Moderate intensity quake jolts Kashmir Valley

SRINAGAR: A moderate intensity earthquake jolted the Kashmir Valley on Saturday, a weather official confirmed. The Met department official said, “An earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale occurred today at 5.44am.” The intensity of the earthquake was moderate and its coordinates were latitude 35.0 degrees north and longitude 74.4 degrees east. BRESWANA(DODA): Karishma Prakash, 25, quit her engineering job in Bengaluru and Sanu Khan, 30, took a sabbatical from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Thiruvananthapuram. Both volunteer as teachers at the Haji Public School in Breswana village of Doda – a district 160 km northeast of Jammu that was once a hub of militancy.

“I feel people are too scared to come here but there is a necessity to teach the students here more than any other city in India,” says Karishma, on her second threemonth stint in over a year.

Given the remote location of this village of about 1,600 residents and its troubled past, finding regular teachers was not easy for Sabbah Haji, 35, who runs the school. So she relies on volunteers from across the country, like Karishma and Sanu, who along with a group of locals, teach 400 children up to Class 8 — mostly first-generation learners — to think, question and stay abreast of the world.

“Coming here has been an eyeopening experience. The children despite the different kind of hardship they face are tremendously bright,” says Dhamini Ratnam, 33, who quit her journalism job in Mumbai to teach here.

Situated at 7,500 ft above sea level, Breswana, was one of the many villages of Doda where almost every household was hit by militancy till 2004. The only government school, burnt down in 1992 and reconstructed in 2005, has just 150 students and 10 teachers. Militants used the terrain to engage in a guerrilla battle with the forces. In 2008, the region was again in news due to unrest over the Amarnath land row.

However, set up a year later, the school is redefining education in a village where not more than 1% residents are educated beyond Class 10th.

“We are taught everything about the world,” says Yasir, 13, in fluent English. The son of a carpenter, Yasir writes poems in English and Urdu. His mother tongue is Kashmiri. A Class 8 student, Humaira Banu can read out the “Quality of Mercy” quote in

I feel people are too scared to come here but there is a necessity to teach the students here more than any other city in the country. KARISHMA PRAKASH, volunteer teacher at Haji Public School