The Paaruls and Palash were introduced to the Chittara art form through a two day workshop at Shibumi.   Chittara is a folk art form practised by the women of Deewaru community living close to Jog Falls in Shimoga, Karnataka. CFRIA (Centre for Revival of Indigenous Art) is a non-profit organisation that is committed towards preserving and Indigenous Art practices in India. We had Geetha Bhat, from CFRIA, as the facilitator and Lakshmakka, who is from the Deewaru community, introducing the kids to this art form.   We started off with an introduction to ’Hase Gode Chittara’.   The motifs used in Chittara are geometric and mainly lines. Hase Gode Chittara represents a marriage ceremony in the community. The drawing of the Chittara itself is part of the ceremony.   The colours used in Chittara are red, white, black and yellow. For white, ground rice paste is used; roasted rice for black, yellow seeds (Gurige), red earth and the brushes are made up of pundi naaru. ...

We had a one day intense workshop with Nikita Jain and Priyanka Patel , where they shared with us the magic of Shibori. We had done tie-dye earlier, and were fascinated by the simple technique of knotting and dyeing fabric to create happiness! Shibori is the Japanese word--meaning to wring, squeeze, press--for a number of ways of embellishing textiles by shaping cloth and securing it before dyeing. It was magical because of the various labor intensive techniques that created elaborate patterns that were unexpected and mind blowing. The techniques involving crumpling, stitching, plaiting, plucking and twisting. Once the cloth was 'shaped' by these methods, we secured it in a number of ways, such as binding, clamping or knotting. The children's questions moved from, ' what will happen if  I do this?' to 'let me try this!' The element of chance to the display of patterns and colours of this method gave life to the shibori process and added its special...

Pelva has brought music with her to Shibumi. We are very happy to have the regular singing sessions with Pelva where she takes us through the nuances of Dhrupad.   In the beginning I tried to understand the music. I couldn’t do this because I wasn’t able to pick out the different sounds and see that they were unique. To me they sounded pretty much like each other. I then tried to feel the music but I am afraid I didn’t feel anything. I tried keeping the beat while singing but this made me loose the tune and words. I also tried to move my hands with the music but they moved in a very odd manner which did not resemble the music in any way. So as you can see I found it very difficult to connect with the music both at the level of the mind and at deeper level. I will not give up and I shall continue to try and cross these hurdles because singing is one skill I sincerely wish to have. ~ Sagar. (Mamm o th) This type of music (Indian Classical) is ge...

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