While the hospital was modernizing, our personal lives revolved around a different kind of infrastructure: schooling. It is one thing to plan wards and workflows; it is quite another to plan a child\u2019s education in a small town where choices appear suddenly, disappear quietly, and always come with conditions. In those years, Bhavana and I discovered that raising children is essentially a series of decisions taken with incomplete information, followed by long periods of hoping you chose wisely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ashwini\u2019s early schooling was eclectic\u2014a tour of Sevagram\u2019s educational landscape. He began at Mahila Ashram, a Gandhian school with a Marathi-medium curriculum and a simplicity that suited the place. Then came Agragami Convent in Wardha for three years, and later, Kasturba Vidya Mandir in Sevagram for the fourth grade. Kasturba Vidya Mandir had one unbeatable advantage: it was across the road. Ashwini could roll out of bed and walk into his classroom, half-awake and still chewing his breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n In the mid-1990s, a new institution appeared, and with it came a new kind of parental restlessness. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan opened a campus at the Lloyd\u2019s Steel Factory in Bhugaon. It was called Lloyd\u2019s Vidya Niketan, and it promised what every ambitious school promises: a rigorous English-medium education, good facilities, and the reassuring glow of a famous name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bhavana and I were impressed by the Bhavan\u2019s reputation, and we made a decision that felt bold at the time. We would move both Ashwini\u2014now entering fifth grade\u2014and Amrita to Lloyd\u2019s. They passed the entrance test, and we paid a refundable deposit of Rs 10,000. It was refundable, yes, but it was still Rs 10,000\u2014an amount that carried real weight in those days, even when spoken casually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n We had solved the admission problem only to create a logistical nightmare. Lloyd\u2019s was in Bhugaon, fifteen kilometers from Sevagram. Unlike city schools, there was no neat yellow bus turning up at your gate. We had traded a school across the road for one that required a daily expedition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were not alone. Dr. Prakash Behere, a psychiatrist who had returned from the UK, was also looking for transport for his sons, Aniruddha and Shashank. Dr. B.S. Garg\u2019s daughter, Neha, faced the same problem. So did Aditya Farsole from Wardha. We formed what can only be described as a coalition of anxious parents\u2014polite in conversation, slightly desperate in intent. We needed a chariot for our children, and we needed it quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The solution arrived in the form of Akhtar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was Mr. Farsole who found him\u2014almost by accident\u2014at a time when we were discovering, with mild embarrassment, how few of us actually owned a car. Akhtar was willing to do the long daily run, which in itself made him a rare man. He was tall, thin, and so soft-spoken that you sometimes had to lean in to catch his words. He drove his auto with a caution that was almost philosophical. At times, the pace was so leisurely that the children could have stepped out, walked a few paces, and climbed back in without the vehicle needing to slow down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He tried, occasionally, to discipline his passengers, but children have their own democracy. They listened when they felt like it and ignored him when they didn\u2019t. The auto was a tight squeeze, yet it worked. Every morning the “Lloyd\u2019s Auto” buzzed through Sevagram and Wardha, collecting Ashwini, Amrita, Shashank, Neha, and Aditya. That three-wheeler became their moving clubhouse. For the thirty minutes it took to reach Bhugaon, they bonded over jokes, complaints, last-minute homework, and the rhythmic bumps of Wardha roads. Akhtar, in the front, drove as if he was transporting fragile glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The commute was long, but it turned out to be worth it. Under the leadership of the Principal, Mr. Dass, and his wife\u2014who became friends and even invited us to the school\u2014the children flourished. Lloyd\u2019s gave them more than an English-medium education. It gave them a circle, a shared life, and the confidence that comes from belonging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ashwini found his tribe quickly\u2014Shashank Behere, Aaditya Jain, Vaibhav Patni, Gayatri Saraf, Vikram Belkhode, Tahsin Taaj, Ram Agrawal, and Sudhir Rawlani. Many of them later became doctors or dental surgeons, which is what happens when bright children grow up around a medical campus and begin to think stethoscopes are part of the natural world. Amrita built her own world too, with friends like Abhilash Dass, Neha Bhomiya, and Mahodaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, I realize that the real education did not happen only in classrooms. It happened in that auto-rickshaw, in shared tiffins, and in the small negotiations children learn to make every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n There is a pleasing circularity to life. Today my granddaughters, Diti and Nivi, go to the same school where Ashwini and Amrita studied. They travel in a school bus now\u2014comfortably, safely, with a driver who does not whisper and a vehicle that does not invite children to get out and walk. They enjoy the same bonhomie their father and bua<\/em> once did, only with better suspension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What has changed most is not the school, but the parenting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Modern parents attend monthly teacher-parent meetings with the seriousness of a board meeting. They sit for hours, discussing unit tests and “part-completion” scores, dissecting marks into neat categories like stock market graphs. There is a great deal of diligence in it, and also, if I may say so, a great deal of anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bhavana and I never attended a single such meeting during the six years our children were at Lloyd\u2019s. We never “projected” them. We didn\u2019t negotiate grades. We were, in this one matter, blissfully relaxed\u2014perhaps even irresponsibly so by modern standards. And yet, they never let us down. They studied, they grew up, and they found their way without us hovering over their report cards like anxious auditors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, that may be the quiet truth of parenting: you do your best, you make a few sensible decisions, you worry more than you admit, and then you step back and let the children become themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New School on the Horizon<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
The Commuter\u2019s Dilemma<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Akhtar\u2019s Auto<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Coming Into Their Own<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
One Generation Later<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n