When I walked into the little red brick building called “My School Satya Surabhi (MYSS)”, it looked like a summer camp, set among lush green trees and buzzing with activity. The school was awash with cheer and laughter. Smiling children in bright red uniforms played energetically, practised yoga, sang songs and attended their classes. Vivid art and posters hung along the walls. In the midst of the cacophony of a school, there was a silent discipline and order too.
A shy but confident class VII boy welcomed me to his school and village, and presented me a sapling explaining its special features. “He is an electrician's son,” someone whispered.
Padmini Mani, greying and elegant, emerged with folded hands. Her entrance ushered in a flutter of activities and loving ebullience. The smaller ones hugged her and clung to her and a few dragged her to a cardboard train to sing with them.
When her friend Mark Antrobus fixed up the interview, he had said I would not find a scrap of litter in the school campus. “Neither will you find another school of this kind in the region which has opened its doors only to the children of the toiling and ignored from surrounding villages.”
Unassuming
I knew I was here in Attuvampatti Village, seven km outside Kodailkanal, to interview Padmini and her husband Ram much against their wishes. They wanted only the school to be featured, not them, so that others would be inspired to start similar schools elsewhere.
“We have a wonderful atmosphere here. We take pride in our school and its environment. All children are encouraged to keep the school grounds clean and litter free,” says Padmini, having steered the school through a period of growth in the last decade.
Sitting on two acres of greenery and cooled by the breezes of Palani Hills, MYSS maintains a low profile. There are 102 students enrolled at present, from nursery to Class VIII. The school started 12 years ago in a temporary shed with 20 children of farm workers, petty vendors, daily wagers and migrant labourers. Today, it has come to be the envy of even schools for the well-to-do.
When Ram, a management professional, first came to Kodaikanal in 1993, he fell in love with the verdure. Padmini, then heading the Department of Foreign Languages in The British School at Delhi, came to the town as vice principal of Kodaikanal Christian College. Six years later, the couple's vision for “equality and education, and the right of every child to call a place ‘my school” took shape.
“During a casual conversation, a milkman told us the village needed a school,” says Padmini. “This appeal coupled with the influence of my parents, who taught us service without reward, propelled us into action.”
Starting the school, she admits, was easier than running it.
They put out pamphlets highlighting the school's core values and got 40 applications, but in the first year they could take in only 20 children given the space and availability of teachers. Now, the school's links with the local community stretch beyond Attuvampatti to neighbouring Pallangi and Vilpatti.
The couple asserts their school is “not a commercial venture”. They consider it a secular non-profit educational institution. They charge only one time admission fee of Rs.25, and work to provide quality education, books, class materials, uniforms, noon meals, and extra-curricular activities absolutely free of cost.
A dynamo of energy and ideas, Padmini puts enthusiasm into her students and teachers: “I keep communicating with them and run a continual training programme that ratchets them up.”
Ram is heartened with the many successes of students who integrated into other mainstream schools after class VIII. “When children spend years here playing, learning and relating, they have had a great childhood,” he says. “Examinations become secondary. Our kids are self-assured with a positive outlook.”
Padmini adds that most of the students are doing well either academically or in sports and other fields. “The values we teach them here, they carry through their lives and are equipped to face challenges. Our teachers together ensure that the children gain maximum academic and social benefits from their time at the school, where they develop long-lasting friendships.”
While the students are challenged academically through a range of projects and classwork, sports is also a big part of school life. Chess, yoga and athletics champions have already emerged from the school. The teachers emphasize language and learning through song, dance and drama, and they follow a philosophy of “thematic teaching”, where there is a connectivity between subjects.
This couple, silently trying to change the face of India in one remote corner of the country, are delighted at the decision they made 18 years ago. “We have to build up the institution, individuals do not matter. For us, it is like culmination of life experience here by making an impact,” says Padmini.
But for her and Ram, these children would never have got a chance. Indeed, it has become a different world out here.
Salient features
MYSS was declared one of the top 100 schools in India in a national contest called Design for Change last September. The students helped clean and beautify the Vilpatti bus stand and the nearby rural settlement Kota Teru. The school also bagged a special prize in the INTACH Heritage Club competition 2010 and the Bisnoi Trophy for environmental awareness and preservation 2010.
Up to primary level, MYSS is recognized by the Tamil Nadu State Education Department. For middle school, it is under the Open Basic Education Programme of the National Institute of Open Schools, Union Ministry of Human Resources Development.
Raison d'etre of MYSS is value acquisition. Emphasis is on life values like basic hygiene, civic sense, environmental sensitivity, honesty and on becoming a good and responsible citizen.
MYSS is run by the Satya Surabhi Trust. Among the six trustees are Padmini's elder sister Mohini Giri (founder chairperson of National Women's Commission and daughter-in-law of former President V.V. Giri) and Kathak exponent and author Jigyasa Giri.
