Our member, Ms S. De, lived in Kharagpur. Her husband was a professor at Kharagpur IIT. Along with a few like-minded ladies, she started a charitable organisation for the underprivileged families, working as sweepers or office hands at IIT. Once their husbands left for work and the children for their schools, the ladies would have an adda, session.
It was during one such session that the idea for social impact organisation was born. ‘Charity begins at home’ was the motto. The ladies put together their little savings and visited the homes of the hired hands and class IV staff quarters. The idea was to ensure that their children got educated. They realised that male alcoholism was rampant and it was a tough task to convince them about the importance of education to bring their children into the mainstream of society and make good lives for themselves.
So great was the resentment that even the otherwise polite people, “who worked for us as helpers, got abusive in their inebriated states. Sometimes their wives would signal to us to leave once their husbands were back home”. The ladies became activists at heart and and finally managed to extricate some children from their environment and started to teach them.
The resentment persisted though. “We often found the books and clothes that we gave them were shredded and even burnt. Over time, the mothers were convinced and it became easier to get more children into a small classroom”. The local priest was so happy with the endeavour that he gave them a big room behind the temple.
The second phase was to engage the women in some productive activity to generate additional income for the family. Classes for sewing, stitching and making handicrafts followed, with assistance for buying material and marketing the products. Many women got interested but resistance came from an unexpected source. Some professors got upset because their hired hands were getting more interested in stitching than household work!
Funding remained a problem and the ladies collected funds and donations from traders and business groups. “It all paid off though when some of our students went for higher studies. Nothing could give us greater pleasure and satisfaction.”
(As told to Support Elders by our member.)

Our member, Mr K. L. Chatterjee, spent his career working in ordnance factories at Ambernath, Maharashtra and others but has never forgotten his village Jhikira, where he was brought up.
On the border of Howrah and Hooghly, at village Jhikra, was the childhood home of our member, Mr K. L. Chatterjee. There was much debate about the curious name and most held that the origin of the name came from the ‘jhik’, the traditional ‘chullha’ (clay oven) of the region.
For the child, however, it was the sheer beauty of the place on the bank of the river Mundeswari, a distributary of the Damodar. “The Damodar river and the greenery surrounding the village and the free and relaxing lifestyle was totally different from what we have now. The calm, clean and serene ambiance enveloping the communities helped us to grow,” says Mr Chatterjee. It was a cultured and rather developed village and had a high school even 150 years back. It had brick roads, tube wells for drinking water other than a few big ponds, each with its own name.
There were the palaces, ‘rajbaris’ of the landed gentry too; of the Koleys and Roys. They awed him with their architectural splendour and sculptured panels that were in line with European mansions, even though the early signs of decay had set in. There were also beautiful terracotta temples, gilded with crafted earth; sophisticated bas-relief work, which attracted people from near and far. The boys from the palaces were his classmates but they never flaunted their wealth, though they were objects of great curiosity for the children at the beginning.
His father and many other men went to the city of Howrah where they worked. The commute meant ferrying across the river that all but dried up every summer. A bamboo pool would be constructed across the river bed, which would get washed away by the monsoon rains, when the Damodar turned fierce.
For the children, these made life interesting. There was, of course, the sheer joy of playing in the open. They needed no luxuries to enjoy life. Resources were limited and children knew how to find fun in the mundane. Higher studies demanded a move from the village but the memories remain etched in a beautiful corner of his mind.
(As told to Support Elders by our member.)