The long walk home

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She says ideas are mysterious things. They come to us in many different ways and then we begin to make choices and make decisions about what we want to do with them, and shape the work. Delhi-based writer, filmmaker and teacher Samina Mishra wrote the first draft of the 'Jamlo Walks' (Penguin), to be released on April 19, in one sitting. A picture book for ages 7-9, but a story that she hopes children across ages will read.

A book on what the lockdown did to the people, particularly its young citizen, Mishra, who wrote the book, which has illustrations by Tarique Aziz, in April last year still remembers those videos of the migrants walking through the night, out of Delhi, on the Yamuna bridge "That was such a searing image. And it was juxtaposed by the middle class apathy all around, from what people were saying on social media about the migrant labour walking, to stories about how domestic workers were being treated at colony gates and incidents of police walking into bastis and thrashing people for being outside etc. It was all so horrible � as if our humanity had completely disappeared. The working class has always been treated differently but this � it was as if they were not people. And then when Jamlo's story was reported in the media, it was simply heartbreaking. Considering I work with children and the experiences of childhood, I thought of what this divide means for all children, how are they to think about these stark differences across different childhoods, would they go on to continue institutionalising this inhumanity… So, I think the first draft just came out of a need to respond to all this," she tells IANS.

Considering the book was quite 'visual', the idea of it being a picture book developed. Though she wanted to, doing anything longer would not have been possible for Mishra without actually getting out on the ground. "That's my process as I work with documentary film. And I couldn't get out at that time. So it remained a short story that I kept working on," says the writer of 'Hina in the Old City'.

In fact, when Lockdown 1.0 was announced, she began an online art project with kids, 'The Lockdown Art Project', asking them to reflect on their experiences of the lockdown. Stressing that it is important to include children's voices in all that we grapple with in the world, and making room for them to express themselves is part of her practice, she adds, "These were all middle-class children and the enormity of the gulf between those who had access to the Internet and those who didn't was glaring � everything that was present from before just became worse and more solidified. There was all this content for children being shared generously online but so many kids who couldn't access it. Old media suddenly became important and so I recorded a set of audio stories for Radio Mewat � just to create content for kids who could not access content on the internet."

For Mishra, writing, making films and teaching feed into each other and complete her. "For me, they all inter-connected for me. My creative practice involves using image, sound and text to tell stories or share experiences of a particular time and place. The challenge of practice across both film and writing is the same in many ways � how to create something that engages both the heart and the mind."

Adding that teaching creates a context for her to engage with the world, with children and young people, the author, who that in both formal and non-formal spaces, says, "Whether I am teaching the IB Film programme or doing writing workshops, I am engaging with the idea of the arts in education, and that connects to the idea of making work that engages the heart and the mind. I have to be able to connect with the young people I teach and so I learn a lot from that process that I think shapes my personal creative work."

By Sukant Deepak

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