79-yr-old's passion to brighten up future

To sir with love

 
Seventy-nine-year-old Shankar Bandhu, a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s small Lakhimpur-Kheri town, about 150 km from here, is a retired teacher, but he never gave up the teaching profession.

In fact, he had never been involved so much in teaching as he is now.
“Earlier my teaching was time-bound and according to the syllabus, but now I can teach as I like,” Bandhu says.

Since he officially took retirement, Bandhu has been teaching poor and helpless children at his small house in Maharajnagar locality in the town without charging any fee.
“I wanted to make a little contribution to the development of the country and there is no better way of doing it than teaching the children, the future citizens,” he says.

It was his strong determination to teach the poor and helpless that prompted him to close his general merchant shop. “Although I used to have books for children in my shop, I later felt that I would be able to serve society better by teaching the children,” Bandhu said.

Lacking the means to advertise, he approaches the parents using his cycle and encourages them to send their wards to his house for receiving tuitions free of cost.
Initially the response was not good but it picked up later. Currently, Bandhu has as many as 45 children and all of them come from the underprivileged section of society.

Popularly called “dadda” (grandfather), Bandhu pampers and encourages his students if they score good marks in their class and uses his wisdom acquired through his life to prove as a guide and a friend to his students.

“The children also play with me and always share their problems,” he says.
Living each day with a sense of satisfaction and content, Bandhu however, laments that the parents, who are poor, are not very interested in sending their children to the schools and instead  want them to learn some technical work and start earning
money.