Students of Kendriya Vidyalayas across the country participated in a regional folk music contest for Independence Day. The host was KV1, behind Labony Estate, and they had held an elaborate inauguration ceremony on campus.
The digital lamp was lit by Vinjamur Vijayalakshmi, additional commissioner (academics) KV Schools, New Delhi, who blessed the students and staff for their enthusiastic participation despite the trying times. “I wish I was present with you in person, but this is the best we can do now. I congratulate the teachers for organising everything just as meticulously as we did in pre-Covid times,” said Vijayalakshmi.
Chandana Mandal, deputy commissioner of KVS, Kolkata said that it was an honour to host the event here in Calcutta.
While all schools had given it their best shot, 108 of them were selected for the final round, under various age categories. Each team was given four to five minutes time and was allowed to have a solo singer along with a maximum of three musicians accompanying him or her. But the show was not live. The music was pre-recorded and played for the judges, who had assembled over three days at KV1.
The students had been assigned different regions of the country and the mash-up produced colourful and melodious results. Students from Agra, for instance, performed a folk number from Arunachal Pradesh. Anwesha Misha of Class VIII wore a beautiful black-and-white sari and paired it with red ornaments while she and her companions performed a Yodi gadi chal dita yodi nyasi.
Students from Bhubaneswar had been assigned “Maharashtra” as their theme and they performed Khel mandala, a song from an eponymous Marathi film. Their song received much appreciation from the judges and they were declared second in the junior girls category.
Students of KV Tatanagar were assigned “Goa” and they went for famous Goan singer Remo Fernandez’s Ya ya maaya ya. This team too shone and came third in the junior girls category.
The host school, or KV 2 in Salt Lake’s Sector III for that matter, had not qualified for the finals. But Samriddhi Bhattacharya, a student of Class XII of the host school, welcomed everyone with the opening song. Students of Fort Willam’s choir also delivered a musical performance.
Biswajit Bhattacharjee, a teacher of Rabindra Bharati University, was one of the three judges of the competition. “Surely we miss listening to students performing live in front of us, but then we have to accept this situation. After more than a year of the pandemic we are finally getting used to this digital way of conducting classes and judging events,” he said.
“Previously we used to have a long list of events around the calendar but now everyone is locked at home. So such events are all the more important as they give students a break,” said Sudhanya Kiran, principal of KV1.
