The World of JAAGRITI: June 2009

By Abhishek Kukreja

For years theatre has been the best form of an art to spread messages & ideas which have time and again been able to revolutionalise the society. Apart from being a medium to communicate, the art of theatre helps its participants to discover himself/herself, it makes him/her realise his/her infinite capabilities & unleash the enormous potential, which I believe God has packed in all of us. What would it be like if this powerful tool reaches to every oppressed personality, how would be if it reaches every being whom society considers inferior. JUST IMAGINE!! This is what I imagined and grabbed the opportunity when Anchit in one of the regular meets of Jaagriti, told us about the event which AID Delhi was planning to organise with RBS. As he expressed the desire that kids of Jaagriti must perform at this event, immediately I had decided that this was it. And next morning I was there at the site making dance and drama team.

For kids of Jaagriti this new experience was pretty exciting. Infact the first day was quite peaceful and easy going, giving high hopes for a positive result. But let me clearly state that this first day, definitely wasn't an apt trailer of the film, that lay ahead. After my successful day I was firm that I would go ahead and get these kids on stage. I had myself anticipated a lot of obstacles coming our way but somehow my instincts gave me a green signal to go ahead. But the road ahead was way tougher than I had expected. Problems kept creeping in from every direction. Yet our determination stayed for the fact that we saw them being sorted out someway or the other. Room and music system was our first difficulty but then Pragati Public School came to our rescue. Then the next difficulty was choreographing over 20 students. Again one of my friends from dance society of my college was the one who steered us through. Similarly no costumes, kids dropping out at the last moment (as they had to get back to their village), timing problems, kids falling ill, we being unable to handle children etc. Things kept going wrong yet after sometime everything was back on track. But this one big speed breaker had almost finished everything. As we were midway to completion we got to know that planned event had been called off.

But all of us at Jaagriti had seen the amount of hard work these kids had put in and we knew this news would shatter the morale of kids. Thus we decided that we won't let their efforts go in vain so we decided to put up our own show, where every volunteer would get their friends and family as audience.

So, finally after a tiring jostling with the situations, came the BIG DAY. The day of the event and I must mention that it was this day that I learnt that all hurdles we faced were the tests that God had put to us, just to see how desperately we wanted what we wanted and I think we faired pretty well, as finally the show was highly appreciated. For the first time in my life I saw people of a so called higher level of society not only coming forward to watch the show of a class inferior to them, but also rising to give a standing ovation for the spectacular performance. I was shocked to see this heartwarming response, my vision blurred because of tears that had surfaced in my eyes. The miracle wasn't only the fact that the audience enjoyed the performance but the bigger miracle was that the kids had pulled off their act amazingly well. They were attempting a mature script, a script asking spectators to introspect and fight the devil within.

The successful completion of the venture compelled me to review the past month - this is what I realised that it wasn't me or any of us at Jaagriti who were doing this show but it was actually that divine superpower who was doing it through us. We in this case were a mere instrument to his plans. Today every human being needs to be awaken and for all of us be it volunteers, kids or the audience present that day it was God's plan to awaken us, it was God's call to bring us to the state of JAAGRITI.

Event Pictures