HYDERABAD: “Ma’am, mein pencil leke aaya,” says a young boy holding up a pencil. Puja exclaimed “Very good!” to the child and offered me an explanation for the excitement, “I scolded them the last time for not having pencils.”
Puja Chauhan is an art teacher. When hunting for a job, she approached a government school who stated that they barely had funds for regular teachers to even consider employing art teachers.
Understanding that there is little prominence for art in schools for children from low-income families, mostly from SC, ST, OBC, Muslim or Christian communities, she started teaching art at Ambedkar Vignan Kendram, a community space in Masab Tank.
She named the classes Savitribai Phule drawing classes, after the first Bahujan woman teacher of India and a revolutionary.
It was a Saturday and mostly just the little ones had shown up.
The older girls, they informed, had gone to collect water for their houses. The girls, Puja explained, helped with household chores.
A little girl of four sitting on a stool in front of a picture of Savitribai and Jyotiba Phule pointed to them and said, “Dada, dadi.”
The children belong to the Madiga, Muslim and Christian communities and are well aware of Dr BR Ambedkar, as most of their families are involved in Ambedkarite politics.
Ambedkar Jayanti is a huge celebration in the area as proved by a sketch of him drawn by Maheer, a Muslim girl. On a blue flag in front of the classes, she did not miss out to sketch Dr Ambedkar.
However, Savitribai and Jyotiba Phule are still new to them. “Through the medium of art we want to educate our children of their own Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi history and its leaders,” says Puja describing her classes.
The age of the children varies from 3-15. The number of children attending classes varies each day. The children attend classes whenever they are free from school and household chores.
Sifting through the children’s old sketches, I came across a sketch of two girls in hijab playing football. Intrigued by the powerful picture, I enquired of the artist. She was Maheer’s friend. She stopped coming because her house was quite far away.
Initially, Puja funded her classes with help from friends. She explained, “I don’t want to take any donations because then people will have this feeling like we are doing some daan or we are like helping the poor. So I don’t want that at all and I think these children are really amazing. We have other plans for making money.”
On the anniversary of the classes, which falls on the birthday of Savitribhai Phule, Puja conducted an exhibition for three days.
Though initially, she had only invited her friends, they informed their friends enabling them to raise enough funds to clear their costs for the art materials and also to pay the artists who conducted workshops for the children.
Printmaker Karuna conducted a workshop on the papercraft while Hyderabad based sculptor Narasinga Rao held a clay modelling session for the children. With the surplus money, she purchased poster colours for the older children.
This time, she hopes to hold an exhibition of the works of her four-star students Divya, Deepthi, Saritha and Maheer, all children from class IV to class VII.
With the hike in the house rents in the locality, a lot of Puja’s best students have shifted homes and stopped coming.
But the little ones keep informing their friends and hence the classes see young enthusiasts creating masterpieces every week.