RANGAYAN 2024: Celebrate Creativity!

The memories of the annual day celebration will stay with us for a long time, inspiring us to aim higher, and create more meaning and magic next year

By  Palak Yadav

Every school event is special, but RANGAYAN 2024 was truly amazing. Indeed, it was extra special. A great leap of imagination!

The second annual day function of Dr BR Ambedkar School of Specialized Excellence (SoSE), Andrews Ganj, Delhi, was a brilliant, pulsating and kaleidoscopic celebration of art, culture, literature, music, cinema and creativity. This year’s theme was ‘Bengal’, and students from Classes 9, 10, and 11 came together to make the event a big success.

The event started with the arrival of chief guest, Viditha Reddy, IAS, and Director of Education. She was warmly welcomed by our principal, Sonia Sikka, teachers and students. While a welcome song played, she lit the ceremonial diya, officially starting the event.

The programme was hosted by Umesh Kumari from Class 11 and Ansh from Class 10. They did a fabulous job as anchors, making the series of events  interesting, with their confident presentations laced with subtle humour and intelligence.

The first performance was the ‘Genda Phool’, a lively, pulsating and colourful adivasi dance from rural Bengal, with smiling Class 10 girls dressed in colourful dresses, with bright flowers shining in their hair. And they danced with such exuberance and rythm!

The beat of the song is so peppy, and the movements are so fluid, that every one in the audience would have loved to join them on the stage. Many of them did, in the grand finale.

The best part was when, at the end of the performance, our chief guest and principal joined us on stage to dance. It was a beautifully choreographed by our inspiring teacher, Natisha Chabra, and the vibrant energy radiated by all the dancers made the experience unforgettable.

The exhibitions set up by the film-making, acting and media and communication (FAM), and visual arts students, were the highlights of the event, reflecting the creativity of the students in the best way possible. The FAM students had prepared an exhibition that beautifully captured the essence of Bengali culture. 

One of the main attractions was a board featuring a photo shoot of Aditi Rana, a Class 10 student, who wore a traditional white Bengali sari with a red blouse — the popular and much loved dress of women across Bengal. The photo shoot began with a  tribute to Rabindranath Tagore and his great book of poems, Gitanjali, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize. The photographs of Aditi, were sensitively shot, with a nuanced play of light and shadow, including sunlight peeping through a window, by Ansh and Kush, Class 10 students, with she playing the role of the female protagonist.

The exhibition not only showed the subtle beauty of the dress, but was evidence of the rich cultural heritage of Bengal, said Aditi. 

The ambience of this photo shoot reminded of the last day of the Durga Puja in Bengal. On the day of Vijayadashami, when the goddess would say goodbye and would be immersed in a river or pond after sunset, women wear white saris with red blouse, and play ‘sindoor khela’ in the evening, rubbing sindoor on each other’s faces, in an act of bonding and bonhomie. 

The beauty of this moment is that they are at once happy and sad — happy because of the joy and bonding with each other with red sindoor and gulal flowing all over,  and sad because Durga would finally leave the earth, having arrived for such a short while.

Along with this, there were several informative boards that showcased the significance of Bengali cinema. A board was made as a tribute to great filmmaker, story-teller, author, lyricist, musician, Satyajit Ray. Another showcased some of the outstanding films which has emerged from Bengal over the years: Mahanagar by Ray, Meghe Dhaka Tara by Ritwik Ghatak, 36, Chowringee Lane by Aparna Sen, Chokher Bali by Rituparna Sengupta, and Paar by Gautam Ghosh, among others. 

Among great singers, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, Hemant Mukherjee and Geeta Dutt, along with Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal, were showcased. (Music students played Kishore Kumar’s lovely song, ‘O mere dil ke chain’ in the background). Folk musicians got equal space in another board, along with baul singers with their ektara.

The FAM students also created a hand-made bioscope, a trip down memory lane, when kids, with wonder and amazement, would enjoy pictures of various places, including great monuments like Taj Mahal and Qutub Minar, after paying just 5 paisa for a show. Indeed, the world of images with sound, as the bioscope-wallah would sing along  — it started from this simple bioscope too. Hence, the resurrection of this cinematic nostalgia. 

Meanwhile, the visual arts students had their own extraordinary show, crafted with finesse, hard labour and skill over months, under the guidance of teacher Seema Tomar. The 10^th-graders displayed their intricate wire sculptures, which were eye-catching for their precision. They also presented ‘kaavad’, a traditional art form that tells a story through a painted box, which fascinated the visitors with its detailed designs. 

The 11th-grade students visual arts students made a Durga Pandal that was so realistic that it felt like one was walking into this festival. The pandal was exquisitely decorated, with intricate designs, bringing the spirit of Bengal to life. It was surrounded by paintings and scrolls, and the entire spectacle was simply stunning. 

The bauls were showcased in a huge painting. There were several scrolls, meticulously crafted, of ‘Patachitra’ — the folk art-form, whereby Hindu and Muslim artists (‘chitrakars’), often sharing each other’s surnames in rural Bengal, would recite the stories from our mythologies, gods and goddesses, with their hand-made paintings. Post-covid, and with the onslought of ‘mobile culture’, their art is fading into oblivion; hence, it was all the more important that Patachitra was resurrected at SoSE, Andrews Ganj, in Delhi, far away from the beautiful, green countryside of rural Bengal. 

The exhibitions weren’t just about displaying artwork, they were a celebration of the culture, history, and the creative energy of Bengal. Visitors, including the chief guest, spent a lot of time admiring each piece, and it was clear that the students had put in a huge amount of effort, labour, craft and passion into their work.

Class 11 media students brought out a professionally designed four-page colour newspaper, with a front page, a city page, an editorial page and the back-page of sports. It was a fine mix of current affairs and features, stories and opinion piece — with offbeat content which is generally avoided in the mainline newspapers.

In the backdrop of the event was the upbeat songs and orchestra played by the music students, guided by their teacher Poonam. Old and new songs songs combined to keep the audience enthralled. The music students performed in a huge chorus on the stage, and the synchronisation was perfect. Rohan sang some soulful songs in his melodious voice.

Once the exhibition ended, the stage performances continued, and this time, the audience was in for a surprise. The visual arts students of Class 11 showcased a stunning ramp walk, where they wore outfits made from waste material. Each outfit was unique, and the confidence of the students made the performance even better. It was inspiring to see how waste could be transformed into art.

This was also an ecological message — recycling is import; we must stop waste and mindless consumption, and we must learn to save our severely damaged environment from the ravages of urbanisation. 

Next was the ‘Dhunuchi’ dance, performed with two energetic Bengali songs. The dancers carried incense-filled ‘dhunuchis’, filling the stage with an authentic festive vibe. The ‘dhunuchi’ is used during the ‘aarti’ in the evening on saptami, ashtami and navami during the Durga puja. Both women and men dance in praise of the goddess along with ‘dhaak’ (a drum) and ‘ghanta’, the incense and the drum-beat filling the air. It was a visual treat and one of the most applauded performances of the day.

The chief guest was then invited to watch two short films made by the FAM students. Both films were unique and showed the innate talent of the students. She praised the students for their hard work and vision.

After the chief guest’s departure, the programme continued with a meaningful panel discussion. The discussion was engaging and insightful, covering topics that mattered to us as students. It felt more like a conversation than a formal event, and it left us with a lot to think about. Parents sat in silence, absorbing the discussion.

The panelists included veteran journalist and author, Ramsharan Joshi, theatre person, Niloy Roy, broadcast journalist Athar Saeed, principal Sonia Sikka, film editor Mohit Garg and timesheadline.in editor and seasoned journalist, Amit Sengupta. The  discussion was wonderfully moderated by Riya Gupta and Richa Yadav of Class 11.

The topic was — Meaningful Education: Can knowledge be a lot of fun? The participants emphasised on the need to learn from the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar, especially how he transcended the reality of the difficult and oppressive margins of a Dalit identity, to make the world a better place and to become good human beings. They also emphasised the need to make a synthesis of play and work, that is, how to make knowledge meaningful and enjoyable at the same time. Film, sound, music, theatre, journalism — it all should strive for perfection and creativity, but it should also inspire humanism and beauty. 

Following this, there were a few more mesmerizing musical performances that added a perfect rhythm to the evening. The event ended on a high note with the entire school, including teachers and students, dancing together on the stage. It was fantastic — the heady chaos and the sheer ecstasy of collective song and dance. It was a moment of pure joy and togetherness, with everyone celebrating the success of this grand show.

Indeed, this year’s annual function wasn’t just an event; it was an experience that brought out the best in every student. The memories of RANGAYAN 2024 will stay with us for a long time, inspiring us to aim higher, and create more meaning and magic next year. As they say in Bengal, when goddess Durga is being immersed in the water: ‘Aashche bochor abaar hobe’! 

It will happen again, yes, next year!

Palak Yadav is a student of Class X, Dr BR Ambedkar School of Specialized Excellence (SoSE), Andrews Ganj, Delhi Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi.

Above picture: Principal Sonia Sikka.

Photographs by Amit Sengupta.