Kali Sadhan Mukhopadhyay – A Teacher By Passion
At 74, retired teacher Kali Sadhan Mukhopadhyay continues to teach mathematics at Lalbathani High School in Malda, undeterred by age or pay.
By all accounts, Kali Sadhan Mukhopadhyay ought to be enjoying a leisurely retirement—perhaps tending to a rose garden, sipping cha with his grandchildren, or watching reruns of Ramayan with a warm shawl draped over his shoulders. After all, the chap is seventy-four, his hair’s gone pepper-and-salt (more salt than pepper, if we’re being honest), and his voice now boasts the kind of baritone one usually associates with All India Radio’s golden years.
But no—none of that for this gentleman. Instead, every morning, like clockwork, Kali Sadhan dons his crisp white kurta, tucks a chalk and duster under his arm, and trots off to Lalbathani High School in Malda. You see, although he officially hung up his boots thirteen years ago, retirement, for him, is but a word in the dictionary—probably wedged between “reptile” and “ridiculous”.
And ridiculous it would be, frankly, to imagine this school surviving without him.
When Duty Trumps Dosserdom
Lalbathani High School—surrounded by mango orchards and occasional political drama—was established in 1953. Today, it houses some 750 bright-eyed students from class VI to XII. Unfortunately, it also suffers from what one might politely call a “slight staffing kerfuffle”. With eleven sanctioned teaching posts and two recently axed under Supreme Court orders, the school is now running on educational fumes. Add to that the lack of a clerk, and you’ve got a school running on what can only be described as duct tape and divine intervention.
Enter Kali Sadhan Mukhopadhyay, who has become, quite literally, the maths department in human form.
Ask the acting Headmaster, Manikkumar Prasad, and he’ll tell you: “For 35 years I’ve worked alongside Kali Babu. Rain or shine, he arrives bang on time. Retirement? Could’ve fooled me.”
He’s not being hyperbolic. Kali Babu takes classes from VI to X, unbothered by salary or service record, driven purely by an old-fashioned sense of duty—a trait now rarer than a politician admitting fault.
The Formula for Inspiration
While the state’s education ministry is embroiled in one of its classic rows—this time over disqualified teachers—Kali Babu keeps his head down and his blackboard full. No placards. No press statements. Just algebraic expressions and chalk dust.
“I have no comments about the job situation,” he says in a tone so calm it could lull an angry wasp. “But I do know that the children of Lalbathani must be moulded into proper human beings. That is my only goal.”
And mould them he does. Anika Khatun, the class eight topper, swears by his methods. “Sir explains the same sum using multiple formulae. It’s like magic—but logical.”
Ageing Like Fine Rasgulla
Satyendranath Chakraborty, the President of the School Committee and six years Kali Babu’s senior, puts it rather bluntly: “I’m older than him and I couldn’t take a class even if you bribed me with mangoes. But he does it daily. The students are the better for it.”
It’s hard not to see Kali Babu as something of a national treasure—minus the gold hoard and Nicholas Cage. In a world where many run at the first sign of inconvenience, here is a man running towards a blackboard, day after day, without pay, without fuss, and certainly without hashtags.
His tale may not make the headlines of the Telegraph, nor will it likely trend on X (formerly known as Twitter, because someone fancied being cryptic), but it deserves to be shouted from rooftops, or at the very least, scribbled neatly into the margins of an exercise book labelled Inspiration.
One might say Kali Sadhan Mukhopadhyay is old school. But isn’t that exactly what we need to keep our schools afloat?
News and Picture Sources : Ananda Bazar Patrika
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