Synopses & Reviews
Will Randall thought teaching in an inner-London comprehensive was a tough job. But that was nothing compared to the next assignment: saving a slum school in the Indian city of Poona. Learning as much as he is teaching, Will finds his life transformed by his remarkable class of orphans: Dulabesh, the head-standing joker who lost his parents on a crowded railway platform; Prakash, who learned self-sufficiency by scavenging in dumpsters; the charmingly madcap Tanushri, fan of the singer "Maradona." When the slumlords threaten to level the school, Will hits upon the idea of a fund-raiser to save it: a stage production of the 24,000-verse Indian epic, The Ramayana, ever so slightly condensed
By turns funny and poignant, this is a gloriously life-affirming account of the India tourists never see.
Synopsis
While attempting to teach at an inner London comprehensive Will Randall is taken up by an elderly German woman who asks him to accompany her to India. Nothing ventured, he agrees and so begins a wonderful life-changing adventure. Set down in Puna (3 hours from Bombay) he begins work teaching English at a slum school. Most of the children are orphans or parentless (one lost his parents four years previously when his mother had let go of his hand at a railway station and he 'd boarded the wrong train ). When zamidars -slum barons - arrive and threaten to pull down the school Randall has to put on a fund-raising performance of the Indian epic The Ramayana in order to help the slum dwellers buy their own land. Meanwhile he's also been spotted by a Bollywood Director who persuades him to take the role of leading man in his new film.
Will Randall is 'the teacher who travels' and, as in SOLOMON TIME, this is a funny and heart-warming account of how one man's enthusiasm and old-fashioned desire to do good have helped to preserve a community.
About the Author
Will Randall was born in 1966 and educated in London. He is a teacher. His next book is a travel book on Botswana.