THE ADMISSIONS 24th MARCH

I went back to Roldih within a short period for two reasons, one was that the admissions were due, another was that Tomoyo was going to end her one month stint and given the recent situation in Japan I wanted to give her some companionship.

Bhola had already spread the word about the admission date through the children of the school and village visits. On the D day children with their parents started to trickle in from early in the morning. By the time it was 9 o clock- the designated time to start the admission process- the crowd was so big that we had to send Bansi and Shanku to organize by numbers. So they started to send them one by one to where Bhola and me were sitting. The process of interviewing the parents and kids went on till late morning. The kids who wanted to join class I or higher were asked to read a passage from the English and Hindi Readers. They were taken in those classes if their reading was found satisfactory. Even after we closed the admissions, there were people coming in throughout the day and the next few days.

From the money that was collected, we could pay off the dues which had accumulated over the last few months both in the salaries and the provisions department and miscellaneous expenses. After it was all over, Tomoyo and me, we came back by the night bus to Kolkata. Tomoyo learnt a lot of Indian cooking on the project and she was carrying all kinds of spices to Japan.