“It was the first time that I left Dilli-6 (Old Delhi’s postal code) without my parents.' Her classmate Ilma adds in a mischievous tone, “Nazreen always scored good marks but rarely uttered a word now she is a chatterbox.' “Our class went to Amritsar and Dalhousie in 2011,' says Nazreen, a class XII student who lives in Lal Kuan. Nevertheless, as more and more students won prizes, including cash rewards, parental opposition subsided to a point where they even let their daughters go on outstation tours. Gupta faced stiff resistance when she tried to send girls to inter-school competitions, for which they would have to commute to schools in Karol Bagh and Rohini. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mintīut there is a world beyond Zeenat Mahal, beyond Turkman Gate, beyond Dilli Gate. Squinting at the sun, Sofia, her hair braided with a red ribbon, says, “It is impossible to study in my overcrowded and airless home.' “In the recess, I sit in the yard and enjoy the winter sun,' says the soft-spoken Sofia, a class XII student who lives with her parents and five siblings in a one-room house in Farash Khana, a neighbourhood that derives its name from the masons who were brought to Delhi to lay tiles on the farsh (floors) of Shahjahan’s Red Fort. I discovered that she had TB and was visiting a distant government health centre every Monday to get her DOTS (the World Health Organization-recommended tuberculosis control programme) pill.' After a number of students disclosed similar stories to her, Gupta persuaded a health centre very close to the school to take charge of her student-patients.įor the girls, the assembly ground and the window-lined classes are an oasis of air and sky, something that is in short supply in Old Delhi. “One girl, for instance, constantly stayed away on Mondays.

“The school suffered from a regular pattern of absenteeism,' says Gupta. Gupta got strict about attendance and teachers too were asked to take classes regularly. Most homes consist of just a single room. The fathers are daily wagers, patri (footpath) vendors, Zardozi workers and kite makers. Almost all the girls at SKV, according to the principal, come from conservative families, many of whom put little premium on education, especially for the girl child. Blinded by Jama Masjid, Karim restaurant, Ghalib’s haveli, and a kaleidoscopic street life, visitors to this part of the Capital fail to notice its underbelly, the daily lives of its residents. “The magical turnaround happened,' says Gupta, “after we looked into the root cause of the problem.'

1 among the city’s government-run schools in terms of the quality index, the average marks obtained by each student. The very next year, the success rate at both levels increased to 100%.

Haveli by Zeenat Mahal