Literacy India – Children View HTML Page
Source – Indian Express, September 13, 2005
INDIA EXPLAINED, INDIA EMPOWERED: A SPECIAL SERIES
Dark clouds give way to silver screen
A Gurgaon NGO shepherds talented actors from slums right into Bollywood
RAGHVENDRA RAO
VILLAGE CHAUMA (GURGAON): Till a few months back, 14-year-old Kamal was resigned to the fact that he would at best be able to step in the shoes of his father, who works as a driver in a Gurgaon household.
But ask him about his future plans now and he replies assuredly, ‘‘I want to be an actor.’’ Kamal will shortly be seen in Vishal Maqbool Bhardwaj’s next production Neeli Chhatri. And he is not alone. Accompanying him will be four other children (including his sister Urmila), all students of the Shiksharth Project run at NGO Literacy India in village Chauma near Palam Vihar in Gurgaon.
The NGO, is the brainchild of Indraani Singh, Asia’s first woman to pilot an Airbus 300, and has Kapil Dev and Palash Sen as its committee members. Bhardwaj selected Kamal, Urmila, Rahul, Doli Ram and Paramjeet for his film after watching them perform a play. ‘‘NSD’s Shrivardhan Trivedi brought him here. Bhardwaj liked their performance so much that he auditioned them and called them to a seven-day training session with Pankaj Kapur at Mumbai,” says Satya Prakash, an office-bearer. ‘‘After Mumbai, the children accompanied the film’s crew to Dalhousie and Khajjiar for a month-long tour,’’ he adds.
Child thespians
• NGO Literacy India funds the vocational education of poor children whose parents can’t afford schools. Five pupils whose special skill was acting were signed on for a Vishal Bhardwaj film after a school play.
• Bhardwaj, the maker of Maqbool, facilitated a week-long training session in Mumbai with actor Pankaj Kapur for the thespians off the street, literally.
• The NGO has adopted close to 500 children, imparting skills ranging from mobile phone repair to carpentry. Those academically inclined are sponsored to attend to proper schools.
‘‘Pankaj Kapur ke saath kaam karne mein bahut mazaa ayaa. Unhone sikhaya ki dialogue ko dil se mehsoos karke bolo,” recalls Paramjeet, the eldest. Paramjeet says he eventually got a role where all his scenes are with Kapur. “Main film mein unka chamcha bana hoon,” he says.
Trained by the likes of NSD alumnus Shrivardhan Trivedi, these children have staged productions like Pied Piper, Charandas Chor, and Alibaba Aur Chalis Chor. They have also staged Humari Kahani, based on the play Bhagwadajjukam, before President APJ Abdul Kalam at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
All the children come from a background where getting two meals a day is a luxury. Their parents either work as daily-wage labourers or are employed as domestic help and drivers.
‘‘Most of these students live in slums and had dropped out of school at some stage or the other,’’ says Prakash, who also supervises the NGOs Karigari Project where 250 students are being trained in vocational skills like plumbing, carpentry, mobile-phone repair, electronics and driving. We have tried to make education a fun-activity through means like theatre and creative arts. The mindsets of the parents have also undergone a change in the process,” he adds.
Starting from a mere five children in 1996, Literacy India is now home to 475 children who have enrolled at the NGO’s school called Vidyapeeth. ‘‘As many as 40 children, who have shown academic promise, have been sponsored to other schools under our Gurukul Project,’’ says Prakash. Another 390 children come for evening classes at the Pathshala Tuition Programme run by the NGO.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=78010