Hands On Paper

Modular origami, a dash of colour symmetry, folding puzzles to solve and flex those innate visualisation and spatial skills and building hollow structures. If there's a validation that i seek as an instructor, it's those "frowned and focused faces" that refuse to look up, engrossed wholly in "figuring it out". A huge responsibility as a teacher is ensuring that sense of accomplishment and confidence in thinking through a tunnel of a challenge. They all make it through the tunnel eventually - sometimes with a little clue, sometimes with a flash of the torch on the next step.


As a teacher trainer, i often wonder how to share this quintessential skill - the skill of not giving it away, the skill of measured secrecy, the skill of sprinkling the right clues that fit those itchy hands like a glove.

When students write in, it always makes me drop everything else and brew in the words. Here's a note i received out of the blue by a student who I last met 5 years ago when i taught Origami At near Pune. As is anyone's guess, i was more than just smiling when i read the message and then, a few days later, received the image of what she'd laboured over with those pink units. A quick look at the unit told me what this was meant to be and I ferreted out the diagrams from a book. Bridged that little gap. Oh, i am so chuffed that wrote in, folded in and continues to never give up!

20 of this one, 10 of those and 15 of this one. A little girl decided that the neighborhood must see more of Origami, must get the feel of it and must know how much the joy is in the process as much as it is in the product at the end. So this 12-year old made an inventory list of her favourite ones and decided that if art therapy really is a thing, we should have recovered from our week long flu in a few hours after being immersed in folding!


All we need, sometimes, is something to look forward to. Better still, a goal with a deadline that's a passion project. We're done with 25 of these - that's 25*4, 100 sheets of paper folded.
Like Dory said, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!" Just keep folding, just keep folding!

When I first sat and folded Origami – a foldful afternoon of 1 had spread to 6 hours and I hadn’t realised how. It was a turning point in my life – I hadn’t found anything this engrossing in a long while. And I was tired but beaming at the end of the 6 hours – like a good marathon, a long yoga session or a typical watercolour painting session.

Did all Origami make time fly? No. With modular origami where identical units come together, I enjoyed the repetitive rhythm of the folding sequences, the struggle to zoom in and zoom out periodically while fitting the pieces together and the end result of watching an elegant, colourful whole from various vantage points. With tessellations and corrugations, the creasing of the initial grid was painstaking and pushed me to the wall. It took hours. The constant “edge to nearest crease and then fold” drummed in my head initially. Gradually there were no in-my-head instructions. My mind had floated away to other realms while my fingers worked as if on auto-pilot. When there were no more edges to match to creases was when I would become aware of the fact that I was done. The feeling of surprise always surprised me.

Immersion. Focus. Concentration. Absorption. Mindfulness. Meditation. These words floated within the conversations between the folds fluidly with people of all sizes. This is what it really is, isn’t it – to Focus (on the moment), Forget (any other moment, past or future) and Feel Fulfilled.

Throwback to a turning point in my life as a teacher.

"From spectator to cheerleader to passive guide to a hands-on resource, I have personally grown with this project. Strangely, this, along with my Origami-Club, has become the fuel that I need to keep me going for the rest of the week. The children – on both sides – have opened my paradigm about what art can do, what it must not aim at achieving and, most importantly, why it’s absolutely essential to make art education a priority for every child. There is so little that we have needed as resources and so much that we have all gained in the process – the children have told me so. It has also opened my mind to the ideas that young adults can come up with which, a single adult mind like mine often fails to think through. I’ve also learnt so much about the power of a teacher’s enthusiasm to teach, the importance of affection in this relationship and the power of motivation in the learning process.

In the laboratory of human relationships that the two classrooms transform themselves into, there is much to take away and observe as students of life. Despite barriers of language and previous teaching experience, our children have managed to strike a chord with each other and eagerly look forward to Saturday for more reasons than being a herald to the weekend. After an exhausting 2 hours, they continue to jabber through the kilometre-plus walk back home. Like running a marathon, we come back each Saturday afternoon, exhausted but exhilarated."

https://artinthevalley.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/growing-with-aitv/

A little boy began folding for the first ever time, a month ago. His first question after the second time was, "How big do I have to be to make that?" As he pointed to a colourful modular piece swaying and rotating with the post-Monsoon winds, I saw that there was only one right answer to this oft-repeated question: ""Three models later!"

He was overjoyed - he certainly saw his hands itching to get on that 'dream project'. Why do you want to make that specific model, I asked. "Because I don't think I can" came the reply and then, after a moment's pondering, "Also because it is so beautiful."

He and I have been crossing paths ever since - and each time, he tells me what he has been upto in the Tinker Shed in the after-hours. Did I see him fist-thumping in the air when he learnt that the next time that he touches paper does not have to be a week away? He has been coming in every 'rest-hour', an otherwise sacrosanct period when all the children are supposed to have quiet time in their hostels. He does have quiet-time - only, it's immersion-time with paper.

The other day when we crossed paths, he pointed out the print on his shirt. "I've only just noticed it, akka - maybe because I have just begun doing Origami." As an after-thought, while I was looking closely at the models on his shirt, he suddenly said, "How big do I have to be to make this one, akka?" And before I could answer it, "Can I first try it on my own in the rest-hour?" I whispered to myself with delight, "It's working!"and then I quoted Dr. Seuss aloud, "Today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!" He bounced away.

In the evening, our paths crossed again and he asked excitedly, "How are these black and white? Do we need double-coloured paper?"

There's nothing that fuels me than a mind thirsting to think - hard.

August 06, 2022
August 06, 1945
The Paper Crane.
Hope. Peace.
Wars that the newspapers report of.
Wars within some of us that we don't report of.
Sometimes - most times, as it should be - a classroom converts into a space for discussing more than the curriculum or lesson plan dictates. We put ourselves in Sadako's shoes for a brief while this weekend. Read up the story, why don't you? And let me know your thoughts - it can't not touch you.

A little boy began folding for the first ever time, a month ago. His first question after the second time was, "How big do I have to be to make that?" As he pointed to a colourful modular piece swaying and rotating with the post-Monsoon winds, I saw that there was only one right answer to this oft-repeated question: ""Three models later!"

He was overjoyed - he certainly saw his hands itching to get on that 'dream project'. Why do you want to make that specific model, I asked. "Because I don't think I can" came the reply and then, after a moment's pondering, "Also because it is so beautiful."

He and I have been crossing paths ever since - and each time, he tells me what he has been upto in the Tinker Shed in the after-hours. Did I see him fist-thumping in the air when he learnt that the next time that he touches paper does not have to be a week away? He has been coming in every 'rest-hour', an otherwise sacrosanct period when all the children are supposed to have quiet time in their hostels. He does have quiet-time - only, it's immersion-time with paper.

The other day when we crossed paths, he pointed out the print on his shirt. "I've only just noticed it, akka - maybe because I have just begun doing Origami." As an after-thought, while I was looking closely at the models on his shirt, he suddenly said, "How big do I have to be to make this one, akka?" And before I could answer it, "Can I first try it on my own in the rest-hour?" I whispered to myself with delight, "It's working!"and then I quoted Dr. Seuss aloud, "Today is your day. Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!" He bounced away.

In the evening, our paths crossed again and he asked excitedly, "How are these black and white? Do we need double-coloured paper?"

There's nothing that fuels me than a mind thirsting to think - hard.

“It just looks odd to me”, said a rather confused eight-year old girl, holding her six-unit cube, unsure of what was wrong with it, even though it very much resembled a dice. I shall spare you the suspense: instead of using 3 colours for each of the 3 dimensions, she had used 2 colours and therefore, some of the 6 faces, in her words, seemed “odd”. Over the next 30 minutes or more, she sat back and took her own time to correct her model – using different colours, but same size, of sheets of paper - working with trial and error, to begin with, and then finally understanding what colour-symmetry this particular model demanded. She walked out of the Origami Room, exuberantly and loudly admiring her own piece of art. To anyone else, it was, just a cube.

To me, as her Origami teacher, it was reaffirmation of Origami being a tool to fan what are innate in all my children – and remain latent in many an adult – the curiosity to solve a puzzle, the appreciation for symmetry and the power of a patient facilitator. In the next few months, I began to put my thoughts together on developing a separate vertical in my Origami curriculum to teach elements of symmetry – without any terminology.

Hello, hellooooooooo!

With the post lockdown life bringing back the hustle and commute of adulthood back, here's a Friday Night special - an hour of Unwinding with Origami.

Do come next Friday, *August 05 on Zoom* - we're a growing tribe of people who'd like to bring back the simple joy of working with our hands!

*Please spread the word in your circles - I'd be grateful to have more hands busy and minds mindfully unwind!*

Lots of love,
Roopika