Winter Wonderland Carnival: Heralding holiday season

DIMAPUR — The spicy aroma of food, the fragrance of flowers and the laughter of children set the ambience of the ‘Winter Wonderland Carnival’ at the new campus of NN Nagi School, Kuda village ‘A’, Dimapur, on Saturday.

The one-day carnival was inaugurated by Kaisa Rio, wife of Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio.

This is the first time NN Nagi School is heralding the year-end holiday season with a fairyland-themed carnival, which came to fruition after “five years of visualisation,” said the school administrator Pete Nagi.

He said the carnival reflects joint celebration of the school community, including the management, staff, students and parents. The event is also aimed at providing an avenue for the students to collaborate with the parents, teachers and faculty, he added.

The event featured 91 stalls, including art exhibition, photo booth, face painting, on-the-spot photo animation, play zone, mascots, magic show and circus, fascinating kids and adults alike.

The mild winter weather also added charm to the event as parents and grandparents of the students, as well as other visitors thronged the stalls. Interestingly, the proceeds of some stalls were earmarked for charity.

Art teacher of NN Nagi School, Ritsa Longchar, said the school’s Arts and Crafts Club also run a stall featuring postcards, bookmarks and paintings made by the students, for display and sale.  

A co-worker of Natsiko Resources, a prelove book stall, said that they were encouraged to experience the reading habit of children, unlike the past.

“Every November, we have a sale on our Instagram page and the response, not just on sale month but also other days as well, is encouraging as this signifies that the children love books and reading,” the co-worker said. 

“We made around 100 plus postcards, more than 60 bookmarks and some paintings. Every club in the school opened a stall and took the opportunity of the carnival to showcase our crafts and creativity. Every student worked hard and cooperated well. The students particularly were very excited for the carnival,” Longchar shared.

The ‘Farmer’s Market,’ a stall offering organic vegetables and fruits sourced from different villages and districts of Nagaland, witnessed a mad rush since the early hours.

“Just few hours into opening our stall, the Farmer’s Market has been a hit among the attendees,” confided a co-worker of the stall.

“We are here to promote our local farmers and their hard work. We started the farmers’ market to introduce their locally-grown vegetables and financially help them. Since they cannot connect directly to the urban market, we thought we will be the middlemen. We have a variety of vegetables and fruits coming in from different villages in Nagaland, which are locally grown in villages and are not found in Dimapur,” the co-worker said.

Thejanguno Nagi, assistant headmistress of the school, said that the farmer’s market was set up, especially in view of the trend among children to eat only junk foods and packaged foods.

“We wanted to make a statement where we also want to promote organic food. There is a mantra why we started this – ‘grow local, buy local and eat local’,” Nagi said.

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