As soon as upon a time in Surat, beneath the comfortable glow of a streetlight, a couple of girls sat cross-legged on the pavement. To not gossip or cross time, however to be taught.
They held pencils awkwardly, tracing letters on lined paper, their eyes vast with focus. The weird classroom was led by 48-year-old Beena Kalathiya, who smiled gently, providing quiet phrases of encouragement to her college students — most of them older than herself.
Beena’s journey into training didn’t start in a college or a coaching institute. It started within the coronary heart of her dwelling. Like many ladies in India, she spent years juggling chores, elevating youngsters, and placing her household first. However when her youngsters grew up and moved on, one thing shifted. With time on her arms and a thoughts stuffed with objective, she turned to seva — selfless service — and determined to fill a spot that society had lengthy neglected.
In her phrases, “Lots of our elders by no means had the prospect to go to highschool. Now the world is altering so quick, they typically really feel left behind. Some even imagine they don’t know something.”
Decided to alter that narrative, Beena began small. Her first paathshala — her first classroom — was the road itself, lit solely by a single streetlight. A number of curious girls joined her, hesitant at first, however warmed by Beena’s persistence and kindness. Slowly, letters was phrases, and phrases into sentences.
9 years later, what started beneath a streetlight has blossomed right into a full classroom at an area senior residents’ centre. Each night from 3 to five PM, Beena teaches over 120 aged girls how one can learn and write — lots of whom had by no means held a pencil earlier than.
With no giant NGO backing her and no sponsorship banners in sight, Beena funds the varsity herself. By day, she runs a small mukhwas (digestive mouth freshener) enterprise together with her sisters. No matter they earn goes straight into shopping for notebooks, pencils, and chalk.
However Beena is giving her college students way more than literacy. She is giving them dignity. Confidence. A way of belonging.
The curiosity and laughter that fill Beena’s classroom every afternoon are proof that it’s by no means too late to be taught — and by no means too late to start once more.
With nothing however immense willpower and a field of chalk, Beena Kalathiya is quietly lighting up lives, one alphabet at a time.
Edited by Khushi Arora
