Every morning she wakes to the sound of drums from a distant santhal village. She walks barefoot to a nearby field. Every morning, she waits till they start streaming in through the green iron gate that separates Bhalopahar from the rest of Bandowan in Purulia on the Bengal-Jharkhand border. The area is infested by Maoists and inhabited by adivasis on the edge of survival.
Jayati Chakraborty gave up a secure job with Tisco in Jamshedpur, a nice apartment and a decent salary "to build something new, create something that would be of use to others. Honestly, I did not know know what it could be".
A trip to Bandowan in 2000 answered the unspoken question. She happened to visit Bhalopahar, an NGO run by another former Tata employee, Kamalesh Chakraborty. She was inspired by his developmental work in the area and ecstatic when he agreed she could work with him.
She quit her job , faced down appalled friends and family. "They found it hard to believe that I would be better off working with poor people in a godforsaken village." And tried new things - linseed and tomato farming - finally deciding the area needed a school. "We converted a hall into a classroom and started with 66 students in 2001. It seemed the school was waiting to happen," she says. Students pay Rs.30 per month. But paid pupil or not, no one is turned away.
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