8-9 November 2025 | The Lalit Ashok, Bengaluru
At the National Mental Health Festival, hosted by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies in partnership with NIMHANS and NCBS
In the middle of Manotsava 2025, a festival already filled with layered conversations on mental health, community, healing, and systems, there was a corner where everything felt a little closer to the ground.
Literally and metaphorically.
The Bachpan Manao Zone didn’t just talk about childhood. It created a living, breathing space for it. Families sat cross-legged on mats. Children painted their feelings in colour. Grandparents played Pallankuzhi and Gilli Danda alongside facilitators who were younger than their own children. It was not a zone for children, but a space about what childhood makes possible, for all of us.
There were no big speeches. No toolkits handed out. Instead, something else: room.
A Festival Inside a Festival
Held on 8-9 November 2025 at The Lalit Ashok in Bengaluru, the Bachpan Manao Zone turned a corner of Manotsava into a celebration of curiosity, story, and emotional connection. Through picture-book readings, collective drawing sessions, pop-up art corners, and traditional games, it invited everyone, regardless of age or role, to remember that childhood isn’t only a stage of life. It’s a way of seeing the world.
Workshops like Once Upon a Feeling, Little Stories for Big Feelings, UnStuck, and Setting Sail didn’t treat emotions as things to manage. They treated them as things to feel, express, and move with. Many of us who sat in on sessions found ourselves tuning into something far more embodied than expected.
“I got in touch with my inner child all over again,” said Gomathi, a special educator and counsellor from Bengaluru, after walking through the space.
The Power of Design That Doesn’t Rush
Every detail in the Zone felt intentional, without being forced. There were no signs directing traffic, yet people moved gently. There were no “outputs” expected from children, yet so much was expressed. Care didn’t announce itself. But it was everywhere.
Reading corners set up by Bookworm Trust offered moments of quiet. The Visual Voices exhibit by Artreach India displayed art made by children, unfiltered, emotional, and vivid. Pratham Books created a cosy Corner for Big Feelings. Funky Rainbow curated books that made people of all ages laugh and think. Sva-Hitha and Vazhai Foundation invited intergenerational participation through therapy-informed play and traditional games.
This was infrastructure for emotional wellbeing. It didn’t call itself that. But that’s what it was.
A Small Doorway into Larger Conversations
One experience within the Bachpan Manao Zone was the Lock Worry, Unlock Joy installation. You walked through slowly. No phones. No explanations. Textiles touched your skin, music followed your pace. The experience triggered memory, sometimes unexpectedly.
One parent shared:
“I was sceptical at first because I didn’t know how long it would take, but it was so beautiful. It activated all the senses, from touching the fabric to hearing the music that touches your soul. There was a moment I broke down, but by the end, it felt like I’d spoken to someone. It was deeply healing.”
The installation didn’t require feedback. It didn’t demand interaction. And yet, the responses it evoked were some of the most personal and unguarded moments witnessed across the entire festival.
Why It Mattered
As Deepika Mogilishettty, Chief of Policy and Partnerships at EkStep Foundation, shared:
“We feel very strongly that Bachpan Manao connects closely to Manotsava. Manotsava is creating a national conversation on mental health and wellbeing, and Bachpan Manao celebrates early childhood care (0–8 years), while we are starting one on celebrating childhoods.
The two are deeply connected, because wellbeing is rooted in curiosity, joy, and the permission to connect with yourself, to be present, and to engage with life fully.
That’s what Bachpan Manao is about. Here, we’ve tried to bring our energies together and make something meaningful happen. The Zone was more than a set of sessions and stalls, it was a living reminder that care begins in the smallest, most ordinary moments.”
That stayed and was felt, consistently, across two full days.
There are many ways to think about mental health. Clinical. Social. Structural. Behavioural. But what the Bachpan Manao Zone reminded us is that some of the deepest work begins far earlier. In storytime. In play. In the design of a room. In how we welcome people to arrive, exactly as they are.At Manotsava 2025, the Bachpan Manao Zone offered more than activities for children, it invited adults to remember. Over two days, it became a shared space where stories, play, art, and feeling unfolded without urgency. This reflection captures what that space held, and how it quietly stayed with us.
)
