It was just another day at Svā Academy, when the final leg of carpentry works was underway. Wooden pieces lying all over, cutting, drilling, lots of noise! But what was noise to me was actually a matter of interest for few children living in the neighborhood. Children, who at that hour of the day should have been in the school, but their circumstances chose them for life lessons, instead of math & science.

As I stood there watching over the carpenters skillfully going about their job, I couldn’t help but notice how each child displayed their own interest levels – one child keen to see the way the wooden pieces were grafted, while another was trying to imitate the sounds from the drilling machine, as if it was music to his ears and one excited with the gush of saw dust that was coming out of the cutter reminding me of our belief at Svā, that each child absorbs the world from their own unique set of eyes & ears.

On completion of the works, the carpenters segregated the scrap and before they could dispose, the children ran forward to volunteer; created their own makeshift baggage to carry the wooden pieces back home for their chulhas. When those children dispersed is when another sight grabbed my attention. That of a 5 to 6 year old boy (Hanuma) who was oblivious to any of the carpentry related activities, all he was engrossed into was to entertain and make his 1 or 2 year old younger brother laugh (Samartha), as he pushed around his tricycle. As the other children came for their 2nd round to collect the scraps for wood fire, Hanuma walked up to me and asked, “Aunty please nange adu kodi” (meaning, aunty could you please give me that). He was asking for a long stick of wood which I gave to him thinking that he probably wants to play running race with the tyre, a game we used to play on the streets when we were young too.

Time flew by and I got busy with the shifting of materials and other works, when suddenly I was distracted by the even louder laugh of Samartha outside. Curiosity and the love for children’s laughter drew me out again only to see that Hanuma was pushing Samartha on his tricycle at a really fast pace (I almost thought of scolding Hanuma for going so fast but Samartha’s excitement held me from interfering) and when he passed by, I noticed that Hanuma had tied the stick at the rear end of the tricycle using it as a break to reduce the speed. The increase & decrease in speed along with the manoeuvring by Hanuma followed by the happiness displayed by Samartha made up an enjoyable moment for me. Also it was intriguing to see that both the kids didn’t even have a streak of fear of falling down.

But what awestruck me was to see the understanding of mechanism and the creativity displayed by a 5 year old child living in situations where not many would expect any invention coming by. But Hanuma’s circumstances didn’t matter to him as the motivation behind it was nothing but to experience joy!

As I remember this episode today, I think the following are my take-away from children:

• Every child is unique and there’s no dearth of talent
• A child’s circumstances can never determine his/her capabilities of thoughts and actions.
• Fear of falling down will take away the happy risks taken to try new things, possibly a new invention that the world needs!
• Nothing in this world is useless, except for our thoughts about them.

To summarize, when we let the child be, to do what they desire, and stand aside to just observe; we will ourselves learn new things which wouldn’t normally cross our minds.

We at Svā Academy have tried to incorporate many such natural random materials, which is given to children to explore as they desire. Found a perfect image over the internet with a perfect description:

Leaving you all with the pictures of the lovely boys Hanuma & Samartha: