Ankur & Unmesh

A different initiative by Mr.Sukumar Poira of Sunderbans at the time of lockdown

Students were severely affected by the covid lockdown in 2020, there are news of depression, school dropout, child marriage from all the rural areas of India during this period. But the students of Birajnagar area of a remote island Bali Sunderbans were busy learning how to talk in English, solving math riddles, making poems and stories collectively, making sentences in English and Bengali. All because of a retired teacher Mr. Sukumar Poira whom people of Bali island of Sunderban fondly call ‘’Mastermosai’’ (the respected teacher), he came to this island for only three months to teach on way back in 1977 and to do something for the society he settled here and got retired from Bali Birajnagar School in 2015 as headmaster. When he saw students are not going to the schools but loitering around and playing all the day with others and getting scolded by their parents for not being in home, he felt an immediate urgency to do something fruitful. One day he organised all the students in nearby field and proposed to make a ‘’Dol’’ (group in Bengali) and all of them readily agreed thus ‘’Ankur & Unmesh’’ (ankur means bud and unmesh means passion) two Dol were formed which is now consists of around 60 students from class three to class twelve.

‘Mastermosai’ started to give them mostly informal education in such a manner that the knowledge will give the students a lot help in formal education in future, he helped them to speak in English with each other, helped their imagination to flourish by giving them two lines in poem or story form and asked the students to develop collectively a poem or a story. He gave each students a diary provided by one of his ex student who is now well established to develop good hand writing and to help them to practice good habit diary writing. Students of ‘Mastermosai’ slowly started showing the result of these initiative. In August 2021 ‘Mastermosai’ took another project called ‘’ Amar gach’’ (my tree), where each students of Ankur And Unmesh were provided a fruit tree sapling and another diary and the students were asked to take care of the sapling on their own and use only organic manure and to write down periodic observation of the sapling in the diary provided by a nature group.

Rimi mondal a mentally challenged student who was very shy, lonely and temperamental joined Unmesh Dol and with the help of ‘Mastermosai’ she now have lots of friends started communicating with others a lot and actively taking part in all the celebrations organised by Ankur and Unmesh , she even participates in group dances also. Students of this area encouraged by Mastermosai to plant trees by the road side of Birajnagar village in order to help understand the need for a forestation. While in school Sukumar poira with the help of school students planted huge number of mangrove saplings on the bank of Durgadowani river near his school which now developed in a dense mangrove plantation along the bank of the river.

Mr. Poira was awarded ‘ GreenTeacher’ by the ‘Sanctuary Asia’ in the year 2007 and also ‘The Telegraph School Award’ in 2009.