Begusarai is not a place. It’s a legend, it’s a myth but still it was not on our Artologue trip because no one had invited us from there.
I had this feeling since beginning that without Begusarai, Bihar trip will not be considered complete.
And so it happened. We got a flood of invites from Begusarai after we painted in Jehanabad.
Apparently people read it in the newspapers. People in Begusarai read too much. That was another hallmark.
Two teachers Ranjan Kumar and Anupma Singh followed us closely and politely sent us invitation several times through Facebook messages and phone calls to paint in their schools.
We expressed our regret as our schedule was quite full but they persisted extremely politely.
In Bhagalpur we had to cut short our stay and there we decided to go to Begusarai.
Ranjan and Anupma were so happy with the news that they came ten kilometres to receive us.
We painted in two government run primary schools…One was in Dumri and another was in Beehat.
Dumri was Anupma’s school where kids were so excited that they themselves cleaned the school before we reached to paint.
We painted simple circular designs on the walls involving almost all the kids and geometric pattern on the doors with the help of teachers.
Next day we went to Dumri. The plan was to chat with kids not to paint but we ended up painting there as well.
It all depends on how people receive us and respond. It was because of Ranjan kumar and the principal of the school that we painted in Beehat.
The moment Meenakshi asked whether one of the walls can be painted white or not, Principal asked someone to get the color and two kids picked up brush to paint the wall white.
We were told that the high school of this place has produced some best girl Kabaddi players. The students took serious interest in sports regardless of paucity of resources. Keeping in mind the inclination and achievements of students Meenakshi decided to paint human figures playing football, hockey, badminton and other games.
In between Jey interacted with kids and asked them to come up with some new designs. One of the kids came up with the design of a butterfly with human face. Mermaids are commonly drawn figures but this lady butterfly was something new and interesting.
Meenakshi asked the young girl to paint the same figure on the wall with few other girls. With very confident and clean moves, the figure of lady butterfly was completed beautifully.
We completed the painting in five hours and then Principal invited us to have a chat with the teachers. It was probably the first time we were asked to interact with the teachers in a government school.
They asked all sorts of questions which we answered and then came something unexpected.
One of the very senior teachers told Meenakshi, ‘Meenakshi I am really sorry. I didn’t help you guys while you were painting because I thought you guys are messing the wall. I thought you guys are from some NGO or something but I was wrong. You guys did a commendable job. I am feeling ashamed. I should have contributed like few teachers did.’
The teacher was literally in tears and we felt a bit emotional. We thanked Ranjan Kumar for relentlessly pursuing us to come to Begusarai and paint.
The man never asked us to paint in his school but he got the wall of the school beautifully painted.
It happened because he loved us. That’s what I feel. Actually the Artologue project is all about Love. If you love us…..we will give you love in the form of paintings.
Once again Thanks Ranjan kumar and Anupma singh for making the government schools better. You guys rock.
