Mexico looks for Indian children who painted for the 1968 Olympics
NEWDELHI: Mexico has launched a hunt for children from 80 countries, including eight from India, who participated in a global painting festival as part of the cultural activities for the 1968 Olympics.
The children who joined the World Children’s Painting Festival, with the theme “Un Mundo de Amistad (A world of friendship)”, contributed some 1,800 drawings and murals that were displayed at some of Mexico City’s most iconic spots.
Five decades later, as Mexico prepares to host an exhibition with the theme “A world of friendship – 50 years later”, which will feature the few surviving pieces of the original collection, a hunt is underway for the participants of the painting festival.
“To acknowledge the contribution of those children to the painting festival, the embassies of Mexico worldwide are searching for the participants, who would now be adults,” the Mexican embassy in New Delhi said in a statement.
The embassy wishes to present a copy of the framed painting with a certificate of commendation to the participants. The embassy also released some of the paintings by the Indian participants and a photo from a publication featuring one of them, Leela Sudakaran.
However, there is a snag — very little is known about the Indian participants, and according to the embassy, only their names and ages are available.
Only one of the eight participants has been traced so far and he died in 1998 after a long illness. Jitendra Navnitlal Parikh from Baroda, who was 15 at the time of the festival, had submitted a painting entitled “Market”.
The embassy released the names of six other participants: Sujata Sharma (14 at the time) from New Delhi, Ira Sachdeva (12) from New Delhi, Sanat Kundu (13), and Vivek Kuchibhatla (nine years), Ela Ems (eight years) and Leela Sudakaran, who may have travelled to Mexico to paint murals.