Brothers and sisters

Studying after school

It's almost dinner time at the Illam by the time we return from our delightful afternoon tea at Banu's place. Children are dotted all over the centre on any floor space they can find, studiously completing their homework and testing each other, rote-learning style. The boys are still in their khaki and white uniforms, but the girls have changed into beautiful coloured, sequined saris. I don’t know how they manage to keep everything so clean sitting on the ground outside all the time, but I get the feeling everyone here works hard to keep things spick and span.

Jenny’s been staying at the Illam for the past week, and tells us how impressed she is with the children’s work ethic. “They wake up at 4.30am every day – even the youngest ones – do their yoga and prayers, cut up vegetables for the day’s meals, clean the place top to toe and then study. All before school!” she says, incredulously. There's no denying it puts the TV-watching, internet-using generations of our home countries to shame.

We join in the children's pre-dinner prayers at 7pm, which begin with some “omm”-ing and morph into a more melodic Tamil song that the house warden Nagarathinam tells us is translated from a traditional Hindi hymn. The Karunai Illam Trust is non-denominational, but the prayers each day include elements of five different religions (such as Muslim, Hindu and Christianity), each of which are depicted in decorative tiles adorning the walls of the dining area. The prayer session ends with the children standing up one by one to share a proverb with the group – some in English, some in Tamil. Finally, before the children disappear for their evening meal, they each stand up again and tell us their name and what standard (class) they’re in at school. It’s a lovely welcome, and worth the pins and needles we get sitting cross-legged on the concrete.

Later in the evening, we chat to some of the boys about their school work, and they delight in showing us their books, affectionately calling me “sister” and Pete “brother”. We’re impressed with the level of English they’re expected to know, and admit that some of the words on their vocabulary lists challenge even us, with communications and legal backgrounds. The boys have great hopes for the future – careers in graphics, economics, the list goes on. With the incredible support they receive from the Trust (even into the early years of their tertiary education), I’m sure they’ll be well equipped to take the economic powerhouse of India into the future – whatever that looks like for this incredible, insane country.

Setting the prayer table before dawn

When the boys leave for their home down the road, the girls set to work making a garland to welcome Jasmine (“the other madam from New Zealand”) who arrives at around 11pm. Taken aback by the energetic welcome from the girls, and suffering jetlag, she heads to bed and so do the children.

Pete suggests we rise at 4.30am to partake in the girls’ daily rituals. It’s no secret that I’m not a morning person, but after two hours’ sleep, I climb out of bed anyway. When we try to help out, we’re ushered away and presented with cups of tea, so we talk to the other visitors and quietly observe the children as they do their yoga, clean, prepare vegetables, do homework, set up the prayer table, light candles, say their morning prayers and plait each other’s hair – just as Jenny had told us.

Cutting the day's cabbage

The spicy breakfast of vegetable sambar with the Illam staff couldn’t be more different from my usual Special K in front of the computer screen at work, but it’s certainly a very special and authentic experience not even Lonely Planet has notched up. We chat some more to the house warden, Nagarathinam, who tells us in broken English that she’s not from here – she says she goes home “monthly once” to her own house, 70km away, but lives here most of the time. “I am working in the programme 17 years, but here for four,” she tells us.

Our farewell garlands

Before the children leave for school, they give us a lovely farewell, presenting us with woollen, floral garlands they’d secretly made for us that morning, on top of everything else they had to do before school. They line up in their immaculate uniforms (a different colour for each standard) and march off to school like the children in Madeleine, warmly waving goodbye to their new “sister” and “brother”.

Tamil Nadu's Madeleine