A class apart in heart of the hill

ON a chilly December morning in 2014, as the world prepared for Christmas Eve, 46-year-old D Saraswathi guided her scooter over a rugged hillock deep inside the dense Athiyur reserve forest.

- NIMISHA S PRADEEP @ Vellore

HM Saraswathi with her students in Kurumalai after delivering new books she carried up the hill.

(EXPRESS)

In Tamil Nadu's usually sweltering landscape, the temperature had plunged to an unseasonal 18-19°C. In this remote wilderness, where wildlife prowled unseen among the trees, the newly appointed headmistress of Panchayat Union Middle School in Kurumalai, Vellore, paused in confusion - she had lost her way.

Her worry turned to alarm when a boy of about ten - Parthiban, casually scratching his neck with the tip of a knife - approached her bluntly, "Nee teacheraa?" (Are you a teacher?) She exhaled in relief, only to discover that he was a grazier who, without much ceremony, pointed her towards the right direction. That brief exchange - strange, unsettling and oddly grounding - was her first introduction to a place that would reshape her life just as profoundly as she reshaped it.

Today, 11 years later, Saraswathi is proud that she has pushed countless tribal children of Kurumalai to reach their own destinations. The 10-year-old Parthiban, now 21, is preparing for TNPSC's Group exams, she says with quiet pride.