It was the year 1982, and advertisements had been posted in magazines of missionary organisations – announcements related to a new school that was being opened in a small town called Dohnavur in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.

Before the days of kit lists and other protocols, no one really knew the necessities required of children in boarding schools. That you had to buy three bed sheets, and a plate and tumbler, that you had to make sure there were socks and pyjamas.

“Pyjamas? What’s a pyjama anyway?”, some people would ask in the following years when they opened a formal letter from school.

“Mosquito net? Are you sure we can afford one?”

But this was before all of that.

Yet, parents bought trunk boxes for their children, booked train tickets, and started to this obscure village of brick walls and cactus plants.

36 children were admitted to the school that year.

It was the June of 1982.

History was yet to begin!

#RememberingOurRoots