Sayaji Vidhya Vihar High School

If you take a walk down Vishvamitri Road in Vadodara, you’ll see our gate eventually. It’s a busy area with a lot of traffic passing by all day long, especially in the mornings when everyone is rushing to get somewhere. Sayaji Vidhya Vihar High School has been standing here for years, watching the city change around it. The building itself is sturdy, made of old brick and concrete that stays relatively cool even when the sun is beating down on the pavement outside. We spend a lot of our time just managing the daily bustle. There’s always a door that needs fixing or a lightbulb that’s flickered out in one of the back rooms. We don’t have any big flashy signs or fancy lobbies. Instead, there are just rows of classrooms and a small area where we keep the records. The staff rooms are a bit cramped because we have a lot of books and papers stacked up everywhere. Lunchtime is the loudest part of the day, and you can smell food from the tiffin boxes all through the corridors. Once the final bell rings, the whole place goes silent pretty fast. Most of us head home through the same Vadodara traffic we came in. It’s a routine we’ve all gotten used to over the years. We just keep our heads down and do the work that needs doing every single day without much fuss.