Chennai: Come September 5, a retired teacher will get his 'Guru Dakshina' when 500 of his students, whom he taught Tamil over 20 years back, will gift him a newly built two-storey house.
Tamil scholar S V Venkatraman, who retired in 1985 after working for 41 years at a school in Gurusamypalayam in Tamil Nadu's Namakkal District, had to move out of the town as he was unable to pay his rent.
When news about his plight reached his students, they came together to his rescue.
"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 and an old student, who convened the meeting, said from Namakkal.
"Our Tamil Pundit 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 and purchased a 1,200 square foot plot and constructed the house," he said, adding that initially their teacher was reluctant to accept the house, but was finally prevailed upon by them to accept it.
The house will be handed over to Venkataraman on September 5, the Teachers Day.