-Ratnajyoti Dutta –
Today, I am writing an obituary for a school teacher who used to live in a remote village in the Northeast. He taught in the village high school for nearly four decades. The period when he served the village school was an entirely different era. Those days, electricity was not there, not to mention the telephone, mobile and internet services of the digital era of these days.
He served that part of the country on a mission to impart education to the children of poor families. People like him were then the only connection with the village flocks and the rest of the world.
The name of the village teacher is Late Megh Naryan Goala. The name of the village is Fakirtilla, near the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Silchar, Assam. He studied at the prestigious Gurucharan College.
Megh Narayan ji was a popular teacher for his simplicity and student-friendly nature. His popularity can be judged by the fact that after he retired from the school service, he had contested a local body election and won by a huge margin.
As a teacher and a social worker in his village, he touched the lives of people in humble ways. I knew him from my college days. He used to visit our village home frequently as we were neighbours. He had a lot of respect for my father, Late Radhapada Dutta as an elder brother. He used to treat my mother as his own Bhabhiji. My parents were fond of Megh Narayan ji as they knew he had wisdom on his side.
Masterji made a humble contribution towards the making of Assam University by mobilizing public support along with my social worker father in favour of a public movement that demanded a central university in the Barak Valley of Assam in the days of the initial conceptualisation of such a university.
He was a member of the Hindi advisory committee of the Heavy Industries Ministry.
Megh Narayan Ji had immense respect for the Bengali culture and language. He was a Hindi-speaking person but had a deep knowledge of Bengali literature, art and culture.
His family upheld Megh Narayanji’s spirit of language harmony by printing his Shraddhya Chiti in Bangla.
His contribution to the society can be still visible on a plaque in the school premises where he used to teach. The plaque mentions the development work done by him as a member of the elected local body.
Indeed, Goala ji could touch the lives of common men in a humble way!
(The writer is a Delhi-based internationally acclaimed journalist.)
