Swami Vivekanand Inter College

People around Kaserua know us well enough. We’ve been sitting here in Sahson for a good number of years, just doing what schools do. It’s a bit of a walk for some of the kids coming from the outskirts of Allahabad, but they make it every morning. The building is an older one, with brick walls that have been painted over more times than I can count. We have the usual classrooms and a big yard where the dust kicks up whenever the wind blows hard. It’s not one of those fancy private institutions you see in the big cities with glass windows and air conditioning. We just have fans that rattle a bit and desks that have seen a lot of use. The teachers are mostly local folks who’ve been with us for a long time. We spend our days making sure the registers are marked and the lessons are finished before the bells ring. Sometimes the water pump acts up or a window gets cracked during a cricket game in the break, and we just fix it when we can. It’s a quiet life here in this part of town. Parents come by to talk about their kids’ marks, and we sit on the wooden chairs in the office and have a tea while we chat. There isn’t much more to it than that. We are just a local college trying to keep the routine going for the families in Sahson.