MORNINGS are messy for Saira, Jahanara and Samar Spacie. Where 7 am once meant dragging their groggy selves out of bed for school, a splash in the gurgling river has now replaced this monotony. Sometimes, when they have more time on their hands, the siblings scramble up the craggy branches of a tree, or just sway below, on a rope that serves as a makeshift swing. Despite the frenetic cramming of activity quite early in the day, the kids are breakfasted and ready for class at 9 am sharp. Their headmistress is their mother, independent photographer Ashima Narain, who describes herself as "strict and shouty," and "temperamentally unsuited" to teach primary school kids. But, since June, this has been her life. Her holiday home in Karjat is the centre of new learning.

Narain has been home-schooling her children—aged seven, five and four—for the last four months. She and husband Matthew Spacie, after much thought and deliberation, decided to take the kids out of school. This wasn't part of the plan. But neither was the pandemic, and the subsequent lockdown, which led the Spacies, who lived in a rented apartment in Khar, to adapt to the bucolic life in rural Maharashtra.