Day 6 - Visit to the Royal Enfield factory, Dancing and Painting

After all the fun and excitement from Day 5, Day 6 started on a much calmer note with meditation followed by painting color based associations. The children finger painted the first thing that came to their mind when a certain color was called out and wrote down the feeling or thought that the color brought in them.

Out of all the motorbikes in India, no other bike receives more respect for its elegance, power and rhythmic beat as the great Royal Enfiled. So a factory visit to their new assembly plant in Oragadam, was a unbelievable opportunity for most of us, which was clear from the big smiles we had on our faces when we reached there. The Oragadam plant came into service earlier this year, currently produces more than 200 bikes a day and has the capacity to produce up to 1200 bikes a day. We were greeted there by factory in-charge Raja Ratnam and his crew, who spoke about the history of Royal Enfield and about the safety procedures we had to follow inside the plant. 

Next we were taken through the Assembly Line, where we were shown how the bike starts out, step by step from just a chassis, to a fully functional motor bike that goes straight into testing and is then prepped  for shipment. Here we also got to see their newest model, the Café Racer, which is already launched in Europe and is set to be launched in India in the next few months. We were then taken to the highly advanced paint shop to see how each part of the motorbike goes through a four stage process and comes out stronger and with a beautiful sheen. The children were completely fired up throughout the 1 hour factory tour and bombarded our two guides with countless questions, which they patiently answered. 

After taking a group photo outside the factory (photographs are not permitted inside the factory floor), we started back towards Dakshina Chitra where an ‘Oyilattam’ (traditional South Tamil Nadu Dance form) workshop had been arranged for the kids. This workshop was definitely a test to our children’s endurance as pace of the rhythmic beat goes extremely fast at the peak of the performance.

The day ended with the children taking time to work on posters expressing their message on water conservation, which will be displayed in their exhibition at Dakshina Chitra tomorrow. If you are in town, please drop by between 4PM to 6PM to see the wonderful work the children have done for the last 6 days.