Under-privileged children enact Caesar and Macbeth

These 277 wards of landless parents of the economically underprivileged community, studying free in a special residential school run by retired police officer J K Sinha are endowed with tremendous talent.

The perfection with which they performed the Shakespearean plays and snippets from epic Mahabharata left the audience awestruck.

Located nine km from the railway station in a residential area, the school run by an NGO 'Soshit Samadhan Kendra' since 2007 has ushered in a silent revolution.

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam had visited the school in November 2011.

Former IPS officer J K Sinha, the man behind the mission, told PTI "it is heartening to see these children speak English so fluently."

A class XI student of the school Manoj Kumar had recently hogged the headlines when he took the hot seat in 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' before Amitabh Bachchan and won Rs 25 lakh.

Kumar donated the entire prize-money to the school so that his brethren from the community could benefit from it.

Jehangir Khan Suri, school's English teacher and former BBC staffer, said "these students coming from economically poor musahar community are no less talented than those from privileged class."

The Musahar are a Hindu scheduled caste found in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India.

Aftab Seth, former Ambassador to Japan, Vietnam and Egypt, who paid a visit to the school yesterday, was awe-inspired watching these children perform.

Brimming with confidence, Anuj, a class V student, said he wished to become an IPS officer, while his classmate Chandan, whose poem got published in a magazine in US recently, oozed similar confidence.