Hainault Public School

Up here at Hp Sett in Shimla, the weather is the main thing everyone talks about. Hainault Public School sits where the air is thin and the slopes are steep. Every morning is a bit of a climb for the students and the teachers. You see them coming up the paths, breath huffing in the cold air, wearing their thick navy sweaters. Our building is old, like most things in Shimla, and it has that specific smell of old wood and chalk. The windows rattle when the wind picks up, which happens more often than you'd think. I spend a lot of my time making sure the heaters are working or checking if the roof is holding up. We don't have a huge campus with tracks and fields; we make do with the space we have on the hillside. The kids are used to it, though. They play in the courtyards and don't seem to mind the stairs. It’s a quiet sort of place, away from the main tourist spots. We just go about our business, teaching the basics and keeping the fire going in the staff room. There’s no big corporate board making decisions. It’s just a few of us trying to keep the school running smoothly so the kids have somewhere to go. Sometimes the fog gets so thick you can’t see the gate from the front door, but we still open up.