Whereas three have a yellow belt, the rest of them have advanced to an orange belt in their karate training. And it is certainly money well spent as the girls are doing exceedingly well. Saturday mornings are reserved for karate coaching “because girls should know self defence”, while they hit the swimming pool at a nearby club at 5am every Sunday.Ĭhakroborty pays half of the fees for the dance, karate and swimming lessons while the rest is absorbed by the institutions themselves. Their week is carefully planned out so that they get to enjoy various extra-curricular activities as well.įun-filled weekends are kicked off with dance classes on Friday evenings. However, the girls don’t spend all their time reading course books or attending the extra classes that their beloved Kanta ‘didimoni’ still takes every evening.

In fact, Priti, who is admitted to Kesto Lal Hindi Academy, will be among the first in the group to give her Class Ten exams in 2016. We want to do well in school and make her proud.”Ĭhakroborty’s diligent pupils, who are between seven and 15 years old, have been accepted into nearby government schools such as Kasturba Kanya Vidyapith Dum Dum, Muktadhara Vidyalaya and Kesto Lal Hindi Academy. It’s difficult to give up but with Kanta ‘didimoni’s’ help we have kicked the habit. We owe her a lot,” she shares.Īdds Tia, “Those who live on the streets get addicted to dendrite adhesive mostly because it kills the hunger pangs. Kanta ‘didimoni’ has made sure that we are enrolled into proper schools. Nowadays, the first thing I do after I get up is to pick up my books and get ready for school. “Earlier, my day used to start by picking up trash from the streets, which I sold to earn a few rupees. Monya can’t remember how and when she got addicted to sniffing dendrite adhesive but she knows that those days of hunger and helplessness are well in the past. Today, Tia, Monya, Priti, Doel, and several other girls have managed to get over their years of substance abuse and are working towards building a better life. As word spread, I had many more girls coming up to me to ask if they could join in so I shifted base from the platform to the station’s parking lot,” she reveals.

“When I started taking classes I asked my students to give up the bad habit and take their studies seriously. They get hooked to sniffing dendrite adhesive and spend their days either begging or rag-picking. “Most of the children hanging around at the railway station are either orphaned or abandoned. In a matter of weeks, from two she had eight girls studying in her makeshift classroom. Later, she introduced them to English and mathematics. Initially, she taught the duo to read and write in basic Bengali. Next day, armed with a few textbooks, writing pads and pens, Chakroborty sought the girls out and began taking lessons on the railway platform. That evening she discussed the idea of teaching two girls at the Dum Dum Junction station with her husband, who backed her endeavour wholeheartedly. Rendered speechless Chakroborty apologised to her and told her that she would work something out. Of course, Chakroborty forgot all about her promise soon enough and so she was really taken aback when two days later one of the girls walked up to her and asked: “What happened? Why haven’t you come to teach us?” The youngsters accepted her generous offer and then quietly left. Instead, at the spur of the moment, she told them that she could teach them if they were interested. The observant woman noticed that they were high on dendrite adhesive, a common addiction among street children, so she refused to give them any cash. As she arrived at the Dum Dum Junction station to catch a train back home to Bediapara two urchin girls came up to her to beg for money. She has opened a small, informal school in the parking lot of the Dum Dum Junction station where 20 girls gather every evening at 5 pm to learn to read and write in Bengali, Hindi and English.Ĭhakroborty uses a part of her monthly salary to run her school and while the orphaned and abandoned girls have found a mentor in her, the hardworking teacher, who doesn’t have children of her own, has got her very own loving daughters.Ī defining moment one evening in 2007 changed Chakroborty’s life. Kanta Chakroborty, a government primary school teacher in Kolkata, West Bengal’s state capital, is one of them.

Dendrite glue