Srija (name changed), 12, would sulk for days whenever work forced her busy father to sacrifice a weekend outing with the family. Her father will be home this Saturday but Srija might have to be in school.

Welcome to the world of weekend-starved children, burdened not so much by books as by bandhs, blockades, rallies and weather-induced disruptions that have forced their schools to play catch-up by dragging them to class even on holidays.

“We lost a full day on Friday, and had truncated school hours on Tuesday. Our teachers have informed us that extra classes on weekends will be the norm if disruptions continue,” grumbled Srija, a student of Class VIII in a city school.

Calcutta Boys, Welland Gouldsmith and Rajasthan Vidya Mandir have already drawn up a weekend schedule to make up for the loss of two schooldays.

“I attend private tutorials and guitar classes on Saturdays but our school will hold weekend classes to make up for the disruptions caused by last Friday’s bandh and Tuesday’s Trinamul rally,” said Surajit Sinha (name changed), a student of Calcutta Boys.

So, won’t all work and no weekend break make Surajit a very tired boy?

“I feel burdened just thinking about being in uniform on a holiday,” complained the Class IX boy.

Teachers admit weekend classes are unfair on children but say the frequency of disruptions has left them with no other option.

“To miss an entire day of teaching and learning because of a bandh (like the Congress-imposed one on Friday) is a huge loss. We missed several classes on Tuesday as well because of the Trinamul rally. The final bell rang at 10.30am instead of 1.30pm so that our students and teachers could reach home safely,” said Gilian Rosemary Hart, the principal of Welland Gouldsmith School in the heart of the rally zone.

As Trinamul supporters converged on Victoria House in central Calcutta, students of schools that had shut early had a difficult time getting back home.

“Our school gave over at 10.55am, and I boarded a bus to Salt Lake around 11.15am. Around 3pm, I was still in Beleghata,” said an exhausted student of Calcutta Girls’ High School.

Arpit Ahuja, who was in a pool car with eight schoolmates from Apeejay School on Park Street, was caught in a traffic snarl off Mayo Road for over an hour.

Gargi Poddar, a student of Class VI at St Thomas’ in Howrah, walked around 3km from Babughat till Esplanade with her father before taking the Metro to Tollygunge.

Students writing Calcutta University’s undergraduate and postgraduate examinations were inconvenienced, too. “My paper was scheduled to start at 10am. I set out of home at 6 in the morning fearing that I would get stuck somewhere because of the rally,” said a student of Asutosh College who stays at Serampore, in Hooghly.

Given the fact that bandhs and rallies are not new to the city, many schools take into account the possibility of days lost while finalising their academic schedules at the start of a session.

“But there have been far too many disruptions this year for us to make up for the loss of days without altering the schedule,” said Malini Bhagat, the principal of Mahadevi Birla Girls’ Higher Secondary School.

Mahadevi Birla was among the several city schools — the list includes South Point, St Lawrence, Gokhale Memorial, Patha Bhavan, Shree Sikshayatan, Nava Nalanda, Scottish Church Collegiate, Bethune, and Sakhawat — that had extended their summer vacations because of heat wave-like conditions in the city a month-and-a-half ago.

According to Krishna Damani of South Point, the proposed indefinite transport strike from Friday could force every institution to take drastic steps to complete the syllabus.

“We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that the transport strike is called off. If the strike does continue, attendance is bound to be thin. In that case we would have no option but to arrange for extra classes at the cost of inconveniencing both students and teachers,” said Damani.