A print of this picture by my friend the photographer Ashima Narain hangs in my living room. A small group of school-children huddle around a solar-powered lamp, trying to read. They are probably working on their homework. The dark threatens to flood them and the plain of the picture but they will not be conquered.

They will work on, they will strive on.

And when I am tired of teaching – and I have taught for 25 years at the Social Communications Media Department of the Sophia Polytechnic – I look at these children, I look at the small circle of light, I look at the growing darkness, and I think, “Okay, one more year.”

Children Reading around Solar Lamp by Ashima Narain.

Read all the articles in the Art of Resistance series here.