Ms Gupta got strict about attendance and teachers too were asked to take classes regularly. Most homes consist of just a single room. The fathers are daily wagers, patri (footpath) vendors, Zardozi workers and kite makers. Almost all the girls at SKV, according to the principal, come from conservative families, many of whom put little premium on education, especially for the girl child. Blinded by Jama Masjid, Karim restaurant, Ghalib’s haveli, and a kaleidoscopic street life, visitors to this part of the Capital fail to notice its underbelly, the daily lives of its residents. “The magical turnaround happened,” says Ms Gupta, “after we looked into the root cause of the problem.” 1 among the city’s government-run schools in terms of the quality index, the average marks obtained by each student. The very next year, the success rate at both levels increased to 100%. That year, only 50% of our students had passed the 10th standard board exams and 61% cleared the 12th.” “When I arrived in 2007,” she says, “the teachers were demotivated and the girls lacked confidence. She does not give off the vibe of a tyrant-she uses the intimate beta in her interaction with students.

Principal Chitra Gupta, 54, commutes daily by Metro from Old Rajinder Nagar to Chawri Bazaar. More than a century old, it moved to its present site in 1950 to occupy the remnants of Zeenat Mahal’s dilapidated mansion (actually, nothing is left of it except the two arched gates). The painted portraits of Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and his much younger queen Zeenat Mahal provide a clue to the school’s history.

The principal’s spacious office is reached via a roomy corridor. A kota stone platform is built on one side, a row of flowerpots arranged on the other. As one of the 719 schools run by the Delhi government, it charges no fee. Like a bubble of tranquillity in the congested Lal Kuan Bazaar, SKV is nestled among kite shops, biryani stalls, serene mosques and crumbling houses with latticed windows and wrought-iron balconies. This Urdu-medium school not only mirrors the academic merits of its students but is also a portrait of the locality in which it is situated. In January 2013, the girls-only school made a fleeting appearance in a leading daily when it was selected for the annual Times of India Social Impact Award-because it “had gone from being one of the worst government schools not long ago to achieving 100% pass results for the last five years”.Īll the 1,246 students are Muslim and come from the Walled City. 2, Zeenat Mahal, Lal Kuan, begins with a drumbeat. The morning assembly at Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya (SKV) school No. These sounds, typical of Old Delhi, recede as the empty yard fills. A cat’s drawn-out meow cuts through the squawking of chickens.

Haveli by Zeenat Mahal