The idea for Rewind Replay was shared by Deepak Srinivasan at Maraa and Rashmi Gopal. Deepak took me along to meet Rashmi and after talking, playing and drinking tea together, we decided to host these playing sessions.

Then Meeta and Pallavi met Rashmi, set the dates and the got the playing sessions happening.

When: 3rd to 9th September, 5:00-7:00 p.m.

Facilitation: Pallavi Chander, Meeta Jain and others

Introductory note (by Meeta): Navakankari, Choka bara, Aadu huli aata still rings a familiar bell to many inhabitants of Bangalore. These were the broad games that still exist as living traditions in many parts of the state but are fast disappearing from the world of a typical urban kid. Often these were played in outdoor and semi outdoors spaces. The underlying grid gets drawn onto the available ground which soon transforms to becoming a fascinating landscape of entities like seeds, shells, dices, stones, beads et all , traversing it till the game gets over.

By employing the simple means for these games as the use of the” available” and the “natural’, lends us a potential to inculcate a certain sensibility over and above its pure leisure value. The children will revisit their neighborhood and search for varied materials to create their own means to play these games. Bringing these games back we also relook and reinforce the idea of play amongst groups younger and older alike, as an act of connecting in outdoors and common spaces. Later this can also lead to inhabitants appropriating/fashioning their parks and other common zones to include these games as footprints translated onto the terrain.

Photographs of Rewind Replay:

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From a nearby flea market I managed to get some petis (wooden cartons used for transporting and storing fruits and vegetables. With a few modifications, the petis were usable as containers to grow plants in. We spread gunny bag at the bottom of the petis, put a mixture of soil and compost in it and then sowed the seeds.

View Delhi Public Fruit in a larger map
Photos

From the nearby Qutub nursery, I requested the head gardener, Ram Shankar, to come over to the shelter and demonstrate and explain to us the process of sowing the vegetable seeds and preparing the seedlings. I am interested in seeing if I can get the children connected to the gardener community over the long term. I see a lot of potential there for exchange of knowledge and skills.

Later we started talking about making a map of fruit which the children had seen or eaten in the public spaces of Delhi. The children described jamun, banana, amrud and mango. They also described temples, gurudwaras where they go food for free on a regular basis. We worked on a map of many of these places on Day 5.

Day 3: get baskets, setup baskets, get containers made, talk to neighborhood gardeners, put audio recordings on the Internet

Read more about the workshop at http://st.ation.in/wiki/projects:invisible-farm