Sept. 11: Santosh Rajbanshi, 10, would attend school only on Saturdays, when the midday meal menu includes eggs.
Since August, he has not missed a single day of school. And the Class IV student of Harijan Gyan Mandir is not the only one with an improved attendance record. This government-sponsored free primary school near Taratala has seen a near 100 per cent jump in attendance over the past few months.
The trigger for this transformation isn't eggs on the menu every day. The credit goes to an unlikely catalyst: basketball.
In January, assistant teacher Rakesh Tiwari went to a "Train the Trainer" programme organised by Reliance Foundation Jr. NBA at the West Bengal Basketball Association courts, off Red Road.
The programme aims to introduce potential teacher trainers to basketball so that they can, in turn, promote the sport in school. Tiwari completed the training, but teaching kids a sport that many of them hadn't even heard of was a different ballgame.
"I learnt the basics - footwork, passing, shooting, the rules of the game and so on. But I was not sure if I could teach anything to the kids," the assistant teacher recounted. "The first time I started speaking to the children about the game, they were clueless about it. But there was an interest. Their eyes lit up when I showed them the ball."
As word spread among the kids about the new game "sir" was teaching, the number of attendees started going up.
"These students are from extremely underprivileged families, and many of them are first-generation learners. Their parents are mostly daily wage-earners and not keen on sending the kids to school every day," said a colleague of Tiwari.
Harijan Gyan Mandir has around 175 students and the average daily attendance till December 2016 was 65 to 70. Sometimes, a girl student would be asked to stay home and look after a younger sibling while a boy might skip school to help his father run a tea stall.
"Attendance over the past two months has increased to above 120, thanks to basketball," said head teacher Rama Shanker Singh.
Gopi Rajbhar, a Class IV student, is one of the converts. "The only occasion we could play earlier was during the annual sports meet. Now we play every day and it is great fun," he said.
The impact of basketball on attendance at school has caught the attention of the NBA brass in India. "Harijan Gyan Mandir is a great example of how the game of basketball can contribute in enhancing and enriching the life of students," said Yannick Colaco, managing director of NBA India.
The junior NBA programme has covered 800 schools and 3.5 lakh kids this year alone, he said.
Harijan Gyan Mandir has introduced a daily sports period that is now all about basketball. As soon as the bell rings, some boys run to the head teacher's room where the balls are kept. The next stop is the courtyard in front of the two-storey building, where a makeshift net hangs from one of the broken walls.
After a round of freehand exercises, the kids do some passing and shooting under Tiwari's tutelage.
For a man who was introduced to the game a few months ago, Tiwari himself has come a long way. He now gets up early in the morning to watch NBA matches. "I love the speed of the game. There is never a dull moment," smiled Tiwari, who supports the Golden State Warriors and admires their ace shooter Stephen Curry.
The students don't know any NBA star by name yet. But the excitement basketball has brought into their lives is hard to miss. "All of them will not become great basketball players. But they will at least be able to get a basic education if they come to school regularly," Tiwari said.
Tiwari has yet to see Coach Carter, the 2005 film starring Samuel L. Jackson as high school basketball coach Ken Carter. In the film, Carter links academics to basketball to help students get rid of drug problems and make better human beings out of them.
Harijan Gyan Mandir may have found its Carter in Tiwari.
