Red Hill School

People often ask about the school on Gokhale Marg. Well, we’ve been here at number 23 for quite a while now. Most days start pretty early. You can hear the rickshaws and cars pulling up outside the gate before the sun even gets high. Lucknow gets hot, so we try to get things moving while it’s still cool. Inside Red Hill School, it’s mostly just the usual stuff you’d expect. We have desks that have seen better days and walls that we try to keep clean, though kids with sticky hands make that hard. Some days the Gokhale Marg traffic is so bad it makes for a grumpy start to the morning. It isn’t some fancy place with glass walls. It’s just a building where we teach. Some of the teachers have been here since they were young themselves. We know the neighbors around here pretty well. Sometimes we have to apologize for the noise during recess, but that’s just how it goes with a hundred kids in one spot. We don't have a massive field, but the kids find ways to run around in the spaces we do have. Lunchtime is the loudest part of the day. You smell everyone’s home cooking from their tiffins drifting through the halls. Then the bell rings, everyone heads back to class, and it gets quiet for a bit. It’s just a regular school day in Lucknow. We keep the lights on, keep the chalk moving, and hope the fans don't stop working when it’s ninety degrees out.