I took a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and the Agra fort. It is beautiful and much like the beautiful architecture in Lahore, Pakistan. There was a crazy number of people hawking and annoying tourists outside to eek out a living, but inside it was much more peaceful. It really is a beautiful place, but it seemed so familiar having been to Lahore.
On the train there I saw a young boy with an impressive mustache named Sonu. Sonu, along with his drummer sister is a performer who dances and rolls through the train cars for money. It’s quite sad really. These sweet children perform much the way street performing monkeys do. I hope he and his sister are well fed and loved. I asked the little sweetheart his name and he said “Sonu”.
Thanks to Kristeen Singh I had the pleasure of doing my first animation workshop in India with the amazing people at a very special org in Khan Market, called Manzil.
We met up with some of the folks from Manzil at Lodhi Gardens, where there was some beautiful old architecture and a picnic for special needs kids and kids from Manzil. Afterwards, Jimmy who is volunteering there took us to Manzil’s Khan Market location where we cut used paper to be used as small flipbooks for the workshop. The idea was to use readily available, recycled materials to show the kids how to create animation in a way that they could continue long after I was gone, without materials they did not have access to.
There were many things going on that day, and so our first round was with some adult volunteers including Ravi’s mom and his sister Sonia. That worked well as a testing ground, before the children arrived later on. There were a lot of wonderful animations created that day by children and adults.
We took a break in between and shared some singing and dancing. There’s a lot of warmth and love there from Ravi (who was at a conference but joined us afterwards), his mother and sister Sonia (founders of Manzil), Shalu who shared dance and insights and to all the people who teach there and the children who come there (whose parents work for richer families in the neighborhood).
Afterwards, a group of kids and young adults joined me for a session on filmmaking where I shared my short film Gul. It was fun to introduce the piece and the wonderful Sindhi music from Pakistan. The discussion afterwards was a lot of fun and I felt humbled at the appreciation and even more so at the amount of thought that people put into expressing their interpretations of the film. This after all was my wish with the piece, so it was a lot of fun.
It’s amazing to share the joy of animation through the medium of flipbooks which is accessible to all. Thanks to Jimmy and everyone else for helping to make this first effort a success! It was really great to share art, laughter and some great food with my new friends in Delhi.
So, I arrived in Delhi, tired, but happy. I went to Nizamuddin Auliya’s and Amir Khusro’s tombs. These are two amazing figures in the history of North Indian Classical music, Qawwali and various other forms of music.
These were two important figures in the Chisti Sufi Order who are remembered not only for their musical contributions, but by people of all faiths in India for their life long efforts to bring people together.
So, I moved out of my apartment in LA and took to the road…er air. I’ll continue doing freelance work as I travel. It has been a crazy busy month with the Montezuma Film Festival, CTN Expo, moving out and prepping for India, but well worth it.
I painted these while attending the Montezuma International Film Festival in Montezuma, Costa Rica. This was the fourth festival to screen my short film Gul (flower).
