You’ve met students from Mumbai’s government schools in newspapers before, invariably in reports of city authorities dealing them the short end of the stick. Japanese violinist Mika Nishimura thinks these tiny hands look better wielding shiny violin bows. This weekend, a group of 140 students from government schools, NGOs and private schools will bow their strings in tandem to tunes like Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Nishimura, with a dream team of international mentors, has been working overtime to make a movement-meets-music showcase a grand success in SoBo this Sunday.

Guillermo Diaz mentors the children during an outdoor strength training session

At the Elphinstone Municipal School on Monday, Nishimura had a long overdue rendezvous with Spanish educator Katheryn Murillo of the Real Madrid Foundation (RMF). “I met Katheryn in 2022 at a conference in Portugal. I had already been teaching kids at Muktangan Education Trust for many years. I mentioned how the kids, while extremely bright, struggle with physical strength. Sometimes, they couldn’t bear standing with a violin even for an hour,” Nishimura recalls. The Elevate Camp, the duo’s music-meets-exercise brainchild, came to fruition three years later at the municipal school.