"A talkative kid called Tashin Khan used to work in our college mess. The disconcerting experience of seeing this child clean our tables and mop the mess floor made him the subject of most of our conversations. One day while he was learning math with me, he told that he is about to quit his job in order to find another one with a better pay so that he could save enough to go back to school. That was when we (Srijit and me) decided to take on the challenge of getting him back to school.

 

      After many a desperate emails later, I finally found a school 300 km from Bhubaneswar that seemed ideal for his education. Tashin studies there now. He talks to me daily about the exotic birds that visit the school campus, the vegetables that his caretaker grows in the school plot and his activities in school. His progress in just 2 months of schooling has been astounding.

 

      This experience humbled me to the plight of all the out of school children that I saw living in the slums facing my institute for the past 4 years. I realized how ostracized this community felt. I understood why most children seemed to be out of school. In order to experience the gravity of the situation I went to the slums for enquiry with our college sweeper as my guide. Sure enough, children and their parents thronged around me debunking the myth of their disinterest towards education. Thus a NISER social outreach club – Zaariya took birth.

 

      The hopeless gaze that I wore the past 4 years when I looked at the slum that we passed by several times a day has transformed into one filled with expectations. The slum children who were anything but visible relate to beautiful memories now."

-Suryanarayan Balasubramanian