It is always a pleasure to chat up with Vidula. Aakash, my co trustee at Peepal Tree, Jammu, was visiting Pune. Took him to over to Garware Bal Bhavan for a chat with Vidula. We were promised half an hour of her time. We ended up staying on for 1.5 hours. We moved around the … Read more

Madhuri Gokhale grew up in a village in Ogalewadi, near Karad. She remembers that her first touch with English was when she was in 5th grade. She has been a teacher in a special school for 13 years. She works mostly with students with learning disorders. Most of these kids appear for NiOS exams. She … Read more

Prof DK Joshi and his wife visited the school in Sep 2018. We started by discussing the building design theme being good ventilation. I informed him about the sunlight through skylight problem. He felt that we can have two vertical curtains near the skylight, which will narrow down the lighted portion to a smaller area. We then went … Read more

As a kid Anindya (pronounced Anindo) Mukerji suffered from a degenerative disease. AM grew up in the industrial township of Burnpur, near Asansol, where his dad had got a job in the IISCO steel plant, after finishing an education from Presidency College, Calcutta. Doctors had given AM till 25 to live. He had been awarded … Read more

Ajay Kolhatkar represents a great combination of academics and industry. His academic background spans COEP, SIBM and IIT Bombay SoM. Though he has had a stint with Infosys at their Research and Development division, most of his working life has been spent in the Tata group. At Tatas, he has worked across companies like Tata … Read more

We started with a talk by Ashwini. She has spent 9 years as a counsellor in Kalmadi High School, Kothrud. We asked her to share her counselling experiences. Ashwini talked about a girl, who was in 7th standard when she first met Ashwini. The girl was an adopted kid, who had decided that she did … Read more

Sandeep started by telling us the difference between a counselor and a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a medical professional, who heals through medicines. He may have clinical psychologists attached. Counsellors are people who are students of applied psychology. They are not allowed to prescribe medicines. One of the common customers counselors have today are school … Read more

You are a learning-by-doing school. How are parents accepting it? MT: Grades have fallen, so they were concerned. Students are doing well after school. How do we make our school the best in Ambala? Teachers’ behavior depends on the subjects taught. We need each teacher to teach both language and science in lower classes and … Read more

We visited Bharat Vidyalay again in 2020. Had visited the school five years ago with Vijay Chheda and my kids. Now was time for our teachers to visit. Bharat Vidyalay is a live example of what CSR should actually be doing. It’s journey begins before the days of government mandated CSR. It was started by … Read more