Seventy children. Their first fair.
Nataraj Gurukul is a small school on a forested hilltop near Mirik. Most of its children come from the tea gardens below, and none of them has ever been to a fest. On Children's Day we're carrying one up the hill: games, art, stories and a stage of their own.
- 80G receipt on every gift
- Pay here, never leave the page
- Spending posted after the fair
- Children
- 70
- School since
- 1994
- Up the hill
- ~3,000 ft
- The fair
- 14 November
The road runs out before the school does.
Dhajea Busty sits above Mirik in the Darjeeling hills, about 3,000 feet up. You drive the last stretch on a dirt road through the forest, then walk a stone path to the gate. On 3 November a group of us spent the day there with the children.
It began with 23 children in an 80-year-old building.
Swamy Mick was born in the United States and studied at Rutgers. He came to India in 1970 and found his teacher in Nataraja Guru, a disciple of the Kerala reformer Sri Narayana Guru, and the school carries his name. He became an Indian citizen in 1977 and moved to the Darjeeling hills in 1993.
Nataraj Gurukul is an English-medium primary school, run the old gurukul way. Its children are Nepali kids from the tea gardens and the Balasun Valley. Parents pay a small fee, and well-wishers from Darjeeling help with books and the odd dental check-up. The first batch went on to some of Darjeeling's best schools in 1998.
“Nataraj Gurukul promotes harmony, cooperation, universal brotherhood and peace.”Swamy Mick, founder
- 1970Swamy Mick reaches India
- 1977Becomes an Indian citizen
- 1994School opens with 23 children, helped by Dhajea Tea Estate
- 1995Two young women from the village join to care for the children
- 1998First batch moves on to top Darjeeling schools
- 2000The dairy starts with two cows
- 2007A waste project starts for the village
- Today70 students
Their own vegetables, their own milk, gas from cow dung.
Most of the food comes from the gurukul garden, grown without pesticides or chemical fertiliser. The cows give milk and curd. Their dung feeds a gobar gas plant that cooks the meals and lights the rooms, and what's left goes back to the garden.
72 seconds from 3 November.
Phone footage, lightly cut, with the sound as it was. This is the place your gift reaches, and these are the children it's for.
- The drive up and the walk to the gate
- Swamy Mick shows us the gobar gas plant
- The garden, the seedling crates and the cow shed
- Lunch together on the floor of the hall
- The children come in, and crowd the camera
- A speech, a dance and a lesson at the board
A child's growth doesn't show up on the marks sheet.
Children need to play. They need their bodies looked after and some quiet in their heads. A 2024 WHO and UNICEF report found that a third of mental health conditions start before the age of 14, and WHO links regular activity with better fitness, learning and mental health.* So the fair is a day to play, learn and simply be children, and maybe a glimpse of how much joy is still ahead of them.
- Talent showChildren, students and volunteers sing, dance and perform. Every child who takes part gets a gift from Unnati Foundation.
- HealthA BMI check-up stall
- LearningOrigami, and storytelling to think and dream with
- EnvironmentA talk by Save Earth for Life
- ArtFace painting and tyre painting
- GamesTell the Donkey, Break the Pyramid and Tyre Football
- SnacksThekwa and popcorn
Tyre planters
The children paint about eight tyres. Most become pots for flowers and vegetables in the gurukul's garden.
A new play space
The Tyre Football tyres stay at the gurukul after the fair, for the children to keep playing.
“Time spent playing is not time taken away from learning.”Why we're doing this
Help us give 70 children their first fair.
Choose an amount and pay right here, by UPI, card or netbanking. The form is run by Seva Stack, the donor system behind every Humrahi gift, and the payment goes through Razorpay.
Your gift helps cover the day itself:
- Paint and old tyres for the art stall and the planters
- Paper, colours and face paint for the stalls
- Getting the volunteers up the hill to Mirik
We haven't set a target. Every gift is tagged to this fair in our books, and after 14 November we'll post here what came in and what it paid for, as we did for the Siliguri school library. Your 80G receipt arrives by email. How we report money.
Form not loading? Donate on Seva Stack's page instead.
Six groups, one Saturday.
Humrahi Foundation
Organising the fair, with about 10 volunteers.
Unnati Foundation
Storytelling, and gifts for every child in the talent show.
Inspiria NSS Committee
Running the BMI and origami stalls with 10 to 12 students.
Save Earth for Life
A Siliguri cleanup group. Giving the environment talk and sending volunteers.
Plogwarts
Collaborating on the fair.
Siliguri Canopy
Supporting the fair.
Core team: Ankit Mahato, Vice President, Humrahi Foundation, who is leading the fair · Saurav Pradhan, Humrahi Foundation and founder of Plogwarts · Khushi Lepcha, Executive Assistant and Content Lead, Humrahi Foundation.
The fair is on 14 November. Be part of it from wherever you are.
Donate to the fairFollow the day on Instagram at @myhumrahi.
* WHO and UNICEF, Mental health of children and young people: service guidance (2024). WHO, Guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour (2020). The gurukul's history draws partly on C.M. Paul, “American swami's gurukul serves Darjeeling kids”, Matters India, 22 August 2017.