DIKSHA, Kolkata

It’s always the same time of year when I get to go to Calcutta. For some reason I’m only ever free between March and June – the very hottest, most humid time of the year. So my trips are invariably hooded by heat and trickled with sweat, and I don’t necessarily come away with a fair impression of the fractured city.

There is an inevitable pull of love and hate then between the place I come to and the work I come to do.

DIKSHA is an organisation on the verge of celebrating its 10th Birthday. Over the last 10 years it has worked to provide safe spaces for adolescents living within slum districts and red light areas of the city. These young people have taken on the running of the organisation themselves and have gone on to open up groups in five separate areas of the city where they employ creative techniques to discuss, disseminate and inform about the issues touching their lives – child trafficking, gender violence, child sexual abuse and child rights among them.

In my most recent stay I led a two-week workshop introducing new theatrical techniques from the tradition of French physical theatre. A poor theatre, where props, costumes and sets are not necessary, and where the body plays the most important part in telling the story. After five visits over 7 years, finally it seems that we have found our ideal way of working together.

Previously I had “directed” specific pieces they created. This time we simply explored ways of working and the results were overwhelmingly positive. So much so that in their feedback not one of them had a negative thing to say. And believe me, they would have said it if they had wanted to. After being with DIKSHA for several years I have learned that these young people are absolutely empowered to speak their minds and will not go along with anything whose value they are not entirely convinced of.

—

Some feedback from the current workshop series:

“Now I can say I really know how to make good drama. I feel different inside. My body has become very free” – Pankaj Shaw, 18 yrs

“Before we’d just get up and do drama. Now we’ve learned new techniques. I know how to use what’s inside me – my feelings – in making drama. Now we can do anything we want to do” – Rakesh Lal, 17 yrs

“I feel very proud to be part of this workshop. Before I felt very small. Now I am not small – I am big!” – Priya Sen, 13 yrs

—

On the last day we finished with a discussion on why theatre is important to them and DIKSHA as a whole. Here are some of their thoughts:

“Drama has always been a part of DIKSHA’s work. There are many topics we discuss and understand among ourselves. Drama helps us to get them to the public. Most importantly though we make our feelings felt” – Prakash Upadhyay, 17 yrs

“To lecture people would be impossible. They wouldn’t listen. Drama is easy therapy. We get peoples’ attention and make them listen” – Tumpa Adhikary, 22 yrs

“There are things we can’t say to our parents but when we do drama we can show them. They then understand and it makes them more open to the fact that sexual abuse happens” – Riya Sen – 15 yrs

“Many children’s parents don’t want them to come to DIKSHA – we really have to fight. But when they see the dramas then they know that we should come” – Roshni Rauth, 17 yrs

—

Apart from the group I was working with there is an important new group that DIKSHA has created in the years since I was last there. This is RAKHI, a group where women from the same areas as the group – sometimes but not exclusively their mothers – participate in workshops and discussions initiated by the adolescent group leaders, covering similar topics but looking at them from the womens’, as opposed to the young peoples’, perspectives. They have already created one new play soon to be toured to other red light areas, where the women believe they will be able to draw other women into being able to speak out about their work and the issues they face.

Despite the positives DIKSHA struggles to keep going and there is always an urgent need for vital resources – workshop space; marketing materials; materials to make the handicrafts they sell; snacks for the group sessions etc etc. If you would like to contribute please get in touch and I shall provide you with the details necessary to make a donation. In return you will be kept up to date with all DIKSHA’s activities and will have first refusal on a variety of handicrafts that have been brought to the UK after this last visit.

(see an earlier piece of writing with more details about the group on our previous blog page here)

*it looks as though people have been searching the address for DIKSHA. thei email is:

diksha_kolkata@yahoo.co.in

thanks for the interest!