Visit to Akanksha

This article is about my visit to Shindewadi Muncipal School, near Dadar station as a volunteer for the Akanksha Foundation. The school is run by Akanksha and Bombay Municipal Corporation. BMC provides books, school uniforms and so forth to students while Akanksha foundation enrolls teachers for the school. My assignment was to assist an instructor in teaching 4^th grade students. 

I arrived there at 11:30 am as required. Although the building was under renovation, it appeared to be an ordinary residential building. Almost all the rooms of the school, each with 30 to 35 students, bore good resemblance to a usual classroom with handmade posters and paintings by kids fixed on the walls. I went to the 2^nd floor where this class was going on. As I entered the room half of the kids started staring at me as if some alien had broken in. They were taking a test at that time. I introduced myself to teacher. She asked me to invigilate in the examination. As I was passing through the aisle, a kid poked me and asked with flourish of innocence the answer of a question. While I was trying to fend off this call for help, another kid whispered “Bhaiya Bhaiya, can you tell me answer of this question?”  Observing my unwillingness to answer they soon gave up.

Post-exam I was handed the answer sheets for correction. This was a problem larger than I could gauge. There was match the column in the test. So in the answer of few students, the line started from one column, disappeared and reappeared out of nowhere to test your intelligence. There was also a case where two lines merged and then split to meet the answer column. The correction was more of a test than a routinely exercise for me. I bet even Sherlock Holmes would have had hard time or might have possibly given up unraveling such a mystery of lines. Nevertheless few students did very well.

After checking the answer sheets, I went to the class again. It was storybook reading time. The teacher asked me to control the class for a while as she went to fetch few documents. No sooner than she stepped out of the class, decibel level of the room increased. I tried hard to make them quiet using gamut of expressions like threat, force, request, beg but all of my efforts came to naught. I realized the authority madam was having over students.

During the time of interval I got chance to talk to them personally. I gathered that most of the students there come from middle level low income families. The source of earnings for their parents was for instance by driving auto rickshaw or working in small industries and factories and other petty jobs. Then they also asked me few questions and a few of them were peculiar like the one which a little girl asked me if I come from the countryside and when I asked her why she thought so then she replied because all of them have bushy beard. 

By the end of the last period I was exhausted and I realized how tough the job of teaching is. Sometimes you have to make yourself heard over the din of students in the class. You have to ensure that what you are teaching they are getting it and what they are getting is reflected in the exam. The best part of the day was when the school time ended and these children ran towards school gate for their parents waiting for them there. Watching this event on the sideline makes me realize how beautiful the life is and how time passes so quickly. We all have gone through this beautiful stage of childhood and now we are heading towards hardheaded hurly-burly world and we don’t know what it holds for us. Sometimes I don’t find any purpose of life and what I have discovered is that if any day one feels like there is no value of one’s achievement or one doesn’t know where his/her life is heading or one doesn’t find any reason to strive for what one desire, a visit to an airport (arrival gate) or railway station or school and observing people meeting their loved ones will do a great deal of good. You will read between the lines. You will notice something which we generally take for granted. You will perceive more than what you see. 

P.S. : Thanks to Kishor, Vishal and Mayank Singhal for giving me feedback.