School children relive Premchand's stories

Stories by celebrated Hindi author Premchand, who often wove social and political realties around him into heartwarming fiction, are now the subject of a series of plays being enacted by school students.
Organised by the the Hindi Academy under the Department of Art, Culture and Languages, students from across the capital are staging classics like 'Eidgah', 'Pariksha', 'Lottery' etc at a "Premchand festival that goes on for five days till June 24.
"Our aim is to spread interest among the schools students for Hindi literature. We want children to know that Hindi literature has its own place. Premchand's stories brilliantly depict social reality of his times. We want students to read and know about Premchand and his remarkable works," says Harisuman Bisht, Secretary, Hindi Academy.

Bisht, who is an author himself and has penned many books on social issues says, "Premchand's stories are relevant in the modern times too. Without him, we cannot imagine Hindi literature. This festival is, in a way, pays homage to one of the most revered writers in Hindi language."
The plays are the result of a workshop organised from May 20 to June 19 by the Hindi Academy.
10 directors chosen by the Academy and assisted by 10 assistant directors conducted an audition to select children between the age group of 8 and 16 years from both private and public schools in the city. Finally 400 children were chosen from across 10 schools in the city.

The children seem gung-ho about performing in the plays and exude confidence on stage.

"These children are untrained. They did not know anything about stage-play. During the one month long workshop the children were throughly trained and taught everything about stage-acting. The children are very well-informed. They were very interested in performing," says Rajesh Kumar Goyel, director of "Do Bailon ki Katha" ( A story of two bulls), one of Premchand's masterpiece.
Most children have read Premchand's stories. "I have read "Eidgah", "Pariksha" and we are super-excited to perform in the plays," says Ankita, a participant.
Some of them even said that this kind of initiative should be made more often since people do not take interest in reading Hindi literature as much as they take in reading English stories.

"People are slowly forgetting about this (works of Hindi writers). People tend to give more importance to English literature. So this initiative is good", says Vimanyu Tyagi, class X student, who played the role of Pandit Moteram Shastri, a comic character from Premchand's popular comedy "Nimantran".