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| T.K.Chandra Sekhara Das, Thalakkath, Kanhangad, Kasaragod |
While walking 12 km to the Rajas High School, Neeleswaram, Kasaragod everyday or while peddling away in an old bicycle to distribute newspapers every morning, he could only dream of one day becoming an advocate’s clerk. Little could he have imagined that he would one day occupy the post of a High Court judge and later become the Ombudsman of Local Self Governments in the State.
Though T.K.Chandra Sekhara Das successfully completed the school education, college education was an impossible dream for a teacher’s son whose father had died in his infancy. So he took up the job of an advocate’s clerk. Apart from the Re.1 per day salary, the job afforded him to listen to the arguments of lawyers in English before the judge. This apprenticeship turned out to be quite useful as later events revealed.
His next stint was to manage a newly formed single teacher school in a portion of a local chieftain’s house. Gathering students, wading through the river on the way, walking 20km through the forest etc constituted the challenges of the assignment. However, not long after, he was posted as the headmaster of the school in Kanhangad where his mother was a teacher under him.
The black coat continued to enter his dreams and so he left behind the black board to become an advocate in 1966.
Since then he did not have to look back. For about 25 years he was the sole lawyer for Devaswam Board-related cases. In 1994 he was elevated as the High Court judge of Mumbai. Stints in Aurangabad and Goa followed. And to cap it all, he was appointed as the Ombudsman of LSGs in 2005.
Courtesy:
Sony M.Bhattathirippad (text), R.S.Gopan (photo), Sree, Malayala
Manorama, December 18, 2005
Contributed by: Administrator
