I walked into what I thought looked like a school. There were children playing outside and running towards the gate. I passed the gates as there wasn’t a guard standing outside. The children drew me in with their smiling faces. I was hesitant at first; after all I had entered the premises of a school. This lasted shortly, they’re friendly nature reminded me that I had entered a place where I was welcomed.

 

I looked around till I caught the eye of a teacher. I awaited a response from them, sort of like a green light to go ahead. Instead what I got was a smile, the most genuine kind.  We had arrived at the field, which looked like it was also their play area. Within minutes they formed themselves into lines keeping an arms distance between one another.  There were a wide range of children from the age group of five to ten, they were all dressed in different school uniform, some of them wore slippers while some were bare footed. The assembly started with the national anthem, we stood up in unison and sang the anthem. At the end, each one of them put up their hand and saluted. It evoked in me a feeling of pride. I was proud of who I was and where I was and where I had come from.

­After the anthem, one of the girls got up and set up the drum on her lap. I sat down and watched as they exercised to the beat of the drum. What was amazing to see was that through each one of their exercises they were taught traditional values.  Each of them was confident, as if they had been doing this every day of their lives. I sat down while my eyes were being opened to a different world. This world was in which there was no need for privacy, life seemed hard yet simple. Happiness was a way of living. A stranger passing by and taking photographs was enough to make one happy. It was a world in which what you see is what you got; there was nothing more to it. I walked out there with a different feeling from what I walked in with. I felt confused. What is life about? Is it about achieving your ambitions, striving to be the best or is it about finding happiness in anything. I wonder if the children from that school have dreams of setting out from Melkote. Do they wish to become doctors and teachers? or do they wish to stay in this temple town that has proven to be a home to them?

I decided to conduct an experiment, I erased the backgrounds of the photographs and kept only my subjects. I then handed these pictures to people along with sketch pens and asked them to create their own backgrounds for these children, they could decide where they were and what they were doing. I got back some interesting responses. Many put themselves in the place of the children, some created a whole other fictional story and some just placed the kinds where they felt they should be. It was clearly forming certain patterns.