Here is a delightful story 10-year old Rajat wrote for a question in his English book, which asked him to write a science fiction story. A couple of tiny corrections in spelling and punctuation are the only changes I have made while typing it out. A Brief History of my Life When I first met the interplanetary explorer Edward Hardgriff, I thought he was pretty stupid: first, he was a big showoff, second he always won the prizes in our school (nothing wrong with that) and for that part in our college. The loudmouth and I shared rooms in an astronomy college. He was interested in the practical bit, I was interested in astronomy. A few years later, because of staying with him for so long, we became friends. Maybe it is because of something I don’t remember, but I don’t think so. After a while he followed his profession and I followed mine: he became an astronaut, and I became an astrophysicist and wrote a Ph.D. on quasars 1 . After I’d completely forgotten him I got a call from him...

We haven't posted much onto the blog for a long time now -- I will try and get down to sharing bits of news from the past few months now. Srikiran, a carnatic classical violinist, spent the day with us in August. He played a very moving little 'kriti' for us at assembly. Amidst the usual excited hubbub of the post-lunch break, the feeble strains of a melody emerged from a window. We followed it into the cool dimness of the library and found this (please excuse the dark video): Parvathy, the singer, is a fifteen-year old student at Shibumi. She has been singing and learning music seriously for years now. The musicians found each other after lunch and had an informal little 'jam' with a couple of us looking on, savouring every moment.

Are You My Mother? Adapted from P.D.Eastman's classic picture book The Silly Rabbit Adapted from the folk-tale Nikita anchored a one-week long workshop in shadow-puppetry at school this month, at the end of which we put up two little plays, both based on well-known stories. Two student groups of eight each (between 7 and 14 years old) worked towards one play each. Nikita briefly took us through the history of this art-form and showed us amazing examples of shadow-puppetry, before we began together to visualise the stories and make and choreograph the puppets. Behind the Scenes - From Nikita's blog