Fifteen-year-old Ritik Bamnera noticed he had started asking too many questions at school after he joined Tasawwur – a collective of artists and educators working to empower teenagers – last year. That isn’t a bad thing, he said, mindless argument is.
Asking questions to understand the “other” seems to be the philosophy of Tasawwur, a collective that works with students from diverse backgrounds in Delhi. It encourages them to discuss issues they deal with every day, and helps them use song and choreography to take their stories to the world. Topics that came up during their discussions were issues related to caste, violence, disability, inclusion and dating problems.
Tasawwur, an Urdu word meaning imagination, was started by youth development professional Aditi Rao two years ago. “Our social groups tend to be very homogenous,” said Rao. “How much do we know about or interact with people from other groups? At Tasawwur, we try to bring together children from across demographics to talk to each other and understand where the other person is coming from.”
The collective’s latest production Silence, Please! highlights issues related to caste and disability with the help of stories taken from the lives of the students, who have conceptualised and written the 35-minute-long play. Last year, it staged The Walk, a play that dealt with the theme of violence – gender, domestic and street – unfortunately a lived experience for some children in the group.
Three children spoke to Scroll about the ways the group has changed their lives.
“I have stopped teasing girls” – Shrikant Patel, 16
He was dubbed “the boy with the swagger” when he first showed up at a Tasawwur session last year. However, he soon revealed himself to be a sensitive, intelligent boy under the “swag”, and is now a part of the leadership team that helps new entrants settle down.
A student at a municipal school in Delhi, Patel was already a part of the theatre programme at Manzil, a non-profit organisation working to empower youth from low-income backgrounds, when he heard about Tasawwur. It took him some effort to convince his father to let him join the group, but he was successful, and has been with the group nearly since its inception.
Patel said he soon realised the group was about more than just theatre, it taught him to understand how his actions could affect others. “I have stopped eve-teasing,” he said. “I used to bother girls at school and thought it was fun. But when I came here and heard girls talk about what they go through every time a boy teases them, I decided to stop right away. I even stop others boys in my class from behaving this way. We get into fights sometimes.”
Before he joined Tasawwur, Patel would also tease classmates who belonged to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. He said that he now realised how much his teasing must have hurt them. In Silence, Please! he plays a character from the scheduled castes.
‘I have started questioning everything’ – Ritik Bamnera, 15
It was a teacher who encouraged this Sarvodaya Vidyalaya student to join Tasawwur last year. The teacher felt the experience would help him look at the world differently. When Bamnera did, he realised he started asking a lot of questions in class. "My teachers thought I was arguing with them,” he said. “But I wasn't. I was just asking questions." Those who confuse asking questions with mindless arguments must watch Silence, Please! he said.
‘I found my voice’ – Tuba Sheikh, 15
An essay on why she thought education is important for girls got Tuba Sheikh a spot in Tasawwur. "I had written it very well," said Sheikh, explaining that her argument in the essay was that education allowed a woman to be financially independent, which was important. A student of a municipal school in Nizamuddin in Delhi, Sheikh had to convince her parents and her aunt to permit her to join the group.
She said it helped her find her voice. “I have always found it difficult to talk to strangers, but I don't get so nervous anymore,” she said. “We are encouraged to talk here. Nobody judges us or makes fun of us. There is acceptance."
Sheikh said school seems different now. Her friends tease each other about everything, and get bored if she talks to them about more serious issues. However, she is excited that her friends and parents will watch her perform in Silence, Please! In the play, she raps about growing up in a world full of rules about how "good girls" should behave.
Silence, Please! will be performed at the Akshara Theatre in New Delhi on February 18 and 19.
