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The students who just graduated from the school Mount Barker Waldorf performed the 'Conference Of The Birds' in The School on the 21st of January 2008.

The conference of the birds was originally a poem written by Farid ud-Din Attar in the 12th century. The play was directed by Jo-Anne Sarre. The music played a big role in the play. William keyte, his daughter Naomi keyte, and three other students, Alex, Thomas, and Joel composed the music and used over 20 instruments. This performance was their 12th one, and a brilliant one at that!

It starts off with all birds quarrelling with each other. The hoopoe tells them about Simorgh, the King of All Birds. Stories are told by the hoopoe to convince the birds to come with him on the journey to find this land, across deserts and valleys, where Simorgh resides.

The journey then begins, to find Simorgh, after one by one, most of the birds drop out of the journey, each with his own excuse. The birds cross the desert, and come to a point, where they readily give up their physical bodies. They then must cross 7 valleys; the first two being the valleys of quest and love. Eventually, the survivors reach the land of Simorgh, where they realize that Simorgh is none other than himself or herself.

The story is an allegory of one's life. It revolves around the journey that every human being must take to understand that a divine energy exists within everyone. The play is both realistic and sort of abstract as it uses symbolism throughout. The hoopoe represents guidance and inspiration, the nightingale, a lover who is too caught up in its love for the rose, the parrot, who feels secure inside its small cage, the falcon, who is egoistic and pretends to be strong while in truth, was a vulnerable and insecure character, and the sparrow who felt it was too weak and refuses to step out. These are all human characteristics. Each of the valleys symbolizes the stages that one must go through to find themselves. Personally, the play made me think about all the various excuses that one gives to escape life.

The props were given great importance. Every little detail was thought out so that the play could be understood better. For instance, to enter the valleys, the actors passed through two sticks held by two others. The lighting and music were also thought out well. The music was there throughout; Naomi keyte sang beautifully, with different tunes for apt situations. The lighting was something that really excited me; every time the birds put their hands down together, the lights would dim and when they put their hands back up, the lights would slowly come back on! The music, the lighting, and the acting were brought about with excellent synchronization. Also, the positioning of the actors proved to be very helpful. For example, when the birds were flying, they would form a sort of a 'V'.

The space was used well, as entrances were made both from the front and back of the hall. There was one scene in which thieves enter from behind the audience and direct their dialogues at whoever was in their way! That way, the actors both involved the audience and kept their attention throughout. Another thing I really liked was that each of the characters had their own walk. This showed that each of them had a different character or personality.

On talking to the actors, we found out that they read the script and chose three characters they really liked, and then the director would choose the one that would most suit the student(some students had more than one role too). Two weeks after deciding their characters, they were ready to perform!

Overall the play was very enjoyable and thought-provoking at the same time.

- Sri Vidya (Class 9)

Patua artists Moyna and Joydeb Chitrakar were in Chennai at the end of August to conduct a workshop for children from KFI The School and Olcott Memorial. Organised by Tara Publishing, the workshop introduced children to a unique form of community art, and attempted to approach art education from a non-Western point of view.

Patua is an ancient art form practised in West Bengal. The artists sing and recount stories by painting them in sequence – almost like a storyboard – onto long scrolls. Traditionally, patua artists worked within their own repertoire of stories and tales, but over time they have begun adapting their unique form to reporting events such as 9/11 and the tsunami, and even to spread messages on social issues. Each scroll is has its own song, reminiscent of the time when this art form was used to aid performances. The artists of old carried the scrolls with them singing for alms, now the scrolls are valued as art and sold separately, but songs continue to be intrinsic to the creation of the scrolls. The entire community paints, with everyone in the family assisting in the making of scrolls and composing of songs, and children starting to paint from a very young age.

During the five days of the workshop, the children, from ages 9 to 17, were introduced to Patua art, the idea of community art, and working together and telling stories thorough art. The ideas of drawing from the imagination and drawing to communicate were stressed upon. The children formed pairs and began working on their story-songs and their scrolls. A couple of the older children found it difficult to abandon the idea of depicting-as-is-seen that they had been taught in their art classes. A few of the younger ones were unsure about drawing itself, some had not even used paints and brushes before.

Moyna and Joydeb showed the children how they first composed their scenes based on the story, sketched the figures in roughly, painted the background colours and finally filled in the details – lines, patterns, faces – to complete a scroll. The demonstration calmed nerves considerably, and the children settled down to sketch and paint, reassured by the fact that Moyna and Joydeb were within calling distance for a quick consultation on anything from the colour of a character’s dhoti to how to show an earthquake’s destruction.

By the end of day five, frothing volcanoes, irrepressible jokers, philosophical fathers and benign elephants burst out of long, colourful scrolls. Detailed borders mimicking the traditional Patua motifs of flowers and leaves edged each scroll. The children proudly displayed their scrolls and sang, recited or told their stories.

Shri Rajendra Singh was on a visit to Chennai in January. It was an honour to have him visit school 10 January and speak to the students. Shri Rajendra Singh was a recipient of the Magsasay Award in the year  2001. As part of the Class 11 program students and teachers had visited Tarun Bharat Sangh in 2000.

"If your heart wants to do something really badly you should let yourself go ahead and do it...", these words still echo in my head after the interaction with Rajendra Singhji. What can one say about a man like him? This is a person who left his government job on impulse and moved to a village in Rajastan not knowing what he was going to do there. This is a person who holds his head up high and says proudly, " At that time I was educated and now I am not." This is also the man who was instrumental in bringing water to numerous villages in the dry state of Rajastan.

Everybody needs water to survive from the richest of people to the poorest. "Can you live on bought water forever? What would happen to the people who cannot afford this water?" There was a point in our history when all the 148 rivers in India were fit to be drinking and bathing water. Now, not one fits this criteria. This dramatic change can only be credited to ourselves and our tendencies to dump waste in the nearby water bodies. Are the Adyar and Cooum rivers actually our personal septic tanks? Who is responsible for the water that runs in these rivers? Who is responsible for the water we drink? Can we continue to push this upon the government or upon other people? Or is it time for us to do something for the environment that we live in ourselves?

In a village in Rajastan that had benefited from these water projects a few people turned up one day boasting licenses that said that they could fish in the villagers' river. At once the villagers sprang into action clearly stating this river was theirs and with the river came the fish that reside in it. These outsiders were sent away, licenses and all. A group of villagers or lets say a community of villagers managed to protect their river from men bearing government licenses. How were they able to do this? How are we not able to do anything compared to this for the rivers that run through our city, we are the educated ones after all, aren't we? The key word that lies in what they did happens to be community, community responsibility . If every community takes care of the part of the river that they live near no one would need to transfer the work upon another. A simple decentralized community way of river care.

A common thread reiterated in this interaction was centered around the question; do we need money to live and to be happy? Or do we just need to follow our hearts calling? For the students of class 11 and 12 this would be a walk down memory lane with regard to the December trip and for 9 and 10 maybe a brief introduction to emerging questions.

Here was an eminent person asking whether we know things about our own city, how much does the Chennai corporation spend on purifying 5 liters of water? What is the point of our education if we know nothing about the city we live and learn in and the nature that surrounds us? Our 'developed' city has two rivers that are not fit to wash a cleaning rag in and Rajendra Singhji lives in a village where their river feeds into a reservoir which not only sustains the people of Rajastan but is also distributed to other developed cities. Living the way we are living, are we actually sacrificing a connection with nature?

At the end of this interaction a lot of questions were left for us to answer personally regarding our place in a community and our responsibility as an individual. And for many of us the talk would have stressed upon our thoughts around what education actually is. Can we live like the villagers that Rajendra Singhji lives with, without all the comforts and the schooling we have, do what our heart desires and live as an intelligent human being?

- Madhvi Venkatraman Class 11

Class 8 along with three teachers undertook a study of the Cholas in the month of January 2008. For four days we stationed ourselves at Swamimalai, a pilgrim town about 8 km south of Kumbakonam town, and set out everyday to see various places and study them.

The trip has within it, four themes: crafts and the temple; the geography of the land, delta and irrigation; monuments of a city; a village and an ancient capital.

We met with crafts people - bell metal workers, weavers, veena makers, glass plates, three-metal plates and observed their work.

On the trip last year we had discovered the palace at Thiruvaiyaaru. This time Thiruvaiyaru had another surprise to offer - makers of the thavil rings. We discovered that this was the only place for thavils in India! Thiruvaiyaru is also famous for its halwa and now it is a convention to buy some for our snacks!

Darasuram, Gangaikondacholapuram, Brihadeeswarar were the three Chola monuments we visited. The man in whose times the temples were built - the so called creator of the huge temples, the architect of a marvellous kingdom, Rajaraja is now represented by a black stone in an unmarked and unnamed field in a village called, Udayalur. This stunned the students who had seen the Thanjavur temple. I think they became immensely thoughtful after this. "Is this it?" was one question on many lips.

Udayalur and Keezh Pazhaiyaarai were two small villages which were part of the old Chola capital were also two places we visited.

The Kalannai or the Grand Anicut was a breathtaking sight. This time we had time enough to walk the entire length which I estimated to be at least 2 km, and note the the three rivers which flowed at the head of the delta.

The trip to Gangaikondacholeeswaran temple took us along the breadth of the delta, crossing distributaries and miles and miles of green verdant fields of the thanjavur district. Crossing the Kollidam, we had the thrill of seeing two crocodiles sunbathing on a sand bank. We weren't quick enough to snap them, though!

The children had worksheets that gave them challenges and room to observe, ask, think, write and discuss and, of course, to sketch. Photography was organised under areas or themes: people, monuments, landscape and students at work and were takes by four separate volunteer students.

It was possible for the students to be involved in their work. They listened most of the time to instructions; asked questions once they warmed up; ate, slept and got ready without too much of delay. Quite a few of them found a way of relating what they saw to what they read and we hope that this learning will always remain with them. The three teachers had time to observe the children; guide them and work with them. From the teachers, knowledge of music, village life and Tamil literary works contributed to the understanding and enjoyment of a study based on observation and questioning.

- Akhila Seshadri (Teacher of History)

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