Despite delays in our classes, the first week in Hyderabad was an exciting one. The kids that live in our apartment are full of questions about the U.S. and our work in India. They have taken me to play cricket, badminton and catch. Some hope to be professional sports players. Yet, they have few resources and little space to exercise. Pollution shallows both their lungs and the sentiments they may harbor within them. They are bright. Many are strong and have a quick wit. Unfortunately, their frustrations are inherent in the circumstances in which they live: air pollution, water-borne diseases, troubled schools, limited access to higher education, and a dearth of athletic or academic scholarships.

On Tuesday we visited the Railway Girls School. They were the first children I met outside of my neighborhood. A girl read her poem, ‘Onset of Night.’ Her writing was exceptional and I hope her work is published more extensively on-line so that others can see the benefits of The Modern Story. The work focused on the traffic of hands, feet, and crowds that flood the city. It was an excellent exercise in creative writing and personal reflection. I couldn’t help but admire how she related what chaotic rhythms of the city beat within her own heart. She is smart, as are her classmates. While most, it seems, have dreamed in proportion to the school’s successes, I was struck with how The Modern Story allowed her to dream in proportion to her reach toward the self.

This week of delay has also given me the opportunity to befriend men who have children in the government education system of Hyderabad. One man, a translator of Hindi, Urdu and Arabic, expressed that while the schools are not terrible there is movement without momentum in their education – the children move up a grade but few can build on that knowledge to graduate from university. I asked him what, when he was a child, he wanted to be when ‘he grew up.’ He didn’t answer. A man with broken glasses, he was accustomed to a world view that could not focus him in it.  His friends joked with me. They said that, as I prepare for a 5 month program in Hyderabad. I should also prepare for a city that swirls with, in the spirit of Fitzgerald, the ‘secret griefs of wild, unknown men.’

On Wednesday I got lost in one of Hyderabad’s poorest districts within the city limits, 3 km west of Osmani Hospital. My autorickshaw driver picked up two schoolboys and let them ride for free. We passed a man handcuffed and pressed up against the walls like worn graffiti. The two boys got out asking the man, who was apparently a relative or father, what was happening. The mix of police sirens and the call to prayer rose a familiar music above the city, in what felt like more of a call to discontent than to communion before dissipating among the crowds. The autorickshaw driver reminded me not to be too quick in punishing students for not doing their homework if they come from troubled neighborhoods such as this. We haven’t started teaching yet, and while I don’t think that the circumstances can make for a direct comparison, there is a lesson to be learned that the students’ home situation must be kept in mind, especially in a city like Hyderabad.

Yes, I do hope the students learn valuable practical skills. However, I am more keen on developing the students’ awareness of their capacity for expression. The final product is important. Yet, so are the impulses, energy and drive that the program develops. A city as chaotic as Hyderabad can narrate a false biography into a young man, leading him to mistake the limitations of the city for his own.  Sometimes, it can be tiring to live in such a crowded city center. Because of these circumstances, the most important lesson we might reinforce is a sense of individual worth, perhaps best summarized by T.E. Lawrence who once wrote “there are no great lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock its peoples, partly so that no man mistake for history the bones from which someday a man might make history.”