Kulapathi Dr. S Balakrishna Joshi Gurukkulam Matriculation Higher Secondary School

Our school has a very long name, but most people in the neighborhood just call us the school on 2nd Street in Kolathur. It is a very busy part of Chennai, and our location at 13/1 puts us right in the middle of the residential blocks. The building has been around for a good while. You can see the age in the way the walls look and how the old wooden desks have names carved into them from students who left years ago. We have a lot of students coming through these doors every single morning. It is a bit of a squeeze in the corridors when the bell rings for the end of a period. The teachers are usually busy marking papers in the staff room or standing at the chalkboards with dust on their hands. We still use a lot of chalk here, so there is always a bit of white powder on the floors. The fans hum over our heads all day long to keep the air moving. It is a very traditional environment. We do not have many flashy gadgets or new technology. Instead, we focus on the books and the exams because that is what the parents expect from us. The area around us is full of small shops and houses, so the sounds of the city are always there in the background. We have our daily routines, like the morning assembly and the lunch break, and we stick to them.