An Active Day

There was school as usual. But at lunch I discovered that the children in Nursery had misbehaved badly. I am now wondering if I should take up the issue tomorrow at assembly or wait for them to repeat things before taking action. I wish the teachers had called me in when they were apparently throwing paper at each other and jumping on the benches. The problem could have been nipped in the bud. An example set. I’m really upset and wondering what course of action I should take.

Bansi went to the bank today. He left soon after school only only got back at 4:30. He probably ate something in Chandna. And as usual he had a story to tell about the Chandna branch of the State Bank of India where Dakshinayan has it’s account. Every time he goes there to deposit money or withdraw cash the cashier or the manager and sometimes even the peon throws the rule book at him! Today they asked him why he wasn’t carrying the project’s stamp with him to countersign a bearer cheque! How ridiculous can one get? It’s a bearer cheque which bears his name and I had already given a letter to the bank informing them that he would be conducting banking transactions. But now they expect him to have a rubber stamp to cash a bearer cheque. I sometimes wonder how these people get their jobs. They don’t seem to be aware of banking rules and definitely are lacking in customer care. But it’s rural bank and for most educated city folks – especially in Jarkhand and Bihar – villagers are less than human. The bankers treat their customers as if they are doing them a big favour. No wonder the villagers prefer to go to money lenders rather than go to a bank.

Balai came today. He has done a lot of painting. Dani and Tak joined him in the afternoon. Then later all four girls watered the trees. Though the trees get some moisture from the due that falls at night, it’s not adequate and a bit of extra water won’t harm them. May even help them grow faster. Today I discovered that someone had broken one of my gulmohar saplings. Wonder who it was. Must have one of the children while playing football. Ah well, we’ll just plant another this monsoon.

The freshly painted desks and benches have been put in the classrooms. They certainly add colour to the class. The kids like it. I think it was a good idea to paint them with different bright colours. The yellow did not come out well. The paint was too thin and did not dry. And somehow after drying the yellow looked rather washed out. So we repainted the tops of some of the desks and benches with other colours.

Yesterday, Karoline and Renee said they wanted to learn Indian cooking. So I suggested they could each take turns to help Suman in the kitchen. Today, Danielle opted to go first and right now when I peeked, she was busy fanning the oven and trying to light it. I think it will be a great way for them to not only see how much work goes into preparing lunch and dinner, it will also help them to interact individually with Suman. I hope he manages to shed his inhibitions and diffidence. These days I am teaching him English. I had to start from ABC and he is a keen learner. He sits down with me for 45 minutes every afternoon after serving us the afternoon tea.
As I write I can hear Bansi ringing the temple bell just before lighting the lamps. It’s twilight now. Soon it will be pitch dark and cold. I think I’ll just send this off. It’s so expensive to get online these days. That’s why I’m typing this on a word document offline. Earlier I was paying Airtel Rs 250 a month for unlimited access. The connection was slow, but it did not matter. Now they are charging 0.30 paise/50 Kb. Well, it averages out to 10 rupees every time I get online to check mail! And if I start surfing or chatting, the cost could easily go up to 30 rupees! I figured that I will end up spending over a 1000 rupees every month if I get online every day. What is sad that even though Airtel is now charging more, they haven’t improved their quality of service? And I thing this rate change was quite arbitrary. But since they are the only service provider in this region I guess they have a monopoly and there’s probably nothing we could do about it. And certainly not while sitting here in Roldih. At the moment all I can say is that even though I am unhappy with Airtel, I’m grateful, I can at least connect to the world.