Last evening was the first show of our cultural programme at Sanskriti. Everyone in charge treated it as a kind of exalted dress rehearsal. Everything was practised - giving gifts to the teachers, standing for a photo, everything. For them, it was just a complete, thorough rehearsal before Saturday. For me, though, yesterday was the real thing. My guru was there. And as always, no one's reaction is important except for hers. The whole world could be in raptures, but if she is not happy, the simple fact is that the programme was not successful. Guru Mythili Raghavan was not impressed, but she was pleased. She was proud of us - I could see that much. She was unhappy with the sound system, but the girls were, in her words, 'not bad'. I'm happy. For me, now, Saturday's show is a dress rehearsal. We can just turn time around a bit and pretend Saturday's performance came first. … [Read more...]
The Circus Boy
I did two more book-readings yesterday - The Circus Boy and The Old Yellow Scooter. The reactions were completely different! Children never stop surprising me. The first reading (The Dictionary) was wonderful - I got questions about reading, writing, publishing, drawing... The second reading (Dreams) was strange - I wondered whether the girls understood the story at all. I got all kinds of questions that were totally random - about how many languages I spoke, about what my mother wanted to be when she grew up, about who my class-teacher was... The third reading (The Circus Boy) was lovely. The questions made me feel that the girls really enjoyed my story. They wanted to know what happened after that. What did Girish feel? What did Ravi say? How did Jatin react? It was heart-warming. The fourth reading (The Old Yellow Scooter), with class II instead of class III, was grand. The children … [Read more...]
Performing tomorrow and on Saturday!
I teach dance at a school run by the Army Wives' Welfare Association (AWWA) - and they have their annual cultural programme tomorrow. Beginning with a Ganesh Vandana, there are several performances on the programme. My girls are going to be doing a Kannada folk dance and Swarajati (Raag Hamsanandi). I'll be concluding the programme with a thillana. The programme will be repeated on Saturday simply because the expected audience exceeds the capacity of the hall. Some parents will be asked to come tomorrow, and some on Saturday. It's a fairly standard programme, but for the first time, my guru is coming to watch! I'm going to be playing the nattuvangam too - and I'm trying to figure out what is making me most stressed - my guru watching my girls, my guru watching me dance, or my guru seeing how I play the nattuvangam! Hoping things go well, and as always, the only reaction that matters … [Read more...]
Why I Write for Children
My first reading at St. Mary's school yesterday told me, yet again, why I love writing for children. The number of questions they asked me and the way they interacted with me for a whole hour was simply wonderful. Writing, editing, publishing, marketing, illustrating and designing - they had questions about all these things. They wanted to know what an illustrator's options are. They wanted to know whether children can get books published. They wanted to know why sometimes books are not available in shops. If I have a big painting on cardboard, how can I send it to a publisher? How can I make an audio book on a CD? How can I ask the shopkeeper to sell my book? How long does it take to publish a book? They wanted to know everything - it was splendid! At the end of my four readings for the girls of class III, I am to write a small piece about the experience for the school magazine. I … [Read more...]
Book-Reading in MY School!
Once upon a time (in 1995, to tell the truth), my wonderful school-librarian encouraged us to write and illustrate books of our own. A friend and I sat and wrote a book of stories and poems. I forget what it's called. We illustrated it painstakingly - and one important lesson that I learned from that was that even if I could write, I could never draw. At the back of the book, we proudly put in little biographies - About the Authors. Mine says 'Varsha Seshan is 8 years old and studies in Standard IV A.' What else was there to say? My teacher kept that book. She got it rebound when it started falling to bits. And eighteen years later, when I have a 'real' book published, she wants me to go back to my school and talk to children about making it happen. She wants everyone to look at that book and then at my new official one. She asked me if I was willing. I'm not just willing - I'm … [Read more...]
Treasure Hunt
All my friends ask me where The Story-Catcher is available, all the time. I know how easily it's available online, and I tell everyone to buy it online. But I've wanted to know for a while where it is actually available so that people can go to a store and pay for it at the counter (and so that I can take a picture and prove to myself that a childhood dream has really come true). So yesterday, a very dear friend and I went on a treasure hunt for my book. It's the most fabulous experience of my life because I tried so hard to spot my book amongst all those haphazardly lined on the shelves. I had a list from my publisher and we went to Pune's famous Appa Balwant Chowk, hunting, hunting, hunting. We went first to Venus Traders. Running up and down looking for a book in a place that does not have a catalogue is far more exciting than I could ever have imagined. My book was not there. This … [Read more...]
Cyber Café
I remember the year we created email accounts (which, of course, we used more often than not to send forwards). There was a cyber café at the gate, and we used to go at least once a week to check our mail and feel excited. Every year, we went to Bangalore for our summer holidays. That year, we felt a little lost without our precious email, so we scouted around for a nearby internet centre and found one, fairly close to home. We told our grandparents that we would like to go the cyber café for an hour in the evening. "Go where?" asked my grandmother. In Bangalore, we will always be children. Even now, I don't go out without telling my grandparents exactly where I'm going and for how long. "The cyber café," we explained. "Internet. For email." "Where is it?" asked my grandmother. "Just here, down the road." My grandmother wasn't too sure about sending us there by ourselves, but she … [Read more...]
The Mice who Turned into Fairies
I think I'm finally old enough to read stories I wrote when I was seven years old without cringing in embarrassment. Some still make me cringe; this isn't one of them, perhaps merely because it won the first prize in a story-writing contest when I was seven years old. Written in a four-lined notebook with painstaking neatness, it was 'edited' by my mother because seven-year-old Varsha did not understand the purpose of commas and paragraphs. Other than those original changes, The Mice who Turned into Fairies has been reproduced here as it was written. Once upon a time there lived five mice in a hole. One day another mouse came and said: "Please give me some food." So the five mice gave her a lot of food and to their astonishment, she turned into a fairy! After that, leaving a note saying where she lived, she went away. The mice thought that if they ate a lot of food they would also … [Read more...]
Getting back from Olympia
We managed, somehow, to get to Olympia, thoroughly unprepared. (How do we go to Olympia, please?) We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly there - how could we not? Yet, the whole day out in the sun got to us, eventually. And living on juice, bread and cheese is never a good idea. At Patras, we had an awful youth hostel. We'd read reviews that called it a 'filthy scum hole', but there was no other place to stay. Calling in Greece was ridiculously expensive, so we hadn't been able to call home. We were planning to go next to Athens and had no idea where we would stay there. All in all, we were well on the way to being upset by the smallest things. And then it happened - that which got us upset. We discovered that even though museums in Olympia close at 19:30, the last train out of Olympia is at 15:20. That meant two things - we would have to take a bus to Pyrgos (and spend more money again) and … [Read more...]
Experiences on Stage
I'm sure every performer could write a book about things that go wrong on stage. The most wonderful part about performing on stage is the fact that nothing is predictable. Even after practising for, say, a year, something is bound to go wrong. I remember when we performed the Ramayana on stage. Deeply inspired by performances we saw at Kalakshetra, we wanted to put up something grand, something that audiences in Pune don't see very often. My dance teacher choreographed a beautiful dance ballet in Kalakshetra-style - the Ramayana. A problem we face very often is that we have very few committed dancers, which means that each dancer often has to play more than one role. Changing took rather longer than planned, and Ravana was not ready in time for his grand entrance at the Sita swayamvara. Unwilling to leave the stage empty, we went on to stage to play for time. Then ensued the most … [Read more...]
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