Moving Outdoors

For the last three days, the camera had been lying untouched. The children were putting down the images inside their heads down on paper. We were witnesses to the process of their thoughts evolving. A picture is worth a thousand words - I'd like to correct that - its worth many thousands of words.

We moved outdoors into the wide space enclosed by the Aarti Home building and the school block. The mural would go on the wall at the ground level on the school building. We had got it white-washed earlier and now it was time to get the children introduced to their canvas!

We played some more games and then the children had another session with Farah. The idea was to get them comfortable with the space.

We now zeroed down into what we wanted next - ideas for the mural! Much brain-storming and animated discussions happened. We used a whiteboard to jot down the ideas that were being bounced around. At the end of the session we had more than forty completely unique ideas - all depicting the idea of shelter. What a long way we had travelled from the boring picture of two hills with a rising sun and a house, and this was just half a week later!

The children drew their ideas - we had got them a sketch book each which they had been using to sketch out their thoughts, to learn drawing techniques and to preserve all their memories of this week.

We collected the books in a pile and then all of us went through each of them, capturing the images in our heads in an effort to cobble up an idea of what would eventually go on the wall. The dinner bell went off but the children simply refused to budge till the last book had been checked out. All the books were laid out on the floor like an art gallery - with the picture they'd chosen facing upwards. We would start off on the wall the next morning - we couldn't wait!