Ramswaroop Singhal Girls Inter College

Down at Daresi No. 1 in Agra, you’ll find our building tucked away. It’s called Ramswaroop Singhal Girls Inter College, and it has been part of this neighborhood for a long time. Agra is always crowded and noisy, and our street is no different. You can hear the traffic and the people shouting outside while the girls are in their classrooms. It’s a bit of a maze inside sometimes, with stairs that go up to different floors where the girls study. We don’t have many fancy things, just the basics like chalkboards and benches. In the winter, it gets quite cold in the halls, so everyone wears their thick sweaters. During the break, the courtyard fills up with noise and girls sharing their lunches they brought from home. The staff room is usually full of tea cups and stacks of notebooks that need grading. We don’t spend much time on decorations or making things look perfect for visitors. It’s mostly just about getting through the lessons every day. Sometimes the monkeys from the nearby trees come onto the roof, which causes a bit of a stir. We just keep the doors shut and carry on. It’s a plain, honest place where local girls come to get their schooling finished before moving on to whatever comes next in their lives. Most of the teachers live nearby, so we walk or take a rickshaw to get here every morning.