BHARATI PAWASKAR
It was a site to behold the students of New Dawn Ashadeep (Vasco), Sanjay School (Porvorim) and Lokvishwas (Ponda) dancing to the tunes of their mentor, the renowned Kathak artist Mamta Hussain who stole the entire show along with her dedicated team.
The event that began with the lighting of the lamp by dignitaries on the dais - Govind Gawade, Radhika Timblo, Gurudas Pilernkar, Bodhiraj, Pratap Gawas, Savio Messias, Govind Bene, Colonel Sharma and Mamta Hussain - mesmerised the audience for the next hour-and-a-half. The special children presented a spectacular performance despite their physical and mental disabilities, proving that with willingness to learn and compassion to train, nothing can stop them from touching the skies.
“The children of these special schools have been learning dancing from for the past 14 years while many batches have been passed out with new students enrolling each year. Some of them are trained in classical dancing too and many have performed outside Goa too, winning the hearts of the audiences in other States. When the HI (Hearing impaired) children perform the music played is for the audience and not for them as they sync only with the lip movements and actions while they dance,” stated Mamta Hussain who regularly travels to each of these schools to enhance their dancing skills. “I only add music to their lives and try to bring in some peace, hope and happiness,” shared Mamta, herself a trained Kathak artist and disciple of Pandit Birju Maharaj.
The programme began with a devotional note with Ganesh Vandana . Then there was a spectacular performance by the kids from Ashadeep who did a Zumba session on stage followed by Shiv Tandav by the hearing impaired boys and girls from SanjaySchool who are trained preliminary in classical form. Lokvishwas girls (also HI), presented a Rajasthani folk dance with fire lit water pots on their heads and took everyone’s breath away with their swift, easy and graceful movements.
“These girls had visited Rajasthan and saw this difficult dance there. When we came back, they insisted that they would perform the same dance here easily. And here they are, with a brilliant confident performance,” shared Mamta who stirred the children sitting in the audience, watching the show and asked them to join the next dance on popular Konkani and Hindi tunes like ‘Hunir mama aaylo’, ‘Galyat sakhli sonyachi hi pori konachi’ and ‘Bambai se aaya mera dost’.
Another performance on a Marathi song ‘Jejurichya Khanderaya, jagarala ya’ evoked and touched the spiritual aspect of life. The senior students who have upgrades and trained in Kathak were able to convey a ‘loud and clear’ message through their eye-catching performance though they had hearing and speech difficulties. The message was - how a pen, book and a teacher can change the world through education. All the slogans of women empowerment and upliftment come true only if education is imparted to girl child.
The students of Lokvishwas displayed a patriotic show dedicated to the Indian Army and Indian Police Force. When these hearing impaired children danced on the courageous song from Lakshya - ‘Kandho se milte hai kandhe, kadmon se kadam milte hai, hum chalte hai jab aise, dil dushman ke hilte hai ’ - penned by Javed Akhtar, composed by Shankar Ehsaan Loy and sung by Shankar Mahadevan, Sonu Nigam, Hariharan, Vijay Prakash, Kunal Ganjawala and Roop Kumar Rathod - a wave of patriotic ‘josh’ swung through the audience too. This was followed by a Konkani Mando by MR kids who, with expressive and smiling faces, actually danced their heart out.
“It is difficult to tune with these children. If one action or move is missed, they take a complete U turn so one has to be very attentive,” disclosed Mamta who works with them closely and understands their behaviour well. For the grand finale all the participants were called on the stage to do a brief presentation and the climax had an extravagant performance of (singing) the national anthem with only actions and no words - a silent performance, the national anthem was presented with full ‘josh’ and ‘hosh’.
Compered by Orville D’Souza and Reshma Prabhu, the programme concluded with words of appreciation from Govind Bene, finance director, Fomento Resources and Savio Messias, chairman, New Dawn Ashadeep School (Vasco). Govind Gawade, minister for Art and Culture and chairman of Kala Academy was impressed by the performance of special kids. The deputy speaker, Goa Legislative Assembly and Calangute MLA Michael Lobo suggested of allotting a space for special kids to display their artwork and get it sold at Kala Academy and Ravindra Bhavans.
(More pictures on page 4)
