CAS 2017

It’s been a year of learning cooking, once a week in my school. It was an activity that I took as my arts special classes. As I already knew how to cook, there were instances where I was the only one been praised for my perfect work (“practise makes a man perfect”). I had learned many recipes. We had been taught about +50 recipes.

I knew many of them, but the challenge in here was to do it in a different order then I usually use! For example, in the beginning we were given the task of making perfect round Roti (Indian bread); and the tools which I used while making it at home and the technique was all different, which resulted in taking lot of time and also there were times when it use to get it torn from the middle, because of applying a lot pressure (physics everywhere, when will it leave our backs!!!).

In the initial days, we didn’t have our kitchen ready and were given a temporary space (a space for only two people to work, whereas we were about 15) to work. There also were times when we all (15 people) had to cook together and many of us had no work to do except for watching (which is a tedious and insipid job!). At this point, many of us started to have issues with each other as we all wanted to work and learn more than the other gets to, but at the each end of the class when we are done with cooking we feel good about it and these fights don’t seem to be a problem (coz as we say, “When ends well, All’s well”).

By the end of the year, others (my companions) had left the class because of their exam preparative leave and therefore Disha (my friend) and I were the only ones left to learn. At first we used to think how we will be able to manage but then it turned out that because of their leave we had more work and we could learn more and connect better. There were a few recepies that I had also tried at home after learning in the class. The best part about it was that they were easy to cook and as delicious to eat.

At the end of the year, we have to showcase our skills and knowledge learnt throughout the year. So for this year, we (all the students learning cooking in art special classes) decided to keep live kitchen, where we will sell food (Frankie, Mexican Bhel, and watermelon juice) that we had learnt during our classes, and this all was recorded and projected on our dinning area’s LCD screen, with it visitors were also allowed to have a walk inside the kitchen while we were working. For the same event, we were given chef coats, and name tags (this made me feel like a real chef! It had felt so good!). I was assigned to cook Frankies with my juniors. At the time of rush hours, I was actually working with two pans, 10 ingredients, and a lot of pressure of piling orders for Frankie.

I had loved this experience more than any other and felt good after doing so.

I had taken a three month course of learning and improving my different types of dance skills. By the end of the course I had learned a couple of dance forms such as Contemporary, Jazz, Salsa, Bollywood, hip-hop, Lyrical. When we were learning hip-hop and lyrical, that was the time that I enjoyed the most, also I use to find myself giving so much effort, while learning, that my cloths used to get drenched in sweat. I use to go 5-6 days/week right after my school use to get over. Due to this there were times when I was too tired to do dancing, although by the time the class was about to end, I would have gained so much energy and would have rejuvenate so much that I would want to do more.

At the end of three months course coincidently we had a dance carnival (something they did every year at this time of year), where we were going to perform. For that, we had been preparing from about a month before final recital. We were doing contemporary and had to perform in front of an audience due to which we had to bring our dancing to a whole new level and had to practise hard. Me being one of the non-dancers in our batch, there were step that were too difficult for me to do; and even though, my body use to ache due to unusual movement of body and tight schedule, I overcame the problem and was able to do the steps correctly; although it took me about a week or two to do so.

As the days passed, I started to realize the efforts everyone was putting in, just to make this carnival the perfect one, and for the same we (as students and performers) had to begin being on time. It was difficult, as I had to make it really quick with eating my food and getting ready (which is a challenge for all women existing on this planet), but I use to try my best. The most challenging thing was my exams and the show. The show was in between the days of my examinations and because of it I had to really be punctual and not waste any on my precious time. There were times when we had to meet up with all the batches and practise on the stage, on those days I really had to take my books with me just so that I don’t miss any of it.

On the day of the carnival, I could see all the people so excited to do their best and enjoy, off course. As the performances were getting over and ours was getting near I could really feel my heart beating a second faster. Our performance was one of the most praised ones (after all we all disserved it, come on! We had worked hard for days).

Because of this activity, I had started to make new friends and I also use to enjoy my time spent in the evening after so much of work out; another way for me to sweat while enjoying and keeping my not so fit body, fit. All though, I had joined the dance classes for completing my CAS requirements, I enjoyed my classes so much that I continued for more. Over all, after so much sweat and work out and fun and dancing and making new friends, I enjoyed being part of this amazing experience.

It was an inter-school Arts competition, which included drama, dance, music and visual arts as different areas where people could participate. Our school was the host of the event and hence had asked me to do anchoring. I had volunteered to help as an anchor, but also ended up in helping with registrations. I had an option to do anchoring at many different places, but as I loved to see different dances and always use to end up being there, I decided to anchor at the place where dancing competition was held. I had to work with one of my friends, and so that I get equal opportunity to do anchoring, we decided to split our work.

When we had reached the venue, I got to know that we were having troubles with registrations because of which we had to wait before we get the dancing competition started. So instead of just waiting around, I decided to end the process of waiting by providing my help. Due to my help one of our teachers got free and was able to do the rest to start the competition. I had missed a few dances because of this and also parts of my anchoring work (which I feel sad about) but it was one of the interesting jobs and later I felt happy that I came to good use, which fulfilled my intentions, to come and help here, properly.

The worst about this event was that I had to wake up at 6 in the morning to be on time and had to speak and help continuously for about 8 hours without stop, due to which I ended up having a sore throat and drinking warm water for the next few days. It was kind of a tiresome work, but I learned about registration processes a bit.

I had an experience of anchoring in the public once before and hence I thought it would be similar, adding fillers, entertaining audience and so on; but to my satisfaction I got to know that my part of job included just speaking out the names to audience about who is coming next and see to it the judges know that too. After knowing this piece of information, I felt good that I had gone up to helping in with registrations. I enjoyed my time being there, I got to see many dance, and be with people. Overall it was a good experience.

For this event I had decided to work with a partner and organize the whole event successfully, but I saw failures in my actions and thought that as I am not giving any ideas and instead of taking leadership, I am doing the worked asked, I resigned from my post. Although I resigned, I wanted to be a parted of Creative Mela so I participated to take a workshop of Stomp Dance.

As I had initially thought of taking up a challenge of managing the Creative Mela and was not able to, I thought of taking up a workshop which was challenging again. As I had recently been learning dancing I thought of applying my skills here as well as learn a new dance form.

A day before the workshop, I learned about the number of kids in the workshop, the time and the rest of the details; with deciding upon what will I make the children do while the workshop and planned accordingly. For my help, I also searched for dance tutorial and tried to imitate the step shown. On the day of Creative Mela, I realized that I had not book the venue and hence we will not be able to have an appropriate place to dance and conduct our workshop.  To my great fortune, there were two of my friends that wished to conduct the workshop with me, one of them having a great background to dance. With this, I decided to divide the kids in three groups and each of us leading one. At first I gave all the kids some brief background to what is stomp dance, and later without wasting time we started with making new moves. To make the workshop more interesting I decided that each group will compete with one another and learn. This turned out to be great as every kid wanted to win and hence had put their 100% in learning.

Although, I left the post of an organizer, I felt good that I had taken Stomp Dance Workshop as at the end of the workshop I could see kids enjoying and wanting to learn more and not leave. This was one of an amazing activity that I did, and I enjoyed it!