How it felt to be proven wrong by kids? Wonderful, and Happy

Imagine you are on your office desk, immersed in your routine task. Your colleagues are sitting around, on their respective seats. Suddenly, your lead calls everyone in a meeting room. 3-4 unknown people are there and without much introduction, they give you a drawing sheet, few colors, and ask you to draw.

Yes, draw.

How would your react? Clueless, may be, or if you were like us, poor with colors and drawing, nervous, perhaps.

But, that’s NOT how the kids, aged between 5 years and 10 years, at a Government run Primary School in a neighborhood in Varanasi, reacted. They were joyous, and at ease.

Team SHURUA(R)T along with Professor Suresh K. Nair Nair from Visual Arts Faculty, Banaras Hindu University, spent 2 hours with kids; in full of awe, admiration and inspiration. We had organized a workshop intended to give the students the very basics of art.

Students at this school don’t undergo any separate classes for arts or drawing, hence we thought to expose the kids to a bit of drawing. Much to our surprise, and to the astonishment of teachers at the school, students were wonderful with the drawing.

Prof. Nair wrote the following on the black board,

• Mother
• Father
• Yourself

and asked the kids to draw. We all were little apprehensive about the outcome and school teachers were nervous. However, the event turned out to be a great one. The next hour or so, Sana, Gaurav and Vikas from SHURUA(R)T team, Prof. Suresh Nair and teachers at the school, namely Ms. Anju, Ms. Asha and Ms. Sunita experienced the energy, enthusiasm, and joy amongst the kids, while kids worked with the colors.

We were proven wrong, but we were happy. Not only the students enjoyed drawing and colouring, but showed their quality of attention to detail. In some drawings mother was wearing a saree, in some she was clad in salwar-kameez. Some even showed their mothers’ hairdos. Some dads were smiling, where as some of them had frown on their faces. Some made the pictures of their siblings as well (doing things beyond what is told).

It was our first experience. For many kids, it was their first experience as well. And it was a brightly colored experience for everyone. We felt nostalgic about our first drawings, remembered drawings done in our home walls, and carried back the smiles and enthusiasm in our hearts, determined to make such sessions more regular and frequent in future. Let’s start with the Art.

To see more drawings, visit http://www.shuru-art.com/pages/art-workshop-at-government-primary-school-in-varanasi