my sunday sundae with Bhumi

Usually I spend my Sunday mornings lazing around at home, doing laundry and pampering myself with a pedi-mani-cure, feasting on sumptuous home cooked food, and of course Church and friends. The last Sunday, I instead visited a government school with two of my colleagues. While there were many surprises awaiting us, the first was discovering a slum right in the middle of the city in a so-called posh locality.

The road got narrower as we entered the locality, too small for our car, after some looking and asking around, we made it to the school vicinity. At first I found it difficult to accept that the “building” in front of me was actually a school. We went in.

There stood two small four roomed, tin roofed buildings facing each other. The classrooms were empty. There was only a whitish blackboard in each of the classrooms. The ceiling was leaking, the floor wet, and the walls damp. It’s beyond my comprehension how a child would learn in a wet, dark classroom sitting right on the floor, without even a desk to keep his books.

The educational psychology paper I opted in college taught me that “Education is an all round development of a child”. However, what I saw that day relates nowhere with this definition.

With a garbage dump, a defecation compound, animals of various kinds (including pigs), no benches or desks, not enough classrooms (half the classes are held outside, right on the floor), no fans and lights, no library and no laboratory, I wondered where the “all- round development” was going to come from.

But the students didn’t seem to be bothered with all this. All that mattered to them was the school, the classrooms, their teachers and their books.

How could the government be so negligent? I went through mixed emotions: there was anger against the government, sympathy for the students, and there was respect for the Bhumi angels.

Not waiting for the government, the Bhumi angels (a group of dedicated youth) have gone ahead and done things on their own. They adopted this school a year ago and have so far constructed a new building (half of the existing school structure was created by them), got in more teachers, and are on their way to building more classrooms. They are keen to get in more qualified teachers, clean up the surroundings and the school (a recurring task they don’t flinch from) and do much more.

They have their jobs, families, and their own lives. But every little moment they can, they spare for Bhumi. Even eating the last meal at home has become such a rarity that they in fact declined an offer to dine with the three of us after a meeting because their folks were waiting for them at home.

This school is only a representation of many such schools. Thousands of government schools I’m told are run this way. The Government should stop deceiving our motherland, give us what is ours, and stand by its promises. Some of them, at least.

In the mean time, I salute the Bhumi angels.

To know more about Bhumi, click here