Today was a great day in terms of art as well as in terms of moving forward! Right across from where we hold Street Smart right now, is Gandhi Park. This is a huge, enclosed space- lush green obviously since it is a park- and an absolute waste of brilliant potential, seeing as how the only thing Doon folks seem to use it for is to sit on dharnas at!Street Smart intends to use the beautiful Park for a wonderful reason: to introduce our kids to Taekwondo, yoga and basic techniques in self-defense. The idea is that not only will the kids, especially the girls be fairly equipped to defend themselves against the muck (and here I mean boys will be boys as will a lot of middle-aged and old men). Did I entangle the simple sentiment too much? OK what I mean is should a situation arise where a male comes too close for comfort, I hope our girls will beat the shit out of the creep once they have received the training in self-defense.But there is yet another, equally important motive. Whether it is yoga, Taekwondo or self-defense techniques; becoming a student of any or all of the three requires mental and physical discipline. It aligns the mind and body and unclutters the system. It will, we hope, make our kids more in tune with healthy living and adapting to a pro-positive line of thought.So in sum total, amidst the trees and on the grass, we will work with our children to be tougher and more resilient against the many many evils that fall in their path (street). So with the change in our physical surrounding, we hope to reflect the same in ourselves. The Mayor of Dehradun has given us the green signal to act on our proposal. The Mayor’s popular slogan for cleanliness in the city reads “Green Doon, Clean Doon” and I twist it for our kids and hope that the Green Street Smart at Gandhi Park will mean Clean Street Smart! 🙂