One blissful morning, I was enjoying the pleasant rain with my mother's special lemon tea and her unending family chit chat just when our maid arrived, accompanied by three of her children who did not go to school today as the rainwater had made it impossible for the students and teachers to reach school. I offered them some snacks and was curious to know more about their studies due to the sensitive nature of mine. They were excited to talk about their school schedule and how they played various games and learned many interesting things while playing in school. Thanks to the efforts of the teachers even with the little resources they had a lot to share.

While both the boys were completely engrossed in narrating stories of how they passed their day at school, their elder sister just glanced while dusting with a look on her face as if she was missing the fun. On enquiring from her, I came to know that she did not go to school as she worked with her mom at various houses for the livelihood of her family. I emphasized to the maid that why is she not allowing her girl child to go to school, to which the obvious answer was one I already knew in my heart - what she would do by going to school as she had to be married and had to lead a role of housewife, looking after her own family. Knowledge of the household work would come in handy. In a nutshell, the maid was not ready to bear the burden of extra fees to make her girl child study. I talked to my elder sister who is also a teacher in a government school, she told me about the conditions in the rural areas where parents are reluctant of sending girl child to school because of many reasons involving safety, narrow thinking and sanitation problems. I spoke to my father and came up with an idea.

My father runs a school. I told him to start the evening classes for those girl students whose parents are not capable of paying high amount and also for those girls who help their mothers in their work for family living. Initially, he was not very supportive and was not ready to leave his classrooms open for those kids. He was a little scared of allowing me to use the smartboard for those kids. But in the end, I convinced him. We started contacting the teachers who were ready to spare some time for these girls. We made contacts with them and explained everything. Some of them agreed to teach for free for this cause.

Maid spread the news to others in her community. So some more parents were ready to send their children not even girls but boys who were working in the morning hours started joining. The guard of the school was also happy and brought his kid to the school.

Everything was set for the first day and it started on a good note with 5 teaching staff including me and a handful of kids which involved 9 girls and 3 boys. They were of different age group but they were the beginners too so we made all of them sit in one class. They were excited to see classrooms with paintings on wall and smartboards playing cartoon pictures for them. A set of swings was the icing to the cake.

Within a few days my vacation got over and I went back to my college. Today we have around 80+ kids attending the evening classes in school. Some of those kids are doing exceedingly well in studies. We are also trying to bring some of them to the mainstream. They were made to participate in the annual function of the school. This time when I attended the annual function, I was amazed to see them performing in such synchronization. I can proudly say now, that one positive thought can bring happiness to a lot of faces.

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Not Just A Maids’ Daughter