All of us deserve good stories. “If told by great minds, these stories can give us direction,” says Kaushik Kumar, a volunteer with the Cuckoo Movement for Children, an informal group of volunteers from across India, working at making childhoods happy.
When the lockdown was announced, they got to work, coming up with a list of established names, to start what they call Cuckoo Conversations. They set up webinars every evening for people to attend, and so far, have had 50 such sessions.
Names include people from fields as varied as environmental activism and science, to music and cinema: such as scholar and supporter of grassroot innovators Anil Gupta, filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge, Tamil writer Jeyamohan, social activist Aruna Roy, environmentalist Claude Alvares, artist Benitha Perciyal, Carnatic vocalist Bombay Jayashri, singer and composer Bindhumalini, and actor Nandita Das.
Show and tell
Kaushik explains that the talks are for two hours each, with a question-and-answer session towards the end.
It is not all serious talk. Toy innovator Arvind Gupta, who kickstarted Cuckoo Conversations, demonstrated the making of science-based toys, while Bombay Jayashri and Bindhumalini sang in between sharing their life stories.
For a lot of people stuck at home during lockdown, these voices from far away were a means of hope, explains Kaushik. For the team too, the task of curating the list, holding trial runs, and finally hosting the webinars on the Zoho app, meant that their minds were off the pandemic, if only for a little while.
With lockdown easing in some parts of the country, the daily sessions of Cuckoo Conversations are set to become weekly. “A few years from now, these talks will be a documentation; reference material on all the great minds who told us their stories,” sums up Kaushik.
The talks are available on Cuckoo Movement For Children’s YouTube channel. For details on the sessions, visit their Facebook page Cuckoochildren.
