Children living around Vidyasagar Niketan spent a fun-filled Sunday recently painting and skating in innovative ways.

The kids had gathered at Mustard Seeds Library as they do every weekend. This is an initiative taken by Maura Hurley, an American-born resident to teach them about art and the environment, and the special guests that day had flown in from Japan.

Sakie Imagawa is a mural artiste from Osaka who had come to Bengal to work with several children’s NGOs. She was crashing with her friend Maura, and happily took a session with the Mustard Seeds kids too.

“I had come to Salt Lake 10 years ago and painted a mural for a garden wall in Vidyasagar Niketan,” said Sakie in Japanese while Maura, who has spent years in the land of the rising sun, translated. Sadly, that wall broke due to some pipe work.

This time, Sakie brought along her son Sakutaro Taguchi, who was all of seven. The little tyke had talents of his own. He is a breakdancer and skateboardist and had come with a mind to spread his skills among his peers here.

Around 12 children came for the session but instead of hand-holding them, Sakie simply made some basic pointers and asked them to do as they felt right. Since permissions could not be procured to paint a wall this time, Sakie offered the next best canvas — her suitcase. “Let’s paint on it the insides of the human body,” she said, offering some biology books. “Don’t be afraid to try something new. Something beautiful could come out of it.”

The kids were stumped at first. “I’ve never painted on anything other than paper,” said Indrisha Guha of Class II, preferring to practise first on some cardboard before laying her hands on the luggage.

Kabir Dutta, of Class VIII, is a talented artist who specialises in deities was open to the challenge and drew an abstract lung with beautiful stripes.

Seeing kids of various levels of proficiency having a go at the suitcase, Maura couldn’t help but ask Sakie the most obvious question: “Aren’t you worried they’ll ruin your suitcase?” but she replied: “No, why would that be? It’ll be easy to spot my luggage on the conveyor belt next time.”

Every time someone asked Sakie which colour, size or shape to make, she said: “Ja khushi hobe,” and the Bengali kids broke into titters. This is the line she learnt from the NGO kids and is pretty much her philosophy for painting.

The Japanese and Indians also tried to learn each other’s languages. Many Indians knew konnichiwa and sayonara (hello and goodbye) but Ashutosh Pathak impressed by rattling off the number from one to 10. “I learn karate and our teacher has us do repetitions using Japanese numbers,” smiled the Class XII student who has a brown belt in the martial art. “I am not interested in art but I’d love to try skateboarding if the little boy can show us.”

Dance, dance

As expected the little boy found the roads too uneven and so a concrete strip next to the pump house was chosen. The kids watched and cheered as the boy showed his moves but none more than Bholu, Maura’s dog who kept butting into the performance, curious as to why Sakutaro kept going upside down.

“This takes a lot of practice and core strength but I’m happy everyone got a glimpse of my hobbies. In Japan skateboarding parks are common so I do stunts there,” he said, pushing little Raisa Mukherjee Sengupta on the skateboard as she sat on it. “One has to be comfortable on this board before riding it.” The girl was all smiles.

Saptak Biswas has had a skateboard in his house for a while now but it was gathering dust as he didn’t know how to ride it. “I’ve brought my board along today and am picking up tricks from Sakutaro,” said the third grader. “I can teach him cricket if he likes.”

Sakie felt the streets of India had way more bold colours than Japan but she liked it. “It compliments my personality,” smiled the lady who also enjoyed Indian food, especially the dinner on the Vande Bharat train back from Santiniketan. Her son found most of the food too spicy but loved Frooti! He went on to ask every restaurant waiter: “Do you have mango juice?” and even painted this phrase on his suitcase later on.