At 4 every afternoon, children in Talwara, a tiny village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district, have to report to the police station, where they are kept in custody for two hours.
At 4 every afternoon, children in Talwara, a tiny village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district, have to report to the police station, where they are kept in custody for two hours.
But no one is complaining. In fact, all are praising station house officer Ranbir Singh Bhau. Reason: The confinement is for refinement. The arrest is for freedom from the shackles of illiteracy.
Bhau turns a small room in the police station into a classroom from 4 pm to 6 pm every day. He teaches for free after duty hours.
“Soon after my posting here [at Talwara], I noticed that these children were just roaming about and not paying attention to studies. It pained me because before joining police I was a teacher. I decided to teach these children,” he said.
Bhau’s class, which began with only three students, has today swelled to over a 100. It has students from nursery to standard-XII.
Such is Bhau’s appeal that people form neighbouring villages also send kids to his class and locals want to resist his transfer.
Talwara is a settlement of 632 families who had fled the upper reaches of Reasi after the Parankote massacre of 1998 in which 28 people were gunned down by militants.
Most families in the village cannot afford education for their children.
“My worry was if these kids are not given proper education, they may end up becoming criminals. My teacher instincts do not allow me to be a mere spectator,” Bhau, who has done BSc and BEd, besides a post-graduate diploma in computer software, said.
His dream is to make dreams of his students come true.
“I want to become a pilot to realise the dream of my mother. Coming to this class has given me hope and confidence that I can do it,” Nitesh Kumar Sharma, a class-VI student, said.
Fifth-grader Balbir Singh said he wants to become an army officer to fight militants who burnt down his house at Ladha village, forcing the family to migrate.
Both are banking on Bhau.
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