"Caring for the environment" is something every City Montessori School student can talk about fluently from Primary school upwards. In all 20 campuses you will notice creative posters about saving water and electricity and throwing your trash in the bins. Each campus has an environment coordinator, taking children out to plant trees and run campaigns (eg. clean the Gomti river, have a cracker-free Diwali celebration). (see more)
I was already familiar with all of this, but the one new topic to me was Solar Energy. I consider my first lecture on the topic to be the one conducted by Padma Sri Janak Palta McGilligan back in June '15. I had heard about her before meeting her (she's a Bahá'i, and an international multi-awarded environmentalist, and yet so down to earth!) oh you can't imagine how nervously excited I felt walking up to her room the morning of her presentation, to accompany her to the meeting hall! We grew close those three days, we had wonderful conversations, and even after she left, I continued admiring her through her facebook page (look her up! She's a legend!)
Later in the year, I got good news, that Janak didi was coming back to Lucknow (for the International Environment Olympiad). She was bringing with her some friends - a group of solar-powered musicians from the United States who wanted to perform in CMS campuses. My task was to write letters to the principals of three campuses which had the space/facilities (either a field or auditorium), get those campuses to pick dates and time, and then accompany the band. This group was called SOLAR PUNCH. Despite going through their website several times, I didn't really understand how they were solar until we had their first performance. Basically, their leader Alan Bigelow brought out two sets of solar panels he put together himself. Each consisted of eight solar sheets. He laid these out under the sun, then connected the wires from the sheets to their speakers and microphones. Each of the four members played an instrument (three guitar-like, one drum-like), and two of them sang. Solar Punch composes their own songs, and that's exactly what they sang. One of my favorite was a Native-American inspired song that has lyrics like "we are the light of the moon and the sun, we are the light that's in everyone. We are the turning of the time".
My videos of their performances are too large to be uploaded here, so for now we'll make do with a few pictures:
 |
| Their first concert. The setting wasn't ideal - it was just too hot/sunny to be in the open field, so we used this covered hall, and the solar sheets were on the field, getting some sun (the students weren't able to see this, from where they were seated) |
 |
| Day 2 - this was amazing! The weather was pleasant, and here you can easily see their solar panel sheets. |
 |
| It so happened that the newspaper headlines on this day read "Lucknow the second most polluted city in India!" So to demonstrate how severe that was, they wore these masks. They invited students to come forward and give ideas on how we can have a cleaner and greener India! Very participative performance |
 |
| Last day was on the rooftop of another campus. Solar Punch had so many songs, they performed different ones at each campus. But the one that they always performed was a hindi song Chaiyya Chaiyya (from a Bollywood movie) it got everyone singing along too! (it's about the rain) |
 |
| And that's me with Solar Punch, Janak didi and CMS Environment Coordinator |