Keswick Public School

Down in Madurai, specifically in the Koodal Nagar area, Keswick Public School is a place where things are always moving. Shanthi Nagar is a busy little pocket, and our address puts us right in the middle of it. The school day starts early because of the heat. If we don’t get the kids in and settled before the sun really gets going, everyone gets a bit cranky. The classrooms are filled with the usual sights of school life like half-used chalk pieces, charts pinned to the boards that might be a bit lopsided, and rows of wooden benches. We spend a lot of our time just managing the day-to-day stuff. One day it’s a leaky pipe in the washroom, and the next day it’s organizing the library books that got mixed up. The staff room is usually where the real talk happens over cups of tea while we mark papers or complain about how fast the term is going by. We don’t have a lot of fancy slogans hanging on the walls. It’s mostly just practical work. The kids here are energetic, and you can hear them all the way from the main road when they’re out for their physical education classes. Sometimes the dust from the street gets inside, so we’re always sweeping. It’s a simple setup, but it’s our daily life and we’ve gotten used to the rhythm of the school bell.