Incidences of teachers appreciating kind gestures of students may not be unusual. But, the situation was refreshingly different on Sunday when 80-year-old retired teachers were overwhelmed by the affection showered on them by their students of the Government High School, Chithode, who had organised a get-together after 36 years.
For, the ‘students’ had driven home the point that respect for teachers would remain all through life. According to the octogenarian speakers, the get-together would well serve as a pointer to the current generation of students on holding teachers in high esteem forever.
It was a family get-together most of the students of the 1977-78 batch kept date with high anticipation. Seventy seven of the 88 students of the SSLC batch turned up. Of them, Nalini, who is settled in the USA, flew down with her husband Shanmugam, a textile consultant. The meeting also had the presence of Deputy Mayor K.C. Palanichamy whose wife Nirmala was a batch mate.
There are certain niceties in life that would linger in the mind forever, and the get-together is one such, according to A. Velliangiri, a lawyer in Erode district, who, along with his Karur-based batch mate Maheshwaran was instrumental in the success of the get-together.
They gathered the phone numbers of all their batch mates and even undertook personal visits to make the get-together happen. About half of the batch mates had grandchildren, but had no qualms reliving their student days in jovial mood for the few hours they were together. Five of their teachers had died due to old age. Nine of the eleven teachers turned up to bless their students collectively by showering flower petals.
To set an example worthy of emulation, the old batch of students has decided to make the get-together an annual affair.
