Meet Odisha Lecturer Who Works As A Porter At Night To Pay Teachers At His Coaching Centre For Poor Students

By OB Bureau On Dec 9, 2022

Bhubaneswar: Any student travelling by train at the Berhampur railway station would recognise their teacher Ch Nageshu Patro in the garb of a porter but would certainly be baffled. For, little known to them, he lives a dual life. All for their sake. He’s a lecturer by day and a porter at night, complete with a red shirt and a gamcha on his shoulders.

Patro’s story, reported in The Times of India relates how this resident of Ganjam district has been working as a registered porter since 2011.

His life changed after the COVID-19 outbreak. “When the pandemic struck and movement of trains got restricted, I lost my livelihood. Instead of sitting idle, I started teaching students of Class X,” Patro, 31, a postgraduate in Odia told TOI.

Later, he set up a coaching centre for mostly poor students of Classes VIII to XII. He himself taught Hindi and Odia but had to employ teachers for other subjects. Working as a porter fetches him Rs 10000 to Rs 12000 per month, which goes towards paying the salary of the teachers.

Patro has employed four teachers whom he pays Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 per month. He earns around Rs 8,000 per month from his teaching jobs. Patro gets Rs 200 for each class as a guest lecturer and can take a maximum of seven classes in a week, TOI reported.

Passionate about learning and teaching, he told TOI, “I could not appear in the high school certificate examination in 2006 as a regular candidate because my parents, who graze goats and sheep, were unable to afford money to spend on my education. I was forced to go to Surat in Gujarat in search of a job.”

After working in a textile mill in Surat for about two years he returned home after he fell ill. He then went to Hyderabad to work as a salesman in a mall. While staying here he got work as a railway porter in December 2011. It is during this period that he decided to appear for the Class XII exam in 2012 through correspondence. After passing the HSC exam, he did his graduation and post-graduation from Berhampur University as a regular student, as a porter at night, TOI reported.