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A house as gift on teachers’ day
Come September 5, a retired teacher will get his Guru Dakshina (offering) when 500 of his students, whom he taught Tamil 20 years ago, will gift him a newly built two-storey house.
Come September 5, a retired teacher will get his Guru Dakshina (offering) when 500 of his students, whom he taught Tamil 20 years ago, will gift him a newly built two-storey house.
Tamil scholar S V Venkatraman, who retired in 1985 after teaching in a school in Gurusamypalayam in Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district, had to move out of the town as he was unable to pay the rent.
When his students got to know of it, they decided to do their bit. “Around 500 of us held a meeting in 2007. We decided to pool in money for a house and gift it to him,” M A Arthanari, a retired municipal commissioner who called the meeting, said.
“He gets a pension of Rs 9,000. He has to support his wife and son. All his savings have been spent on the marriages of his two daughters. So, we thought we should do something for our Guru," he said.
“We collected Rs 10 lakh, bought a plot and got the house constructed,” he said.
The house will be handed over to Venkataraman on Teachers’ Day. The day is celebrated on September 5 which is the birthday of country’s second president Dr S. Radhakrishnan, a great philosopher and teacher.
