16.Theatre of Relevance –Healing the survivors of natural calamity!

Theatre of Relevance –Healing the survivors of natural calamity!

Truly Tickled… By Vijay Shetty

 Though I have a film and theatre background, most of my work has been centred around children. So when, six months after moving from Mumbai to Port Blair, I was offered a job by DWEEP PRAYAS (the Andaman & Nicobar Unit of PRAYAS, headquartered in Delhi) an NGO working on children's rights issues and towards anything that would help in children's welfare, I took it up without batting an eyelid.

I met Rajshekar, an Assistant Project Officer with UNICEF. Raj asked me (considering my theatre background) to come up with a project concept that would, through a fun based activity, help the children to ventilate their feelings post the tsunami, and also make them aware of child rights. He desired to do this as a pilot project in 10 tsunami hit villages spread across three islands, namely, South Andaman, Little Andaman and Car Nicobar.

And that was the beginning of Gudgudee, initially, my colleagues at DWEEP PRAYAS were sceptical about this title, but agreed that if we had to have children laughing, and through laughter speaking out their hearts, we would have to get them tickled enough to do so. Finding a resource person to do something like this was my second hurdle, though it was assumed by everyone that this would be, for me, as easy as clicking my fingers, after all I had worked with almost every big name in the theatre circles of Mumbai, which included over 15 years with Naseeruddin Shah's Motley. But then I knew that none of the big names with their vast experience and immense talent might have the patience or aptitude to do this kind of therapeutic work.

 So I was still scratching my head, when Raj called to ask me to check out a chap by the name of Manjul Bhardwaj, this guy had been recommended to Raj by Saji Thomas of UNICEF Chennai. Now I myself have had many years of experience working with children's theatre and know almost all the names but I had never heard of this man Manjul Bhardwaj so I must confess I was cynical, but call him, I had to, so I did. And my cynicism only built up when this man after saying hello, said, 'you can check me on Google search', 'such a pompous ass' at that moment I remember thinking to myself. But all my suspicions were cleared the moment I did go on to Google; this man had indeed done more theatre work than all those theatre luminaries (that I personally knew) put together. Convinced, I got down to working out the logistics and got this man to understand what Raj and I wanted from him. This too was not at all a challenge because Manjul Bhardwaj the man lives, breathes and believes in only two Cs in his life, 'Change' and 'Children'.

 Thus, on 29th October 2006 Manjul Bhardwaj arrived in Port Blair, and with his help DWEEP PRAYAS and UNICEF (Port Blair) were able to churn a up the whirlwind of hilarity which we had called Gudgudee.

 The first 4 days were slotted for the training of the Area Coordinators of the 10 villages (in the three tehsils of Ferrarrgunj, Little Andaman & Car Nicobar) where Manjul was subsequently going to conduct direct interactive fun based activities for children. The four day training that the trainees underwent was something they had never ever experienced in their lives. They had all been to various trainings which spoke of various issues and approaches but in truth, the trainees later confessed, had been only theoretical, which most of the times had been boring lectures from so called experts whose language the trainees (in effect grass-root field workers) never understood. Manjul's method of training the field level Community Mobilizers is truly participatory, and makes his trainees look inwards and then helps them get the skills and strengths from within themselves which they need to apply in their work. Some of my colleagues who underwent this training acknowledged that they had undergone complete transformations due to this process of looking inwards and then building up.

 I certainly am in awe of this kind of process because I know that I've had a hard time convincing these very same people to look at our work not merely as a job, and what I could not do in 6 months, Manjul had done in four days. In the four days the workshop process also worked towards eliminating all the inhibitions that my friends from the grass root had had prior to the Gudgudee programme. In fact, on the second day of the training session, it was quite a sight to watch one of our colleagues Fathima shouting dancing and singing (along with her co-trainees) in front of her husband's office without bothering about the consequences or that one of her husband's colleagues would wonder if she had gotten off her rockers, shouting singing, crying and dancing like she was on the street. At the end of the 4 day training workshop for the Area Coordinators, an informal valedictory session was held, during this the trainees spoke at length about how they felt and how they had changed in the four days of the training, they thanked me for organising something which had practical use for them as compared to the purely theoretical and boring workshops they had attended earlier.  

 This brought us to the main part of the programme of Gudgudee which was to go to the villages or the Temporary Shelter colonies (where the Tsunami affected people will reside in, till their permanent shelters are built in 2008/09) and conduct Gudgudee as a fun based amongst the children. This was the most exciting part and something I had been looking forward to because I had garnered by now that Manjul would indeed be able to deliver much much more than the mere project objectives that had been outlined in the Gudgudee Project Proposal that DWEEP PRAYAS had submitted to UNICEF (Port Blair). So on 3rd of November we started with Tushnabad village about 35 kilometres off from Port Blair. The time that Mukund and Fathima had fixed was 3.00pm, as the children returned from school around that time, and the venue was the Tushnabad Community Centre. We decided to go a little earlier and scout the village after going around the village we went to the community hall and waited for the children. Slowly and steadily the children trickled in and Manjul ignited them with his cries of 'Pillello' to which the 37 children assembled there responded with 'Ho'. Listening to the hullabaloo, the parents, and other community members who had gathered around but had been reticent to enter the community hall came in and started to proudly watch their village children perform. As Manjul started playing various song and dance routines the children aped him and while enjoying this thoroughly, they slowly opened up. It was for me quite an eye opening experience, in the sense that we 'so called educated and concerned citizens' mouth only homilies on child welfare and child rights, but the children in Tushnabad were aware that they have the right to exist, right to shelter, right to good nutritious food, right to speak, right to be heard, right to parental and community care, right to entertainment. What the community elders realised that evening was that merely telling the children about the rights was not good enough but they as a community had to ensure the systems to provide this for their children.

 The next day we went to the Tsunami Affected people's Temporary Shelter colony at Chouldhari, here too the interaction with about 52 kids was enchanting, but what was more magical for me was that I lost Mukund, Abdul, Kiran, Manju and Ramani (Dweep Prayas Team Members) among the crowd of children. It was especially a touching moment for me as only four days earlier we'd had Ramani telling us that though she liked children to some extent she didn't concern herself about their welfare as she directly worked in the field of providing women with livelihood trainings. For the Chouldhari interaction with the children I had earlier asked Manjul to include the children's fears, dreams and ambitions, which he did do and this lead to a cascade of emotions as the children all started to talk of the tsunami and the nightmares they still had. When asked how they got over their fears most of the children there answered by saying 'by thinking of the future and dreaming of achieving our dreams and working hard at reaching them'. This made me realise how easily we adults undermine children and their capacity for intelligence and (provided the right opportunity) achievement.

 The next day we at 6.30 am we set sail aboard the M.V (Motor Vessel) Wandoor for Hut Bay (Little Andaman. It was a 6 hour journey.

The next three days were so full of animation that we didn't realise how they passed. As far as the fun based activity and the children's responses to that were concerned, they were somewhat similar to what had occurred in Tushnabad and Chouldhari yet they were totally different. This is something that I know from my prior experience in theatre that no two shows and no two audiences are ever the same. The three places (namely; Harbinder Bay, Padauk Tekri) in Little Andaman that we conducted the activity for children were each in their own way unique.

 Harbinder Bay, for Manjul was unique because this was the first time he (though he has travelled the length and breadth of the world) was interacting with Nicobari Tribals in a Nicobari settlement. For me this was unique in the sense that I witnessed the demystification of the myth, that due to a lack of comprehending Hindi (which is the language used as medium of instruction at the schools here and is compulsory for even the tribal) the tribal Children do not understand what is said to them and are slow at reciprocating to communications, and thus are less intelligent than mainlanders. For me it was not just this discovery that was a learning experience but what was spell binding was the simplicity with which the children reacted and the honesty with which they shared their nightmares with Manjul. When Manjul asked them what we the adults could do to help them reduce their fears, 'just be our friends and play with us' was an almost unanimous answer.

 Padauk Tekri only enforced the fact that language or lingual skills are never a barrier when working with children. Vinod Kumar a 13 year old deaf and mute, was within a matter of a few seconds, swaying, dancing and aping Manjul and the 76 children assembled in the community children's park.  I couldn't but help get choked with emotions at this sight. Its something that I will never ever forget in my life.

 Apart from the fact that we were more than able to fulfill our agenda and get extraordinary responses from the children the activity at Nanjappa Nagar was distinctly fulfilling for two other reasons:

1.   It had rained and the site originally chosen for the work was full of puddles, so Manjul nixed the venue, as most of the work entailed the children jumping, falling and sitting on the floor.         After a little scouting, we found a slightly decrepit gazebo-like wooden construction which was what used to be used formerly as the Community Centre. Manjul said the wooden floor would be very convenient for our work, provided we quickly procured some Gunny sacks and wiped off the damp moss so that the children wouldn't slip. You must be wondering what's so special about this, well here it comes, when the gunny sacks were brought, the DWEEP PRAYAS team members were all slightly hesitant to get down on their knees lest the mucky floor get their clothes dirty, so in a fit of righteous anger I snatched one sack from Rathin, the Area coordinator's hand, got on all fours and started to vigorously wipe off the damp wooden floor. After this obviously all the team members got into the act and we had the floor dry in a flat four minutes and all this while Manjul was carrying on his activity. Later that evening Rathin told me, 'Sir, today we realised no work is big or small, if we really want to change our communities for the better we have to get our feet dirty'.

 2.       Coincidentally, a Team of officials from the NGOs 'Save the Children UK' and 'Butterflies' had happened to be visiting Hut Bay at that time so we had invited them and they had been curious enough to come see what we were up to. Neha Naidu (Programme Officer – S. C. UK) and Dr. Khader (Programme Manager – Butterflies) had originally said they would stay for 15 minutes but ended up spending more than an hour with the children. Later that night Neha expressed extreme joy at having been part of the activity and said that such activities should be conducted at a wider scale. She said that though she had witnessed many a participatory activity before today, this was a novel and elevating experience for her.

That night we got on to M.V. Kalighat and sailed back for Port Blair. The next five days were a vacuum as the office had not been able to procure a Tribal Pass for Manjul, which is why we could not proceed for Car Nicobar till one was obtained.

 On the 14th of November we were finally able to get hold of a chopper ticket for Manjul and send him off to Car Nicobar. I was pretty envious of him as we had got only one ticket and I had to send him alone when I too would have like to go with him, but later the envy turned to humour when I heard Manjul's predicament as they had had no recourse but to twiddle thumbs, while the chopper after taking off for Car Nicobar, did an unscheduled stop at Hut Bay, returned back to Port Blair, spent an hour being repaired and then flew once again for Car Nicobar.

Even though I'm sure the fatigue of being in limbo, while the flight was doing its back and forth, and the boredom of waiting while the chopper was being repaired, might have gotten to Manjul, he is relentless and as soon as he met Huxley, the DWEEP PRAYAS Area Coordinator of Car Nicobar, he wanted to know which village he was being taken to, and they set off for Kinyuka. I was lucky enough to get a ticket on the chopper flying the next day to car Nicobar. 'Sir, Gudgudee is working like Magic' Huxley gushed when he met me at the airport and start to brief me about what happened the earlier day at Kinyuka. He further went on to tell me that not only the 48 children of Kinyuka village, but their parents and about 32 community members too had insisted that Manjul not leave and go back the next day and conduct more games song & Dance routines. 'They loved talking to him, Sir, they've had so many NGO types visiting them Sir, including us, but no one has ever listened to them like he does' a very delighted Huxley informed me. I knew that Manjul had one more convert to his concept of Theatre of Relevance.

That Day we covered 3 more villages, Tee Top, Small Lapathy and Sawai. Organisationally speaking this was an achievement because apart from Tee Top village PRAYAS as an organisation did not have any presence, and we availed the assistance of the Butterflies team working in the villages Small Lapathy and Sawai

After the interaction with the children of Sawai, the last village on our list, we asked Edwin Zaphania CDO of Butterflies how he felt, and he said "Superb! What you've done with the kids today is something I'd never thought possible. When I was told about Gudgudee I had imagined that you people would run behind the kids and try to tickle them, but the way in which you got them to laugh so whole heartedly without going more than two feet near them and then through laughter go the children to talk and in turn, told them about Child Rights is amazing." That, for both me and Manjul, was the best kudos we could get. And we were calling up everyone possible to share the joy that we ourselves were feeling after this accomplishment.

The last day in Car Nicobar was really a succulent icing on a delicious cake. At Six am, Shabnam Singh the Field Coordinator of Butterflies landed up at Manjul's room at the Guest House, Zaphania had told her about the stupendous interaction we'd had with the children. 'I can take you to some more children' said she. So later in the day, thanks to Shabnam's intervention, we went to three schools and got the chance to truly tickle about 600 children. The children were so tickled that their peals of joyous laughter pierced through the skies. For me this was Goose Flesh Material, now, I've had hair raising or bone chilling experiences, but they've all, earlier, had to do with experiences which had some element of fright, or the unknown, or even once when I was learning something. But to sense this kind of reaction in connection with sheer delight, is an experience few people would have and I count myself lucky.

#TheatreofRelevance #Tsunami #NaturalCalamity #VijayShetty   #Unicef #ManjulBhardwaj

…to be continued…