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nice. Teachers had a hard time controlling the various moods and emotions of thechildren, but, on the whole, the spirit of joy and expectancy was infectious and as eachcharacter came out transformed, there were loud claps of appreciation. The green-roomseemed to be a mini stage where life’s drama was enacted year after successful year.The scene in the pandal was different. Some teachers and pupils were arranging chairsand seeing if the view from each angle was alright. The Principal was moving aboutlooking into the details of the seating arrangements, the position of the volunteers, themicrophones and so on.Ten minutes before the time indicated on the invitation, the Principal and teachers andsenior students were at the gate, ready to receive the guests, feeling proud of their school.The chief guest and his lady arrived, happy to be invited by a school, happy to relive theirown childhood and forget the political worries of the day. After the invocation, a pupilspoke hospitable words of welcome and then the function started dead on time. The stagewas a simple affair with only a backdrop of navy blue cloth and a few improvised setswhich the children themselves could easily remove. This was a progressive school thatgave more importance to children’s acting and participation than dead furniture andpatterned sets.The English play was very good. At one stage, the teacher who directed it, feared thatthe queen may not know how to carry the large, round, hooked skirt she was wearing,Elizabethan style, and her heart missed a beat, but the queen carried herself so well, shemight have been Queen Elizabeth herself! Children usually have a way of rising to theoccasion. It is the training period that is difficult, when they give you a hard lime.The Salt Satyagraha scene was moving and brought tears to the eyes of the young andthe old in the audience. The boy who acted the Mahatma’s part looked every inch likeGandhiji. He had seen Attenborough’s film on Gandhi thrice to make sure he got all thefiner points of Gandhiji’s walk, expression, smile, bend, dress and all. He was the bestboy in the school and took his part very seriously. The words were simple and directbecause they were written by the children and so the whole pageant was very natural,each child doing his part with a great deal of understanding and emotion. There wereabout eighty students taking part. The music was also beautiful. The audience was deeplymoved. Parents craned their necks to spot their loved ones in each item. School Day is animportant day for parents and they love it. They recognised other children as well, as theyremembered little anecdotes their little ones had related at home.Then came the folk dances, bringing a fresh breeze as it were into the pandal. The gayabandon of the dances as they rejoiced at the coming of the rains was infectious and therewere happy smiles on the faces of the audience. In fact there had been a severe droughtfor two successive years in that town and so young and old yearned for the freshdownpour of the welcome rain. The songs were in different Indian languages and theyhad been learnt with great attention paid to correct pronunciation and intonation inMarathi, Bengali, Malayalam and other regional languages. How simple it is to learn thelanguages of India and how wonderful it is to be able to speak them. Each language is sorich and beautiful, with a cadence all its own. This raises a question in the mind — whydo we make things complex by fighting over which language children should learn atschool and which they should not?