Big Mural
Workshop in Rishi Valley Scool, Rishi Valley, India
6 December,1999 - 22 February, 2000
The second workshop in India was held at Rishi valley school in Andra Pradesh. Rishi valley school is a boarding school established by J. Krishnamurti as an ideal school to flower children's inner goodness not based on the principle of competition. 350 students from the fourth grade to the twelfth grade and 50 teachers are living together in a beautiful natural surrounding. A very small group of students is often taught under a big tree. Krishnamurti, an enlightened world teacher was always looking for a peaceful spirituality. He said that world peace could not be achieved without our individual peaceful minds. In this regard, Rishi valley school is a very suitable site for the international peace mural project. This workshop was curried out from December 1999 to March 2000. Rishi valley school has good facilities of art and craft for students to experience various creative activities such as painting, modeling, carving, woodcraft, weaving, batik and embroidery. The project was started by Mr. Shivarajan, art department head, and other art teachers. A huge batik and a big work of peace appliques were also planned to create as well as a Guernica size huge canvas painting. Making such a huge batik was a big challenge for Mr. Monarajan, batik teacher, and his students. The work of peace appliques was instructed by Momaranjan's wife, Shormila, art teacher of needle work. Besides these three murals, it was also decided for junior students to paint a peaceful forest on long brick fence in the jumior school ground. After discussing about the meaning of peace, students made their images of peace on small paper and they were composed to finalize the basic design of peace mural. Rishi valley school has a big Banyan tree, which inspired Krishnamurti to start this school. Whenever people stand in front of this big tree, they really feel peace in their mind. The big Banyan tree shows the greatness of nature and eternity of time. It was centered to identify this school as a symbol of peace. A senior student sketched this tree and the drawing was enlarged in the huge canvas. Almost every day, many students participated to paint it. The big Banyan tree was growing from the earth shown in the lower side of the painting. The huge sun was painted behind the big tree to illuminate all living things on the earth. The different colors of the right and left sides are symbolizing the day and night; the cycle of nature. Many kinds of birds in Rishi valley such as Hoopoe that Krishnamurti had deeply loved were painted on the background. Rishi valley is well known as a bird sanctuary and the school is conducting a bird watching training course. Rishi valley means the valley of a saint. A meditating saint was also shown in front of the big Banyan tree with playing boys and dancing girls. It is needless to say the meaning of meditation is searching peace in mind. A colorful snake was approaching the saint. It is believed that a snake never bites people in a peaceful place. Serious snake bites have never happened to students in Rishi valley school although many snakes live around it. Generally, snakes have violent images and once it argued among students whether a snake should be added in the painting or not. Finally, it concluded to add it. Because snakes are also a part of nature and it is more important not to be exclusive but co-exist with nature in order to make world peace. The border of this painting was filled with traditional village mural motives known as Mithila painting. They were instructed by Shashikala Devi, a famous Mithila painting artist living in Rishi valley. All pictures in the big canvas such as a big Banyan tree and various birds were from not students' mere imagination but the actual environment of Rishi valley. It means that Rishi valley itself is really a peaceful place where people are living peacefully with nature. The main theme of peace batik is a Hindu god of love, Krishna, and his lover Radha. Their love transcends ordinary human love to realize the universe of love. In this sense, there is no difference between love and peace. Another work of peace appliques shows a peaceful scenery of Indian village where birds and animals are living together harmoniously. On February 22, a special program was organized to celebrate the completion of murals. the murals were hung on the trees in the junior school ground and traditional dance of the seventh standard girls was shown in front of them. This project was not an individual work but collaborative work of all Rishi valley school students. They could create wonderful murals and learn the importance of cooperation that is a key to world peace. (Ohtsuma Women's University Takuya Kaneda)

Participant children:

Anvesha Sinha, Harika P, Hethal G, Lakshmi Madhurya Machiraju, Nandini Dey, Pratyusha Gandikota,
Radhe Jaggi, Sai Divya Krishna G, Saranya Ramachandran, Swetha G, Aneak Prashasth M, Aniketh Jayanthi,
Anirudh Reddy P V, Atish Nahar, Durga Prasad A K, Hareet D Sheth, Harsh, Pradeep Kumar Nandyala,
Prashanth Narasimhahan, Rahul Bhatnagar, Sri Charan Devineni, Vijay Krishna Koneru, Adhira M N,
Aisha Ali, Akanksha Kohli, Duhita ganguly, Manjeera A, Manjusha K, Mehak Bhaiya,
Mythili Kundur. Oindrila Sinha, Saranya N, Aayu Malhotra, Abhishek Bikkani, Abhishek K,
Krishnamoorthy Abilash M, Adarsh, Ankur Lokhotia, Barath Chandrashekar J, Havis Teja Y,
Joshua Thomas, Preetham Reddy K, Rijul Bhatia, Sai Sharan, Sricharan Reddy P. Stanzin Kunkhen,
Teja Bodepudi, Sachi Kaneda, Akshayya Sitaraman, Ashita Talwar, Jyothsna P, Kavya Chenna,
Namrata Mani, Sindhu Raavi, Tanvi Nandani, Tanya Marwah, Titiksha S Pandit, Adhir Khosla,
Athul Vasudev Menon T, GautamReddy K, Krishna Mohan B, Mohd Baasir Gaisawat,
Nachiappan Ramanathan, Pranav Bhardwaj K, Satya Dev Nemani, Sri Venkat, Devineni, Tosham,
Vardhman Shankar, Yukihiro Suda, Yuwa Kaneda, Ambika kamath, Ananya A Asula, Ashwati Negi,
Divya Surapaneni, Eesha Shyam Ghate, Harshita G, Kalpana G, Katyayani Palur, Mary Dominic,
Raeesa Vakil, Abijeet Duddala, Anirudh D V, Atishe Chordia, Auroni Mookerjee, Raghuram K,
Ranjit S Gulvady, Rinchen Norbu Wangchuk, Saahil Mahidhara, Surya Tej Nemani Tenay Balantrapu,
Vivek Shishir K, Anandi Rao, Lavanya Venkateswaran, Maithri M, Namrata Kartik, Puja Lunani,
Radhi N P Desai, Shreya Ram P D, Sireesha C, Saumya Sharan, Srigeetha Sumanogna M,
Anuttam Mahapatra, AshwinT V, Chris Jonathan Peters, Gopal Menon, Keshav Dhanraj, Prasen Reddy N,
Rahul kalvapalle, Rohit Kishore Naimpally, Rohit Reddy Vangimalla, Roshan Ali, Shyam Sundar Ganesh,
Tejas H, Uday Shanker N, Varun A Bhide, Veneeth George P, Vinayak Uppal, Alisha Raghavan,
Aparna V, Jigisha D V A, Karishma Degar, Karuna P Anantharaman, Neha Sura, Prashanti Rajendran,
Revathi D, Rutuparna S, Sri Shrenika E, Alok Chetnan Kotian, Avinash C, Harsh D Sheth, Kabir Bedal,
Kartik Yejju, Narendra B Suryavanshi, Nihav Kumar Dhawale, Omprasad, Raghav Reddy R,
Sahil Hiten Sheth, Tariq F Thekaekara, Vaibhav Arvind Parekh, Varun J,Vekataditya D, Vikrant Sirur,
Vishal Mathew

TEACHER

Shivarajan Manoranjan, Sharmila, Nandakumar.M., Sreekumari. J. L., Muralidas P.V., Shasikala Devi,
G.Moshe, Takuya Kaneda

Partitipants

Senior Students
Viney David, A.B.Belliappa, Kabir Ramola, Gaurav Dubey, Y.V.S. Harsha, Varun Sreenivasan