Come June, Delhi’s hot weather Hobby Season begins. As exams end, children start thinking about hobbies they can pursue during the summer break.

This year’s holidays have come after two years of Covid. Alert parents, therefore, made quick trips to venues where their children can pick up a craft or an art. A hot favourite has been the summer theatre workshops of the National School of Drama (NSD).

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The premier national school of acting on Bhagwan das Road, near Mandi House, pioneered the workshops that it holds now at several schools in Noida, Ghaziabad, Guru gram, and Delhi.

It has already selected several batches of children for its theatre in education (TIE) Sanskar Rang Toli. Children have been grouped according to their age at several other theatre workshops in the city. Parents feel relieved when the names of their wards appear on the lists of the selected children. The demand for such short-term acting courses has been high for years, but the pandemic gave it a severe setback. Some institutions devised online courses to let the children continue with the programmes.

The workshops have been valued high for the personality development of children and enhancing their power of expression. Many parents spend several morning hours outside the workshop venues to pick up their children immediately after a day’s session.

As the weather turned pleasant, after a night-long rainfall, the “Y School of Music” of the New Delhi YMCA near Parliament Street received many curious children. The Y School of Music has been offering instruction in guitar, violin, piano, keyboard, and drums for the last 20 years, Children are joining classes in western instrumental music for hobby or for professional purposes.

Syed Sajjad Rasul, the popular piano teacher at the school, has been arranging public shows where the young pianists can show their skills. He said the school arranges examinations by London’s Trinity College which awards certificates also. During the Covid days, he took classes online and the option is available even now.

An addition this year is western vocal music. The music school has been receiving students from as far as Panipat and Nainital. Music classes are available in several localities also.

Children can walk down to these neighborhood hobby centres on their own and come back easily. A leaflet in circulation in a locality offered “daycare” for younger children, along with training in instruments, as well as, for popular vocal music competitions on TV.

Pawan Bhargava of Darya Ganj’s Bhargava’s Music, the largest store of Indian and western musical instruments including pianos, guitars, saxophones, violins, and their accessories in the capital, said there was a good off-take of the instruments this season, after Covid.

Many buyers were learning and then sharing their creativity on the net. This way they got recognition for their talk ent and earned some money also. The most popular instrument with the young buyers was the guitar, followed by keyboards. The number of customers had gone up as several schools were offering classes in western and Indian music. The students had to buy the instruments for practice at home. Many of them took extra classes under professionals and turned into teachers themselves!