Tenali Rama at KathaVana!

It has become increasingly difficult to plan weekend outings for kids in Bangalore as Bangaloreans are faced with too many choices and too little time. For instance, amongst other events, this weekend saw a host of children-specific events ranging from interactive story-telling at Kutoohala to the staging of the play “The Selfish giant” at Jagriti for children aged five years and above and the three-days children’s literature festival "KathaVana" organized by the Azim Premji University at Makkala Koota. With a line up like this, it is a wonder if the parents ever get a quiet weekend for themselves!  Ideally I would have liked to go for everything,  but since we were far from such a situation, I had to prioritize, and my choice was driven by logistics and timing! Well, the drive to Jagriti seemed daunting from Bangalore South, I thought I’d rather wait for the play to be staged nearer home (at Rangashankara!.......hopefully this would serve as pointers to the people associated with the play!:-) and the story-telling event at Kutoohala scheduled for Saturday morning being personally inconvenient for me, my obvious choice was to catch the fag end of “KathaVana” at Makkala Koota! Despite the detour in route owing to the Metro construction and  parking problems at the venue, we managed to watch the performance of “Court Jester- Tales of Tenali Rama” by Bangalore Little Theatre. With innovative use of props, foot-tapping jingles in between the narrative and actors taking turns to play the role of Tenali Rama, this play was a delight to watch!  Being a regular at events like this, Abhay has begun to recognize familiar faces and approaches them with ease – be it the play’s director whom he identified as having played “"Sringeri Srinivas"” at BLF 2012 last year or Shashank Purushottam who plays our favourite character in the Kannada serial  on ETV Kannada called “Mahaparva” - the villain Vishnumurthy Chintadri! J

 

(With due apologies to Shashank Purushottam ...I just couldn't help                          putting up this on Onestoryaday!)
 

A Children’s literature festival must mean books, books and more books….so amongst the many books I picked up, I had Abhay read the bilingual Appu series on Tenali Rama titled  "Tenali Rama outwits the thieves" ....…a variation of one of the stories performed at the play. Once there was a gang of cunning thieves in Vijaynagar who decided to rob Tenali Rama’s house hoping to find some royal gifts therein. Little did they know that they were being watched by Tenali Rama who hatched a plan to outsmart the thieves. He shouted out to his wife within the hearing range of the hiding thieves asking her to put all their valuables in a big trunk and hide in the well. They are shown dropping a heavy trunk it into the well, with the thieves looking on. At midnight, when everyone appeared fast asleep, the thieves started drawing water from the well bucket by bucket until they finally pulled out the trunk only to find that the trunk full of stones. Meanwhile, Tenali Rama sent for the king's soldiers  who came in just in time to arrest the thieves. So Tenali Rama helped the police nab the notorious thieves who unknowingly helped him water his entire garden! Being a bilingual book in English and Kannada, I was hoping that Abhay reads the story in Kannada (since he is a little behind in his second language)….but I should have known better!