Aisha Siddiqua Inter College

Down in Beconganj, near the Parade area in Kanpur, things are always moving fast. Our building at 98/206 is right in the middle of all that bustle. You can hear the sounds of the market and the rickshaws all day long while classes are going on. The rooms are basic, just desks and boards, and maybe a few charts the students made pinned to the walls. We don't have those huge glass buildings you see in movies. It’s an old-school setup where the corridors are narrow and the stairs are worn down from years of students running up and down them. In the mornings, the gate gets really crowded with kids coming in from all parts of the city. We spend a lot of time just keeping things organized and making sure everyone is where they need to be. During the lunch break, the smell of food from the nearby stalls drifts in, and it gets quite loud for a bit. It’s a very local atmosphere here. People around Beconganj know the college well because we’ve been part of the landscape for a long time. It gets dusty, and the power goes out sometimes, so we just open the windows and keep going. It isn't perfect, but it works for us and the families who send their children here. We just focus on the daily routine and getting through the syllabus without making much of a fuss about it.