The next morning, Vir sent someone to get Niraj and his sister Pabi to his room. He was editing a book by himself when the siblings arrived. He put down his pen and looked at the siblings.
Niraj and Pabi were distracted by Vir's large room that was more than half the size of their house back in the village. The decorations were also as beautiful as they had imagined a prince's room to look like.
"You're here. How did you feel about staying here? Were you comfortable?" Vir thought that if he didn't speak, the siblings would just stand there stunned.
"Ah, yes! It was comfortable. We got new clothes, a lot of food, and a room for ourselves. It was more than what we had in the village." Niraj answered Vir as politely as he could.
After seeing so many guards and servants in the mansion and the way they treated their masters, an automatic filter of politeness was added to Niraj's tone subconsciously. Humans are quick to adapt to new environments if they find them suitable.
"Okay, then you can stay here for the time being. Did you go to school in your village?"
Niraj was confused about what to feel about being told that he could stay in such a nice place. He had not yet found any way Vir might hurt them. His sister Pabia on the other hand was quick to get excited by the news. Her sunken, malnourished face had a brilliant smile.
Despite his confusion, Niraj managed to answer, "Yes, it had been about a year since I joined the school before the bargi attacked us."
"That's great. You two will be put into an orphanage that my family will be running. There will be lots of other kids and all of you will study and live together." Vir began explaining about the orphanage to the siblings.
It felt very weird to Niraj and Pabi. No matter how they looked at him, Vir didn't even look older than Pabi. But the way he talked was like how their parents or the other elders talked to them. But somehow, it felt right. It didn't feel like a child acting older at all.
"Will I be able to live with my brother at the orphanage?" Pabi asked in a low mutter. She looked very concerned and anxious.
"You will get to see each other often during the day. But at night you will have to stay with other sisters in the orphanage. Boys and girls will have to stay in two different buildings at night."
Although Pabi was a little upset, she could accept the fact that she wouldn't be completely separated from her brother. They get to live together but have to sleep in different houses which was acceptable to her. Her brother was the only person she could trust to protect her.
Vir had decided to house both male and female orphans in the orphanage but they had to be separated into two dormitories. It was safer that way and he could avoid the societal pressures from people complaining about the difference between boys and girls.
….
Vir sat down with Swarup to discuss the detailed plans for the orphanage in the afternoon. They were sitting outside in the courtyard under a warm afternoon sun. The winter was here so everyone tried getting as much sunlight as possible.
"So you want to create these buildings with large, sectioned-off rooms for the children to sleep in? If we were to house 20-30 kids in one room, we would need at least 15 to 20 rooms like that to accommodate the number of orphans we are estimating to enroll."
Swarup began calculating the costs. If they built fired kiln bricks and lime mortar to build the buildings, it would be very cheap and durable. They could also build the buildings fairly quickly like that. Add a few wooden doors and windows and flooring and it's done.
"You didn't forget the part about needing some fields around there, right? We will make the kids do farming as part of their education. They can grow their food and generate some money as well. They need something other to do than just studying."
Swarup looked at Vir with a squint, "You are a very cunning nephew. You are going to make them work for you right from the beginning. You even call it education."
"Thank you for the compliment, uncle. There should also be ten to fifteen large rooms that can accommodate about 60 people. They can be the places where classes can be taken. The people who will work for us in the future should study every day no matter the sun or the rain."
Swarup laughed at Vir's half-joking tone. He didn't want his investment wasted either. If he is going to pay to take care of them, the least he can expect from the kids is diligence and hard work. He had a plan to ensure that.
"How about this? We should conduct biannual tests and anyone who fails three times will be sent out to work in the fields or the factories. We can't keep feeding the useless ones forever."
'In this timeline, every kid in the future will curse Swarup Chand as the inventor of exams. I hate to remove children from our care but we don't have unlimited resources.'
Swarup chuckled at his own thoughts. "That's a great idea. But I think we need to design the tests well. There might be hardworking students who aren't good at studying but better at other things. Just the ones who don't even try to get better should be the ones removed."
'I hope this little change in testing method leads to some good changes in the future. I did my best for you all future students. You should worship me.'
"That's true. There are always some hard-headed kids who excel at simple factory work."
Vir didn't think just a test was enough. "Uncle, if there is a punishment, there should be a reward too right? How about giving the top three students gifts after every test? It should motivate them to work harder."
Swarup was happy. "Good, good. I like it. Our dear nephew is really smart, isn't he? What should we do about the teachers? We also need female teachers, right?"
Vir had already thought about this topic for a long time. The conclusion was simple, "For the male teachers, we should look for young, open-minded teachers open to learning. Those set in their ways won't accept learning new things. As for the female teachers, we should prioritize hiring young widows who have had some education."
Swarup frowned, "That might be difficult. Even if we wanted to hire them, they might not want to work at an orphanage. And I don't think we can find many educated widows anyway."
"It's fine. We can just hire women who have been to school or studied before. There should be plenty of those who would be happy to work at an orphanage for some wages."
Vir wasn't particularly worried. Although there was some prejudice, quite a lot of women went to schools or were educated at home in the Indian subcontinent at this time. Since this was a period of relative prosperity, people didn't discriminate between their sons and daughters a lot.
When there is plenty to go around, people live in relative harmony. Only when people are poor and desperate they start to create divisions and discriminate. That's what happened in the history that Vir had read about.
The British sucked dry the wealth in the Indian subcontinent and the people turned against each other for whatever little was left. By the time they had hit rock bottom and bounced back to fight against their oppressors, the Brits had grown too strong.
Vir's thoughts were cut off by Swarup's words. "That's it for the teachers. But what about the books the children will study?"
"I am almost done preparing them. I would like to ask my uncle to help me print about three hundred copies of each of those books."
Swarup was confused by the number of books to be printed. "Didn't you plan for housing at least 450-500 orphans? So why so few books? Even if you have ten different books, it would cost less than five thousand rupees. We are printing it cheaply anyway."
Vir explained, "There is no need to give all the books to them. We will make a number of them share the books. They will have to collectively take care of the books. It can be a method for them to learn responsibility and bond with each other."
"Hah. I almost forgot those words came out of a child. If not for the childish voice, I wouldn't even notice. And what bonding? It is a recipe for fights to break out." Swarup laughed.
"Don't children grow closer through fighting?" Vir said with a straight face.
Swarup was dumbfounded, "What do you know about how children grow up? You need to grow up first to point fingers at others. Anyway, why not print a lot of them and store them somewhere safe in advance?
If it works out as grandfather wants, there will be more orphanages run by our family. They would need books too right? And we need to store extra sets for emergencies too. Also, it would be easier to print a lot at once than to do them in batches."
Vir was convinced by Swarup's reasoning. He had forgotten that the printers of this era were not the ones he was used to. There was a lot of setting up to be done before you could print. And since he had plans to expand his schools all over Bengal, he needed reserves.
"That's true, uncle. So let's print about 1000 sets for the orphanage here. You can calculate the rest."
"Hmm, we will make the other branches pay for all of the printing anyway, so it doesn't matter. New books written by employing experts from Western and Eastern countries should be enough of an excuse to raise the price of printing, don't you think?"
'This guy is a businessman to the core. He said it was a small cost but now he wants to share the cost among the other family branches.'
Vir boldly ignored Swarup's words, "Uncle, could you help find the teachers early while the construction is being done? I assume it will take at least a month or two before it will be done? It would be great if the proportion was 70% male and 30% female teachers."
"Sure, we will have to find the accommodations for the time being but it can be done. How many do you need me to find? Also, why do you need them early?" Swarup asked curiously.
"The curriculum that I have designed is completely different from the way children are taught in other schools. It is a mixture of a couple of European styles and methods in the subcontinent. The books also contain a lot of knowledge from Western books. So I thought the teachers needed to be trained and prepared beforehand."
Vir's explanation impressed Swarup. "You have prepared quite a lot for this, haven't you? What plan are you cooking in that tiny head? Since you seemed to have planned so thoroughly from who knows when it can't just be about the orphanage."
Swarup's instincts were very sharp, as expected of a great businessman. But Vir wasn't going to let anyone know about the big picture that he was drawing in his head. The pieces need to fit together at the end, but at least for now they just need to be placed on the board.
"I was just making notes while reading the different books and thought that our education was stagnating so I thought about updating the books to match the rest of the world's development." Vir gave a plausible explanation. And it wasn't entirely a lie either.
If his books become mainstream study material in the Indian subcontinent, at least the people will know about all the advancements that the rest of the world was doing. Even if no scientists, intellectuals, and researchers are born out of it, just the awareness is a big step up.
"I am getting very curious about the books that you have prepared. I should read them when you send them to me for printing. Let us see what new knowledge you have managed to add to the things I studied during my schooling days."
"You will be surprised at how different it is from how you studied, uncle. It could revolutionize the education system all over the world altogether." Vir bragged but Swarup dismissed it with a simple eye roll. He thought Vir was just joking.
'I have incorporated the education system developed over centuries in the future. It would be weird if it wasn't revolutionary. In this timeline, the Christian missionaries who will come to 'educate' India in the future will sit in the classes run by my schools to get educated.'