Inspiration
This 81-year-old teacher has not hung her boots even after retirement
81-year-old Vimla Kaul founded the school Guldasta for children of under privileged students in 1993 and through sheer grit and perseverance continues to educate children who otherwise wouldn’t have even a decent chance at quality education.
Guldasta, in Hindi means a bouquet of flowers. However, you discover there is nothing beautiful or fragrant about this school when you have to navigate a dusty lane smelling strongly of cowdung, and climb one floor of a narrow, dirty staircase.
This decrepit building, overlooking a junk storage yard is a 4 room tenement which would generally house labourers or domestic helps. The walls are old, unpainted and stained with patches of peeling paint and leakages making their way from one wall to the other.
However, once you step inside, the energy and the buzz in the classroom will make you forget your trek up to this place. A group of children shout "good morning" at the top of their voices as 81-year-old Vimla Kaul walks into the school.
Once Kaul is seated, as if on cue twelve of them, 11 boys and one girl, immediately begin chanting the English alphabet – "A for Apricot, B for Blackberry" – fruits that many of them are unlikely to have seen, let alone eaten.
All the students are from the neighbourhood – children of maids or drivers, servicing the middle class housing colony across the road.
When asked how is Guldasta different then government schools
Similar to government schools, Guldasta's students are taught English, science, maths and environment. The school also owns a solitary computer in addition to offering extra-curricular activities like yoga, dance and drill.
She admits that she sets high standards for her students unlike government schools where a combination of ‘no-detention’ policy and poor teaching results in teenagers not being able to string together one sentence either in Hindi or English.
"We don't turn anyone away, but we hold an entrance test to evaluate the standard of the child, and if they perform poorly at class examinations we hold them back," she says.
Progress through time
Guldasta has shifted in the current decrepit building only 2 years ago, before operating out of a Municipal park.
"It would be too hot for the children in the summers and too cold in the winters, but we didn't have the funds for anything else," one of the teachers says.
Established in 1993, Guldasta owes its existence to the sheer perseverance of Mrs Kaul and her husband HM Kaul, who passed away in 2009.
"My husband and I had both just retired. We decided to do something charitable, but were not quite sure what." That question was answered during a visit to the village of Madanpur Khadar, an hour away from Delhi.
A school is born
During a village visit to speak with elders about problems faced by them, the couple had taken biscuits as a part of the Rotary Club Drive to be distributed. However, during the conversation when a woman pointed out that they should teach the children how to get food instead of depending on free doles, at that moment the proverbial light bulb lit up for the Kauls who decided to open a school.
After a failed attempt to open the school in the village itself, the Kauls shifted the school to their housing colony Sarita Vihar, where they witnessed around 150 students immediate enrolled.
Mrs. Kaul wrongly assumed that she would get support from the colony residents. Not only did the residents disallow the use of the community center of the colony but also the park inside the housing complex. She finally gave in to the demands of the society when a woman went on a hunger strike for the removal of the school.
Finally moving into the municipal park, Guldasta operated out of there for nearly 10 years, until an NGO discovered and adopted the school. This allowed for enough cash to finally rent the building to house it.
Every child brings with him/her a heart-rending.
"I had one very bright young student who was pulled out because her mother wanted her to help clean houses to make more money. That was the end of her education," she says. Others come without food because their parents don't have the time, or can't afford it.
Then there are the ones with happy endings too.
2 of her students are teaching at Guldasta now, one of them with a computer degree. Another has found work as a mechanic. Yet another was working at a Chinese restaurant Mrs Kaul visited, where he proudly insisted that she would not pay for her meal that day.
"If I can lift even one child out of their circumstances, that's enough for me. But mostly, I want to give them a childhood. Some happy memories that they can look back on later in life."