Sandhya was eight years old when she first sat on the Bridge School floor with a slate and a wax crayon. She wrote her name twelve times that afternoon. Her mother cried in the corner.
Twelve years later, the slate has been replaced by a laptop that one of our donors funded last year. The room she studies in has a door that closes. The schedule on the wall has UPSC prelims dates highlighted, with three-week revision blocks marked in different coloured pens.
She wants to be a District Magistrate. Not someday — by the time she is thirty.
“The District Magistrate of my mother's district came from a college I had never heard of. I checked. So I can come from a school nobody has heard of, too.”
Sandhya
She is currently in her second year of a B.A. in Public Administration at Delhi University, attending classes in the morning, tutoring two Bridge School children in the afternoon, and studying for the UPSC in the evening. When she stays up late, she texts us photos of the question she got stuck on. We almost never know the answer.
Her mother still cries sometimes. But for a different reason now.
Shared with permission. Names retained at the request of the storyteller.
