For over 15 hours on January 17, Sneha S Nathan sat outside the green room, dressed in her heavy Bharatnatyam costume, her face caked with makeup, waiting for her turn on stage. Her event was scheduled for 2 that afternoon; when her name was finally called out, it was 5 the next morning.

After her Bharatnatyam performance, she had to sprint down the steps of the stage, rush to the green room and change into another costume — this time for her Kerala Nadanam dance, which was to begin at 9 am. She finally got her chance at 2 pm, but had to perform without background music as the CD got stuck. When the curtains came down, Sneha ran into the green room, tears streaming down her greased face.

Anangha A S , a contestant from Kasargode. An ‘A’ grade at the festival fetches students a grace mark of 30 in the annual examinations Anangha A S , a contestant from Kasargode. An ‘A’ grade at the festival fetches students a grace mark of 30 in the annual examinations

Backstage, her father Sathyanath exploded before the media, raising allegations against the organisers over the malfunctioning CD player. The organisers then got into a huddle and decided Sneha would be given another chance. So, Sneha sat at the dressing table for another round of makeup. Six hours later, at 9 pm, she was on stage again. When the results were out, Sneha’s tears were forgotten: she had bagged ‘A’ grades in both her events.

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The 57th edition of the Kerala School Youth Festival or Kalolsavam, a week-long annual competition organised by the state government, was held between January 16 and 22 in the north Kerala district of Kannur. It’s the biggest such event in the state’s cultural calendar, with 12,000 contestants competing across 300-odd events this year. At stake is an A grade that fetches the winning student a grace mark of 30 in the annual examinations, a key factor that feeds the frenzy at the festival. Those with a ‘B’ grade get 24 marks and a ‘C’ fetches 18 marks.

The competition is intense and with parents investing their energies and resources to ensure their children get nothing short of an ‘A’, many of these contests go down to the wire, with some ending in tears and meltdowns. Though the festival is scheduled to start at 9 am every day and end by evening, plans often go haywire and events spill over to the early hours of the following day. As they wait for their turn on stage — in heavy costume and makeup — children often go without sleep and food.

While the organisers and contestants believe the festival pushes the boundaries of what a child can do, critics say it probably tests the limits of childhood itself.

Participants of a drama contest head to the venue with props. Participants of a drama contest head to the venue with props.

Human rights activist Joy Kaitharam says children are under tremendous pressure to perform at the festival and that makes it “a grave violation of rights”. “Events at youth festivals get delayed by hours. It has happened in the past too. This year, the organisers should have taken corrective steps. But clearly, they haven’t,” he says.

Kerala Education Minister C Raveendranath, whose ministry is the nodal agency for the festival, says Kalolsavam should be “seen as a celebration, rather than a competition”. “There is no violation of children’s rights. Due to the presence of more contestants, schedules may have got disrupted. Otherwise, we have taken every step to ensure the smooth functioning of the festival.’’

The first Kalolsavam was held in 1957, with 18 events and 400 students, but since then, the festival has grown in scale and hype. It’s now a media carnival, with newspapers devoting full pages and TV channels broadcasting the event live. Successful contestants are whisked away by waiting television crew to makeshift studios, where the children, breathless and awkward, talk about what it feels to win.

This year, the festival is being held across 21 venues in Kannur, all named after the rivers of Kerala. At the biggest of them, Nila — a giant pandal erected at Kannur’s Police Grounds, where the dance events are being held — there is a crowd running into thousands around 11 am on Wednesday, the third day of the festival. In front of the huge stage are red plastic chairs, all packed with parents, teachers, representatives from schools, organisers and sundry others.

At the side of one such stage is Keerthana Pradeep, a Plus Two student in Kozhikode. Her face is red, flush from two back-to-back A grades: for Ottan Thullal and Kerala Nadanam, one an 18th-century dance form and the other an evolving dance style. In a couple of days, she says, she has another “individual item” coming up, Nangyar Koothu, apart from a “group dance” as part of the school team.

Keerthana looks distracted as she speaks about her “preparations” for the festival. She says that for the last four years, her summer vacations have been spent in school, “preparing for events”.

While the youth festival is held in the second week of January, preparations begin months in advance, with training sessions held in schools and other centres during the April-May summer vacations.

On the third day of the festival, the ‘Nila’ venue at Kannur’s Police Grounds is packed. On the third day of the festival, the ‘Nila’ venue at Kannur’s Police Grounds is packed.

In the new academic year, schools conduct a competition at their level, usually in September, after which the winners begin their training sessions during weekends. “My trainers — for Ottan Thullal, Kerala Nadanam and Nagyar Koothu — are based in Kozhikode, Pattambi and Shornur districts. So every Saturday morning, my father and I would board the train to either Pattambi or Shornur, depending on which class I had that day,” says Keerthana.

Her father Pradeep Kumar says Keerthana has been participating in the youth festival since 2013 and that he has always accompanied her. “I am always with her,” he says, so much so that when he talks about Keerthana’s preparations for the festival, he uses the plural first person “njangal (we)”. “Every year, we start preparing for the festival during the summer vacation. The first step is to identify a new theme for the individual dance items. We approach professional writers with the theme. They write the lyrics and we get them composed and recorded at a studio. By the time the school opens for the new academic session in June, the song is ready,” says Kumar, a marble and tile businessman.

Kumar says he spent Rs 2.30 lakh on this year’s event — on the trainers for Keerthana’s three events and the costumes — not to count the travel and boarding expenses.

“We can’t take chances so we go in for a new theme every year. That pushes up the cost because we have to pay for the composition and the recording. Then there are other expenses. We buy the silk for the costume directly from weavers and the ornaments are bought from manufactures in Nagarcoil in Tamil Nadu. This year, I spent Rs 15,000 on just one set of costume. Also, the cost of makeup for one session is Rs 3,000,’’ says Kumar.

With so much at stake, parents tend to be pushy, says D Pramod, a dance teacher who has been training Kalolsavam participants for about a decade. “This year, I had to turn down a few children because their parents insisted that I only coach them, not other students. Though 30 is the maximum marks a contestant can get, even if she has multiple A grades, parents force their children to participate in more than one event. Worse, they expect them to win all events.”

One of the performers of Parichamuttu, a martial dance form, being attended to at the makeshift clinic. One of the performers of Parichamuttu, a martial dance form, being attended to at the makeshift clinic.

Kalamandalam Sathyavrithan, 51, a dance trainer who charges between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000 per student, says eight of his students, from four different districts, are participating in Kerala Nadanam this year. “I have written the script and composed them for my students,’’ says Sathyavrithan, who runs a dance institute in Kozhikode.

“While students opting for individual items hire their trainers, schools fund and coach students for group events,’’ says Sasi Lal, a teacher at Silver Hills School, Kozhikode, where Keerthana is a student. Today, Lal is leading his school contingent at the Nila venue.

The competition is so intense that schools poach talent from other schools. Keerthana, who was with Providence Girls High School, Kozhikode until a few years ago, says, “When I won an award at the festival in 2013, Silver Hills offered me a seat and even gave me an annual scholarship of Rs 12,000.”

The school-level event is followed by sub-district level competitions, the A graders of which make it to the revenue-district-level contest. The winners here eventually make it to the biggest stage of them all, the state-level festival.

It’s usually after this penultimate round that competitors get embroiled in legal disputes. Aggrieved students first approach the deputy director of education and if their appeals are turned down, rush to various courts, including the High Court and the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Children’s Rights.

While 850 candidates appeared for last year’s youth festival with appeals that had been upheld after the revenue-district-level contest, this year, the number had touched 1,027 by the first five days of the festival. Of these, 10 appeals were granted by the High Court and 191 by the Commission for Protection of Children’s Rights.

Programme committee convener K C Rajan says the number of appeals have gone up this year because “the courts were too liberal”. “It seems the students were not satisfied with their district-level results and rushed to courts,’’ says Rajan.

Anagha S, a student from a Thiruvananthapuram school, shot off a letter to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, saying that she had won an ‘A’ grade for Kerala Nadanam at the sub-district level but was “denied” a grade at the district festival and that a “festival mafia” had disallowed her appeal to the Education Department.

Clearing Anagha’s participation in the festival, the Chief Minister instructed Vigilance Director Jacob Thomas to “strictly monitor” the festival and the judgments that are handed out “to ensure transparency” in the results.

Revamma P Das, who has judged festivals in the past, agrees that judgments call for more transparency. However, he says, that can be ensured “not by keeping an eye on jury members during the festival” but by making sure that the selection is transparent. “The Vigilance should look into the judges’ antecedents and see whether the relatives or disciples of jury members are contesting in a particular event,” says Das, an orchestra singer.

Judges, however, say the high number of appeals is what disrupts schedules. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a well-know dancer who is a judge at this year’s festival, says, “The problem is, there is no clear yardstick while fixing grades at district levels. If you get 60 marks, you get grade A in a district. The same score is treated as B grade in another district. Besides, because the competition is so tight, candidates even go in appeal with complaints about the sound system. The grading at the district level should be fool-proof and above suspicion. That way, the state festival won’t have to deal with such big numbers.’’ Besides, he says, judges are already under tremendous pressure as they are under strict instructions to not interact with anyone or use mobile phones while the events are on.

Pramod, the dance trainer, says that the sheer numbers make it unwieldy for judges. “How can a judge be expected to sit through 50-odd performances and evaluate them objectively? At the end of the contest, will he even recall the first performance?” asks Pramod, whose 12 students are participating in the festival.

On Tuesday, Nandana Devadas, a Bharatnatyam contestant, had rushed from her home district of Thrissur to the festival venue, 200 km away, with an appeal granted by the Lokayukta.

“I came third at the district-level competition and decided to appeal. As the Education Department turned down my appeal, I approached the Lokayukta, which cleared my appeal on Tuesday afternoon. My father and I immediately left for Kannur, where the contest for my event had already begun. Luckily, there were other contestants with appeals so the schedule got stretched and I got my turn on Wednesday morning,’’ says Nandana, a Class 12 student. Her results came out a few hours later, with an ‘A’ grade for her.

A member of the Parichamuttu team was injured during the performance. A member of the Parichamuttu team was injured during the performance.

As Nandana performed, in the audience was a familiar face: Kannur-based film director M Mohanan. He says he is scouting for talent for his upcoming project. “My next movie is about a girl who is aspiring to become a dancer. I am hoping to find a suitable face here. Of late, we haven’t been seeing too many from the youth festival making their way into films, but I am still hopeful,’’ says Mohanan.

He optimism stems from good reason. The festival has been the launch pad for some of the biggest names in Malayalam cinema — from veteran singers such as K J Yesudas and P Jayachandran, who were winners at the first edition of the festival held in 1957, to playback singers V Sujatha and K S Chitra, and actors Vineeth, Manju Warrier, Vinduja Menon, Navya Nair and Kavya Madhavan. Warrier had bagged the title of ‘kalathilakam (for the highest scoring girl participant)’ for two consecutive years.

Film and TV actor Vinod Kovoor, who is among those who made the transition from the youth festival to cinema some years ago, says, “I am glad I came into films. Acting was my passion then and it still is. But these days, most of the contestants participate only to get grace marks. Once they get that, they get into professional courses, get a job, they disappear from the arena. They are not in it for the love of the arts, but to get jobs. That’s a trend that needs to be discouraged. Once you do that, this mad rush you see here and the pressure will go down too.”

Minister Raveendranath says there is no move to abandon the practice of granting grace mark to the winners. “However, the festival manual will be reviewed next year and brainstorming sessions have already begun among the stakeholders. Based on this year’s experience, we will introduce necessary changes in the conduct of the festival next year,’’ he says.

Contestants have to wait for hours — often in their costumes and wearing make-up — before they are called on stage. Contestants have to wait for hours — often in their costumes and wearing make-up — before they are called on stage.

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At the Nila venue, Usha Krishnadas, from Palakkad, is among those who believe “something needs to change”. Her daughter Malavika, a Class 12 student, has fared poorly and Usha is now close to tears. “Malavika stood first in both Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi at the last two festivals. This year, we came here expecting a hat-trick. But Malavika came 17th in Bharatnatyam and 21st in Kuchipudi. See, I don’t want to make it an issue, but the jury is biased and something should be done about this,” she says, her voice quivering. “It was the dream of my late husband that Malavika should be a dancer. Besides, the school teachers also wanted Malavika to contest in more items as they believe she can deliver a good show. How could Malavika lose?”

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