Sunday, December 12, 2021

This Day That Year Stories

In the year of 2018, on December 8th, Shreya picked me up from my home at 4am in the morning. We drove to Bowenpally for a photo shoot of The Deccan Project. I picked a book from that cafe, Stephen Rose, Band of Brothers. On the same day, I visited Harry's place, chatted with Anjali and by night, we were at  Retro Drive-in for the Bonfire nights. It was hectic & lovely night.  

In the year of 2019, On December 7th, I took an early bus from Sirohi town to Ahmedabad to catch a early morning flight. On December 8th, I flew to Hyderabad and directly took a bus to Nirmal, Navya's wedding venue. By late morning, I was in Nirmal along with JBR, Chinmay anna, Pooja & Narra. In a few minutes, we were all ready to walk into the wedding venue. Pre-COVID era, we took our seats watching Navya getting hitched through the big LEDs set up at the venue. We were there but, we weren't there. In the wedding crowd, we were in a corner, enjoying in our conversations. By afternoon, we were done with the wedding. My seniors had another engagement to catch up. I had another wedding to attend. I hitchiked as the bus was tool late to start at Nirmal. With the help of various bikes, cars and a truck, finally, I landed at another wedding venue. Just met the couple before they leave for some wedding ritual. Enjoyed meeting all the juniors, Meghana, Vijay, Vineeth, Ved and all others.  

In the year of 2020, even though, it's winter December, it was freaking hot in the villages of Sirohi.  On December 8th, I went to a remote school visit along with Mukesh Parashar. 20 km away from the district headquarters lies a school with a single teacher. Every time, we go, we get lost. On sandy roads, asking anyone who comes across, we went along hoping to be on the right route. 

Due to COVID situation, no students are attending the school. Community classes are being conducted. As there's only single teacher in the school, she can't close the school and teach children in community class.  "Why are we doing this work for the sake of doing this work?" I strongly felt in my mind. I shared with Mukesh as well. We meet teachers, we try to be formal in our conversations, not persuading them to do what we want to do. They try to be formal nodding for everything we say. 

We say, we've engaged teachers, teachers feel they've engaged themselves in learning conversations.


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Art- Empty Spaces-Flow

The abstract of the exhibition is out.  https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/events/empty-spaces-flow-art-exhibition-abhinay-renny