The hartal called by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the district could not dampen the spirit of the 57th State School Arts Festival on Thursday.
The call for the hartal, following the murder of a BJP worker at Dharmadam on Wednesday night, had caught everyone unawares. One could not think of a hartal during the festival in recent times. The people of Kannur have become more used to hartals than any other district in the State.
But, on this day, they did not stay at home. They came out and ensured that almost all the festival venues had excellent crowd on day five of the festival of arts.
There were also full-houses for several events, including Mono-Act, Mimicry and Kuchipudi. The spectators at the Jawahar stadium were treated to some fine performances by HSS girls in Kuchipudi. Not merely they looked great in their bright saris, eye-catching jewellery and ornate hairstyles, many of them danced rather well, in sharp contrast to the efforts in the HS section on the previous night. There was an even bigger crowd for Bharatanatyam (HS girls) at the main venue of the Police Maidan, where Margamkali (HSS) also had many takers. There were large audience for even less glamorous events such as Chavittu Natakam, Poorakkali, and Duff Muttu. And if you wonder how the young talents fared on the off-stage events, such as short-story writing, versification and drawings, you can log on to schoolwiki.in . The IT@School is uploading all the entries from the festival. “It is for the first time that these entries are reaching the public,” said K. Anvar Sadath, executive director, IT@School. “And those entries are keyed in by students.” At the mess hall, about 25,000 people were served lunch. “We, in fact, were hoping for only 15,000 as we thought the attendance would be less because of the hartal,” said food committee convener K.K. Prakasan. “But we prepared more food and could serve everyone who came here.”
