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My encounter with a former teacher


When I was in Form Two I had a maths teacher who had come from Ceylon(now Sri Lanka) and was on work permit. Those were times when Malaya was short of experienced teachers and had  to import teachers largely from India and Ceylon. I was poor in Maths and not a popular student with this teacher. When he came into class he would look at a group of naughty students (me  included) and tell us to leave the class as we were not interested in maths. So we missed most math classes.


After about ten years later I found myself posted as an Officer in charge of approving and issuing work permits for non citizens. I had a big room to myself and a good number of junior staff to assist me. One day when I walked into my office I saw my former Maths teacher seated with other non citizens to apply for work permits. I called one of my subordinates to take the teacher to a spare room and to give 

him a cup of coffee from the office canteen, and would meet him after I have finished what I was doing. My teacher was surprised as his encounters with Government Departments had not been pleasant. 


When I had freed myself, I walked over to the next room where my ex teacher was and found he had not touched his drink. I introduced myself and addresed  him “sir.” He was surprised. I introduced myself and told  him I was his student some years ago. When I asked him the purpose of his visit; he told me he had a  3 month work permit and needed to come to the office once every three months to renew his permit. I collected his permit wrote down one year in the columns and passed it to my subordinate to process it. He came back with a new renewal slip giving him a one year permit. When I  returned the one year permit to my teacher he was delighted saying it had been  difficult for him to call over every three months as he was a teacher and only free during the school holidays. He said he would celebrate the occasion with his family. I was glad I was in a position to bring some measure of relief to my former teacher. 


All contents (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana@blogspot.com


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