I’d left India. India however, was never going to leave me. Andy Croft reports.

“Here we go”, I muttered to myself stepping from the plane. It was 2:00am in Delhi airport, I was alone, tired, hungry and feeling very out of my depth. Standing by the baggage conveyor I waited for my piece of home, a large black wheeled suitcase, to catch up with me. As it trundled into view I steeled myself, grabbed it, and headed towards the exit. Walking out into arrivals at Delhi airport was like walking into a football ground. My senses were bombarded, either side of the arrival lanes men were jammed desperately waving signs in the hope I’d the person they were expecting, beyond them taxi firms hollered at me claiming they would take me anywhere I wanted to go for half the price of anyone else, beyond them, as the air-conditioning started to fade and I began to smell the scent I came to associate with all Indian cities, a heady mixture of sweat, cow and spices. Beyond this I was hit by the heat, and after the heat the stillness. Even Delhi, at 2:00am, was quiet.

My driver had emerged from the mob in arrivals and we now sat awkwardly side by side in his car. Attempting to make conversation I asked him about his family, he had a wife and a number of children, he clearly had a reasonable job working for a travel company but seemed irksome. His sullenness was soon explained by the fact that I’d got my arrival date wrong, this was the second night he’d had to spend away from his family and stuck in the airport. The awkwardness increased as I stumbled an apology. Giving up hope of some friendly ‘banter’ I turned to soak up my surroundings, Delhi at sleep. Lying on benches, on the top of lorries, and curled up in hundreds of green and yellow golf-buggies ( I later learned were called ‘tuk-tuks’) were men, wearing light cotton shirts and trousers, fast asleep. We drove past buildings and squatter settlements, cows and packs of dogs, phone booths and Hindi shrines and eventually down a series of side streets we arrived at my hotel. With a yell and a crash on the gates the night porter was woken, he grumpily opened the gate and dragged my case to my room, when I explained I didn’t actually yet have any rupees for a tip, he muttered something incomprehensible and slouched out. Slamming and locking the door behind I collapsed onto the bed, wincing, when I realised the mattress was a couple of centimetres thick, I’d arrived.

Waking the next morning, foggy with jet-lag and lacking both money to buy, and the trust to eat, hotel food, I breakfasted on the supplies bought in Heathrow, Pringles and Malteasers. I had come to teach in a school in Northern India called Joybells. Friends of mine in England had put me in touch with a lady called Joy who had set up the school and taken in fifty-two children who were orphans or whose families couldn’t look after them. There was only one formal master to teach these children who aged between 2 and 11 and had vastly diverse abilities. For the rest of that morning I waited, somewhat nervously for Joy and Chris (a boy the same age as myself from Australia) to arrive. About 11:00 the phone rang and I was told they were in the lobby. I wandered round and was instantly embraced by Joy, her enthusiasm, warmth and openness at once putting me at my ease. The next few days were spent with Chris, whizzing around the sites of suffocating hot Delhi via tuk-tuk. After three days of being attacked my hoards of shopkeepers, tuk-tuk drivers, and wannabe tour guides, I was ready to escape. The drive with Joy up to Dera Dun, the town near the school, took six hours. It wasn’t the distance that caused the length but rather the huge variety of transport that muscled for position along the narrow road. Glancing to one side I’d marvel at the fact that an entire family could fit on to one motorbike (literally 5 to a bike), looking to the other I’d notice in the meantime we’d been swerving to avoid the cow (sacred in India) that was placidly sitting right in the middle of the road, indifferent to (or perhaps enjoying) the havoc it was causing. Whilst our driver dodged, Joy talked. She told me of the history of the school, how she’d had her heart broken for the poor children of India. She longed to give them an education so that they could have a chance of a future. Joy would never mention it unless you asked her, but she had previously, with no money whatsoever, set up a school in a different state of India. Her and her mother had started a chicken poultry as one of many ways they sought to raise funds to educate those who couldn’t afford fees. By the time Joy left the school it was achieving the best exam results in the whole of that state of India and was being run by a woman who Joy taken at the school when she was a little girl.

By the end of the drive Joys passion and love for her ‘babies’ was plain and I was both excited and nervous as we pulled into the drive of the school. Stepping out of the car I was at once surrounded by fifteen young children, they placed flowers around my neck and fought each other to grab one of my fingers. On the way up Joy had been quietly nursing her broken and bandaged hand yet, despite the pain it clearly caused her, she was more than happy to let the children hold tightly to her fingers. My mini-guides gave me a mini-tour of the school, I was proudly shown neat exercise books, well-made beds, from the brown, earth, playing field to the dinner hall and kitchen. The children themselves didn’t speak much English but enough for us to communicate with each other. After seeing the school I was shown to my room, dragging in my suitcase and shutting the door I collapsed onto the bed… and winced…

My time at the school was incredible. I was given the 8-11s to teach English, Maths and Social Science. We had three hours of lessons in the morning. I was completely taken aback by the children’s desire to learn. Having sent them off for a break I’d soon be inundated by calls of “Andy Sir! Lesson Sir!” I certainly found teaching English a challenge, my acting skills no doubt improved over the week but more difficult than verbs were words such as ‘then’, (if you don’t believe me when I say it’s a tough word to explain try it…). Another obstacle was the wide range of abilities within the 16 children and it was only after a week I was able to suss out who could do the maths and who was just good a copying. Little ‘discipline’ was ever needed, most of the firm words I used were, bizarrely enough, to do with the classroom rubber, about which there would be frequent and shrill cries of “Gimmie rubber!” To which ‘Andy Sir’ would inevitably respond “Please may I have the rubber…”

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