im finally in mumbai at my own place (its rented! i cant really afford one here!)
anyhow, the transition from pune to mumbai has been a great one!
living with 100 fellows and then its just u and ur classroom...i do see some of them during trainings on tuesday and thursday but even then we are alwaz rushing....
Finding a place in Mumbai was a pain...getting to other places around the city was another...heres something i realised while traveling on a local one day...
Locals are the life line of mumbai...the city also has an amazing bus system...that comes in handy especially when there are auto and taxi strikes...The city is full!! here are some of the nitty-witty things about the mumbai...the auto guy charges you exactly one rupee less than what comes on the meter...the ladies compartment of the local is never the same the next morning...it gets shifted..also it is one compartment that has most fights for seats...places in mumbai are far flung yet ppl talk as if they are next door....and an hour of travel is nothn for anyone...the weather is so weird that after bathing you dont know if it is the sweat or the water thats keeping you wet...it rains anytime, n mostly wen ur not carrying an umbrella or raincoat....evn though there is so space in the train for people to stand a certain sect of ppl alwaz find enough space to play musical instruments...the houses have space constraints, infact almost everything does....the cost of buying a flat is almost as if you want to set up a five star hotel...bang opposite every posh colony there is a slum!
tht was about the city...heres whts been happening at school....
lik i told u in my last mail, i am the class teacher of grade 2 in MHB English Municipal School (MHB- Maharashta Housing Board)...my coteacher is Namita Goel whose been part of TFI for a year now...
The first day of school was AMAZING! we had 28 kids (thats a big turn out being the first day after summer vacations)...the next day there were 50...n yesterday after 1.5 weeks 160! bt the first day was unlike any of my summer school days...the class was quiet...n excited:) and so were we....
Day 2 was crazy...it had rained non-stop in mumbai...and the school was flooded...worse was so were the toilets...i actually walked into water with unknown things floating in it to get to class.....its weird bt i have grown indifferent to situations lik these...i tk any path that gts me to the class...n thts abt it!
with the increase in attendance its been getting tough to gt the kids to settle....our classroom gets shifted every few days since we share classroom with gujrati medium kids....yeah the school has marathi, hindi, gujrati , urdu and english medium classes, which run in 2 shifts of 7am to 12.30 am and 1 pm to 5.45 pm......i work in the afternoon shift so have enough time to plan in the morning.....
my class is adorable! bt then there are things tht put me in a differnt state with regard to the kids...most of them cant read alphabets...ask them to write abcd n they can till z...bt cannot read letters individually.....very few of them can write counting till 50....bt cant differentiate between 14, 41 and 40...its all the same fr them......alot of them cant write their name.....some of them write the mirror image of their name since they are learning Urdu at home and get confused...oh i forgot to mention 90% of them are Muslims.....
As for parents...some parents are keen that their kids should get educated...for others its lik a creche.....I recently visited the house of a kid named Zahreen....being a girl, her family is least concerned how and when she comes to school...she is 6 yrs old and can tell stories lik a granny...bt is deprived of love at home.....she is adorable.....the community where she stays is filthy....she walks abt a km to gt home.....imagine a 6 yr old doing tht.....
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