Akanksha is one of the parterning NGOs in the Stayfree DNA I Can Women's Half Marathon

Jyoti Reddy’s earliest memory of school, she says, is when she was six years old, and her maths teacher lit a cigarette in the middle of teaching them multiplication.

In that dilapidated municipal school, Reddy, 18, a P’Demello Road resident, knew this was not what ‘education’ was supposed to be. 

“It just got worse – he next began chewing on guthka when he was not smoking in class. School meant coughing at the smoke and getting disgusted at his incoherent speech between mouthfuls of gutkha,” says Reddy.