 |
| Sunday, April 4, 2004 |
|
| Sunday, April 4, 2004 |
|
Going to School in India
The book deals with the lives of Indian children in remote village schools, at places where one can’t even imagine there are schools. Going to School features 25 stories of ordinary, everyday experiences of these children. There are episodic narratives of children going to school in fascinatingly diverse and often difficult circumstances. There is a tone of tolerant dispassion about the narration as the author lets the children speak for themselves, and never in the children’s tone does one detect melancholy. On the contrary, the joie-de-vivre in their attitude is a delight. Over 30 kinds of schools and organisations, from those dealing with the education of street children to government and private schools, find representation in the book. The book presents a world of possibility for the younger generation, which can not only identify with the issues related to education, but also do something about these. A Bal Sansad or children’s parliament was created in the night schools of Rajasthan so that the girls, who had to work during the daytime, could get a chance to study and know how the Parliament functioned. Every year 3,000 girls vote to elect the members of this parliament. Then there are boys and girls of a district of Bihar, who can discuss all child-related issues. They even write letters to the Education Minister, urging him to do something about the occupation of the school building by the police. Many government and non-government organisations are involved in the task of educating children in these remote pockets of India and even street children in e metros. Going to School is a dream project of Lisa Heydlauff, a British American, who spent five years in India and for seven months visited schools all over the country, writing stories about the kids there. In her project, she was assisted by Nitin Upadhye, the photographer. The idea took birth when Lisa, who taught kids in the age group of six to seven in the UK, was asked by a child, Oliver: "What is it like to go to school in India?" Lisa tried locating books to answer Oliver’s question, but found nothing. Then she promised Oliver that if she ever went to India, she would find out the answer for him. So Going to School came about and "(the book) is the shared experience through which we can begin to understand each other`85 we all get to school in some way, we all have similar hopes and dreams. If, through this common place you open up a world of possibility, well, youjust made the foreign familiar." The places she has visited make all of it seem like a tour to some strange, exotic country; so exotic are the locales and so spectacular the visuals. Their lifestyles differ, but the aspirations of the children are similar. Lisa says every child knows what he or she would change about going to school, if they could. From a government school in a village in Ladakh to a small tent in the middle of 12,000 sq km of mud desert in Gujarat, from the solar-lantern-lit night school for girls to a school-on-wheels in Mumbai and the nature walks in the Nilgiris, Lisa has traversed the length and breadth of India and chosen students as her protagonists. She says: "To tell a complete story of India would require at least 300 million pages, one for every child, but that book, like India’s greatest possibilities, is endless." |
GOING to School in India
is a visual delight. The pictures capture the essence of the schools and
of the regions where these are located. Wonderfully deep in focus and
vision, the photographs speak so loud that words cease to be necessary.
The book is a riot of colour and the text is cunningly woven into these
colours, making the reading extremely pleasing to the eye.
