102-year-old Nanda Kishore Prusti, a resident of Odisha, was honoured with the Padma Shri award recently. Even at this point in life, the spirit of the elderly Nanda Prusty is worth seeing. He is only 7th pass, but still, he is working to educate the children around him as well as the elders. Nanda Kishore is a resident of Kantira village in Jajapur district.
In Kantira village he is known as Nanda Mastre" (Nanda Master). He has upheld the tradition of Chatshali till now. He may be the last person to do so. The Chatshali tradition refers to a non-formal school for primary education in Odisha. Every day in the morning, children gather near their house. Older Nanda Kishore teaches Odia alphabets and maths to these children. The 102-year-old could not go to school in his childhood. But he is teaching other children to read and write so that children and adults can learn to sign their own.
When Nanda Kishore was young, he studied till class seven by staying at his uncle's house. But soon his uncle shifted to Cuttack for a job. His father did not send him there for studies. His father wanted him to help him in farming, due to which his education remained incomplete but his desire for studies could not be diminished. This is a matter of those days when the country used to be a slave of the British.
Nanda Kishore said that he took the decision to make illiterate children literate. He said that he was not very busy so he started teaching the children under a tree. There was no school there at that time. He told that earlier children did not listen to him. But gradually he himself started coming to him for education.
The special thing is that he did not charge fees from any children for teaching. He has been teaching children for the last 70 years, but to date, he has not taken a single penny for it. He says that he loves teaching children. Nanda wants those children to grow up to be good human beings. They have no greed for money. Schools and colleges have now opened near Kantara. But the villagers still send their children to them to learn Oriya alphabets and maths. He said that he would continue to teach the children.