It was not too hard getting my son coming to study in India. Whatever little resistance was there melted away when we said he could bring his new sleek play station 3 with him. The kid never gave us much trouble than some occasional arguments, rolling eyes or banging a door. So we thought of giving him a soft landing and let him slowly get to know about our school system and adjust. We shopped around for schools and found one of the best schools (????)in Trivandrum. Class size was less than 15 in a room. But when we talked to some parents whose kids were going to that school, except one parent who was in Colombo, everybody else told me not to send the kid there as the teaching there is not at all good. We thought with some help from my husband he won’t have much issue in catching up on studies even if the teachers’ are not teaching much.
But what bothered me was that he had to walk for 15 minutes to the bus stop and then be on the bus for an hour to reach the school. The school bus has AC but during cold season it works well and during summer season it doesn’t work well:) . The walk to the bus stop consists of a steep hill and about 150 steps. Coming back home from the bus stop is an even harder job as he has to climb all that steps with 10 kg on his backpack. I don’t really mind the walking as it is good for him health wise. But buying 3 shoes in 6 months and on top all the cream color uniform shirts started getting the black spots (karimpan) as he sweats a lot during those walks, was not something I liked. And they charge more than enough as bus fee so why not come nearer, was my question. No amount of antiperspirant or deodorant can help people in that road. But since we came in the middle of the school year we didn’t want to cause any trouble to other kids by changing the bus route and waited till the next school year to ask for the bus to pick him up closer from our home.
So in the new school year after many phone calls, the ‘bus guy’ decided to come and see the issue. He made a visit through the main road and declared to the principal and the lady in charge that the route is absolutely hard for the school bus to travel and that all my kid has to do is just walk down a couple of minutes and he will reach the bus stop! I went over the roof when I heard that. I called that guy and told him –‘If there are any technical issues you can tell me but don’t try to say you know how long the bus stop is from our home. Since you yourself didn’t do the walking you don’t know what you are talking about this '2 minutes' walk to bus stop’. I regret that I couldn’t make him walk to the bus stop and then come up the hill just so that he could at least know the distance,99%of the people would be panting by the time they are half way through.
Anyway from that incident onwards I have decided to take the kid away from this school and put him in a school that’s closer to our home. Kid was also complaining how they don’t get seconds during lunch most of the days and how the menu comes out with different exotic names but all they do is add some peanuts or take away some peanuts etc etc in the curries! Anyway I was happy that the kid is ready to move to a nearby school and I can put my tension to rest on days when his bus comes very late. The area where he comes through is supposed to be infested with youngsters using drugs after dark. So obviously I am a bit worried when he has to come after dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment