Delhi Public School (Bopal)

It is usually quite busy here around the Bopal Ambli railway crossing. You can hear the trains passing by quite clearly if the wind is blowing the right way. Our school is tucked inside the Sterling City Club Campus on Ambli Bopal Road. Most of us who work here have been around for a good while, seeing the area change from empty plots to all these buildings and shops. The kids come in every morning, some looking sleepy and others ready to run around. We have the usual chaos at the gate with the buses and parents dropping off their children. The school day has its own rhythm that we all know by heart. There’s the sound of bells, kids shouting during lunch, and the quiet when exams are on. The playground gets a bit dusty when the wind picks up in the afternoon, but the trees we planted years ago help a bit with the shade. It is just a normal place for learning, nothing too fancy or over the top. We spend a lot of time organizing classrooms and making sure the chalkboards are clean for the next day. Sometimes we have to deal with broken desks or a leaky tap in the washroom, but that’s part of running a school in this city. We know the shopkeepers nearby and the people who live in the apartments around here. It feels like a small community inside Bopal. We just keep doing our thing, day after day, helping the kids get through their books.