By Ramesh K Dhiman, CHANDIGARH – Chandigarh, known for its clean-n-green environs and high-end architectural marvels, the world over, has always been alive to its residents’ artistic tastes and cultural qoutients. For better part of the year, the city remains abuzz with a plethora of activity, ranging from art, cultural, education, and other creative pursuits, which spice up their dull ad drab lives. Times are when it plays a pro-active role of a social reformer to sensitize people about certain social issues crying for attention, through stage and street plays, et al.
With the festival of colour fever running high on the residents’ mind and their spirits soaked in vibrant colours of Holi, the incurable revelers are gaga over the unique feeling of being on cloud nine. Days ahead of this magical mélange of colours of Holi, students of various city schools, colleges and other educational institutions go on a unique mission of ‘Saving every drop of water’ wielding colourful pamphlets, posters and placards in their hands with crisp and catchy slogans to drive home the point.
The Chandigarh Group of Colleges (CGC), Jhanjeri, on Tuesday, organized the World Water Walkathon – 2040 in Sector 17 here to disseminate the ground message on ‘The conservation of water’. Student carrying placards, posters and pamphlets with slogans, like ‘Next world war will be fought for water’, ‘Save water, save life’, ‘Water is precious, save it’, ‘Not water drops but jewels, save them’ and so on and so forth.
They also stressed the need for conserving each drop of water, also known as the ‘Elixir of life’, to ‘secure future of the teeming millions across the world’. They also distributed herbal Holi colours and pamphlets carrying messages on the theme ‘Save water’. Tap Dance, used as a prop to make the message more cogent and clear, was also presented on the occasion, which was highly appreciated.
Chandigarh Art Theatre (CAT), in collaboration with Jal, enacted a street play ‘Water War, written and directed by Ranjit Roy, at the Sector 17 plaza here on Tuesday. Based on the recurring theme, the plot opens up to on a serious note with those grossly oblivious of the value of a drop of water were shown indulging in blatant wastage of every precious drop of water, unmindful of the disaster their act might play in the near future.
As the plot develops, the underlying theme emerges more compelling. A person well aware of the value of water appears on the scene, as if from nowhere and takes the whole caboodle to the 2050s era, where they find themselves in a precarious predicament. They see people fighting for every single drop of water there and even agitating relentlessly for it, facing a cap on consumption of water and the officials indulging in blatant corruption on water. They simply rue and rant in the wilderness.
Through this thematic play, the well-lived up characters in the play, including Ranjit Roy, Dhruv Manocha, Diljeev Singh, Deepak Jha, Gaurav Shrivastav and Navjeev Kaur, were able to strike an emotive chord with the appreciative audience. The other connecting points touched upon through this compelling presentation included ‘How to take care of water?’, ‘How to take care of water storage tanks?’ and, ’Rain water harvesting’ et al.