My journey with CFL started during a mela about alternative energy in 2015. That day is still one of my most memorable childhood memories. I was a shy, wide-eyed girl who didn’t really know why my parents were taking me to a school for some event. By the end of the evening, I was completely taken in. I saw children my age — and even younger — confidently and proudly explaining what they had worked on. I saw a slide and a fish tank in the junior school building and thought, what a fun place to be in everyday! I saw a community that felt warm, welcoming, full of life and most of all respectful of every child’s opinion and thoughts.

A few years later, I moved from a mainstream school to a KFI school, but CFL always stayed in the back of my mind. I kept thinking about that feeling I had during that Mela, and somewhere, I quietly wished I could be a part of it too. In 2018, my younger brother joined CFL. He got to experience all the things I had once only seen — learning in fun spaces, climbing trees in the sanctuary, and being part of that special community.

In 2020, I finally got the chance to join CFL in Senior School. I knew I had only three years, and I was excited to make the most of it. But soon after, COVID-19 hit, and a big part of our time at school was spent online and distant. Even though I didn’t get the full CFL experience, being part of the school meant a lot to me.

One of the most valuable things I got from CFL was the chance to explore an internship after my AS and A Level exams. That led me to a five-star hotel in Chennai, where I spent just over a month discovering a field I had never considered. Before graduating, I had not only found a direction for the next three years of my life but also a profession I would be pursuing — I had also found confidence in myself. My biggest take away was also learning to have conversations. CFL provided me with a safe space to communicate, voice opinions, have adult conversations respectfully and provided a judgment-free zone. Even in my brief period of being in the ‘real world’ I’ve come to realise that spaces to have safe conversations are rare to come across.

I’ve now completed the STEP programme with The Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, and work at The Oberoi New Delhi. I carry forward CFL’s spirit of exploration, curiosity, and community in all I do. My time in CFL was brief but more impactful than I realised.

I dived into my Bachelor’s (in Communications Studies) right after school. Having been exposed to both the corporate world through college and the NGO world throughout my life, I realized during my year off, that education was perhaps the best balance for me as a career possibility. The field seemed optimistic, challenging and exciting enough. This led me to pursue my MA in Education at Azim Premji University. I have also been extremely privileged with all the learning spaces that I have been a part of, and taking up education seemed like the best way of giving back what I had received all my life.

I graduated from APU in 2017, carrying with me several interests that I had picked up during the two years there; love for sociology, children’s literature and empowering people through making knowledge accessible. The work that I do now involves each of these areas, both independently and as a combination at times. I teach sociology to 11th and 12th graders at a school called Creative, and I am also involved in the Kannada translation initiative at APU. I have slowly started venturing into work related to children’s literature, dissemination of the same and library work after completing a Library Educator’s Course in Goa.

I have always considered myself very lucky to have found a home and a family in CFL. At every stage, as I moved from one educational institution to another, I have observed different aspects of the school’s philosophy get highlighted and challenged in my own head. And it is reassuring that CFL is a space that is not afraid of letting its students or alumni question it endlessly at any point. In fact, it sows the first seeds of that. And because one carries this sense of skepticism wherever one goes, it becomes difficult to accept/take anything blindly; but at the same time, it makes it also extremely easy to be open to new ideas, experiences and challenges, simply because one is able to take oneself less seriously and be less rigid. That is perhaps my biggest take away from school.

The idea of ‘watching patterns of thoughts and emotions’ has only taken different meanings as I have grown up and made sense at a deeper and deeper level. And this in itself has been an interesting journey. All the other spaces that I have been a part of, have contributed to and revealed different facets of the question. But I’m grateful to CFL for instilling it in me in the first place. And it is these very values that dared me to feel my way through life and be micro ambitious, doing things that has given me peace and meaning at the point of time without perhaps compromising on rigour. It has relieved me from the pressures and stresses associated with high ambition and success, because it becomes possible to question the very nature of that ambition itself.

In some ways, pinning down how a “CFL education” impacts and informs one’s life is a very tough ask. Much of what one imbibes from the school is intangible, and sometimes you realise only several years later how you have been influenced by the education. Nonetheless, I shall attempt it.

I graduated from CFL in 2010, having gone through my entire schooling there. Upon leaving, I had a keen interest in learning music as well as pursuing my academic interests. I moved to Bombay and joined St. Xavier’s College, while continuing to learn Hindustani Classical music. While I thoroughly enjoyed living on my own in a new city, and learning music, the curriculum at St. Xavier’s seemed dry and devoid of any inspiration. I dropped out and applied to universities in the UK. I then finished my BSc in Economics from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and then completed my MA in Economics from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. I then decided to move back to Bangalore instead of working abroad and have spent the last few years working as a research fellow at Azim Premji University.

For me, CFL’s education is neither a means to an end, nor some extremely abstract concept/experience that one tends to leave behind after finishing school. I say “for me” because being part of CFL is a deeply subjective experience, and every student feels it differently. In my own life, I have tried to simplify the ideas and processes that began in my schooldays and found new ways of relating with them over different stages of my life. It can feel overwhelming, and somewhat distant, to think about “well-being”, “the self ”, “finding peace”, in a grand, macro sense. For the majority of us graduates (me included), we end up subject to the usual stresses of life: getting jobs, earning a livelihood, developing deep relationships, raising families. I don’t personally believe that detaching oneself from this “mainstream” is in any way an answer in itself. Instead, I increasingly feel that the power of CFL education lies in being able to relate to it from a myriad different realities and standpoints. Whether you are a banker, a doctor, a teacher, or working in an NGO, it does not necessarily change the questions one grapples with.

To still be able to engage constructively with these ideas in the everyday, I have tried to explore them in the microcosm of my own daily life. This has been a deeply fruitful experience, and as with all such processes, it leaves you with more questions than answers: What does it mean for me to live responsibly? To be sensitive, open, reflective? To understand my own emotions better? I explore these questions for myself at a very simple, practical level. It might mean delving into an unpleasant interaction, or a tough relationship, to figure out why I react a certain way. It might mean asking myself honestly if I really do need whatever I am ordering on Amazon. It might mean swallowing pride, apologising, and owning up to a mistake. These are challenges I face regularly and having a schema to approach them which, I hope, helps me develop as a person over time, is invaluable.

By starting on this small scale, I have found this method eminently useful. It allows for a critical, honest appraisal of oneself in the everyday. It allows, hopefully, for me to reinvent myself periodically, learning from my own patterns and past. It allows me to meet life’s uncertainties and my own uncertainties and insecurities about myself with both humility and confidence. Most importantly, it let me recognise that these questions, emotions, patterns are universal, and there is no single truth or right answer to any of them. In times of struggle, this has helped me have a perspective that lets me distance myself from my own churning and understand the struggle through a completely new lens. My troubles seem to always be at the centre of my universe, but it is so easy to feel like it is the centre of the universe.

CFL gave me a lot to grapple with. One could argue that it made life harder! Perhaps living would be far easier without this lifelong, often torturous process of wrestling with oneself. CFL also gave me other precious things, like a love for being outdoors and in nature, a stunningly good academic experience, and several deep, meaningful lifelong relationships with both peers and adults. However, by helping me start down this road of simple self-discovery, if one can call it that, CFL gave me a strategy, a schema, to tackle each day of ordinary life, one at a time. It is more than I could ever have wished for.

I joined Centre for Learning (CFL) at the age of six and for the next 12 years I was a learner there. When I joined, CFL was a day school and just before I entered my teens, CFL entered its own campus at Vardenahalli village. From then onwards, it has been a residential campus, which served to enhance the effect of the school environment on all the residents. As a teenager, it was a ripe time for me to take in and question the various aspects of the multi-faceted education and interactions within our small and close-knit community.

Just a little background about myself, to put things in perspective: In my high school I decided to be a teacher of science and mathematics. I went on to study an Integrated MS in chemistry at IISER and then taught IIT aspirants for a year. Later I worked at Azim Premji University, helping them set up their science undergraduate programme. I am now doing my doctorate at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam.

For my generation, teaching is not in the set of most attractive career options, and neither does it have a promise of quick money. Nevertheless, I strive towards my dream of being a science educator. I don’t worry about what is a smarter way to live, or who is better off than I am. This is not an attitude I cultivated, but an attitude that I grew into at CFL. It was not taught it in a classroom in so many words, but by an environment that does not believe in competition, taught me that motivation from within was far more important.

CFL has a non-hierarchical structure that functions on collective discussion and decision making where the student-teacher divide only exists for functional purposes. Such a system sounds like it would waste a lot of time and get people nowhere in the end. It is to be seen to be believed, how much it nurtures and develops an individual’s growth. Today I have the courage to question and express my own feelings, and equally respect the concerns of others (sometimes even in critical circumstances) because there was no power equation in my school, and hence in my head.

There were activities like “culture class” and “quiet time” that I found trying and wanted to avoid as a student. At that time I felt it was a complete waste of time. Now I have partially realised that they might have been meaningful sessions. There is, of course, a set of ideas that some students cannot comprehend and might even dislike. As the environment provides the forum to express one’s opinion freely, there is a danger of the occasional student turning out to be a rebel. This was something that was an occasional worry to me, though on the other hand there is no control experiment where it can be understood what the same student might have turned out to be if they were in the so called “mainstream.”

There is no guarantee that a student from CFL would do something that makes an enormous difference, but for myself I can say that whatever I do, I do it and look at it with an attitude and spirit that makes all the difference. This is the biggest and lasting contribution that my school has given to me!

I still remember my first exposure to CFL. My father and I had driven to Shibumi and as we walked through the gates I wondered whether he had gotten the wrong address. The campus reminded me more of our farm than the schools that I was used to seeing in the city. We wandered around, peering into the classrooms and looking at the various trees that were growing. While the older students were in class, many of the younger ones were outdoors, playing on the jungle gym, climbing trees and generally having a blast. Everybody looked so happy. I wanted to be a part of it. Luckily, a couple of months later I was accepted as a student and went on to spend an incredible ten years at the school, a period in my life which has really defined me as a person.

After graduating from CFL, I went on to complete an undergraduate degree, a post-graduate diploma in Journalism and a Masters from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. I have now applied to a PhD program.

Although I valued my time while I was still studying in CFL, my appreciation for the school grew after I graduated. Joining the rat race made me realise that I had not left a school, but a vibrant community where each person was given the time, space and where necessary, support they needed to discover themselves. The myriad extra-curricular activities on offer and a large campus to explore really gave one the freedom to find and follow their passion.

At times, I was a slow learner but that didn’t stop the teachers from putting in the extra time and effort needed to bring me up to speed. This was in sharp contrast to my time in college where it was very easy to be left behind. The fact that the number of students in my class was almost twice the number of students in the whole of CFL didn’t help!

Although days at CFL were structured, there was never a sense of rigidity. It never felt like we were forced into doing things. A part of the daily routine at CFL, quiet time, was something I enjoyed and still find the time for a couple of
times a week. Being at CFL, one was naturally connected to the land. This still remains. We have a number of plants both within and on the balcony of our home.

The time we were afforded to explore the flora and fauna on the campus has left a permanent mark on the way I think about the relationship between humans and their natural surroundings. After completing my master’s I have worked with organisations which have been involved with issues of forest governance, forest policy, tribal rights, food security and agriculture. I am currently working with an environmental research organisation in Bangalore where I am exploring how current approaches of wildlife conservation are affecting the livelihoods of people.

Looking back, what I appreciate the most are the values that were instilled: the respect for fellow human beings and the natural world. Finding like-minded people is something that I have found hard to come by which is why my closest friends are still from CFL

It is hardly surprising that CFL is my home in many ways, given that I spent thirteen years there. But, it is not just that. While it seems somewhat redundant to say that my schooling years played a defining role in shaping me, I cannot deny that I have gone back to my education at CfL as a reference point for various choices that I have made over the years. And, in making these choices, I have very much appreciated the space to pause and reflect in situations that are otherwise teeming with pressures and expectations. This is most definitely a quality that is rooted in my schooling, where the attempt to be watchful of ourselves and our surroundings became as much a part of our daily lives as any other school activity.

Having said this, there were periodic bouts of unhappiness and dissatisfaction at various points in my time at CFL; home-sickness, an urge to experience the ‘freedom’ of the outside world, disagreement about certain stances and boundaries… Yet, there was something that kept me there. In hindsight, I suspect it was the sense of thinking together as a community and listening to one another that bound me to the place. And it is this sense of thinking together that I value and hope to inculcate in all my interactions.

This was the reason that I chose to study Philosophy at St Stephen’s College, where the class sizes were extremely small and the course was discussion oriented. Post this, I moved back to Bangalore and followed the urge to explore photography. I now work as a freelancer, mainly in the fields of photography and film. I most enjoy working on themes connected to humanities and nature.

My work and interests are strongly based on exposures that took place during my senior school years, which was the most vivid period of my education. The liberty to design my own programme allowed me to fuse a handpicked variety of academic subjects along with other activities, including photography.

My biggest learning from CFL’s way of education, might be the idea that the process of questioning is itself relevant, sometimes more so than specific questions or answers themselves. This idea yields a sensitive and receptive mind, which for me, is fundamental to how I would like to navigate my path.

After finishing school in 2003, I taught at Srishti, an educational institute for children with special needs. I was the class teacher for a pre-vocational unit in the age group of 12 to 14. The group consisted of 10 children with Downs Syndrome and mental retardation. Our goal at Srishti was to help them live independently to the extent possible. At the moment, I am looking at working with children with physical disabilities.

I can’t yet evaluate the impact CFL has had on my life and work. Since I haven’t yet experienced any other systems in a strong way, I can’t really say. But I lived in CFL for half my life and it felt like my family. People helped me in many ways, both big and small, and this has made me what I am today. The place taught me to think for myself and pursue my own interests. It made me feel that my interests are as valuable as anything else.

I passed out of CFL in 2002 and went on to graduate in 2005 in English Literature, Communicative English, and Psychology. I then completed an Master’s in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, in 2007. I have been working in the development sector for more than a decade now. In the past eight years, my work has been in the field of maternal and child health, with a special focus on health and its intersectionalities with gender and equity.

My parents admitted me to CFL when I was 8 years old. Coming from a conventional school with uniforms, textbooks and strict teachers, this set-up was entirely novel. While academics was an integral part of this education, other aspects, like being fit, “quiet time” and cleaning up school, were given equal importance. CFL was liberating for me, from the confinement of classrooms and the strict decorum that was required to be followed in most other schools.

For the first 5 years or so, I didn’t really understand the need or significance of “quiet time”. But gradually, I realized that it had become an integral component of my life, and on days when it was absent, it made me feel incomplete. Further, the structure of CFL helped me embark on an endless journey of introspection. I also saw that responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin and appreciated the holistic perspective with which we were being educated.

I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to go to a school like CFL. It was not so much what the teachers said, but what they did not say, that has shaped me. So while it is hard to highlight the tangible difference(s) that CFL has made in my life, I can safely say that it has aided my discovery of a way of living, which I cherish. There is a sense of clarity and security, which enables me to question and respond to life and its various challenges.

I have been working with various NGOs as a designer in textiles and beadwork. I have also been working as a teacher trainer for rural women and have been involved with design oriented training and with the marketing of products. My work has taken me to various parts of the country such as Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, and also to Ethiopia.

I am currently in Bangalore working with schools and doing craft work with children.
CFL allowed me to pursue my interests in a non-academic direction. It gave me various experiences in the art world and encouraged me to follow my instincts. I experienced many other dimensions of life in the school: travel, hostel life, handling problems, just allowing events to happen. We were never protected as students. We were always encouraged to go and find out for ourselves and not to be passive.

Something valuable I learned at CFL was to treat all individuals equally. This attitude helped me in my work—in a village you relate to people as they are, not as someone entirely different from you. Similarly, in schools, each child is who he or she is and is accepted as such.

This attitude helped me, in my teaching and other work, to bring every individual’s artistic ability out, regardless of his or her level.