Gyaneshwar Tripathy runs his school the way many Delhi government schools run. Rules bend when they need to. Chaos fills the gaps. Nobody complains too loudly, because this is just how things are.

Then the Cambridge trip comes up. The ten Delhi schools with the best board results stand to win a government-funded training programme in Cambridge. Gyaneshwar hears this, and something shifts into place. Transforming the school is always somewhere on his list. Now it is the whole list.

He gets his teachers together - a mixed bag of different approaches, energy levels, and opinions on whether any of this will work. They go ahead anyway.