Lucknow: Barefoot, with soot still smudged on his face and no proper clothes, four-year-old Jugnoo stands amid the ashes and points to his face — “eyes, nose, ears” —in careful English. When asked further, he softly recites, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…” pausing only to remember what comes next.Just a day after a devastating fire gutted their houses in a Vikas Nagar slum, children like Jugnoo have begun gathering again—not for play, but to learn. For them, learning was never inside walls.Under the open sky, on a patch of blackened earth where their huts once stood, nearly a dozen children sit in a circle. Some trace letters on the ground with their fingers. Others repeat the alphabet aloud. There are no books, no blackboards—only memory.At the heart of this classroom is 50-year-old Manju Devi.For nearly two decades, Manju has been teaching children from the slum for free—basic reading, writing and counting. Her open-air school had become a refuge for nearly 50 children. Today, it is gone.“Everything burned—blackboards, charts, notebooks, even the small fan we used in summer. But how can I stop? These children will forget what they learned,” Manju said.Among those sitting before her is eight-year-old Pooja, who proudly writes her name in English on the dusty ground. She learned it just a few weeks ago. “Didi taught me,” she said, looking up at Manju.Nearby, seven-year-old Arif carefully spells out “A-R-I-F,” then quickly adds, “Sunday comes after Saturday,” as if afraid he might forget.Another boy, Sonu, who had just begun recognising numbers, counts slowly on his fingers— “one, two, three…” — before stopping midway, distracted by the sight of his burnt home behind him.“These children had just started to change. They learned to speak politely, to write their names, to dream a little. Now everything is uncertain again,” said Manju.Parents watch silently from a distance.Rekha, a domestic worker, wipes her eyes as she sees her daughter trying to revise the alphabet. “We lost everything—clothes, utensils—but when I see her studying again, I feel maybe something is still left,” she says.For many of these families, education was the only fragile ladder out of poverty.Manju remembers how some of her former students went on to enroll in govt schools, while others learned enough to help their families.“I started this in 2006, after my marriage broke. I am Class XII pass out and had nothing then. But teaching gave me a purpose. Now again, we are starting from zero,” Manju said.With no classroom, no materials, and no certainty of tomorrow, Manju has already begun rebuilding— word by word, lesson by lesson.Children repeat after her, their voices rising above the silence of the burnt settlement:“A… B… C…”Each letter, a small act of defiance against despair.
