Polish students visit Strawberry Fields

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 12

Games, lectures, art demos, culinary samplings and feasting on yards of vibrant fabric in the quaint shopping streets of Chandigarh have been just some of the things that 12 Polish students from Kolegium Europejskie, Krakow, an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, have experienced as part of the International Cultural and Academic Exchange Programme, organised by the Strawberry Fields High School, Sector 26. 

During the fortnight-long exchange period, each student has been assigned a host family. In addition to structured activities planned by the school, the host families are taking them out shopping along with other cultural and social experiences.

The girls were fascinated with the henna patterns on their hands while the boys wondered why they couldn't go for it too. Playing kho-kho, a traditional Indian game, that has been part of the rural landscape for decades, was a major highlight with both the Indian and Polish students enjoying a healthy competitive nature of the game. 

Despite being given a choice of continental and Western cuisine, they opted for Indian food and were pleasantly surprised to find their threshold for the pungent masalas quite tolerable. 

A 17-year-old, Maja Sroda of Class XI, wondered aloud, a bit perplexed, "Indians eat all the time!"

What surprised most of the Polish students was that it was great to be part of the Indian families and see how young people were protected and nurtured while they in Poland were mostly independent, taking their own decisions and leading their own lives once they entered high school. A healthy debate ensued on the subject with Indian kids agreeing that they were indeed "over protected" at times and that it would be good to experience adulthood on their own and make their mistakes and learn from them too.

The interaction with the Chief Justice Shiavax Jal Vazifdar at the Punjab and Haryana High Court was a lively one with many questions being asked around the Indian legal system and the complexities of being fair and just in a world that was becoming increasingly inequitable. 

Exposure to Indian music and art was provided with a series of lecture demonstrations that included an interactive session on ‘Connections in history and music of India and Poland’ over different periods, a hawan yajna performance and a session on knowing and chanting the Gayatri Mantra.