CALL OF THE DOLLS: Participants of the puppetry workshop display their works. Picture by Aranya Sen

Dipankar, Biswajeet, Tanusree, Nana, Mohammed, Tarak, Rakesh and Kartik are sitting prim and quiet. Perhaps it has to do with the stigma all children of a red-light district have to live with. But mention Narnia to them, and they are all talking dime-a-dozen.

After all, such treats come rarely to these children between 10 and 13 years, who live amidst liquor, drug and flesh trade. Saturday?s puppetry workshops were a welcome break, though Sukalyani Pal, who had taken them to see Narnia and conducted the workshops, was worried that the promising children might not get the security and opportunity they deserved.

Pal, a footwear designer by profession, has been working with the children for the past five years, showering them with love and teaching them English, Bengali and math.

A windfall for Pal was a two-year Arts Collaboration Grant from the India Foundation of the Arts, Bangalore. Artist and social activist Alok Som, painter, puppeteer and teacher Swapna Sen and Pal involved the children in an exercise designed to find new techniques in puppetry. New scripts were written, puppets of every kind were made and the children performed in the Shadow Puppet Festivals in Chennai in 2003 and 2004, in schools and bookstores across Bengal.

It was during the project that Biswajit?s talent in designing and developing shadow puppets was discovered. He cut out black paper into shapes of rocks, waves and ships to illustrate popular tales.

?We had got him some books and admitted him to the Kalighat School. He was fascinated by the poem Inchcape Rock,? explained Pal. ?Children of the area are expected to start earning by the time they are 14. Biswajit is 13 and we have to find him a happier avenue somewhere. Another child, Tapan, who has a knack for dance and mime, is now forced to work as a mason.?

Pal doesn?t want to approach NGOs, managing ?quite well? with her minimal resources. Friends have pooled in and ?there is always a lot of surplus, one has to find it?.

Puppeteering could offer succour to these children. ?If only people were willing to sponsor our shows, make scope for these children to perform in schools on a regular basis, maybe a way could be found,? said Pal.