All that I learn at Aagaaz

Aagaaz Theatre Trust
4 min readOct 23, 2024

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Blog by Pranav

Enagaging with children

For the last couple of years, I have been a volunteer at the Tuesday Open Library at Aagaaz, a space where children from Nizamuddin are invited to engage with books. While my role is to help facilitate the sessions, I must confess that, most often, I go there for the same reasons as the children do — to play games, read books, and to meet some of the kindest and most fun people I know. And like me, if you enjoy stories with beautiful illustrations, themes of adventure, and gems of wisdom — deceptively labeled “children’s books”, the library has one of the best collections.

Once every week, these books come to life. Ismail puts on the costume of a great king, Nagma transforms into a mysterious shayrana, and Aslam is a bus conductor selling you tickets to movie screenings. Every Tuesday has a new exciting theme and the facilitators carefully plan the session flow where different rooms have different activities. Shadow puppets, dramatic readings, and theatre games are regular parts of all that goes on.

Through the sessions I have attended, there are two things I have learned.

1. I need more play in my life.

I am only 26 but I can feel a certain seriousness slowly creep into my life, like a grey shadow from the dark forest. There are words which suddenly appear a lot more in my thoughts and conversations — financial independence, productivity, home chores, landlords, long term career, parents’ health, etc. I hate it.

My theory is, to counter this awful seriousness, one needs to have more play or simply play more. It’s easier said than done. Veils we put on to be taken seriously have a tendency to stick.

At Aagaaz, all open library sessions start with free play. Children can do whatever they want. Some library members build robots from jenga bricks, while some just run and dance. We also have special walls which you can freely draw on.

While playing, kids seem to make up their own rules and games. They are immersed and having a lot of fun. They can be very silly too and pretend to be a cat who goes “moo”, unless they are awkward teenagers, they don’t care who is looking.

Play is one of those vague, hard-to-define things. For you, it can mean spending more time with a sport that you used to love or that friend who used to joke around with. For me, right now, it means — to be okay with being silly, letting go of the instructions and following your intuition, making bad drawings, and singing freely.

In the open library

2. Small steps are amazing and are enough.

As an adult, I had developed this desire to be great at socializing, have athletic fitness, be conventionally successful, and also have a lot of money. You know, all the things most of us feel we need now. I was never particularly good at any of them before, and never wanted to be either. I had my own interests which kept me driven and made me feel like myself. Now, I felt I wanted to be someone else, this perfect person who everyone is trying to be, but rarely anyone is.

When you observe children regularly for a significant period, you start understanding why a child behaves the way they do and you don’t expect them to be radically different. A child who is really shy, will probably not become a super confident orator, and that’s okay. You know they are trying. They might start participating in class and raising their hand more, and that’s amazing. Also, if you ask them what they like, they just might surprise you with the most intricate drawing of a dragon.

This is something I have been able to learn at Aagaaz. Small steps, in the right direction, are both amazing and enough.

Somehow this kindness comes a little more easily for children and not so much for ourselves. But, we too are grown-up children, who are learning and trying. When we excel, it should be celebrated, but even when we try, that is enough.

Free play time — Open Library

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Aagaaz Theatre Trust
Aagaaz Theatre Trust

Written by Aagaaz Theatre Trust

An arts based organisation dedicated to creating inclusive learning spaces that nurture curiosity and critical thought while creating safe spaces for dialogue.

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