Bhavans Gandhi Vidyashram

It gets pretty misty up here on Golf Club Road most mornings. Being in Kodaikanal, the weather usually dictates how the day starts at Bhavans Gandhi Vidyashram. We are tucked away near the P B No 9 area, which is a bit of a walk from the main town center, but it stays quiet enough for a school. Most days, you will see the staff arriving early, shivering a bit if it is winter, and getting things ready for the students. The school has been part of this landscape for a long time. We do not really do much shouting about what we do here. The kids come from all over, and since they live here, it is more like a big, slightly chaotic house than a stiff institution. There is always laundry drying somewhere or someone looking for a lost sweater. We keep the gardens as tidy as we can, though the monkeys usually have other plans and mess things up. It is a lot of work keeping a school running in the hills. Supplies have to come up from the plains, and sometimes the roads are tricky when it rains, but we manage. You will not find any shiny brochures or polished speeches here. Just teachers trying to get through the syllabus and making sure the students are fed and warm. It is a steady kind of life, governed by the school bells and the mountain fog. We just like it that way.