Khalsa Public School

Khalsa Public School is found at 18, Surya Sen Road, in the Ashokgarh neighborhood of Alambazar. This is another one of those local schools in North Kolkata where everyone seems to know everyone else. The street can get a bit narrow and crowded, especially when the school day starts and ends. We have kids of all different ages coming here, mostly from the houses right in this area. You can see the parents waiting outside the gates at the end of the afternoon. Inside, it’s a bit of a maze with different rooms for different grades. The walls have some old posters on them, and the floors are the old-fashioned kind you find in many Kolkata buildings. We go through the regular school year with the usual holidays for festivals. It gets quite humid here during the monsoon, and you can smell the rain on the old brickwork. The teachers sit in a small staff room and mark piles of notebooks every day. It’s a very simple setup. We don't have any big flashy equipment or anything like that. It’s just a place where children come to learn their ABCs and math. People in Ashokgarh have been sending their kids here for a long time. The routine doesn't change much from one year to the next. It is just a part of the daily life on Surya Sen Road for the families who live nearby.