Remembering Besant Montessori School in Mumbai – Where It All Began

Aunty Tehmi Wadia (top right) with the children of the first group of children at Besant Montessori School

Yesterday, four little girls who met in Montessori school at the age of five met again, now at sixty. Between 1970 and 1974, we were together at Besant Montessori School in Mumbai. The school was guided by two remarkable educators. Aunty Tehmi Wadia trained in Chennai in 1939, and Aunty Jer Garda trained there in 1949.

They were part of the early Montessori movement in India. Maria Montessori and her son Mario Montessori came to India at the Invitation of Rukmini Devi and Dr. Aurundel and conducted their first training courses in India at the Theosophical Society in Chennai.

Aunty Tehmi Wadia  and Aunty Jer Garda, whose families were associated with the Theosophical Society colony in Mumbai, had the privilege of learning from Maria Montessori during this time. It was a period when India itself was searching for new ways of being. As the freedom movement gathered strength, many were questioning old hierarchies and imagining a society based on dignity, equality, and responsibility. Education, too, was being rethought. Montessori education, with its deep respect for the child and its emphasis on freedom guided by responsibility, resonated strongly with these emerging values.

We were four — Khushnoor Anklesaria, Nandita Hemmadi, Rukmini Ramachandran and Isobel Swamidasan. Aunty Jer’s girls and close friends. Yesterday we had the most heartwarming reunion and spent the day together, almost smelling the fragrance of memories and remembering a Mumbai of yesteryear.

Everything remains the same in our hearts, even though the city has changed so much around us. We found those small pockets that somehow remain unchanged. We remembered our young parents — most of whom are no longer with us now — and our siblings, older and younger. We spoke of the bus rides to school, our classmates, and the teachers who filled our childhood with warmth and presence.

Aunty Gulu, Aunty Enid with her craft table of crepe paper and that slimy glue from the blue bottle, the musical Aunty Ivy, Aunty Pilloo, Aunty Hema, Aunty Nancy, Aunty Avril and Aunty Roshan. We remembered the shed, the see-saw, the music classes in Aunty Jer’s house, percussion band and piano lessons, and the concerts we looked forward to each year in her home.

Besant Montessori School was a place where children were simply children. There were no differences made on the basis of class, caste, religion, or economic background. We grew up together in freedom, with clear codes of behaviour and respect for one another.

Aunty Tehmi and Aunty Jer were deeply personal educators. They listened carefully and offered guidance. They stood by their principles and by the families they served. Education for them was always about the child.

At Supraja Montessori Study Centre we remember these pioneers with deep gratitude, and in our work we try to hold on to these same core values. Childhood passes, cities change, and generations move on.

But the love and respect we experience as children remain quietly alive within us.