Mohanam helps rural youth to connect to their original culture
The bamboo boys of Auroville
This is bamboozling variety for sure…
The bamboo is touching our lives in more ways than we imagine… food, soap, furniture, clothing and fashion accessories…
And, now we have a full-fledged bamboo orchestra…
The pro-diversity Mohanam Cultural Centre and the Bamboo Research Centre in Auroville have put together a musical set piece---triple drum set, wind instrument, xylophone and shaker---that provides a new experience for the human ear.
When we visited the place, youth from nearby villages were showboating their newly-learned musical lessons.
The rhythms switched---to borrow a phrase from Auroville’s home for horses at Red Earth Riding School--- from slow trot to excited gallop, making it mighty hard to not tap feet on the mud flooring.
Though incomparable with the sonic variety of the mridangam, the percussion treat that unfolded was doubly worthy of the cause it represented--- giving rural youth in adjacent villages an opportunity to express their talent.
Mohanam was founded in 2001 under the Auroville Village Action Trust in a rural village, in the Auroville bio-region.
The aim of Mohanam, we are told, is to provide the young generation of the villages an opportunity for extracurricular activities, which help them to find identity and connect to their own original culture, which is under the onslaught of change, locally and globally.
The community centre, in fact, is established in one of the last surviving traditional houses in the village.
Its mandate includes offering creative arts classes on the weekends for school going children, managing a creche/kindergarten, holding evening tuition classes, and developing the original performing and craft skill sets among villagers residing around the International Community Project of Auroville.
The bamboo boys have performed at stage shows across the country, including Delhi and Sikkim.
“The idea is to perpetuate what is an intangible rural heritage,” says P. Balasundaran, Director of Mohanam.
