KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS hers. Standing there, for the first time, she does. A school in Kasaragod, a school in Thiruvananthapuram A government school in Kasaragod, far up in the north, discovers it is three places ahead of a famous school in the capital on the public ward-cleanliness board. The children cannot quite believe it. They have beaten Thiruvananthapuram at something. By the next term the rivalry has become the best thing about the year. The Kasaragod children guard their lead like a trophy; the Thiruvananthapuram children are determined to take it back. Two schools at opposite ends of Kerala, neither of which will ever meet, are making their own wards cleaner in order to beat each other, and a whole generation is learning that a tidy street is a thing worth being proud of. A nurse comes home to Kottayam A nurse who gave forty years to a hospital in the Gulf retires at last and comes home to Kottayam, to the quiet she once longed for and now, after a few months, finds a little empty. The work that defined her is over. She is not sure what she is for. 43