Drawing in the dark

Perhaps one of the strangest workshops I did. We were invited to a village in Sukkhar to make art with the kids of an extended family living in the same premises (hence no social distancing). We started at sunset, when the 52 degrees (yes thats true!) came down to a "bearable" 43 . The instructions were to draw the patterns that the kids liked best in the traditional patchwork blankets, "ralli" ,that we sat on, and to create new patterns out of them. Of-course the power went off as soon as it got dark and yet the kids kept on drawing. I observed them for some time, confused, wondering why no one complained. Perhaps my 50 year old far sighted eyes did not see the patterns in the dark like they did. Perhaps these simple village kids were just happy to draw. Perhaps it never occurred to them that they could complain. I envied the focused concentration of the children and thought of my own wild, rather spoilt ones. I let them draw in the dark for a bit, before I made some light with my cell phone.. and they just coloured on