As I waited to meet the principal, the teacher’s voice drifted out from the open classroom window. It was a dark room with the children on the floor. I couldn’t make out more from the outside. The voice was repeating “Kanha is a national park. It is open till 6pm in the summers and 4pm in the winters.”. After 3 repetitions, he instructed the children to repeat after him, which they did. In a small town in Karnataka, a thousand kilometre away, the complete irrelevance of Kanha’s opening hours is obvious. The dark room and the disembodied voice unwittingly portrayed a caricature that is often real, of teaching in India. All our stated educational policies and curricular approaches are dead against this kind of meaningless activity that passes as education. However, in the classrooms of this country, far and near from where these policies are made, this routine goes on.