Tightening of screws

It has been more than a month since the new school year started and I am teaching 8th standard (the last class in our school). We in the school have decided this class is going to be the preparatory class for the children to get into 'mainstream' education and I have been given the hatchet job of executing it! This means more academic focus, homework and tests! Not so surprisingly it has been very unpopular at least with some kids (Though, strangely, several of them like competitive tests and are working distinctly harder to get better scores. Nothing so far has motivated them to work on their subjects as effectively as tests!). One kid though seems distinctly unhappy with this change. He was (almost) my star kid last year. His photo appears in an earlier post in my blog. Ravi, the smart(ass) one. He has not been coming since last Friday and I had really thought he was sick. Today I hear news floating around in the campus that he is actually quite ok. So I take my bike and head off to his village (around 3 kms from our school)....

Ravi was in the hostel last year. Both his mother and father were working in Bangalore. Before he was in the hostel, for one year, he used to cook for himself and his younger sister before coming to school. He was impressive last year. He is bright, no doubt and he used to put in reasonable effort. This year he insisted on staying back at home because he and his sister did not like the hostel food. So his mother is now forced to stay with him. Since then he has been very irreregular with his work. Last week at the beginning I had sat down with him to find out why this change. He said he was attending RSS shakas and that was taking up most of his time. I tried dissuading him from attending those shakas and enquired what transpired in them. Not surprisingly the kids were given some 'nippat and pori' (munchies) to eat and were also fed some anti-muslim rhetoric along with it. We had a discussion about how there are no differences between people as such and they are only good and bad (mostly bad :)) etc and he agreed he would not go to the shakas again. I was pleased then, but wondered when he vanished for few days...

I went to his house (a small but pucca house) in the village and the door was partially closed. I peeped inside and here was Ravi spread on a cot and watching TV (colour) at a distance of 2 feet. There was another old woman sitting on the floor watching it too. She was not his mother, who had gone off to work. He came out looking sheepish and when I asked him why he did not come to school, he said he had fallen down from the cycle on Thursday evening and so could not cycle on Friday (it is a tough 3 km ride with ups and downs). Since his friends had Saturdays off, he loafed around on Saturday and since he did not come for two days and could not get a leave letter he did not come on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. When I asked when he planned to actually come to the school, he had no answer.
His mother was back from work by then and she started bawling that how hard she is working so that he goes to school and here he was watching TV. She said that the only way he could get out of her situation is to continue his education. "I am in this state because I did not go to school" (how true this causal analysis is, is not clear). By this time there was a small crowd of old women outside the house (curious about the dapper looking outsider in jeans and t-shirt) and giving their bit to this hapless young fellow. Feeling sorry for him I took him away for a walk and asked him that if he is really interested in coming to school he should come, if not I will not trouble him like this again and let him be. He said he would come tomorrow.
I am hoping he would!