It's a classroom unlike any I've seen. There is neither door nor ceiling, just four brick walls and a few big sheets of canvas - propped up by a metal structure - to keep out the rain and the elements.
There are no tables or chairs either. The three teachers and their 20 or so charges - from three-year-olds to teenagers - sit on several well-used mats spread over the hard mud floor.
Nothing, however, jolts the senses more than this classroom's location. Surrounded by mountains of refuse, it sits smack in the middle of a garbage dump in Okhla Phase I, a grim-looking industrial district dotted with factories and shanties.
The outsider may baulk at the makeshift school but Anuradha Bakshi says it keeps its students away from gangs who use them to beg, steal or peddle drugs.
It also offers them a shot at escaping the fate that plagues millions in the country: illiteracy and poverty.
A feisty and vocal slip of a 54-year-old, Bakshi is the founder of projectwhy. This is an initiative she started six years ago to help educate children and solve child-centred problems in the slums of New Delhi.
'We have taught in pig stys, in parks, by the roadside, between houses,' she says.
The whole idea, she stresses, is to show that to teach children, one needs only the will to do so. 'The rest is there if we look for it.'
The slums where she spends many of her waking hours are worlds removed from the privileged one she grew up in. Her father was a distinguished diplomat who was conferred an MBE by the British government. Her mother was the daughter of an Indian freedom fighter and had a PhD in linguistics from the University of Prague.
Bakshi - their only child - was born in Prague in 1952.
Her father's diplomatic postings saw her growing up in - among other places - Beijing, Paris, Rabat (Morocco) and Saigon.
Her childhood memories include sitting on the King of Morocco's lap when her father presented his diplomatic credentials, and riding piggy back on Uncle Ho's back. That's Uncle Ho Chi Minh.
Her parents instilled in her a sense of fair play and equality, she says. They taught her to 'see with your heart, not your eyes'.
The family moved back to New Delhi in the 1970s. Like her father, she could have been a diplomat, for she passed the very tough Indian Administrative Service test. Instead, she became an academic and a French interpreter for former Indian prime ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi at high level ministerial meetings.
She got married to an executive with Air India and they have two daughters.
Elder daughter Parul, 32, has a doctorate in social psychology and has just spent a couple of years doing a disability survey in Afghanistan for an NGO with her French husband.
Younger daughter Shamika, 24, left school at 15 and worked several years with autistic children. Today, she helps her mother run projectwhy.
Bakshi fell into a deep funk when she lost both her mother and father in 1990 and 1992 respectively. Perhaps it's psychosomatic but she wore her grief like the neckbrace prescribed by her doctor for a mild case of spondylitis, a form of arthritis which affects the spine. She recalls: 'The doctor asked me to wear it for a little while but I never took it off for six years. It became an emotional support.'
One day, her manicurist told her about a Nepali healer in Delhi's Giri Nagar slums.
Bakshi says: 'The healer told me not to waste my energy on grief and to channel it into something positive.' She started a trust in her father's name and started distributing vitaminised biscuits to slum children.
One day, she chanced upon Manu, a mentally challenged young man caked in dirt. He had maggot-infested wounds and had also been sodomised and physically abused. Bakshi rented a hovel, cleaned him up and nursed him back to health.
The neckbrace came off and projectwhy was born.
She explains why she chose the name: 'The reason was all the questions that needed answers.'
Parents soon came a-knocking, beseeching her to teach their children English. Six years down the road, projectwhy has several classes offering full education including computer lessons to nearly 600 poor children. Although some of the 30 or so teaching staff have degrees, most come from within the community.
Bakshi is passionate in her belief that regardless of their creed or ancestry, people - with the help of education - can have a shot at shaping their own destiny.
The results are startling: projectwhy students have a 100 per cent pass rate in their school examinations.
Many lives have been changed.
There's Rani Bahardwaj, a feisty 24-year-old Nepali girl who's transcended her impoverished background to become Bakshi's 'executive assistant'. She had to drop out of school during the ninth grade (the Indian equivalent of Secondary 3) because she was 'slapped five times across the face' by her teacher when she was late with her school fees.
Today, she oversees projectwhy's administration, from book-keeping and development to staff welfare. Her boss says: 'She's our greatest success story. In another time and another place, she would have obtained a Harvard MBA.'
There are others. Four-year-old Utpal - who sustained third-degree burns after falling into a wok of fish curry three years ago - is now in a boarding school. His mother is a recovering alcoholic; his father is missing. 'The future would have been bleak 15 years from now, for him and his mother. At least now, he can have a shot at becoming anything - a choreographer, a doctor.
'I want planet WHY to be a place where difference is celebrated and respected.'
Cynics may scoff at her idealism. However, if you spend time at projectwhy's centre in Giri Nagar - bought with funds raised by foreign supporters - you will understand the diminutive woman's passion. In the disabled section on the second floor of the cramped three-storey building, a dozen children sit. There's Nanhe, who has malformed legs, heart atrophy and lots of stones in his kidneys. There's Anurag, a 13-year-old autistic boy whose father asked, after his son fell four storeys in an accident: 'Why didn't he die?'
There's, of course, the famous Manu.
All have heartbreaking backgrounds but there is genuine joy and big smiles on their faces as they troop in at 8.30 each morning.
It's no walk in the park. Bakshi's been chased out of places where she and her staff teach, had their tents pulled down by politicians and hoodlums who don't want her educating children.
She's also been hauled off to labour courts and accused of a whole litany of wrong-doings.
She says: 'People like me are agents of change. We are never liked by the powers that be because when you change things, you automatically change the top. So the guy on the street is no more going to vote for you because of a bottle of alcohol. He will vote if you do your work. Politicians can no longer manipulate elections.'
Because projectwhy does not rely on government or institutional help, she raises her own funds. Among them is a 'one rupee (S$0.03) a day campaign', which she hopes will create a wide donor base. She says she just needs 4,000 of such donors to fund education for her 600 charges and 30 staff.
'I'm asking for that one thing which will not make a difference to you but which will make a lot of difference to all the people in the project.'
It's not easy, says the energetic woman who documents her feelings, triumphs and frustrations in a blog at http://projectwhy.blogspot.com/.
'We live from hand to mouth. I get a fair amount from young Indians abroad who have found through my blog an India that's real and honest.' She has also dipped into her inheritance when funds run low.
Bakshi, who has also raised funds for seven open-heart surgeries, says candidly: 'The high road I chose is lonely, difficult and uphill - steeped in a multitude of reasons all screaming: give up.'
But she doesn't, not when she has changed lives, given second chances and brought together people who - because of caste and other social stigmas - would have no reason to connect. The philosopher Frederich Nietzsche once wrote: 'He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.' He must have been thinking of a person like her.
# For more information on projectwhy, log on to http://projectwhy.org
A Life Less Ordinary: New Asian Heroes is a weekly series brought to you by DBS