The Aha! Story time

This week saw a unique theatre festival for children at Ranga Shankara, Bangalore’s well known theatre envisioned and founded by Arundhati Nag. Organized by “AHA!” Ranga Shankara’s theatre for children, this festival hosted a number of international and Indian theatre performances, story-telling sessions, painting days, puppet shows for children between the age groups of one to twelve year olds. Needless to say, I was thrilled more than Abhay…especially since Ranga Shankara is at a stone’s throw off from our house (I truly thank God and Arundhati Nag for choosing Bangalore South for her extraordinary venture!) Though ideally, I would have liked to take Abhay for all the events, but with most of the programs falling on weekdays, I had to call in for some reinforcements! I persuaded my ever-so-ready-to-help husband to drive Abhay for the story hour (with me joining in later, of course!) and book tickets and accompany him to the play “Piip and Tuut go to a concert” a Clown Act from Estonia and also take this picture of Abhay with Bangalore’s ace story-tellers Arundhati Nag and Padmavathi Rao! What did I do?....Well…I am blogging about it…am I not?!!:-)

The story hour featured two stories, the first one being a classic  by Robert Mcklosley narrated by Aarti Aney (I had featured the book on one of my earlier posts)  and the second looked like an original from Arundhati Nag herself.  Arundhati Nag regaled the young and old audience with a home grown tale of a farmer named Ganguram! Ganguram had an animal farm that housed different farm animals like cows, hens, sheep, etc. He was unhappy as he was beginning to grow bald. Worried about his hair loss, he tries to seek medical help but to no avail. One day, he realized that he could get a hair transplant from one of his farm animals! He first shaves his sheep off its wool and thereafter targets the hen, but none of these attempts yield the desired results! Finally, he catches hold of a crow demanding its feathers when the crow suggests a brilliant idea that has him pleased. What is that idea, you may ask? The idea is to be happy with whatever he has and count his positives before dwelling on the negatives! A message not just for kids….dont you think? An amazing animal story accompanied by Arundhati Nag’s animated narration was an ‘Aha! Evening’ to remember!