. I lean over and say, that’s my son, I’m not happy with what you did, can you please leave him alone? She motions pleadingly to me.

I can’t make a scene here and now, so I sit back, fuming.

He sits on her lap, but I can tell he is uncomfortable because of the angle of her legs. He keeps sliding off and has to hold on to the seat in front to prevent that. Finally he stands. I call to him to come sit on my lap, whereupon the lady’s son runs over and occupies her sliding lap.

Why is it OK to do this to a kid? Would the lady have thought it acceptable if she had been sitting on the chair and a large man came over and wormed himself into it?

But apart from that: how many more loved, more familiar Western films are there than My Fair Lady? The delicious insults Higgins throws about, Eliza’s outraged Cockney howls, the melody in every one of those songs . no wonder several in the audience mouthed along as Eliza sang. Lots of chocolate for me to eat/Lots of coal making lots of ‘eat/Warm face, warm hands, warm feet/AAAAh-Wooo-dn’t it be loverly?

Ohhhh yes.

Done with the Dockyard walk, son and I happen on a rousing dance rehearsal, for the show scheduled for later in the afternoon. These kids are coordinated, smooth, and are clearly enjoying the dance immensely, and that’s why it’s rousing.

No, wait a minute! It’s really that way because one of the dances involves several of the kids’ fathers, all these moustache-and-shorts men up on stage, bopping and swaying and wiggling fingers and butts to that terrific tune from the ’50s: Buddy Knox’s Let’s Have a Party. (”Send ‘em to the store/And rock some more/Let’s have a party tonight!”)

Knox is from the metropolis of Happy, Texas (this is true). Maybe that’s why these dads looked so kicked to be up on stage whirling their little girls about. When they were done, I was nearly as kicked to have watched them perform. Because of Knox’s song, yes. But this was a fine antidote to disappointment in the dockyard.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

It happened today (Tues Feb 7), to my amazement, for the third and fourth time in the last couple of months. And at the end of it, someone says to me: “Chill, man! Chill!” I don’t feel too chill, let me tell you.

At the KGAF this afternoon, I left my son in a craft workshop run by Akanksha, the Bombay organisation that works with kids from slum homes. About two dozen kids in all, at the workshop, and today they all took cardboard boxes and made themselves pretend cars. Decorated and painted and everything.

Among the two dozen were several of Akanksha’s slum kids. Nobody noticed or cared: they were as enthusiastic about the workshop as my son or anyone else there, and they were as thrilled with their creations as anyone else. For hours afterwards, I saw them playing with their pretend cars all over the area where the Festival is happening.

After the workshop, son and I moved on to a puppet show in German (!). We sat in the second row; plenty of seats were available all through the performance. Some 6-7 of the slum kids from the workshop also came to watch, sitting on the chairs around us.

Without warning, a smartly dressed guard walks over and yanks these kids up from the chairs right beside me. Shoos them away. I run after him and ask what he’s up to. Insist that he let them be; and if he has any objections, they are my guests and I want them there. “OK,” he says grumpily, “but I’m not going to be responsible when they create trouble.”

“What trouble?” I ask.

One kid sits down again, another has vanished into the crowd.

I sit down too, but again, I’m shaking with anger. It’s OK for these kids to take part in craft workshops with “our” kids, workshops that are part of this very Festival, but it’s not OK for them to sit at the puppet show.

A few hours later, my wife and I come back to these same chairs after wandering around the Festival. There’s a rehearsal for the evening’s dance performance on, and several people are sitting and watching. Including, once more, several slum kids. As we walk up, we see another smartly dressed guard walk over, yank them out of their seats, shoo them away. Deja vu yet again.

My wife reaches the man first. What are you doing, she asks. “The light people said they are running around,” he says. They were sitting down! But we let that pass. “We have orders from our supervisor and the organizers,” the man goes on, “to keep these kinds of people away.”

We tell the kids to sit again, and tell the man we want to speak to his supervisor. By this time the previous guard has also arrived, and, grumpier than ever, he takes me to a table below a tree, where his supervisor sits.

Admittedly, I’m angry. But I believe I explain fairly calmly what has just happened. So I’m not exactly charmed when he looks up at me and says, “Chill, man! Chill!”

Anyway, for what it’s worth, right there in front of me he tells the guard not to do this again.

So Sushant, for that’s your name, I’m going to hold you to your promise.

***

If you’re interested:

The first time, in the last couple months, that something like this happened to me.

The second time.

Comment by charukesi on February 8, 2006 @ 7:29 am

oh good, I thought I ws the only one getting into a fight with the security guys for chasing the kids away. I see some of the kids every day I am there now, and a couple of them even reconize me and give me a toothy smile / breezy wave of the hand (I have been photographing them and show the pic to them immeditely on my digicam)
the security guys really have no busines chasing them way or suggesting these kids will create any trouble - they have been perfectly well behaved, sitting quietly through performances and just enjying themselves.

Comment by Anurag on February 8, 2006 @ 10:34 am

This is quite discriminatory. You definitely have more patience and self control than I do.

I have seen the same being done in my housing society. Servants and their children are not allowed on the playgrounds. Even caretakers of children living in the society have to sit out. Pathetic!

Comment by midnighttoker on February 8, 2006 @ 12:38 pm

I saw something similar at the Azad Maidan show. A few street kids upfront when confronted with some beat-laden were commiting the sin of…. dancing.

The security kept trying to move them to the side and would have probably got rougher if it werent so public. Eventually someone was brave enough to get up and stop them. The kids didnt dance anymore though.

Meanwhile over to the other side, a few kids of the same age were running around the same audience area like, well,,, kids. Cute as can be and refusing to be tethered to their maid. Yet not one guard tried the slightest to do anything about it. The difference ?. Well you see these kids werent dressed in torn clothes, and appeared to be related to one of the performers up on stage. Not that their musical pedigree made any difference, it was their ‘babalog’ handicap.

Funny thing, i was at a workshop recently with one of Indias best known percussionists, and in a discussion about African attitudes to percussion he was lamenting how the average Indian will refuse to dance publically in complete contrast to his experience in Africa. Maybe i will point out to him that those who will are not allowed to and those who are allowed to wont!!!.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Akshay Mahajan

I’m suffering from a strange malady, a culture overdose. I’ve lost all sense of traditional time and seem to relate everything with the days schedule. 10:30 am Heritage walk, 2 p.m Movie at Cama and so on. This becomes apparent when somebody asks me how I spend my time and I make up imaginary accounts of extra days I’ve spent just roaming Kala Ghoda.

Here are some pictures I think I took yesterday but I’m not quiet sure.
Dilip has a good round up of Day 4 and some these pictures will help you relate.

[*German* Puppet Theatre]

[School Girls take to the stage at Kala Ghoda and give us a song]

[Street Childrens in their cars. Love the detail on all of them.]

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by charukesi

That’s enough, Sangeeta. You have painted your face on all the boxes now.

(She lives on the streets somewhere nearby. she has been here all day today and yesterday. And she is having such a great time.)

Facing the paint. Or is it the other way round?

Note the Surf Excel sponsored daag acche hain t-shirts and caps. Dirt zone, the banners said, and dirt zone it was.

A happy bunch of kids, endless boxes of crayons, promising dreams, insignificant things like parents and shoes left behind.

We had nurses, astronauts, scientists, even a spiderman

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by charukesi

A hundred kids + two bright red tents + many boxes of waterpaints and crayons. Akanksha volunteers. A camera. A set of anxious and guiltily relieved parents. Two hours of rollicking fun.

Theme for the day: dream city.

Venue : the big red tent.

The children’s section is entirely being managed by Akanksha this year; the older Akanksha kids teaching and working with the other kids who come everyday to Kala Ghoda. In turn, the kids at the workshops having a blast, creative juices and water paints flowing freely and mingling with the red carpet inside the tents..

Some glimpses of the work-in progress.

Note the interesting things this kid has drawn as part of his cityscape: two hotels - the Oberoi and Taj, IIT and Pizza express. Clearly knows his priorities, this child.

Comment

Comment by akshay on February 7, 2006 @ 8:37 am

Wow this must have been so much fun. I must catch one of the children events before the festival is over.

Comment by charukesi on February 7, 2006 @ 12:15 pm

Akshay, yup, it is great fun. keep your eyes open and ears closed. they can be so noisy :)