Here is some new student work from one of our AIF schools. The class is a mix of boys and girls studying in English and Telugu.

1. On a highly relevant issue that the students are always eager to talk about: Telangana bandhs.

Discovering the Troubles of Telangana Bandhs from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

2. All about Bonal, or the Mahankali Jathara, as they normally call it. This is a re-creation of one of the big holidays that spanned August.

The Bonal Festival from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

3. As I recently found out, many of our students are in fact first generation city-dwellers. Many of them spent the early part of their lives and schooling in villages, and they still have very strong ties to their home towns. We actually noticed a while back that our students, though in the same grade, were often of different ages. This is because many of them started school over when they got to the city. Students in this class range from 13 to 16.

City vs. Village from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

We have been back in Hyderabad for just over a week now and the news from the month we missed comes down to two words: Telangana Bandh. I remember the first time I had ever experienced a Hyderabadi strike where the city was closed, or bandh. It was the summer of 2009, and bandhs were relatively new and rare back then. For three days, there was barely an auto or a bus on the road, and people were wary of going out in private vehicles for fear of damages or even danger. We had to buy something one of those days and I remember the outing felt like a spy mission. We planned it all the previous day: an auto driver we had a long relationship with would take us at 6am, and we had to be back by 7am sharp. One of our relatives who owned a shop would sneak into the shop before we got there, we would call as we approached and they would open the metal grate to about 3 feet, and we had to duck in. Any number of things could and did happen to shop owners and auto drivers that didn’t respect the bandh, and everyone was discreet accordingly. Now, two years later, we are living in a Hyderabad that has multiple bandhs a week. And no one really cares anymore, neither normal citizens or activists – Hyderabadis continue living their lives and there is only the occasional story of a brick thrown at a bus window in the outskirts of the city. For auto drivers and shop owners, the decision to honor a bandh is now less about fear and more about economics, and everyone knows it (student photo story to come.) When an auto bandh was called during the long bus bandh, autos still roamed the streets – they could charge extra. When an auto bandh was called right after buses were running again, they were much more eager to honor it. As far as us TMS fellows are concerned, just like every other jaded Hyderabadi Bandh-ignorer, if the buses are bandh, we take autos and if shops are bandh, we pay extra at the renegade shops. The only thing that we can’t work around, of course, is schools.

We got back to Hyderabad to find out that the city was in the midst of a strike that had begun the day before we left, and that most schools had not run since then. The students had not taken the government exams they were supposed to take, and all of last week, most schools in the city had not been running. In fact, it was only yesterday that the month long bandh was finally lifted, and everyone was gearing up for the return to school. But alas, many activists who had been involved in stopping trains through the city had been arrested that morning, resulting in yet another bandh of protest. So today, Tuesday Oct. 18, is the first day in over a month that the city and its schools have been running completely normally.

As far as we are concerned, the main impact of the bandhs is the lack of continuity and, more pressingly, the difficulty of predicting how many classes we will have and how much we can really finish in that time. What feels even more concerning, however, is the impact it is having on the children. Most obviously, there is the fact that there is such discontinuity in their schooling. As it is, there is a less-than-desired degree of discipline in many government schools in terms of having 8 productive, full classes with a teacher present all day every day. Add the fact that they don’t even regularly have school, and this makes a real difference in how much they learn and how seriously they take their education. It is interesting that one of the major complaints of the Telangana movement is that less investment in education means less ability to get good jobs for people from Telangana (Hyderabad is part of Telangana.) But the means to achieving their ends includes calling all the teachers to strike and forcing the children out of schools.

An incident at one of my schools today shows another way that the struggle for Telangana is affecting the children. The boys of Nallagutta have been eager to bring up Telangana since the beginning of the semester, and when we were brainstorming topics for our photo stories, their very first and strongest instinct was to say “Telangana.” Today, we began our video projects and the topic was supposed to be the Telangana movement. All we had done was make a bubble chart with all the words they thought of when they heard “Telangana,” when the Headmistress walked in and asked us to change our topic. In a meeting after class, she explained that it was too sensitive so it was best not to talk about it. Meanwhile, the boys, it became evident in our ten minutes on the subject, knew nothing about the movement. They were passionate, even quoting sound bites about giving their lives for the Telangana masses, but none of them could name one reason why there was a call for a separate state. In a city where bandhs cause weekly disruption, activists and protesters are highly visible, and passions are running high, these not-so-young 14 year olds know very little about what is happening or why, and no one wants to take the responsibility of telling them. But they are eager to learn and know, and they should be. After all, in a few short years, they will be the university students caught in a whirlwind of protests and it is the education they get now that will differentiate those who make informed, passionate political decisions and those who follow the crowd.

In two short weeks, the students and teachers of Communities Rising invited us into their worlds and shared some of their stories with us. Here is their work:

1) The teachers of Communities Rising, ranging in age from college-goers to parents of college-goers, discuss the media as it has entered and changed the character of village life.

Effects of the Media on Children from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

2) About an hour from Vikravandi, where we were staying, is Aniladi, a tiny village with a giant personality. Join the overwhelmingly energetic 4th and 5th class students at the RC Primary School as they guide us through their home town.

Where I’m From from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

3) The “hostel boys” of Vikravandi were only a stone’s throw from where we were staying. They were a bunch of busy bees, as is evidenced by the blue paint some of them are doused in in the following video, but they did manage to squeeze in a few very crucial lessons in Tamil!

A Beginner’s Guide to Tamil from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

One of our goals in continuing the partnership between The Modern Story and Communities Rising is to train staff to carry out the same type of workshop that we conduct to teach students to use the cameras and brainstorm, write, shoot and produce their own short video narratives. In the spirit of creating a sustainable, long-term digital story-telling program, we conducted staff training with all of the Communities Rising teachers and walked them through the process of producing a short film, so that they might replicate that process in the classroom with students.

Srilekha's group planning their video on the effects of media on children.

We began with the brainstorming process where we had each staff member share out an idea for a video topic and then conducted a blind vote to select the top three ideas. Each TMS teacher directed a group in producing a short film on the three winning topics:
• Child Labor
• Differences in Schooling Between The City and The Village
• Effects of Technology and Media on Children

We planned the format and sequence of our videos in our first meeting and made arrangements to carry out those plans at the three hour staff training the following Saturday. When the time came, we quickly introduced those teachers to the camera who did not have experience. There was a wide disparity in the technological knowledge of the group. Some teachers came to the group with a clear-cut vision of what the video would look like and a plan to shoot and edit advanced scenes and sequences. Others had never taken photographs or video with either camera and had a vague, yet eager, sense of what we were trying to produce.

Teachers practicing with the flip and digital cameras.

Each group gelled in its own unique way as leaders emerged to complete each task and less experienced teachers asked questions and contributed their ideas. The grounds at SAMSSS were transformed into an impromptu studio as members of all three groups ran around planning, shooting, directing large groups of school children, and speeding off to shoot scenes on location. It was a very exciting and inspiring atmosphere, and extremely productive when you consider the fact that we were able to shoot all the necessary video footage and introduce editing in only 3 hours.

Vikram posing at the brick factory.

My own group worked on a video about child labor. In our planning session, we decided it would be most powerful if we could tell the story of a child who had been directly affected and pulled out of school to work. A teacher knew one boy and promised to bring him along to the training the following week. Sure enough, she showed up with Vikram and he was a great sport and brave young man for showing us around a brick factory similar to the one he had worked in, and answering questions to help raise awareness about the issue of child labor. Although he was in fourth grade, Vikram looked more like a seven year old to me, and it broke my heart to see footage of him hauling clay for bricks at the factory, knowing that he had been forced by circumstances to grow up so fast. The good news is that Vikram is back in school and with the help of his teachers and their film, raising awareness about the problem of child labor in India.

Seenu and Vikram setting up the tripod on site at the brick factory.

As our two week stay at CR wraps up after today, it is sad to go, but I know that we are leaving a very competent and committed organization behind that will pick up where we left off in our digital media curriculum. I look forward to seeing the finished product of the Analadi Hostel boys’ “Discipline” video that Shiva will work on shooting and editing with them when they return from the break.

Communities Rising Staff: Child Labor from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Srilekha introducing the camera to students at Peter Paul School

It’s been a real joy to join the efforts of Communities Rising in educating and empowering students in rural Tamil Nadu. While it is quite different from our busy home in the city of Hyderabad, the last week has been a welcome change for me. I’ve settled into a peaceful morning routine of cycling down the small country roads through verdant fields on either side, amidst coconuts and grazing cows. Later in the day we travel to three different schools in villages in the area: The Peter Paul School for differently-abled children, Analadi RC Primary School and Boys and Girls Secondary Schools, and the Vikravandi after-school program for fifth class students and hostel boys at the SAMSSS computer lab.

Stella's group at the Peter Paul School

Meeting all our new students and teaching them has been a great experience over the last week. As Srilekha pointed out, the students at the Peter Paul School are particularly endearing and there is a very tangible sense of a loving, helpful community as soon as you walk through the gates.

My group at the Peter Paul School.

My experience my first day there was truly impressive. We divided the class into three groups and each introduced them to both the digital and video cameras. I was working with Sathish, a college student who had made a film with Kara last year, who was well versed in the technology and a huge help in translating to the students. Thanks to Sathish’s translation skills, my group caught on to the concept of a photostory immediately. After he explained that the photos should fit together to tell a story, the students mobilized under the direction of a particularly creative student. They came up with the following narrative about a boy who is pulled out of school because of family troubles in less than one hour! While their creative skills are impressive, it is sad to see how prevalent and common-place the problem of child labor is in their communities. Check out their photostory below:

Communities Rising: Peter Paul Photostory from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

We have made significant progress in all our classes in the last week — introducing students to the technology, planning individual film projects and filming the necessary footage to complete the videos. The students have been hard at work running around to shoot scenes of their daily routines, girls playing various sports, tours of their schools and villages, music videos, skits, Tamil – English lessons and more! For our video about the village of Analadi, the fifth class students were even able to get an interview with a member of the Panchayat.

The fifth standard students filming with the flipcam.

The older hostel students have done a wonderful job planning unique and creative narratives and video topics. I was impressed that the hostel girls voted overwhelmingly to create a video about women in sports. The hostel boys at Analadi voted to write a short narrative about two boys to showcase the importance of discipline in education. They planned a video that shows the parallel stories of two boys in the same class — one who is  disciplined and another who is acting out and failing to study. The acting skills of this particular group were also fantastic. Little Muthuselva had all of us cracking up as he played the “bad boy,” traipsing into the classroom late and trying to cheat off other boys’ papers!

Students from the boys hostel planning their discipline video.

There is a lot of editing to be done in the week to come, but I am confident that we will have some very interesting final products to show the students. Unfortunately, they have a holiday break next week so we will be unable to screen videos to the hostel students who have already returned home for the vacation. The upside is that the Analadi boys will be able to finish filming their story with the computer teacher when they return and they will also have the opportunity to learn film editing once they finish shooting the remaining scenes. Stay tuned for the final products!

As our students in Hyderabad enjoy a long three week break due to exams and Dasara holidays, the three of us fellows have migrated south to Vikravandi, a small village in Tamil Nadu. Here, we are in the course of teaching a two week workshop in partnership with Communities Rising, an organization working with local educators to provide after school enrichment programs in rural schools. It has been a pleasure to meet and work with the teachers and administrators of Communities Rising, it is clear that they know the place and the students well and they have really welcomed us into their community!

Life in Vikravandi has been a sharp contrast to the hustle and bustle we have become accustomed to in Hyderabad. We are surrounded by fields and greenery and a variety of living things, from cows to the strangest of insects. Amidst this peaceful and relatively quiet landscape, we have travelled to three separate villages and discovered three schools containing the most vivacious and energizing students. One school that was particularly interesting to teach at was the St. Peter Paul Home for Disabled Children. This school houses and educates about 60 differently abled children and orphans. Like many of our other students, none of them had ever used a camera before, so they were supremely excited by the prospect of taking pictures and being in them. What particularly struck me though was how they interacted with each other. Like other children we have met, they instinctively wanted to push and grab in order to get their hands on the prized cameras. But they also had a wonderful way of helping one another to understand. The older boys helped the younger ones, the ones that could understand more English translated for their peers, and everyone offered support and encouragement to those whose disabilities made it more difficult for them to operate the camera. It was truly inspiring to see such a close-knit community where boys and girls of all ages worked together and shared us and our cameras. Additionally, it was also fun to see how excited they were at the prospect of being able to teach us. We have been challenging ourselves to try to pick up some Tamil while here and the kids were very excited to help us. They were challenging themselves to understand us and to help us learn what they knew, offering words of encouragement like, “Akka, [your] Tamil super!” These are kids that are eager to share what they know with the world, and meeting them has certainly made my quest to teach digital storytelling feel particularly rewarding.

On our first day at Peter Paul, here are some of the photos that our enthusiastic actors and photographs came up with to tell The Extremely Brief Love Story of Mani Annan and Gopala Krishnan.

Mani gives Gopal a Flower

Gopal accepts and they get married

Mani and Gopal dance at their wedding