Indore and the Outdore Kids

It all started off with an innocuous suggestion from me to the Bhanpura kids and their mothers on my last trip there – “Bachchon ko baahar ghumane le jaaoon?”

‘Haan haan,” they said, with apparent enthusiasm, “le jao le jao”. Still, I didn’t quite believe them. After all, this was a remote MP village, with a highly orthodox community where there is still no girl who has passed grade 10, and children are betrothed at the ripe age of 10 or 11.

So the disbelief continued, as 2 months later, I asked for the actual list of kids who were willing to come for an overnight trip to Indore – with a verbal consent from their parents. In a couple of hours I had 22 names - boys and girls ranging from 8 to 18, and the list was growing. I was forced to turn bureaucratic and put in age limits and other constraints to truncate the fast-growing list.

List in hand, it finally hit me - this trip was actually happening! I was going to have to take 20 kids from Bhanpura (a small 70-family village), most of whom had never ever stepped outside their village, to Indore for a 2-day picnic.

I did a casual stock-taking of things that could go wrong – suppose some kid gets lost?

Suppose a kid gets diarrhoea? Or sunstroke?

Suppose at night they all panic and want to go back home?

P-A-N-I-C!!!!

Several extra-large shudders ran down my spine. ‘Stop!”. I thought. “Focus on the planning, baaki dekh lenge...”

Bhanpura Invades...

16^th April. D-day. Nothing much went wrong in our journey from Bhanpura to Indore– if you discount a 2.5 hour delay in starting, 3 new kids joining the group at the last minute without any prior notice, and 15 out of the 19 kids feeling queasy in the vehicles (most had never been inside a vehicle for so long before).

But then, there was a bright side too... not ONE of the 15 queasy kids actually threw up. I almost started believing that god actually exists...

We reached Indore around noon, and after a quick lunch and a wash, asked the kids whether they wanted to rest or go out. Go out, was the unanimous choice. My comrades in arms consisted of Toofan, the 20-year old Bhanpura boy who shoulders a large part of the responsibility of educating Bhanpura’s young ones, and Shashanka, my crazy and quirky friend from Ahmedabad who (probably in the bravest decision of his life) had offered to join us in Indore and chaperone the kids.

So we set out – for the zoo, at 2 o’clock on a hot April afternoon! I was petrified that on a hot afternoon like this the animals would have retreated inside and the kids would be left disappointed. But clearly, God was working overtime. We were regaled with sightings of Bengal tigers, Himalayan bears, White tigers, elephants, crocodiles and numerous exotic birds. We even caught a glimpse of a couple of hippos – though they just stood still inside their dingy quarters with their behinds squarely facing us. The children could not see anything beyond their enormous behinds – and if in future they are asked to describe a hippo, I am afraid, the description might be rather biased. ;-)

The next 24 hours was a pot-pourri of experiences. We went to the airport, a mall, a movie, a park and temples of various shapes, architectural styles, and faiths. We manoeuvred 20 kids for a distance of what seemed like 10 km through a thick Kumbh-Mela-ish crowd in the old city area. We ran out of food at the mess at 10 in the night (obviously, city people underestimate rustic appetites!) and had to go out to buy extra food.

And I ran into a major, major challenge, which somehow I had not foreseen at all.

The MOST wanted destination in Indore :-/

‘Didi, mujhe zor se lagi!”

When we started off, I had no idea how many times I was going to hear this in the next 2 days!

Yes, the biggest challenge during the trip seemed to be not food, or water, or safety – but how to find a public toilet every 30 minutes or so - when one kid or the other would want to go to the loo. And these being truly unfettered ‘outdoor’ kids, it was tough to make them withhold themselves even for a few minutes. Even as I frantically looked around for a toilet, they would just happily get about the business of peeing, right where they were. 
Including in the middle of a busy road...

After throwing several blue fits in the beginning of the trip when this happened, I came to terms with it. I started planning the rest of the tour around public toilets...

Just as first timers planning a visit to a tourist destination ask locals about the nearest bus stand or hotel, I would punctuate my queries about every destination in Indore with “Achcha, wahan nearest toilet kahan milega?”

Sheela ki jawani – the Bhanpura remix

Back at the hostel at night, the kids told me they were going to put up a dance show. I was expecting some traditional fare. I was in for a surprise.

The first group started off - singing and dancing to ‘Sheela ki jawani’ – and I braced myself. Somehow, watching a bunch of ten-year-olds singing and dancing suggestively to ‘I’m too sexy for you’ was simply unpalatable to me. But it was their own remixed version, with all the offensive lines having undergone a mutation:

“My name is Sheela...
Sheela ki jawani...
ankhen dekhe for you
 main tere haath na aani...”

went their version... and I sighed with puritanical relief!

The Outdore kids

One of the best liked attractions for the kids was the Treasure Island Mall. The kids gaped unabashedly at the shops, relished Mcdonald’s ice cream cones, and screamed excitedly inside the elevators. But the biggest hit were the free rides... on the escalators in the mall! After an initial apprehension, they went up and down the escalators repeatedly, screaming ‘Didi, phir chalenge jhoole mein... phir se.. phir se!!’

How simple and easy it is, to make these kids happy! And what a welcome change from the ennui of city kids.

Whatever, in those two days I spent with the Bhanpura kids, for the first time I started understanding a bit about them and their perspective.

The first day, I behaved like a typical urban mom, trying to get the kids to drink ‘safe’ water – from mineral water bottles or pouches. I learnt my lesson rather quickly, though. They took big gulps of water, swished it about inside their mouths, gargled with it – and then squirted it out. They just would NOT drink it. ‘Yeh paani toh kadhwa hai’, they said. So we had no go but to allow them to drink regular water from filters and coolers at public places.

How polarised our perspectives were! While we swear by mineral water bottles and have actually come to like the sanitised taste, they could not stand it, and rejected it outright! And, no one was worse for the wear - not ONE upset tummy.

Then there was the issue of privacy. Or rather, their preference for the lack of it.

We had booked 8 rooms for the 16 girls and myself. We finally crowded into 4 – while 4 rooms lay completely vacant! The kids preferred crowding 4 in a room – they were just not used to sleeping in a non-crowded space.

To my consternation, even bathing and going to the loo were community activities for them... and every time I went into the bathroom, alone, I wondered if they would find it a terribly impolite action on my part... :-/

And I mused. Over how urban kids learn to guard their privacy so quickly, demanding their own room, exclusive wall space to put up pictures of stars and so on – and how the Bhanpura brigade absolutely revelled in the lack of it. Understandably so, of course.

Urban lives revolve around the self. Rural lives, around family and the community.

“Hope you survived!”

Thus spake Uma, my friend from Indore (who, incidentally, had disappeared mysteriously when she heard I was descending on Indore with 20 kids...) when it was all over. “Barely”, said I. Adding that I still had occasional nightmares about manouevering 20 kids through the Kanch (Jain) temple area on Mahavir Jayanti... and I still hear voices in my head saying "Didi, mujhe zor se lagi..."

But overall, when I think of the experience, I can only think of the joy and the excitement on the faces of the kids. I smile thinking of the time when they gasped, "Waaaaah! Itna bada TV!", when we took them to a theatre for a movie. And I smile a little more, when I think of some of the girls quietly slipping their small, sweaty hands into mine while walking on crowded streets.

Some people told me, “Arre, it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these kids.”

I honestly hope it isn’t. Not for them. And not for me, either.




PS: Thanks Uma, for coining that lovely term, OUTDORE ;-) (And hope you don't mind my stealing it - it just fitted the context so much, I just could not resist...)

Kho-Khoya Khoya Chand

Well, a warning right at the start - this post is not about the film... it is simply a reminiscence of the days gone by... those fancy-free days of fun, frolic, and most importantly - Free Play...

I was on a visit to Bhanpura a miniscule village of about 70 houses in Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh (NOT the Bhanpura on Google maps, which is a town near Mandsaur, also in MP) and had made friends with a bunch of school kids there over math problems and a spontaneously staged skit.


Day 2, lunch time – and they insisted I play with them – first ‘pakdan paath’ and then kho-kho. And I did. Oh boy, I sure played kho-kho. My joints creaked and my breath rasped as my lungs and bones protested and cursed me in unison... but my heart was singing.... and I played on, and on, and on...

And I loved every nano second of it! I can’t even start to describe the sense of elation I felt...Playing in that long-forgotten way - under the blue sky, the slightly over-warm mid-January sun, united in that strangely deep way with that bunch of kids as only children can connect....

No fierce competition and one-upmanship, no pressure to perform... just pure enjoyment of every precious, playful moment.

It set me wondering - do city kids today ever get a chance to play that way? I doubt it – it would be rare, if at all. If some kid actually managed to slip in even 30 minutes of free outdoor play between school, home work, TV, video games, sports coaching and hobby classes – he would not just be a lucky kid, he would HAVE to be Superkid!

And the sad part is, the kids just don’t know what they are missing.

Some of you might feel like retorting to that with ‘What is there to miss – they have so much more in their lives nowadays!’ If that is so, just think back a bit... think of the games you played a child – Sathodi (called pithu in and around Delhi), Stapu (hopscotch), Chain, Paala (Boundary), Vish-amrit, Tippi-tippi-tap (what-colour-do-you-want), I-Spy (ice-spice to us as kids...), Langdi tang and the quirky and quaint ‘Elastic’... the list just goes on. But just stop and think of yourself playing those games.... shut your eyes and bring back the feelings they invoked in you...

Aur ab bolo - are urban kids today missing something or not?

But honestly, Free Play is a thing of the past for us deeply urban beings – as are fountain pens and 5-paise churans in plastic pipes. The only place where it still exists is in our villages – though there too it is an endangered species – threatened by various forms of ‘development’.

The craving for that feeling of pure, undiluted joy still remains, though.   Nowadays, city people try to indulge this craving by paying hefty amounts to go for various kinds of ‘Adventure Sports’. Well, I agree, it serves the purpose to some extent – but really, I do believe that the best things in life come free. They just can’t be bought, sold or rented.

Yes, I am happy I played kho-kho in Bhanpura that day. I am happy I shouted down my lungs and bones and got into the ‘Free Play’ mode.

Suddenly, for no reason, I feel happier. Richer. Freer.

Stop #1: Bhatiwara (continued)

"The should we hope for our future"


(continuing the Bhatiwara school story...)

The secondary school was next. There, the teachers sat in the ‘staff room’ correcting papers of the recently held monthly tests. Meanwhile, most of the students just sat listlessly in their classrooms, doing nothing. It is funny, how without learning anything they go on having tests.

The teachers were correcting the papers with such a grave air that I did not even dare to ask them to take a class. Instead I sat around, and started looking through the corrected papers.

They were Class 8 English papers, with the usual stuff – grammar, paragraph, textual based questions.

Question #3 caught my imagination – it asked, “What should we hope for our future?”. A textual question – but an intriguing one.

Most of the papers had questions copied from the board, but not much else. The students’  favourite mode of ‘answering’ seemed to be to pick some random word (or group words) from that or some other question and rewrite those as the ‘answer’. Like:

Q: “Who were trapped in the well?”
A: “Should we hope trapped in the well”

As I looked through more papers, those of the higher scoring students, my consternation grew. In one question, the students were asked to write a paragraph on ‘My family’.

I picked the paper of the student who had scored ‘well’ on this question. This is how his answer script looked:

My family

“I have a pet dog.
His name is Moti.
He is black in colour.” 

And so on...

Sanjay, their teacher, saw me staring at this answer and explained. Apparently, the only paragraph ‘taught’/dictated in class was ‘My Pet Animal’. So the few students who had the ability to memorize, had done so and tried to reproduce it verbatim... oblivious to the fact that the topic given in the exam was quite different.

Sanjay defended it saying that he had to give marks to whoever had written anything, since the standard was so abysmal and 70% students could not write, and hence not even attempt the question.

There was more. There was an essay to be written on ‘My school’. I am replicating here part of the essay written by one of the best students in the class – interspersed with my own comments in italics. 

My School

The actual answer script

I read in Senior Middle School Bhatiwara.
(Ok. The start seems encouraging!)

It has a red building with 15 rooms.
(Well, it is actually a blue building with 3 rooms.)

There are 35 teachers in my school.
(The school has 3 teachers, counting the para teacher. Well, it is understandable that to a child 1 teacher might seem like a whole army.. but still – from 3 to 35...?)

The 'red' school building with all '35' teachers standing in front of it 

The name of my principal is Mr. S D Sharma.
(The principal of the school is Mohanji)

He is a learned prison.
(Hmm... we can debate whether this one is a ‘careless slip’ on the child’s part, or a deep philosophical comment on the education system...)

(Don't misunderstand the intention here, the humour is directed only at our toothless sytem...)


The student had just mugged up the essay from a guide book and reproduced it. In this case I was not that uncomfortable about the student scoring well, because an essay does not necessarily have to be factually correct. The fact that the student had interpreted the question correctly and written these few lines almost flawlessly was an achievement in itself!

The sad thing is - that students who have the ability to mug up and write so much, have actually not been taught anything ‘real’ – not even to substitute ‘red’ with ‘blue’ where needed!

Well, I also started to understand what these tests are about. I realized every English test here is basically a test of pattern recognition for them - irrespective of class, topic etc. The children recognise that whenever the paper contains one particular series of ‘symbols’, they need to put down another fixed set of symbols as the correct response. For example, I might go and tell the kids that they would see this sequence in the exams:

“Quadrile Gryphon advise Jabberwocky?”

They should recognise this sequence, and put down the sequence “Gryphon gobbledegook advised Jabberwocky” in response. And that is what the brighter ones will do. Reproduce it unquestioningly, without deciphering anything at all in the jumble of symbols, let alone comprehending the ‘meaning’ of a particular group of symbols... 

So much for language teaching...

But despite everything, the situation is not hopeless. Sanjay, who has started teaching just a few weeks ago and is yet to settle down into the indifferent and apathetic attitude that prevails, declares his intent of at least seeing to it that by the end of the term all the kids know their alphabet. A noble thought, and I hope he is able to do some good to some batches of students before the systemic apathy catches up.

Incidentally, one of the best answers that I saw to the “What should we hope for the future?” question was: “The should we hope for our future.” MS Word might look down on this sentence and mark it with a green squiggly line... But think of this - this kid had actually figured out some rules for himself – he had some idea of the general ‘form’ the answer to this question should take! 

Definitely, that infused me with a bit of hope...


I originally ended Part 2 of my Bhatiwara chronicles here, but a friend who read it criticised me for sounding too much like the media - sensationalising without taking responsibility. Well, while this may be somewhat true, I can't do anything much at this point - except declare that my intent is to try and bring in change - and invite ideas and discussions for the same.


I am not sure what could be done - need specific ideas. I dn't know how much longer the present class 8 batch will be there. But for the next batch of class 7 and 8 students (present 6 and 7), is there any way we can help ensure that at least 80% of students do not leave the school without learning to read at least one language with comprehension? 


I am going to try very hard to do that...

The Journey of the Paper Plane: Stop # 1, Bhatiwara

The buck never reaches here

Well – the first month of my six month sabbatical is over. I had promised myself that before the month ended, I would kick off some ‘real’ action. And, well, it could not have got more ‘real’ than my mind-boggling journey to Bhatiwara, the adivasi village where I had gone to flag off my journey to what I loosely, somewhat stupidly, and totally inadequately termed as ‘understanding rural education’. Basically, I just want to see first-hand what our education system is meting out to those children who live and pass away without ever coming in the radar of us ‘city-folk’ – the children living in the remotest parts of Bharat, which India is only vaguely aware of...

Bhatiwara is 25 km or so from Seoni, which is roughly midway between Nagpur and Jabalpur. And that is about the best I can do in terms of coordinates. Bhatiwara does not exist on any map of Madhya Pradesh that I could find online. A Google Search for ‘Bhatiwara’ asks me, rather condescendingly, ‘Did you mean Bhanwara?’... I feel like being condescending right back, and say, ‘NO. I meant Bhatiwara, all right.’.... but Google thumbs its nose at me and refuses to give me that option. I then try ‘Bhatiwada’ .... Google retorts with, ‘Did you mean Khatiwada..?’ ... and proceeds to give me a list of people with the surname ‘Bhatiwada’ on Facebook. I give up....

Why Bhatiwara? Mainly because it is one of the MOST backward and inaccessible areas that I am personally aquainted with, but also because we have a base there – having acquired an expanse of wasteland there last year, which Sudarshan is now trying to convert into a model organic farm, Udayan... and, I think, to his credit and that of his team, succeeding...

So, when I decided to start my ill defined and ill planned journey of understanding the problem of education in remote rural areas, and the accompanying personal ‘soul search’, this seemed to be the most natural place to start.

This was my third visit to the farm, and Bhatiwara. It was the second time I actually stayed on the farm, and the first time I stayed on the farm ‘alone’. By ‘alone’ here, I mean with the local village people, with no family member or friend accompanying me.

The two days I spent by myself in Bhatiwara provoked colossal amounts of thought, which I intend putting down lest they get obscured. I plan to share various thoughts that occupied my mind during the trip – how bad really is the state of education there, how does one deal with marginalisation - and even before that, whether to deal with marginalisation. (Yes, you heard right - that was a real question in my mind.) And of course, share anecdotes and lessons learnt from the journey. If in the process some discussions and ideas are generated on how to put Bhatiwara and other such forgotten places on the map of India, and the map of education - great.. !

So... here goes.. the Bhatiwara diaries – in episodic form...

2 + 1 = 0

As I mentioned, my main reason for spending time at Bhatiwara this time was to spend time at the school and ‘understand rural education’. See for myself exactly how sad is the state of education there.. well, what can I say, except that I went expecting the worst - and well, I was not at all disappointed in that – saw some really depressing stuff.

Juloos's 'open' school

The Bhatiwara school was set up in 2001, prior to which the village kids of all ages just gathered around under a largish tree under the tutelage of a single ‘masterji’. Now there is a primary and middle school there, with about 250 students in all. The primary and the middle school each has 2 regular teachers, and 1 ‘para’ teacher.

Initially, my visit generated mild interest among the teachers. Once satisfied that I was not affiliated with any Govt or other agency and was not going to send any report to anybody, they went about their day as usual, leaving me well alone.

The problem is, they left the kids well alone too... I spent the best part of two days in the school. There was not a SINGLE class held. Not one. The kids just come for the mid day meals, and simply go away after that.

On the second day, I got desperate and asked one of the teachers, Bhikamji, to take a class, giving him a ‘I have come from so far just for this...’ spiel. “Class?”, he said, as if I had mentioned some taboo word... and then, resignedly, "Achcha, aap bol rahe hain toh class le hi lete hain..”. He then led me to the room where class 4 and 5 students waited. The girls sat in neat rows, while many of the boys passed time by beating each other up. Anyway, I was relieved that I was finally going to see some action... but nahi... Bhikamji just said some perfunctory words to the class, and left suddenly...leaving me standing in front of the class. Left holding the babies...

After 45 minutes, he reappeared... probably hoping I would have magically vanished during this time... Seeing I was still standing my ground, he wrote a few math problems on the board, and told the class “Yeh ho jaye, toh yeh madam ko dikha dena...” and beat a retreat again.

Well, I struggled for the next 1.5 hours, realising that even most of the class 5 kids did not know how to read numbers, order numbers, subtract or multiply... I had a tough time, trying to teach some of hem the basics – that too in Hindi...

Some of the kids were quite bright, grasping what I said quickly...others struggled, dulled by years of apathy...

As I left the 5^th grade classroom, I noticed the huge poster on the wall behind the teacher’s desk: “SANGHARSH HI JEEVAN KA NAAM HAI”. As if these kids, who are not sure where the next meal is coming from, need any reminding...

The bhatiwara primary school has 2 regular teachers and 1 para teacher. One of the regular teachers it seems only makes a guest appearance once in a while at the school – needless to say, he did not appear once during the time that I was there... I tried talking to some teachers to understand their problems. “We need more teachers...there is too much work...”, all of them said...

2 regular + 1 para teacher for 150 odd kids.... not a bad ratio AT ALL ... but resultant benefits for the kids? 0. Zilch. Cipher.

2 + 1 = 0. 
QED? I hope not....