An American Teen’s Passage to India

To reach the Good News Children’s Education Mission School near the Bengal capital of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in India, take the Eastern Bypass highway out of the city to the district of Bhagabanpur. Turn onto the district’s main road, which devolves into a pot-holed street and then into a dead-end dirt path.

Near an impoverished shrimp fishery and the tiny corrugated steel homes of India’s most desperately poor is the Good News school, whose library was founded last summer by Tuhin Roy of Danville, CA. It’s a modest collection of 200 reference books, literary titles, and comic books, many in the local Bengali language that he speaks fluently. Oh, did we mention that Roy is just 15 years old?

The new, first-ever library at the 180-student school in Bhagabanpur is the Monte Vista High School student’s Eagle Scout project, the first of two school libraries he worked on in the area, and the basis for a nonprofit he hopes to create to promote child literacy in his parents’ homeland. “I kind of knew I wanted to do something in India,” says California-born Roy. “I figured, 'I really like reading books.’”

Roy found out about the two impoverished schools from his Kolkata-based grandparents. Dolores Fabel, his school librarian in affluent Danville, taught him the Dewey decimal system and cataloging techniques. The library supply company DEMCO contributed laminate covering for the books. Donations came from educators, family friends, and fellow scouts. Roy set a goal of $250 but raised five times that amount—money that was entirely donated to the Indian schools, as his parents paid his personal expenses.

Arriving in India in July, Roy bought books locally to save money and avoid shipping fees. He was able to buy an initial 200 books—far more than he’d anticipated—for the Christian ministry school. He used his extra funds to buy 100 more books to update the library at a second school: a public high school in the slightly more affluent Kolkata district of Behala. With local volunteer help, he cataloged, laminated, and shelved each title.

Roy says he was particularly struck by the mission school, which devotes mornings to teaching boys and girls in nursery through third grade. Older children attend in the afternoon.

The school had very little of anything. Roy was moved to contribute school supply packets, which he then presented in person. Thanks to his efforts, the “library,” which once sat nearly empty, is now a real reading resource.

Roy cherished the day he spent interacting with students and taking the opportunity “to understand from their point of view what their lives are like.

“I’ve been to India many times and seen poverty, but I’ve never seen 'the people’ of it,” Roy says. “What’s so interesting to me is to see how happy they are, for every little thing they got.”

What’s he learned? “First of all, how to run a library system, and how to organize it,” the high school student responds, with total seriousness. “Then, [I’ve been] learning about the people and their culture.

“I’ve grown up with the Indian culture all my life, but I’ve never seen it from that standpoint, you know?”

Roy can be contacted at tudude91@yahoo.com.