My name is Rani Srimati Baghwat
I am 9 years old.
I am in Class 3 at Achhe Din Model School in Ranchi, Jharkhand.
English medium.
Our classroom has 32 desks.
One has a nail sticking out, so nobody sits there.
We also have 16 windows. Eight on each side.
They don’t open.
Ever.
It gets really hot inside the classroom.
But nobody fixes them.
There are 47 children in my class.
13 are girls.
The rest are boys.
Some boys put on lipstick near the sports ground. They look at themselves and laugh.
I don’t want to look like boys.
But there are some boys I like.
Sometimes we become friends for a week.
Then we don’t talk to each other anymore.
I don’t know why.
Class Teacher
My class teacher is Mrs Navya Kumari.
We have to call her “Ma’am”.
If someone doesn’t call her Ma’am, they can lose marks or have to stand outside the classroom.
I am sometimes scared of Ma’am.
There are so many of us that sometimes three children sit at one desk.
Ma’am is supposed to come every day.
But she doesn’t.
I don’t know where she goes.
Once I saw her with the Vice Principal in the hallway.
They laugh a lot when they are together.
Once I saw them sharing the same cigarette.
I thought that was funny because Ma’am always tells us not to share our water bottles.
I asked Riya why they could share things and we couldn’t.
She told me to stop looking at them.
I don’t know why.
I also wondered, there are six teachers’ names painted on the wall outside the office.
I have only ever seen three of them.
Where happened to the other three?
Maths Exam
We had our maths exam last month.
I got 61.
Papa said I should have studied harder.
But I did study very hard.
My friend Aman got 92.
Aman is not very good at maths.
I know because he always asks me what 5 × 7 is.
Two days before they gave us our marks, his father came to school.
He went inside the Principal’s office with an envelope.
I asked Aman, “Hey, what is in that envelope?”
He said he didn’t know.
After the results, his father came again.
This time he brought sweets.
Aman gave me one.
It was a laddoo.
I like laddoos.
I still don’t know how he got 92.
School Cafeteria
Last year they told us we were getting a cafeteria.
A man came and measured the space behind our classroom.
Then two other men came and took pictures.
After that, they put up a board with a drawing of the new cafeteria.
It looked very nice.
It even had tables.
Imagine that.
Even we don’t even have tables when we eat.
A few months later, the board disappeared.
The cafeteria didn’t come.
We still eat under the big tree.
I like eating there.
Except when it rains.
When it rains, we eat inside the classrooms.
If the classrooms are full, we sit on the hallway floor.
I wish we had a cafeteria.
School Toilets
There are two toilets in our school.
One for boys.
One for girls.
The girls’ toilet doesn’t always have water.
The door doesn’t close properly either.
So Meena stands outside when I go.
And I stand outside when she goes.
We call it toilet duty.
It smells really bad after lunch.
Some girls don’t use it at all.
They don’t drink water in the morning so they won’t have to go.
I tried doing that once.
My stomach started hurting by third period.
Ma’am told me I should drink more water.
So now I don’t know which one I’m supposed to do.
Sometimes I just don’t understand things.
Things I Don’t Understand
I like my school a lot.
But sometimes I don’t like going to school.
There are many things I don’t understand.
I don’t understand why they give us books when there is nobody to teach us some of the pages.
I don’t understand why Papa says school is free when he still worries about how much my tuition costs.
I don’t understand why one teacher teaches Class 4 and Class 5 at the same time.
I don’t understand why Mummy gets angry when I get an answer wrong.
Sometimes she doesn’t know the answer either.
There are other things I don’t understand too.
At night Papa watches the news.
Sometimes the news shows police beating students with lathis and spraying water at them.
The students are much older than me.
Some look like they are in Class 9 or 10.
I am only in Class 3.
On TV they get beaten and dragged across the road.
People call them nasty things.
Once I asked Papa why they were being beaten.
He said, “They are a bunch of cockroaches.”
I know what a cockroach is.
I still don’t know what he meant.
All I Want From God
Before I sleep, I speak to God.
Or I try to.
I tell God that I want to pass Class 12 with 99.5%.
I want to get 680 out of 720 in NEET.
Then I can go to a good college.
Then I can get a good job in an IT firm in Bangalore.
Maybe at Infosys.
Or TCS.
Or Tech Mahindra.
I also want to buy a new kennel for Rustam, my puppy.
One day he will grow up to be a fine dog.
Last month, Mom sold a little bit of her jewellery.
She said some of the money could be kept for my studies and NEET coaching later.
Dad says he will happily sell some of his land too.
He wants me to grow up, get a good job, find a husband, raise a family and make India proud.
But I don’t know why I have to make India proud.
India doesn’t even know me.
I don’t think I want all those things anyway.
I want to live in a nice house.
With windows that open.
And a clean toilet.
I want to plant a few trees outside.
And I want to buy Rustam a new kennel.
A really big one.
So that when he grows up, he will think he lives in a castle.
That’s all I want.
Please God, make my dreams come true.
I know you will.
