| ஒத்திசைவு | प्रत्याह्वय | resonance |

As usual, the day before the ‘actual’ Christmas, it was celebrated with much gusto at the School – on 24th December itself.

The children had been toiling for quite a while to set up a cute ‘nativity’ scene, and were preparing to sing quite a few carols, with some background music to boot – what with the erdkinder supporting the music sessions with a drum set and couple of electric guitars. Good ol’ trustworthy Anthony set up the mike system and the forenoon session came to a close with all children having fun and veggie burgers and much else from the famed  amma bakery of Banaswadi! (This amma has no connection with THE amma of Tamilnadu, sorry!)

The afternoon was spent in quite a novel way in the sense that – all children and adults associated with the School had been asked (a couple of weeks earlier) to come up with homemade/handmade gifts – to be given to another child/adult from the school. Lots had been drawn and the lot of these folks were decided and each gifter (argh!) knew and got to spend sometime (in a structured manner)  with the giftee (argh! argh!!) – so that gifts could be appropriately thought about and worked upon.

All in all (it is not just another brick in the wall), I must say that this was a very good success, in the sense that the range of gifts that were made (and handed over on 24th) was very wide and there were quite a few targeted and cute ones – of course, all painstakingly handmade.  Of course, the ‘adults’ (‘teachers’ in Montessoriese) had taken extra care to come up with their ideas and it is amazing that they had the time do these – what with their School related  responsibilites and home related ones.

Apparently many parents seem to have caught on to the School zeitgeist and have suitably pitched in. They have had their creative juices flowing too, and with their ideas getting translated to a good form by their children – the effect was so nice… The children are truly gifted!  (and let us hope that those few parents who couldn’t spend as much time, energy etc with their children, would do that the next time around!)

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Oh what fun we had – and how nice it was, NOT to share any commercially made flimsy & gross contraption – and instead, to talk (=show off) in detail about how a given gift was made…

It is really incredible, if one lets the children be, me thinks.

And for once, we proved the inimitable Bill Watterson wrong about our own kahlweens, I mean! :-)

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Anyway, here’s wishing you…

1. a merry Christmas, or
2. a pagan solstice celebration, or
3. the mourning the death of Rajaji, the great statesman (he passed away this day in 1972), or
4. a thoughtful rumination on the day of the beheading of the Bharathpur King, Sooraj Mal – by the forces of Najib-ud-Daula in 1763, or
5. a working-class or a grand celebration respectively of the birthdays of Rosa Luxemburg (1870) and Isaac Newton (1642) …

… …whatever. Get ticked off, wherever applicable.

JournalEntry# 25th December, 2008, with updates as of date