Winner of the poem contest
For the love of Orange - Ershad Ahamed Chemmalaseri
As the orb sets out,
For its usual errand,
On the land that saw Rembrandt,
The tulips bloom to light the Gothic.
Bicycles are common as the goodmen;
And rain brings the true colors of Koppen,
For all the homines manentes in the Oranje City.
Protected by dikes and moats.
Shining and tolerant,
the country sprouts joy;
When the old beer froths out,
we see through the minds in Haarlem.
Many wonders of civilian huts,
are built on the foundations of science,
They hold strong as the winds blow,
Energising the entire Dutchland
Museums are where the present meets the past;
Van Gogh impresses the art till the eternity.
To all the maggots in fraternity,
There aint a skill or spell that the Dutch couldn't cast.
- Ershad Ahamed Chemmalasseri
Youth on the move
Winner of the essay contest
The C in the CYD course - Shikainah Champion Samuel
Arrays of birthday cards greet me as I open my front door. They have travelled from all over the world- Holland, Nigeria, America, Haiti, Philippines, Uganda, Nepal, Pakistan… the list goes on. They are from my former course mates, alright. But they are addressed to my six year old daughter Shifra who accompanied me five years before to Holland. As we open each card we reminisce about the sender. The Nigerian friend who cooked us an African meal, a young Dutch girl who invited us all to her father’s farm, the very academic American whose pithy repartees in class, I simply loved, my first Pakistani friend who helped me disco+ver that it didn’t really matter which side of the fence we were on. And, yes, as I tell Shifra that she has ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’ in so many parts of the world who unanimously agree she represented the universal ‘Child’ of the Children, Youth and Development course….. I realise that my study in Holland went beyond the class room learning. It made alive that ancient Sanskrit saying ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ meaning the world is one single family.
- Shikainah Champion Samuel
Connecting Concepts in Bangalore
After travelling from Ahmedabad and Mumbai, Connecting Concepts will have its third and final stop in India in Bangalore. Throughout its journey, the exhibition has been adapted to engage Indian designers: to date, Connecting Concepts features five Indian projects.
