This Teacher’s Day, let’s remember that every teacher was once a student, with a lunchbox to look forward to and lessons to learn. Some of the teachers shaping young minds today grew up as Akshaya Patra beneficiaries, their focus in class once depending on something as ordinary as a proper meal. Here are five stories that show where their journeys began and how far they’ve come.
Discover what is already inside you
Bharat Solanki: I remember our lunch periods before Akshaya Patra’s meals became routine, when some children opened tiffins from home and others pretended they weren’t hungry. Once the meals started, nobody had to explain an empty box, and a lot of us finally noticed what the teacher was writing on the board.
I work as a counsellor and visiting lecturer now, meeting students who feel they must follow a path someone else has walked. Don’t just follow what someone else is doing. Discover what is inside you. This Teacher’s Day, the boy who once needed direction is still helping others find their own.
The teacher who started with a maths problem
Saraswati: I studied entirely in government institutions, from Class 1 through my M.Com, at a school with just thirteen students, while money was tight at home. What stayed constant was the meal that arrived every afternoon without fail.
I decided I wanted to be a teacher in Class 2, though I could not explain why. It became clear years later in a Maths class, when I solved a problem on the blackboard and enjoyed explaining my working more than getting it right. A scholarship after my 2nd PUC helped me carry on, and today I lecture at Vidyavana First Grade College. When we teach something, children learn, and that is what I love about teaching.
From waiting for the meal to teaching the next generation
Bhola Baghel: I grew up in a small village near Mathura and studied at our local primary government school. My family didn’t have much, but they believed strongly in education even when it was hard to see where that belief would lead.
Some days, the meal was the reason we walked to school at all. I sometimes carried a portion home to share with my family, because there wasn’t always enough on our table. Sometimes, that one plate of food was the only reason we showed up and the reason we kept believing in a better future.
I completed my B.Ed. and now tutor children up to Classes 10 and 12, teaching for free in my village too, for children whose families cannot afford tuition. This Teacher’s Day, I hope to become a government teacher myself.
When one meal makes room for a dream
Bhanu Pratap Singh: I grew up in Vrindavan and studied at a government school from Class 1 to Class 8, before moving into Physics. Today I work as a lab instructor, guiding engineering students through experiments once out of reach for a boy from my background.
The Mid-Day Meal Programme wasn’t dramatic. It was simply dependable, and its arrival meant one less thing to worry about and more room to focus on the lesson ahead. The distance between a meal and a career in teaching can span years, but every journey begins somewhere.
Some plates, some lessons
Five different villages, five different subjects, five entirely different paths. What connects Bharat, Saraswati, Bhola and Bhanu is not just that they once ate a meal that helped them stay in school. It is what they chose to do with the years that followed.
This Teacher’s Day, it is worth remembering that education rarely moves in a straight line. It moves through Maths problems on blackboards, through jeera rice on Thursdays, through a portion of food carried home to share, until somewhere along the way a handful of children decide to give what they once received.
At Akshaya Patra Foundation, that is really what Child Education looks like up close: not one dramatic turning point but a thousand small ones, held together by something as unremarkable as a shared meal. This Teacher’s Day, spare a thought for the other Akshaya Patra beneficiaries who quietly became teachers, and for the Akshaya Patra Foundation kitchens still serving that same simple belief. A plate of food today can become someone else’s classroom tomorrow.
