Ramakrishna Kongalla, who spent 15 years at Sanskriti School in a small Andhra village Hyderguda, never really thought he would teach at NIFT Hyderabad one day. Hyderguda is now anything but a village, for the building boom has transformed the area beyond recognition. “If not for Reddy sir, I would have had no design career,” he says. Similarly, Shekar Shinde, the son of a village cobbler, spent 15 years at Sanskriti and now teaches art at Chirec International, one of Hyderabad’s prestigious schools. “I’m the first in my family to finish post-graduation,” he says. “All my childhood memories happened at this school.”
Both, like many others, passed out from Sanskriti School, a unique experiment by BA Reddy, a cultural and art centre that started in 1992 to educate rural children who dropped out schools either due to lack of access or help their family trade. Known for his evocative figurative style, Reddy’s canvases often draw upon the vast well of Indian epics like the Ramayana, yet he paints these mythological tales with a contemporary sensibility. His belief that art should not remain locked within galleries or the grasp of the privileged has guided his journey. For many children, Sanskriti offered more than art lessons. But perhaps Reddy’s greatest gift was what he refused to do: he never forced his students to imitate him.
Even today, he sits in the middle of the room, surrounded on all sides by children. Some are cross-legged on the floor, their sketchbooks balanced carefully on their laps; others are squeezed on to the window ledge; a few are even perched outside on the steps, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of what he is up to. Every so often, a hand shoots up.
“Sir, look at mine!”
“Sir, is this right?”
Reddy bends forward, peers through his glasses, and nods with a quiet smile.
“Once he asked us to draw an owl,” Kongalla remembers with a grin. “At the end of the class, there were 50 completely different owls on the wall. He never told us which one was right. That was the magic. He wanted us to find our own way.”
When Reddy first moved to this quiet village outside Hyderabad, Hyderguda was little more than a handful of houses scattered among lush paddy fields. “You could see the school from far away,” he recalls with a chuckle. “It stood out like a lighthouse.”
The children Reddy saw every day when he shifted here fascinated him. He noticed they spent their afternoons ferrying water on bicycles—there was no running water then—earning just a few rupees. Others tagged along with carpenters, electricians, painters, hoping to learn a trade. There was nowhere for them to play, no park, no library, no center for art.
“I couldn’t just sit and watch,” Reddy says. “Children need a space to dream. Otherwise, they forget how.”
And so, Sanskriti School was born in a single room—not as an institution, but as an experiment; a creative gathering place. It opened for two hours every Saturday and Sunday. There were no uniforms, no report cards—only paper, pencils, and a chance to draw. Children came, curious at first; thirty of them on the first day. By the end of the first year, there were more than a hundred.
The early years were often complicated. Padma, Reddy’s daughter, recalls how, in the beginning, children sometimes stole supplies and even slippers. “But they changed,” she says. “They learned to respect the space, and themselves.” Many who once came barefoot to class now come back as professionals, proud of what they’ve achieved. “We couldn’t even see him in class sometimes,” Padma laughs. “He’d be sitting in his chair, completely hidden by children. Some would be standing on the steps outside, peeking in.”
Over time, the school grew. The original room became a library lined with donated books. A second floor was built—a bright 2,000-square-foot space where light pours in through windows. There is now even a small room with a printmaking press, giving students their first taste of professional art techniques.
But the real story of Sanskriti is not about its building. It is about the lives it has shaped.
The world outside Sanskriti has changed. The sleepy village is now part of a bustling town dotted with apartment towers, shopping complexes, and busy roads. The children no longer ferry water on bicycles, but they still come to Sanskriti on weekends, about seventy of them every week, some of them the children of former students.
Since 2022, the school has charged a fee of `1,000 a month. The fee helps sustain Sanskriti, but its spirit remains unchanged. Reddy, now 85, still comes every weekend, sitting on the same chair. His work has been exhibited internationally; he has been awarded Poland’s Order of Smiles, an honour shared by only two other Indians—Mother Teresa and cartoonist Shankar. And yet, when you ask him about it, he waves it off. “The greatest reward,” he says, “is to see them live happy lives.”
And perhaps that is the truest measure of his success. Not the awards, not the titles, not even the paintings—but the children scattered across Hyderabad and beyond, each carrying a little piece of Sanskriti within them, each finding their own way to draw their owl.