Kindergarten

In a kindergarten full of kids, we show the budding friendship between two little children.

We do not see the teacher’s face, but we keep hearing her instructions in the background. There are no dialogues otherwise.

The teacher walks around the table around which little children are sitting on chairs. She instructs them to use the blank sheet in front of them and start drawing. She may have given a subject to draw as well. Every child uses their own packet of colours to draw. There are pencil colours and wax crayons, however, there is a common pool of colours that children without colour boxes are using. Every child is engaged in etching their imagination over the sheet of paper, in whatever form. Their attention is evident with their body language. Some have widely open eyes, some are sticking their tongue out and some are even trying to get over the table for better access. The teacher safely carries them back to their seat.

We focus on one little girl, succumbed into her art with a smile on her face, which shows that she is happy with her work, but all of a sudden she looks troubled as she is not able to find the colour that she needs in her vicinity. She tries to look around over the table, but she doesn’t find it. She then stands on her seat, trying to get over the table to look through the box of spare colours. In her exasperation, she is about to tip her chair, when suddenly a little hand from her left hands her over a crayon. She is overjoyed to find the colour and does not even look at who handed it over to her. She just takes the crayon and continues drawing. The hand belongs to a little boy, who is still looking at her with a smile. Maybe he was waiting for a look or a smile back, but on finding her engrossed, awkwardly gets back to his own drawing. We do not get to see what the boy is drawing, but every time the girl is done with one colour and would start looking for the next crayon, he would be the one using that and would hand it over to her. After few seconds, a bell rings to indicate the end of the period. At the end of every day, the teacher hangs drawings by all the kids over a wall. Noticeably, two drawings are identical.

The same thing happens on subsequent days and our two kids always sit together. The girl engrossed and the boy unnoticed. Sometimes he has to wait for the girl to finish, so he waits patiently. Sometimes he even has suggestions, so he passes the colour accordingly, but also handles the condition silently and keeps her choice of crayon nearby so that she should not have to look for it. Our little girl is also content as she does not need to get distracted as every colour that she needs is always available on the left side of her sheet. But, at the end of every day, without fail, there are two identical drawings.

One day a kid who usually sits at the other end of the table, spots a crayon at their end. So he gets off the chair and comes around the table to get it. Our boy follows this other boy only his eyes to detect the situation and turns his head slightly to check the status of the girl’s drawing. The other boy gets up over another chair to retrieve the crayon, but finds it missing.

Disheartened, he looks through some stuff on the table and then gets off the chair to check if it has fallen down. Our boy’s sad stare follows the other boy to his seat, when there is a rustle. Our little girl, on not finding the next colour she needs nearby, looks up and to her left. The boy notices her looking at him and he is confused, but then he looks down at her drawing and realises that she is looking for the crayon. He excitedly opens his little fist to reveal the crayon that he stole from the table. The girl gives him a beautiful smile, takes the crayon and gets back to her drawing. This little acknowledgement brings joy to the boy’s face in the form of a slight smile. He takes a deep breath and before going back to work, he checks if anyone else has seen his accomplishment, while the smile stays constantly on his face. He scans through the faces in the room. Everybody seems to be engaged in their work, except one. The kid who tried to get the crayon earlier is now looking at him with a question mark on his face. Our kid looks back at him with the awkward smile, but unable to not smile, he looks down upon his drawing. For some subsequent days, we see the girl acknowledging finding the needed colour by her side with a smile, not to the boy’s face, but he knows it is for him and he is happy with that.

One day, while drawing, the girl looks for the colour to her left, but does not find it. She looks up from her sheet, anticipating some action from the boy, but when she does, she finds an unfamiliar face. The boy is not sitting there today. She tries to look for him around the table, but does not find him. While doing so, she finds the crayon that she needs for her drawing. She stretches her arm to grab it, but someone else snatches it away from the other end. It is the same kid who was looking for the crayon the other day. He looks at her with slight resentment. She does not understand why. She tries to look for the boy around the table once again, unsuccessfully. At the end of this day, the teacher, as always, puts all kids’ creations over the wall, but today, no two drawings are alike.

This happens again the next day. When the girl is not able to find the colour that she needs nearby and no friend to hand it over, she gets disheartened. She does not even complete her drawing. On the next day, she comes to the table and looks around for the boy. Not finding him she just sits there looking at the blank page. When the teacher comes to her and asks her to draw, she stares at the teacher’s face with wet eyes. Suspecting that she is about to cry, the teacher picks her up in her lap and consoles her by walking to and fro in the room.

The next day, the girl is sitting there again; quietly amidst the chattering kids. Trying to inspire her, the teacher draws an animal caricature with pencil and puts few crayons next to her sheet, but it seems as if the child finds no interest in this anymore. Amidst a symbolic stillness, the girl is tapped on the left shoulder by a little hand. She does not look up, but looks to her left to find the small hand closed in a fist. As the little girl begins to comprehend the situation, she looks up to his face, a cute smile appears on her face. The boy raises his hand to his face and opens his fist to reveal a bandaged thumb to show her a thumbs-up and starts laughing. The girl is shocked to see the wound, but when the boy moves his thumb jokingly, she also starts laughing. Within seconds even the kids around them start laughing and by the next round the whole class is engulfed in laughter.

Next we see the end of the day when, once again, all the drawings are displayed on the wall and, once again, two identical drawings are placed side by side.