Here are snippets from her entries at Voice of the Parivartan Children

Sriya Srikrishnan

The end

Day 20 - 30th June, 2009

... I had mixed feelings. Couldn’t believe that the whole program was over and we would not be going to Wadala everyday anymore. I was happy that I could still go visit them at any point and that they would be able to study properly now. But it felt weird that it was over and now I’ll have to move on and do all my pending work at home. I literally had blocked out my entire world of friends and even family to some extent during this program. Many people were angry with me but at that point I was not worried......

....I also hope to do more amazing projects like this and to always be in touch and ready to help Parivartan, ETF and Revive: Mumbai......

THE day!!!

Day 19- 29th June, 2009

.... We were telling the kids that our mothers and were coming to see them. They seemed happy. We also asked them if they wanted to perform inside or outside and to our surprise they said both! They were completely prepared, excited and ready to do anything. It was really a great atmosphere and their excitement flowed in to me too....

....Heena finally came to me with her book and asked for homework. After I gave her homework she was back to normal and spoke to me properly again. I was so happy that she was talking to me...

....The kids were brilliant! I felt so proud of them. They went through the whole play by themselves. Gangadhar was also there to see them and took pictures. We also had a professional photographer......

....We headed towards the main street. Gayathri teacher led them. By then we got outside with all the kids, most of them were already in a big circle with a decent audience around them. They started with the song. Little Ahmed, as adorable as ever, led the group around as he sang- “dariya ki kasam, mauja ki kasam, ye tana bana badlega…. Tu khud ko badal, tu khud ko badal, tabhi to zamana badlega…”
We definitely attracted a great deal of audience. People came out of their houses to watch as the kids did an absolutely amazing job. They all looked confident. There were no mistakes and they all just went about doing their roles.....

...The happiest moment for me throughout this whole program was when Sahil shouted out saying that he was so strong and could do anything now. He wasn’t scared of anything anymore. This is exactly what we had wanted. We had empowered these kids to feel strong and have the attitude that they can achieve absolutely anything. It wasn’t about how good the performance was or how many people saw it. It was about how these kids who were once shy to even say their names out loud could now go out into the street and act out their dreams and lives. I was truly happy and felt like we had achieved something....

.... Zohar was then giving out sweets as I said goodbyes. I was a little choked. I didn’t really want to leave. Especially when Asheep walked up to me and said he was leaving. I asked him to give me a hug. I don’t know if he realized that I might never see him again...

...I really didn’t want to let them go. But they had to go home and so did we. Saima started to cry as she left and I gave her a big hug and promised to visit and never forget them. We then said bye to Gayathri teacher as well and walked out of the narrow lanes....

Performing outside

Day 18- 27th June, 2009

...Shakil said that it was one of the policies of Parivartan that for all volunteers and staff the learning should be mutual between the children and volunteers. He said that we had followed with this policy and I completely agree that the learning has been mutual....

... Shoaib did an amazing job. He told us today that he had passed his 10th standard and gave us all sweets! He had told me the first day I met him which was also my first day at Wadala that he was here on a job as Gangadhar’s assistant. He was the one who had guided us through the community and led us from one place to another. ...

...At this time, Heena was on my back and I was just talking to her casually when she said something about me coming everyday. I told her that Monday would be the last day that I was going to come. Then she said that if I don’t come there then she too would stop coming. This really disturbed me...

... Sahil, the boy who played the role of a drunken father was the only one who had played his role very badly compared to usual. He kept laughing and just said all his dialogues softly and without any expression...

... While saying bye I noticed that Heena was not talking to me at all. That’s all I’ve been thinking about the rest of the day....

Rainy Day

Day 17- 26th June, 2009

...the worst part was that as I stepped ahead and felt like I was about to puke I had to keep moving forward to get out of the place. We got through it in the end and made our way to the school after washing our feet using a water pump on the way. As soon as we climbed up the stairs and entered all the kids shouted out “Namaste teacher” louder than ever today! They even came running up to us to shake hands! This they had never done before....

.... Saima was at school today and is so demanding that she finally took the role. I think we ran over the play around three times with the kids. During recess, Gayathri teacher got us chai! In between rehearsing I was giving “jhoola” rides again and doing the “fugdi” with Heena, Asheep and Afreen! Then when we everyone got back we started all over again....

...I found that all the children enjoyed watching the drunken father scene so much.... We did another scene about gender discrimination in terms of education....A really good thing I noticed today was that Parveen was really loud and was no more the really quiet grown up girl. She did a great job as teacher in the play. She also was telling the other little children to sit down or to speak loudly and instructing them....

... At the end of the day, the kids came running to me for homework like the last two days. They really wanted and were ready to do a lot of homework even if it’s the same thing as the previous day. One girl said that she had nothing to do at home and so wanted homework! Everyone wanted to dance again but then Juhi want up to it and came asked me if we should...

... After reflecting our thoughts for the day Manjul told us to write down the answer to how we have impacted the children/parents/staff of Parivartan and community in the two aspects 1) live life interventions and 2) theatrical interventions. My thoughts were expression, initiative, education (priority of parents/community), loud voices and belief in teaching using the methods of theater. Then we had to write about the impact of this whole program on ourselves in the same two aspects. My answers were that I am definitely more self-confident, feel useful, not so worried about other peoples thoughts when I believe in what I’m doing and what I want to do, think it is definitely important to make my family a part of everything I do for it to go smoothly, have seen another side of my own city that I always knew existed but never experienced, learned a lot from all the new people I have interacted with, learned to appreciate what I have even more than I already do, “hold my space” much more than I did before and have learnt and now believe in the use of ‘theatre of relevance’. A great accomplishment overall!...

Putting on the Dancing shoes!

Day 16- 25th June, 2009

… today was just loads of fun… loads…. I was really tired this morning but looking forward to it at the same time…. after the intense conversations yesterday and a new idea, I was excited and just wanted to go try it out and see what happens....

... Was just looking forward to the children and kind of a new start after the horrible day yesterday. We were laughing and joking a lot along the way as we walked to the school. Like Zohar even said in the morning…

.... We played the 10-minute video that Manjul had given us. Some of the children were really enthusiastic that they were getting to watch the video. Although most of the enthusiasm was just for the fact that they were being shown a video on laptop, which is probably something they have never seen before, some kids actually paid attention. They recognized the clapping, singing and formation of a circle, which they had done too...

... Then Kushnuma, a new girl who had just come from the village and is new to Parivartan came up and volunteered to sing a song. It was the first time I heard her speak out loud. It was amazing to see that change. She had been very quiet on her first day. And now she was up singing a song all by herself. Then we made the kids whose dreams were to become police come up and act like they were policemen. It was amazing. Ahmed became a policeman’s bike. The whole group created sound effects. Then Asheep became a thief and Sarfaraj and Sahil became the police who both caught Asheep and came up with their own amazing dialogues. Then we created a classroom scene with Parveen and another new girl as teachers and a whole bunch of kids who volunteered to be students. Again, they came up with the dialogues completely by themselves and beautifully. Lastly we had the doctor scene with Asheep as the patient and Nazir and new girl’s sister as doctors. They were great too....

... After this we actually managed to run through everything from the beginning. This went surprisingly, very smoothly. We couldn’t be happier. We still had some time left and decided to try and do another scene. We wanted to show the scene of alcoholism and domestic abuse. Sarfaraj was trying to be the drunken father and this is where I thought that showing them the video had been a good idea as he actually said, “Accha, video kai jaisa karna hai.” (Oh, we actually have to act like in the video). Sahil then enthusiastically volunteered to be the drunken father, so we gave him a chance and we had Sana reluctantly do the part of the wife who gets beaten up. Although we would have like Saima to do she had left early since she had a headache and wasn’t feeling too well. Ahmed and Sarfaraj acted as sons. Sahil did an AMAZING job acting and with his own dialogues which were better than anything we could have come up with. Probably since he has grown up watching such scenes in reality. We were all hesitant in giving him this role since he has actually experienced it and if his parents watch him acting out such scenes they could probably hit him for doing it. But I don’t think anyone could do it better than him. I hope that his parents do see it and realize their mistakes...

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