Top honours at Kalatmak-2016

The Heritage School, Vasant Kunj celebrated Kalatmak, a three day annual inter school cultural fest on 15th, 16th and 17th December 2016. Students had glimpses of the art, music and dance of the north-eastern states in the schools amphitheatre. The competition was unique as it was solely organised by the students of class XI of the host School.

Day 1: Art Whirr

On 15th December, ten students accompanied by Ms. Parul Singh proceeded to participate in the art competition. There were two categories given by the host school; Category 1 - Best out of Waste and Category 2 - Mural Painting. The competition focused on artwork from the North East part of India and the participants were given four hours to create their artwork.

In the first category, students of classes VIII and IX crafted Manipuri dolls with the help of waste material like cloth pieces collected from tailors, used water bottles, and waste decorative materials. In the second category, students of class X created figurines of Manipuri dancers on a glass sheet. The viewers witnessed enthusiastic participation by a host of schools of Delhi and the NCR such as Springdales School-DK, Holy Child Auxilium, Bhatnagar International School and Cambridge Foundation. It was a proud moment when our students were awarded with the third prize for category 1 - Best out of Waste. The winners were - Vidhi Wadhwa VIII-B, Tanya Trehan VIII-B, Aanchal Gupta VIII-C, Vedanshi Sagar VIII-E and Anshika Kamboj IX-C. The participants of category 2 were - Durga Ruhella X- A, Meghna Naavariya X- A, Prabhsimran kaur X- B and Ayushi Verma X- E.

Day 2: Musical Hum

12 students of classes VI - VIII, accompanied by their music teachers Ms. Shuchismita Chatterjee, Mr. Gopinath Swain, Mr. Adhir Das and Mr. Sanjeev Kumar Chaudhary went for the folk music competition on 16th December. The theme of the competition was - the music of the northeastern states of India. About 10 schools of Delhi and the NCR participated in the competition amongst which were DPS, Vasant Kunj, Mothers International School, Springdales School DK and Tagore International School Vasant Vihar. The competition was also unique in the diverse stream of music it invited as the music of the North East includes both eastern Indian and western influences.

The participants of our School presented Bihu the most popular folk singing tradition of Assam in the Spring and also known as Rongali Bihu in Assamese. The superlative presentation and the catchy melody moved the crowd so much that they spontaneously started tapping their feet, clapping and even dancing, wildly cheering till the end! Such an enthralling performance by the students of The Indian School won them the coveted second position from amongst ten other participating schools with 91.9% marks. They were beaten to the top position by Shikshantar School at 95%.

Our team consisted of Jayant Kumar VI-D, Vedanti Taneja VI-D, Kavya Shrotriya VI-E, Surveen Kaur VII-B, Kshitij Malhotra VII-C, Saarthak Malhotra VII-E, Chirag Chawla VIII-A, Divija Puri VIII-A, Srinjoy Mukherjee VIII-B, Kirti Kaur VIII-D, Ronit Narang VIII-D, Tejkirat Singh VIII-D and Tejwant Singh VIII-D. They were accompanied by Gopinath Swain sir on the violin and Adhir Das sir on the tablas. The judge at the event was Mr. Valentine Sherpa.

Day 3: Dance Swirl

The final day of the competition saw a variety of folk dances of the north eastern states. The students accompanied by Madhav sir showcased energetic and vibrant dances dressed in elaborate ethnic costumes. The dance team of our School presented the Cheraw dance, which is a ritual dance of Mizoram, consisting of four people holding two crossed pairs of long bamboo. This dance is the centre of attraction during festivals. Our students combined graceful rhythmic moves as their feet skilfully tipped in and out between with the tapping of the bamboo. Our School again overwhelmed the audience and repeated history by winning the second position with an overall score of 98%.! The participants were - Chirag Chawla VIII-A, G. Nikthesh VIII-A,Vedant Gupta VIII-A, Dibakar Chakraborty VIII-A, Pankhuri Gulati VIII-A, Vrinda Bansal VIII-A, Jivjyot Singh VIII-B, Anika Malhotra VIII-B, Ragini Bali VIII-B, Khushi Kedia VIII-C, Vedika Sharma VIII-D and Naman Bansal VIII-E. The other schools that took part in this event were Springdales School-DK, New Green Field School and Shriram School, to name a few.

Our students performed outstandingly well and carried back the trophy for Overall Best School at on the final day of this three day celebration of art and culture.

Ms. Simmi Kumar and Srinjoy Mukherjee VIIIB.