Vivekananda Pathshala has no building of its own. “I requested the chairperson of Jaspal Kaur Public School to allow me to teach slum children in an empty hall. He not only agreed but went a step further, allowing us the use of the field and auditorium. Sometimes, even the teachers and students drop in to help the slum children with their lessons,” says Ghosh who graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons, London, in 1965.

Today, Ghosh is a one-man organisation called the Vivekananda Rural Service Centre (VRSC). It deals with all the issues Ghosh can put on his plate at one time—education and health care being prominent. The Vivekananda Pathshala is the education wing of VRSC.

The 150 students at the school are from the slums and of varying ages. Some of them are in torn clothes, but all of them are clean and disciplined. “It wasn’t always so. In 2005, when I started the school, the students would first race to the dustbins to scavenge for food and odds and ends like pencil stubs to sell. They used foul language and were rough,” says Ghosh.

His prescription was to allow the children to be children—he supplied them with badminton racquets, skipping ropes and board games and they played for most part of the evening. When the girls wanted to learn embroidery, he provided them with needles, coloured threads and cloth pieces. And he would regularly tell the children stories about Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose, of the hardships they had faced and how they triumphed over adversity.

Somewhere along the way, the children started to listen. “I want to be an ‘engyeer’,” says five-year-old Vijay Kumar. “Engineer,” prompts his classmate Kishan Saha. Kishan was among the cast of a short film made on Netaji by Ghosh’s son Ashim to mark the 111th birth anniversary of the freedom fighter this year. “We screened the film to an audience of 350 people, including parents of the children and several prominent doctors of the city,” says Ghosh proudly.

On the occasion, some girls presented a dance performance to standing ovation. One of the main dancers was 10-year-old Rekha, who is speech impaired. “Nobody taught her the sign language. Nobody taught us either but that’s how all the students communicate with her. I don’t remember her ever feeling left out. She’s always full of life,” says Rekha’s sister Reena. The sisters have been attending the school since it started and hardly miss a day. “I have more fun here than anywhere else,” writes Rekha as she demonstrates a pirouette.

The school operates for two hours, three evenings a week. “But some parents don’t want to spare their children for even those few hours. They argue that the boys work in tea stalls and earn Rs 150 per month. The girls help with the housework or work as domestic helps,” he says. Keeping up with the children, playing and arguing with them is taxing, especially since Ghosh had a bypass surgery in 2004.

“But I always find the strength to go on,” he says as one three-year-old tugs that his sleeve and whispers, “I touched my mother’s feet in the morning.”