Patna: There are no benches, no blackboard and no classroom walls. There is only a boat, a handful of books and children determined not to let the flood decide when their education should stop.In Raghunathpur village of Katihar’s Amdabad block, floodwater has swallowed roads, surrounded homes and made the local school inaccessible. With the regular classroom submerged, a small class has found an unlikely new home on the water.Mohammad Saheb, who runs a private coaching institute in the village, has turned a boat anchored near the flooded school into a makeshift classroom. The students include children from his coaching institute as well as some from the submerged school. As floodwater cuts through the village, Saheb has refused to let their lessons be washed away with it.With their parents’ consent, he picks up the students from their homes in his boat, conducts classes for about an hour to 90 minutes and takes them back. Around 40 students attend the classes, but Saheb brings only 10 at a time for safety and to keep the group manageable.The children arrive carrying their books, sit together on the boat and continue their lessons while the water surrounds them. For a village used to seeing roads disappear beneath floodwater, the arrangement may look extraordinary. For Saheb, it is a practical response to a problem that returns year after year.He said the damage caused by floods does not end when the water begins to recede. Schools may reopen, but children can remain out of the learning cycle for weeks. The longer the gap, the harder it can be for them to catch up, he said.Rather than wait for the water to disappear, Saheb looked for a relatively shallow and calm stretch close to the school and began conducting classes there. He said the water level at the chosen spot had receded and the children were comfortable with the surroundings.“We do not find any other place for classes, so I chose this boat. My coaching classes have also submerged in flood water, with 3-4 feet water inside the campus. Besides, the roads are also waterlogged,” Saheb said.The unusual classroom has won the confidence of the students. Satyam Kumar, a Class V student, said his parents allowed him to attend the boat classes because the water was shallow. For him, studying on a boat is unusual but not frightening.Annu Kumari, a Class VI student, said she too feels comfortable attending the lessons and enjoys studying there. She said Saheb teaches them for roughly an hour to an hour-and-a-half.“It is fun studying in the boat school,” she said.
