Saturday, November 26, 2005

blessed to work with the kids

After getting a go ahead from the padmanabhanagar govt. school head, I was going to start the classes from 26th nov 2005. I had requested the teachers to pick 20 students with whom I could work with, for the 30 sessions (first step in the Theatre In Education - TIE activity that I am involved in).

I reached the school at 2:30pm on the 26th, saturday and I was given the list of sudents --> class V -Ananthalakshmi, Harshita, Naveena, Varsha, venkatesh class VI -Anand, Arun, Lakshmi, Santosh, Shilpa class VIII -Deepak, Kiran, Sharanya, Shwetha, Srilakshmi class IX -Chetan, Divyashree, Harish, Nutan, Shruthi.

We started the class by forming a circle. I just briefed them as to what was the whole idea was, what we would be doing in these 30 sessions etc. We started the first session with a shloka, "saraswathi namsthubhyam..."We then played the first game...simple one where we have to keep passing the "pat" to the next person in the circle by saying out a number in the order of 1 to 10. If we are about to say 10 and pat the next person, he is supposed to escape the pat. If he succeeds in doing so, the person who was supposed to pass the pat would be out and if he fails to escape, he would be out.

After this, I split them into 3 groups and asked them to show the mysore dasara picture to some visitor using themselves..It was interesting to note that one of the kids had devi bhuvaneshwari with 4 hands! the other group had a pujari performing pooja as the procession proceeded. in the other group, they had 2 people form one elephant as they wanted to show that it is huge!!

As I noticed that they enjoyed this very much, I asked them if they wanted to try out more and the answer was yes! So, the next topic was bangalore...this time I asked the other teams to interpret their representaion. it was fun...they were all enthusiastic to come up with new things. One thing that I observed was that they were not keen on doing it very well or perfectly...should be okay as they are kids and it was something very new for them to concentrate on such things!
After this, I tried one of the playback activity...I passed a book and asked each one to assume that the book was in a particular state and asked them to act accordingly...book being hot, cold, light, heavy etc...I did ask them to think of a state and act but I noticed that they were not able to get the meaning of state...may be i didn't convey it properly as some of them started reading the book! later, i gave them the myself like pricky, sticky, slippery...but atleast some could pick it up as one of them assumed that the book had a bad smell and acted it out...atleast on ecould catch it ...not bad!!

After this was dumb charades...I split them into 4 groups, gave them each a personality/phrase to act...pollution, gandhiji, lawyer and police... they were not all that good in guessing or probably the game was too new...I was concerned if they weren't thinking fast! I should find an answer to this...

We played the last game...stamping the balloons...I split them into 4 groups again...gave them colored balloons, yellow, orange, green and blue...they had to tie the balloon to their left/right leg. This was a timed activity...they were expected to start on time, stamp the balloons of the other team and at the same time guard their team balloons and stop when they were asked to stop. I bet they would have enjoyed this game like no other game...but they didn't stop on time :-) may be I didn't think of it...it took something for me to stop them!

At the end when I told told them that we will meet on next sat, I could see the happy faces :-) ...its amazing that kids get used to someone so soon!! and they just say it out without caring for anyone!

Also, some kids were treating me more like a friend than a teacher, they were taking me here and there holding hands, asking me to do what they were asked to do...when we formed a circle, they were fighting as to who should stand next to me ...may be beacuse I made them play a lot of games but it is true that kids accept you so easily :-) and what suprised me more is, expression of the acceptance...think it is very easy for the kids!

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

kimi also won the "drive of the year" for his monaco drive :-)
F1 racing magazine said --> “No drive in 2005 better combined steely strategic nous and outrageous talent than Kimi's victory in Monaco.” [source: f1.racing-live.com]
and this pic was taken with my nokia 6600
kimi is the driver of the year!
this is the pic of my car (thanks to akshay and vinay)...and chinnu took the pic :-)

Monday, November 14, 2005

hope

"wish you all a very happy children's day! it's a day dedicated to you all and it's all yours...feel special about yourself and have great fun!"
these were my final words of the speech that i gave as a judge for the in-house drama competition in a school called APS public school. it is kind of strange, i felt that until recently i was used to listen to someone on a children's day as a kid i was on the other side this time!
may be i never thought i would address a bunch of kids on a children's day 10 years later, in 1995 when i was in class 9.

but for some reason, i was so happy to see the kids perform...they did a great job. i also remembered how it used to be when we used to do plays in school. man, we used to think that it was everything...i could see the same in these kids too...they were completely into it and it was so evident that it meant everything to them.

there were 4 plays presented by one each house of the school. the theme was "social evils and superstitions". we judged the plays based on three criteria, creativity, presentation and the content, of course with the other sub criteria like, expressions, energy level etc...it was good to see that the children were so creative. there were children from class 6 to class 12 in each house... and everyone had come up with their own scripts. it was surprising to see how well they had planned for it.
one play even had a flashback where they waved the dupatta and went back to the age where the lead actress was still a kid!
the best play was on superstitions... it had various incidents where in kids encountered with superstitious beliefs and how they were resolved...i want to quote one incident wher a kid goes to her grand dad and asks him as to what is a lunar eclipse and why shouldn't moon be seen then? her grandpa says that it is because the two demons rahu and ketu eat up the moon and so he disappears. the kid goes to the school and tells the same thing when the teacher asks "what is a lunar eclipse?" then the teacher gets 3 kids, one representing the earth, another one the sun and the last one the moon. he makes the kid playing the moon revolve round the kid playing the earth and this kid playing the earth is made to revolve round the kid playing the sun. and when they all come in a straight line, they show the sun casting a shadow on the moon and the teacher explains that hence people on earth cannot see the moon then!! it was presented so well that i was really impressed and the captain of this house had selected all the class 6 students to do this and they did a wonderful job!
there were a lot of interesting stuff...in one of the plays, one kid was hit by his friend and within no time he had black patch painted round his eye! very impressive... i thoroughly enjoyed the event.

it was hard to judge but we had to select a best play, best actor/actress and the best script...so we did that... but told them that they all had performed very well etc (typical judge stuff). as i spoke to them in the end, i was all excited about the fact that they are our future generation; they could make our country proud! this had never happened before...i was so happy for them ...for being the kids they are and for being the hope :-))

Thursday, November 10, 2005

sunset in hampi...
another one!
one of my favorite pictures from the amarnath trip